In this article we introduce the reader to the reasons that led to this collection: an interdisciplinary exploration aimed at renewing interest in Luigi Einaudi’s search for «good government», broadly understood as «good society». Prompted by the Einaudian quest, the essays – exploring philosophy of law, economics, politics and epistemology – develop the issue of good government in several forms, including the relationship between public and private, public governance, the question of freedom and the complexity of the human in contemporary societies. The common thread of these essays is that problematic but indissoluble knot that tells us something deeply human: our being torn between homing and roaming, institutional and individual, law and freedom, real and ideal