The current attempt in European politics to develop a European identity makes scientific research about discourses on Europe especially relevant. This book takes an analytical gaze at philosophical and political attempts to conceptualise Europe from antiquity to the present and contributes to the understanding of how they are intertwined with the historical contexts in which they have been forged. The volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of ideas of and for Europe - historical concepts of Europe, Europe as seen from its peripheries and from outside, current concepts of European identity, European memorial culture and reflections on Europe's prospects - and is of special interest to anyone concerned with questions of European identity.

Europe's long sixteenth century—a period spanning the years roughly from the voyages of Columbus in the 1490s to the English Civil War in the 1640s—was an era of power struggles between avaricious and unscrupulous princes, inquisitions and torture chambers, and religious differences of ever more violent fervor. Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe argues that this turbulent age also laid the conceptual foundations of our modern ideas about liberty, justice, and democracy. Hilary Gatti shows how these ideas emerged in response to the often-violent entrenchment of monarchical power and the fragmentation of religious authority, against the backdrop of the westward advance of Islam and the discovery of the New World. She looks at Machiavelli's defense of republican political liberty, and traces how liberty became intertwined with free will and religious pluralism in the writings of Luther, Erasmus, Jean Bodin, and Giordano Bruno. She examines how the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the clash of science and religion gave rise to concepts of liberty as freedom of thought and expression. Returning to Machiavelli and moving on to Jacques Auguste de Thou, Paolo Sarpi, and Milton, Gatti delves into debates about the roles of parliamentary government and a free press in guaranteeing liberties. Drawing on a breadth of canonical and lesser-known writings, Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe reveals how an era stricken by war and injustice gave birth to a more enlightened world.

This book is about the history of Europe in the twentieth century and concentrates on two particular aspects. First, it examines the impact of the Great War on Europe; secondly it is concerned with European civilization and with ideas of what is meant to be 'European'. The approach is interdisciplinary, including integrated analyses from politics, international relations, political ideas, literature, and the visual arts. The common focus, which links all the chapters, is the effect of the Great War on a European mentality, or European identity. It targets reactions to the First World War up to 1939, but extends its coverage in many areas up to the 1990s, offering a wide-ranging view of Europe in the twentieth century.

Montesquieu is famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, Vickie B. Sullivan argues that a creaful reading of Montesquieu's enormously influential The Spirit of the Law reveals the surprising result that he recognizes that Europe itself is susceptible to despotic practices - and that the threat emanates not from the East but rather from certain despotic ideas that inform Western institutions and practices. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu's sometimes veiled yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers have brough forth despotic ideas in the form, for example, of brutal Machiavellianism, of Hobbes's justifications for the rule of one, of Plato's reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and of the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason. Such ideas, Montesquieu shows, inform such revered European institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. In this new reading of Montesquieu's masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it to be instead a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu's death, when despotism repeatedly emerged in Europe with virulent intensity. -- from dust jacket.

How philosophical differences between Eurozone nations led to the Euro crisis—and where to go from here Why is Europe’s great monetary endeavor, the Euro, in trouble? A string of economic difficulties in Eurozone nations has left observers wondering whether the currency union can survive. In this book, Markus Brunnermeier, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau argue that the core problem with the Euro lies in the philosophical differences between the founding countries of the Eurozone, particularly Germany and France. But the authors also show how these seemingly incompatible differences can be reconciled to ensure Europe’s survival. Weaving together economic analysis and historical reflection, The Euro and the Battle of Ideas provides a forensic investigation and a road map for Europe’s future.

Given the destruction and suffering caused by more than four years of industrialised warfare and economic hardship, scholars have tended to focus on the nationalism and hatred in the belligerent countries, holding that it led to a fundamental rupture of any sense of European commonality and unity. It is the central aim of this volume to correct this view and to highlight that many observers saw the conflict as a 'European civil war', and to discuss what this meant for discourses about Europe. Bringing together a remarkable range of compelling and highly original topics, this collection explores notions, images, and ideas of Europe in the midst of catastrophe.

Mirroring Europe offers refreshing insight into the ways Europe is imagined, negotiated and evoked in Balkan societies in the time of their accession to the European Union. Until now, visions of Europe from the southeast of the continent have been largely overlooked. By examining political and academic discourses, cultural performances, and memory practices, this collection destabilizes supposedly clear and firm division of the continent into East and West, ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe, ‘Europe’ and ‘still-not-Europe’. The essays collected here show Europe to be a dynamic, multifaceted, contested idea built on values, images and metaphors that are widely shared across such geographic and ideological frontiers. Contributors are: Čarna Brković, Ildiko Erdei, Ana Hofman, Fabio Mattioli, Marijana Mitrović, Nermina Mujagić, Orlanda Obad, and Tanja Petrović.