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![]( "Buchcover ISBN 9780745694597")
„An important stimulus to how Europeans can seek to understandcritically what will happen to them in 2008 and beyond.“
Ranier Fsadni, Times of Malta
„This is an important, highly relevant, and compelling book. Itwill be valuable to anyone who is interested in the present stateand future of Europe.“
James Rosenau, George Washington University
Europe is Europe's last remaining realistic political utopia. But Europe remains to be understood and conceptualized. Thishistorically unique form of international community cannot beexplained in terms of the traditional concepts of politics and thestate, which remain trapped in the straightjacket of methodologicalnationalism. Thus, if we are to understand cosmopolitan Europe, wemust radically rethink the conventional categories of social andpolitical analysis.
Just as the Peace of Westphalia brought the religious civil warsof the seventeenth century to an end through the separation ofchurch and state, so too the separation of state and nationrepresents the appropriate response to the horrors of the twentiethcentury. And just as the secular state makes the exercise ofdifferent religions possible, so too cosmopolitan Europe mustguarantee the coexistence of different ethnic, religious andpolitical forms of life across national borders based on theprinciple of cosmopolitan tolerance.
The task the authors have set themselves in this book is nothingless than to rethink Europe as an idea and a reality. It representsan attempt to understand the process of Europeanization in light ofthe theory of reflexive modernization and thereby to redefine it atboth the theoretical and the political level.
This book completes Ulrich Beck's trilogy on'cosmopolitan realism', the volumes of which complementeach other and can be read independently. It is essential readingfor anyone interested in the key social and political developmentsof our time.
Just as the Peace of Westphalia brought the religious civil warsof the seventeenth century to an end through the separation ofchurch and state, so too the separation of state and nationrepresents the appropriate response to the horrors of the twentiethcentury. And just as the secular state makes the exercise ofdifferent religions possible, so too cosmopolitan Europe mustguarantee the coexistence of different ethnic, religious andpolitical forms of life across national borders based on theprinciple of cosmopolitan tolerance.
The task the authors have set themselves in this book is nothingless than to rethink Europe as an idea and a reality. It representsan attempt to understand the process of Europeanization in light ofthe theory of reflexive modernization and thereby to redefine it atboth the theoretical and the political level.
This book completes Ulrich Beck's trilogy on'cosmopolitan realism', the volumes of which complementeach other and can be read independently. It is essential readingfor anyone interested in the key social and political developmentsof our time.