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.