Volume 20, No. 2, Fall 2025

FORTHCOMING

The Idea of Europe

Kant's Treatise on Peace as a Draft for an International Peace Order
Ulrich W. Diehl | Heidelberg, Germany

Immanuel Kant's treatise on perpetual peace has been very influential on international law, but it is hardly studied any more by politicians. In his treatise, Kant has transferred the idea of the social contract to the relations among nations in order to contribute to a lasting peace among nations and its peoples. This essay outlines the key concepts and main principles Kant has proposed and I investigate how they could still be received and understood by the regimes and peoples of the current three hegemonic powers, China, Russia, and the United States. It is sometimes assumed that currently humanity is moving from a bipolar world order to a multipolar world order. However, there are two important factors which cause tensions between the idea of a so-called liberal world order governed by the rules of international law: Hegemonic powers do rarely follow these rules and rather adhere to historic myths about their own importance and special role among all other nations. In the case of the United States this historic myth is the rather messianic idea of American exceptionalism. Although the European Union is economically, militarily, and politically dependent on the United States, it tends to conceive of itself not as mere vassal of the United States, but rather even as the vanguard of Western civilization.

Keywords: Kant, Immanuel; perpetual peace; international law; hegemonic powers; liberal world order; People's Republic of China; Russian Federation; United States of America.

Who is European Now? From Karl Jaspers to the War Against Ukraine
Mats Andrén | University of Gothenburg, Sweden

After the Second World War, Karl Jaspers and others from the community of philosophers and intellectuals were eagerly reflecting on Europe, Europeanness, and the future of Europe. After 1989, philosophers returned to pondering these questions. My paper addresses how the idea of Europe has been reflected at these historical times, with a focus on three speeches by Karl Jaspers, José Ortega y Gasset, and Jacques Derrida. From this exploration, key themes are selected including special attention to the idea of Europe in the wake of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine that started on 24 February 2022.

Keywords: tba.

End of History or post-European Era and New Century of Wars?
Václav Němec | Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

TBA.

Keywords: tba.

Revisiting Friedrich Nietzsche's "Good European" with Karl Jaspers
Ruth A. Burch | Ludes University, Lugano–Pazzallo, Switzerland

The aim of this presentation is to revisit Friedrich Nietzsche’s Good European with Karl Jaspers to the end of elaborating an assessment of their contribution towards shifting limits regarding contemporary culture and community that is in crisis. I argue that good Europeans explore the creation of new categories, delimitations and possibilities. Nietzsche conceives his self of the free spirit not as a nationalist but as a good European who is keen to abolish the nation-state, who is a European of a cosmopolitan taste, and who "knows the sea, adventure, and the Orient." Nietzsche is not essentializing and defending the Germanisation for, according to him, there is and was no German culture. Rather, for Nietzsche, in Germany there have always been a few exceptionally cultivated individuals. As cultural philosophers Nietzsche and Jaspers are not only concerned with Europe but also with the entire world. Jaspers speaks in this context of world philosophy. In Jaspers, philosophy is a practice that aims at the creation of both existential and political freedom resulting from truth obtained in the loving struggle in authentic communication.

Keywords: tba.

Europe between Athens and Rome: Phenomenological Discourses on Europe in Hannah Arendt, Reiner Schürmann, and Jan Patočka
Golfo Maggini | University of Ioannina, Greece

TBA.

Keywords: tba.

Europe Beyond the Wrecking
Laura Tușa-Ilea | Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania

TBA.

Keywords: tba.

The Idea of Solidarity: Jan Patočka on Art and Creativity in Cold War Europe
Aspen E. Brinton | Virginia Commonwealth University

In his 1966 essay "Art and Time," Czech philosopher Jan Patočka argues that contemporary art is not only an important locus for the expression of individual freedom, but through the cultivation of historicity and critical reflection on the spirit of the present time, art and artistic communities can create a type of solidarity capable of resisting ideology, technocracy, and instrumental reason. Using an interpretation of Hegel’s aesthetics, Patočka articulates the bases for an authentic form of modern art that is capable of fostering freedom from external instrumentalization. After contextualizing Patočka's essay within midcentury East-Central European artistic practice and explaining how Patočka uses a partially Hegelian framework to transcend the limits of Hegel’s notions of traditional art, this essay argues that Patočka's ideas about art help illuminate his concept of "solidarity of the shaken," the keystone idea of his later work that brought together many of his ideas about phenomenology, technology, the future of Europe, bureaucracy, and the atomic situation. By probing the origins of authentic art and suggesting that art can engender shared freedom intersubjectively and transcendentally through spiritual authenticity, Patočka evokes the possibility that art can cultivate renewed visions of protest against excess and unjust power. Within such art, and in the spirit of Patočka's vision, creativity and historicity can underpin forms of solidarity that have both existential and political consequences. It is further argued that practicing solidarity of the shaken in artistic milieu, even if artists are seemingly powerless in an authoritarian state, can preserve the intrinsic values of human existence (as such unto itself) for those who confront the forces of totalizing instrumentalization in political and economic spaces.

Keywords: tba.

The Idea of Europe and Beyond: Husserl, Patočka, Derrida, Spivak
Eddo Evink | Open University, Netherlands

This essay aims to articulate a few answers to the question what remains of the idea of Europe. After a brief outline of this idea in the work of Edmund Husserl, the thoughts regarding Europe by Jan Patočka and Jacques Derrida are discussed, and then compared to the views of Gayatri Spivak. Finally, several insights on the idea of Europe are gathered as a result of a comparison of these different viewpoints.

Keywords: tba.

The World as a Whole, or Transcendence? Jan Patočka on Karl Jaspers
Jan Frei | Czech Academy of Science, Prague, Czech Republic

TBA.

Keywords: tba.