Europe: ‘Too old for its own truths and victories’?

Rémi Brague

Today's West is concerned with 'sustainability' almost to the point of obsession: of resources, of companies, of cars, of vacations. But Europe, argues one of its leading thinkers, finds itself in the middle of a centuries-old experiment that puts the sustainability of not only its own existence but that of all mankind on the line. How did we get here? And do we have the metaphysical goods to get ourselves out?
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Cultural confidence and the liberal death wish

Frits Bolkestein
In a selection from his forthcoming book The Intellectual Temptation, former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein suggests that an academic obsession with abstract theory over hard-won experience lies behind our political and cultural crises. Bolkestein takes us from centralization through multiculturalism to cultural self-flagellation: ideals - or ideologies - that define the landscape of contemporary Western Europe.