Pierre-Henri Tavoillot is a philosopher and a lecturer at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. His previous work, L'Abeille (et le) Philosophe (The Bee [and the] Philosopher), was a great success.

Are things improving or deteriorating? Should we succumb to the poisonous charm of pessimistic attitudes, or maintain our faith in the future?

After the great success of his last work, L'Abeille (et le) Philosophe, Pierre-Henri Tavoillot endeavors to examine the fears and hopes that we face today. Feeling neither desperation nor confidence, we manage to believe that everything is getting better and better and, simultaneously, worse and worse. In the areas of security, poverty, and health, progress is spectacular; yet we continue to be disappointed, as if promises were never kept.

So what do we do? Pierre-Henri Tavoillot shows that the solution lies in a fresh injection of lucidity: the knowledge that dreams don't come true should not prevent us from enjoying the times we live in, or from preferring courage to resignation. Crises of authority, confidence, the roots of French pessimism, the end of ideologies, mistrust of Europe: in this book, Tavoillot puts all the resources of philosophical thought at the service of a calm and peaceful understanding of our troubled times.