Description:
This volume examines the intertwined meanings of reason, crisis, and Europe against the backdrop of acute political, ethical, and geopolitical instability. Eschewing any singular diagnosis or overarching interpretive frame, it assembles a range of disciplinary, methodological, and normative approaches in productive tension.
Review Quotes:
Today, Europe finds itself under strong external pressure and traversed by painful internal divisions, the former of course stirring the latter. The contemporary crises are so unreasonable that what seems to be in crisis is literally reason. But although present-day political crises strike us as unexpected, fundamentally the crisis of reason is nothing new in Europe, on the contrary, in many ways, it is the very definition of Europe. Since the beginning, Europe is also a philosophical idea, moreover, a very particular idea, in that Europe has at the same time identified itself with an ideal of reason, and thought itself in terms of the crisis and failure of this ideal. This timely book explores Europe as a philosophical question, with which both reason and its crisis are not only at stake, but at test. Its chapters draw a rich and stimulating map of different aspects of the crisis of reason tested against historical reality. It is recommended reading for anyone desiring to traverse our time by means of thinking.
Susanna Lindberg, Professor of Continental Philosophy, Leiden University
In this collection, the editors take seriously the current crises of European modernity and of its normative categories of reason and progress as culminated in the many tragic events of the past century. With a rich multidisciplinary approach, the contributions to the volume question the very idea that the European project could even be seen as coherent and unitary attempt, and demonstrates how its genesis and trajectories of development have always been more contested, liminal, and uncertain. The book unveils alternative voices and concepts though which hegemonic rationalities can be problematised, and takes this plurality as the starting point for imaginatively think new paths of thinking for the future.
Sara Raimondi, Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, Northeastern London
The contributions in this volume add up to a renewed vision of Europe in the world. If you care about the project of modernity then this is a must read text.
Dr. Iain MacKenzie, Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent