Considers current events through an examination of this seventeenth-century philosopher.

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the writings of Baltasar Gracián, a seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit who explored the political uses of rhetoric. Gracián is best known in the United States for his bestselling collection of aphorisms entitled The Art of Worldly Wisdom, but his pragmatic philosophy has been influential in Europe since the mid-seventeenth century.