PHILOSOPHICAL OBSESSIONS AT THE END OF THE CENTURY, Buenos Aires, Biblos, 1993. Philosophical obsessions: "Obsessions" is very strong term and seems to tread the paths of psychology, but it expresses exactly what I want to say: in our time (1993) some issues have become true theoretical "knots". They block fecund philosophical debate, but precisely because of that they become obsessive issues, towards which one is unwittingly and compulsively driven. In part, this is due to the fact that such knots are related to the questioning of reason. The point is that reason is "absolute" by right; we cannot argue against it, we can only argue with it. Within its own boundaries --argumentative discussion-- reason only leaves us with stratagem and wit; or silence, which is basically the result of the refusal to make use of arguments we know are unconvincing. At the end of the century The ethos of the last century, the collective conscience of the period, introduced a new concept of heroism. It reflects an experience roughly expressed in the following belief: "How difficult it is to be modern!". The end of this century, which is already in the past, will but underscore this heroism mentioned by Baudelaire, a heroism to which every plain man is condemned. He can do nothing but face problems such as the destruction of the ecosystem, the paradoxes of genetics and computing, and globalisation, while he suffers, unknowingly, the "anomie" discussed by Durkheim, the lack of moral guidelines and fulfilment of his needs. Philosophical obsessions: we should not avoid them, so we can enter the third millennium as open-minded, non-dogmatic philosophers. Philosophical obsessions at the end of the century opens a wide array of issues, stirred by readings and re-readings done from present times, while maintaining the denial of the "given", as this denial fuels philosophy, as long as it is not turned into a "a school subject", but is taken as a matter of life. There are two possible approaches to the future: from the standpoint of imagination or from nostalgia --in Stephen Toulmin’s words. Nostalgia has no horizon of expectations. The 80’s were nostalgic. Let us hope the 90’s will turn to imagination and future-oriented projects. But this requires acknowledging that stepping into the third millennium cannot be loaded with the burden of notions that were the password and trademark of modernity. Life in our days is very different from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. >From the point of view of ideas and beliefs, we cannot maintain any longer the intellectual autonomy of separate sciences, nor can we trust the self-justification of technology, or defend sovereign and independent nations, or institutions based on the power given to them by western tradition, according to a definitely modern program that must be revisited and reassessed by some sort of planetary ecology.