Blik på Europa: En introduktion

Resumé

Visions of Europe: An Introduction

The European Union has been an incredible success for more than 40 years, but the economic crisis and the problems witnessed before the final agreement on the Lisbon treaty have recently questioned any further expansion of the Union, economically as well as politically and geographically.

In this article the authors argue that the actual problems in the EU reflect a deeper crisis, concerning the lack of clear values and / or principles that should lead Europe into the future. Although Europe is, and has always been, a heterogeneous entity, many different voices and discourses have for centuries sought to define Europe as a unified and stable cultural subject. The single most important challenge of the Human Sciences in the on-going negotiation of the future of the European project is to assure that the cultural richness, the semiotic ambiguity and historical depth in the conception of what Europe has been, is and might be in the future, is not sacrificed on behalf of certain political and bureaucratic interests. And one way to achieve this goal is to provide scholarly informed readings of a variety of important texts upon the subject, which might contribute to keeping the dialogue open. This volume presents readings of six different visions of Europe, seen from within and from without, and representing a time-span of 800 years.