European Thought And Culture 1350 1992

This book explores the main currents of European thought between 1350 and 1992, which it approaches in two principal ways: culture as produced by place and the progressive unmooring of thought from previously set religious and philosophical boundaries. The book reads the period against spatial thought’s history (spatial sciences such as geography or Euclidean geometry) to argue that Europe cannot be understood as a continent in intellectual terms or its history organized with respect to traditional spatial-geographic categories. Instead we need to understand European intellectual history in terms of a culture that defined its own place, as opposed to a place that produced a given culture. It then builds on this idea to argue that Europe’s overweening drive to know more about humanity and the cosmos continually breached the boundaries set by venerable religious and philosophical traditions. In this respect, spatial thought foregrounded the human at the unchanging’s expense, with European thought slowly becoming unmoored, as it doggedly produced knowledge at wisdom’s expense. Michael J. Sauter illustrates this by pursuing historical themes across different chapters, including European thought’s exit from the medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the Industrial Revolution, and war and culture, offering a thorough overview of European thought during this period. The book concludes by explaining how contemporary culture has forgotten what early modern thinkers such as Michel de Montaigne still knew, namely, that too little skepticism toward one’s own certainties makes one a danger to others. Offering a comprehensive introduction to European thought that stretches from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth century, this is the perfect one-volume study for students of European intellectual history.

What are the characteristics of European culture and identity? In which way can culture contribute to the current crisis of meaning within the EU and Europe? And should we return to the discourse of culture and historical experience in order to find a common ground for Europe? In the run-up to the Forum we will publish an anthology on these urgent questions. A host of prominent and influential thinkers such as political scientist Ivan Krastev and historians Philipp Blom and Adam Zamoyski have been invited to write essays. Their thoughts are assembled in the anthology Re:Thinking Europe. In addition to these current day reflections, a selection of often overlooked classical texts that have proved fundamental importance for Europe have been curated.

Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics and law - examine the intellectual and social investments characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules, creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still recognisable and productive in the world today.

With the expansion of the EU and calls for a European constitution, the question of a common European identity has become increasingly pressing in recent times. However, in the face of diverse national and regional traditions - and the absence of an obvious European cultural imaginary - the forging of a strong sense of European identity proves problematic. This volume brings together case studies of national and regional images from across Europe, which together suggest emerging patterns of identification within contemporary Europe - patterns which may not necessarily amount to a European 'identity', but rather to a European 'mode' of identification. The chronological structure of the volume demonstrates the increasingly problematic nature of national collective memories and past imaginaries in light of emergent marginal voices and images, and suggests that it is both from beyond and within the national paradigm that new challenges are now reshaping the cultural imaginary of European communities. Focusing on cultural images within film, literature, national narratives and myths, museum exhibitions and architecture, this volume is of interest to a wide variety of disciplines in the humanities, and presents an interdisciplinary approach to questions of cultural memory and identity formation.

Trajectories brings together cultural theorists not only from countries with a known historical critical tradition such as America, Canada and Australia but from the East-Asia locations of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, India and Thailand. It constitutes a critical confrontation between the imperial and colonial co-ordinates of north and south, east and west. Without rejecting the Anglo-American practices of cultural studies, the contributors present critical cultural studies as an internationalist and decolonized project. Trajectories links critical energies together and charts future directions of the discipline. The contributors discuss subjects such as Japanese colonial discourse, cultural studies out of Europe, Chinese nationalism in the context of global capitalism, white panic, stories from East Timor, queer life in Taiwan and new social movements in Korea. The book ends with an interview with Stuart Hall.

The present volume assembles essays from a broad cultural and professional spectrum around the question of European cultural identity. The heterogeneity of the contributors -- their differing points of departure and methods -- attests to a tension in intellectual communities which today is more intense than ever. Europe's identity crisis is not merely an empirical matter. It reflects a far deeper, and far older, discursive crisis. The mandate of Europe's traditional intellectual institutions to preserve and police their own cultural heritage has proved incapable of evolving in a manner sufficient to account for the mutation in its object: European culture. It is not merely that Europe's identity, like any identity in the flux of history, has changed. Rather, the notion of identity, the very basis of any questions of who we are, where we are going, and the appropriate political forms and social institutions for further existence, all rely on a logic of identity which has, at best, become extremely problematic. It is this problematization which provides the common thread unifying the following essays. Each contributor, in his/her own way and with respect to his/her own research object, confronts the adequacy of the concept of cultural identity. The hidden presuppositions of this concept are indeed remarkable, and the logic of cultural identity prescribes that they remain undisclosed.

"This volume brings together some of the biggest names in European Studies to analyse the most important trajectories of Europe′s development and the challenges faced by the continent today. No one interested in Europe will be able to ignore this extraordinary collection of scholarship." - Professor Thomas Diez, University of Birmingham "In its range and comprehensiveness it will be hard to beat; and it will certainly become an invaluable resource for sociologists, political scientists, historians and all others seeking the best information and most up-to-the-date approaches to the study of Europe today." - Professor Krishan Kumar, University of Virginia "An impressive account of the state of the art of the study of contemporary Europe... This is an outstanding work and a definite companion to all those interested in contemporary Europe." - Journal of Contemporary European Studies Europe is one of the world′s oldest civilizations. But what does it mean to be European today? What place does Europe have in global affairs? How should we analyze its key institutions, system of governance and broader cultural, social and political dynamics? This exhaustive and timely handbook: Explores the transformations that characterize contemporary Europe Investigates how we can best study Europe Consolidates European studies and provides a platform for future study Increases the profile of European studies. The Handbookpromotes the increasing diversity of perspectives employed in the study of contemporary Europe and EU integration and is situated within the context of Europe′s transformations. It offers balanced coverage of political, social, economic, cultural and institutional dimensions of Europe, and includes chapters by leading authorities including Ulrich Beck, Craigh Calhoun, Donatella della Porta, Claus Offe, Anssi Paasi, Ben Rosamond, Gurminder Bhambra and Charles Tilly. Multidisciplinary in organization, inclusive in coverage and cutting-edge in scope, The SAGE Handbook of European Studies is a landmark resource for anyone interested in Europe.