A European federation of states is the only form of integration which has the chance to preserve freedom and survive shifting power relations between sovereign nations

Over 200 years ago, the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, predicted the rise of a great political body in Europe, akin to the present European Union. Using Kant’s ‘philosophical triangle’ Simon Glendinning argues that Europe’s present position as a region of connected, but sovereign states does not go far enough, but that a single unified Europe would be a ‘graveyard of freedom’. Instead, a federation of states provides the best future for Europe

A new rootedness? Education in the technological age

There is little doubt that European societies have undergone a profound transformation in the last two-hundred years. From the self-sufficient farm economies of pre-industrial times, through a period of intense industrialisation and urbanisation, and now the globalisation of tele-technology and capitalism. In the course of these social developments educational regimes underwent their own changes: from the rote schools, through the progressive movement, and into our own technocratic, managerial and performance focussed approaches in mass education. How should we think through the questions concerning the goal of education in our time? This essay considers contributions to this issue from Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Dewey and Nietzsche, highlighting two interrelated themes. The first, concerns the goal of education; the second concerns the characterisation of our time. The essay answers the first question in terms of human flourishing in a place; and the second in terms of the ubiquity of modern technology. Today, young children are not just “natives” of a town or country or region, rooted in the milieu of a national culture; they are increasingly becoming delocalised “digital natives”, and it is easy to think that they are becoming “rootless” as a result. The essay argues that we are not seeing a transition from rootedness to rootlessness, but a transition within a general space of nativisation. The implications of this transition for the education of young people today are introduced and briefly considered. I In a memorial address delivered in his home town of Meskirch in 1955, Martin Heidegger invited his audience to “dwell upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here, on this patch of home ground, and now, in the present hour of history” (MA, p. 47). Heidegger thinks that the “now” of our present hour of history is marked precisely by a distinctive loss of rootedness, the accelerating deracination of our lives from any “patch of home ground”, an uprooting from any definite “here”. In this essay I will try to introduce the problem this new social condition raises with respect to the education; the second concerns the characterisation of our time. The essay answers the first question in terms of human flourishing in a place; and the second in terms of the ubiquity of modern technology. Today, young children are not just “natives” of a town or country or region, rooted in the milieu of a national culture; they are increasingly becoming delocalised “digital natives”, and it is easy to think that they are becoming “rootless” as a result. The essay argues that we are not seeing a transition from rootedness to rootlessness, but a transition within a general space of nativisation. The implications of this transition for the education of young people today are introduced and briefly considered

Derrida and the philosophy of law and justice

Readings of Derrida’s work on law and justice have tended to stress the distinction between them. This stress is complicated by Derrida’s own claim that it is not ‘a true distinction’. In this essay I argue that ordinary experiences of the inadequacy of existing laws do indeed imply a claim about what would be more just, but that this claim only makes sense insofar as one can appeal to another more adequate law (whether the projection of a new law or an existing ‘higher’ law). Exploring how Derrida negotiates a subtle path between classical Platonism and classical conventionalism about justice, the attempt is made to take seriously Derrida’s aim to affirm the idea of a ‘mystical’ foundation of the authority of laws by taking ‘the use of the word “mystical” in what I venture to call a rather Wittgensteinian direction’

In the shadow of the EU referendum: "this is the worst"

Simon Glendinning on what Brexit means

Nietzsche’s Europe: an experimental anticipation of the future

Like Kant a little over a hundred years earlier, Nietzsche saw the history of Europe as moving towards the formation of an integrated political union. Unlike Kant, however, Nietzsche does not see this development as an unambiguous good. Kant had supposed that European integration would belong to a history of constitutional improvements that would make war between what we would now call “democratic” states in Europe increasingly less likely. Nietzsche also sees it as part of a process of democratization, but he understands that as a movement of “levelling and mediocritizing” of the European peoples, making Europeans into serviceable herd animals, “weak willed highly employable workers”. The general trend of European democratization is simply a movement towards the production of a type that is “prepared for slavery in the subtlest sense”. Nietzsche does not think this is a wholly unhappy development, however, because he thinks the same conditions will also bring about something that he welcomes: “the breeding of tyrants”. It is hardly an attractive picture, and this paper tries to come to terms with Nietzsche’s strange hopes for a Europe to come, and to locate it in the context of a distinctively German tradition of thinking about European unity

Nietzsche, Europe and the German question

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is best known for his critical texts on religion and morality, but how did he view Europe? Simon Glendinning notes that Nietzsche’s thought consistently exhibited a distinctively European orientation, with a conception of his own work as belonging to a European context, and not simply a German one or a more universal and global one. He writes that Nietzsche’s reflections on Europe provide insights into the nature of Germany – the so called ‘German question’ – as well as raising questions about what it means to be ‘European’

‘Neoliberal’ variants have dominated Europe’s history but they have paved the way for a new conception of human progress

The term ‘neoliberalism’ is frequently used in contemporary political discussions, but while polemically effective, conceptually it lacks rigour. Simon Glendinning writes on the relationship between the concept and classical liberalism. He argues that by defining neoliberalism in terms of this relationship it becomes apparent that there can be more than one form of neoliberalism, and that we now live in an era in which a distinctively economic variation holds the field. Tracing European history in terms of a sequence of different neoliberal hegemonies, he considers the possibility of a development beyond the present neoliberal condition

Europe should reject Jürgen Habermas’ vision of a federal European state and instead create an enduring association between sovereign nations.

What should the ultimate aim of European integration be? Simon Glendinning writes on the argument put forward by Jürgen Habermas in favour of creating a ‘supranational democracy’ in Europe, with a common European government. Taking issue with Habermas’ interpretation of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, he argues that the creation of a supranational democracy is not only unlikely, but conceptually flawed. Rather than viewing a voluntary association of independent states as being fundamentally weak or incomplete without further integration, we should recognise that it offers the best of all worlds: preserving European diversity, while also increasing tolerance and safeguarding against war

Derrida and Europe beyond Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism

Simon Glendinning argues that Derrida’s views on Europe are more complex than has often been appreciate

Varieties of neoliberalism

The term “neoliberalism” is encountered everywhere today. In popular leftist political rhetoric it is often simply a place-holder for “contemporary capitalism,” “austerity politics,” and “all that is bad in our world,” giving that rhetoric the appearance of a new diagnostic edge. However, one could be excused for thinking that its intelligibility is in inverse proportion to its ubiquity. By defining it in terms of its conceptual relationship with classical liberalism, this paper offers a justification for thinking about our time as a period in which a particular “community of ideas” has sought (with some success) to establish a neoliberal hegemony. Doing so reveals, however, that there are in fact a variety of neoliberalisms, and that the period we now inhabit is best conceived in terms of the rise of a distinctively economic variation. Europe’s history is sketched (anachronistically) in terms of shifting patterns and transitions in which neoliberal variants vie for power. Setting those transitions within a wide-angled vision of Europe’s modernity as inseparable from a movement of the decentering of our understanding of “man,” the chance for a new shift is identified – one to be accompanied, no doubt, by “a surge of laughter” that has been heard, regularly and without fail, throughout the entirety of Europe’s history