"The horror of the twentieth century was not something that burst into a world of peaceful coexistence suddenly and from without. At the same time, being dissatisfied with the edifying picture of the habitual hagiography and situating oneself on the firm ground of reality, with its condtradictions and conflicts, does not in any way mean denying the merits and strong points of the intellectual tradition [of liberalism] under examination. But we certainly must bid farewell once and for all to the myth of the gradual, peaceful transition, on the basis of purely internal motivations and impulses, from liberalism to democracy, or from general enjoyment of negative liberty to an ever wider recognition of political rights. Moreover, has liberalism definitely left behind it the dialectic of emancipation and dis-emancipation, with the dangers of regression and restoration implicit in it? Or is this dialectic still alive and well, thanks to the malleability peculiar to this current of tho...