In Melancholic Freedom, David Kyuman Kim navigates the various dimensions of human agency, exploring not only the current cultural and ideological climate of agency, but also the very core of agency itself. David Kyuman Kim is the leading philosopher of religion and culture of his generation. The breadth of his synthetic imagination, the scope of his scholarly knowledge and the depth of his poetic wisdom is amazing. How rare it is to see such delicate style, nuanced analysis and robust vision in one figure and text in our compartmentalized academy and terrorized society. His dark hope summons us!