Modernities

The books Histories, Beliefs, and Values, and its companion volume in the same distinguished series, Solicitations: Poverties, Discourses, and Limits, appear in especially challenging times. For Europe, many informed persons keep saying, is once again in crisis. But exactly what the crisis is few seem able to say. When the exact nature of the “crisis” cannot be stated clearly, the “crisis” is certainly critical. On the one hand, so many geopolitical, economic, political, social, and cultural problems appear to be proliferating endlessly. Yet at the same time so many thoughtful persons continue to narrow their perspectives to almost single issue concerns. Good examples of both overly broad and overly narrow approaches include ongoing discussions at many levels concerning global economic collapse in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, accelerating climate change, worsening migration issues, and even increasingly widespread fears of coming tactical if not strategic nuclear warfare. Moreover, working seriously in sustained ways to find reasonable and efficient middle ground approaches between multifarious and monocausal reflections on current European crises often simply falls between the two poles instead of actually bridging them fruitfully. The main effort here is certainly not a matter of bridging. Rather the attempt is to inquire more particularly into some of the major philosophical and cultural grounds underlying so much general and specialized talk today of Europe’s new crises. Accordingly, several basic headings stand out. Just three are selected here – alternative early modern histories of European postmodern cultures today, contrasting readings of just how knowledge and belief are to be understood fundamentally, and rationally competitive visions of basic human values.

About the author:
Peter McCormick is a French and Canadian citizen working mainly in contemporary ethics, social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of art. He is Prince Franz-Joseph II and Princess Gina Memorial Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, formerly he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Among his impressive list of book monographs are Blindly Seeing. Essays in Ethics: Discourses, Sayings, Sufferings, and In Times Like These. Essays in Ethics: Situations, Resources, Issues both published in the libri nigri series as volumes 63 and 64.