Pierre Rosanvallon / Maurice Fraser

Organised in partnership with The Goethe-Institut London, as part of a European Series Programme
6.30-8.00pm | Thursday 8 November 2007
Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, SW7

Speaker
Pierre Rosanvallon, Professor, Collège de France

Discussant
Maurice Fraser, Fellow in European Politics, Director of LSE European Public Lecture Series.

Chair
Christian Schubert, correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung based in Paris, and author of Great Britain, an Island between two Worlds

One of France’s most brilliant contemporary intellectuals and historians, Professor at the Collège de France, Pierre Rosanvallon is also responsible for the founding in 2002 of the French intellectual think-tank, La République des idées.

La République des idées proposes innovative in-depth analyses of the major economic, political and geo-strategic challenges of our time, through a series of working papers, seminars, and international conferences, as well as through a review La Vie des Idées.

Pierre Rosanvallon’s works are dedicated to the history of democracy, French political history, the role of the State and the question of social justice in contemporary societies. His recent output reveals a particular concern with Europe.

European Identity in Question
Until recently the self-understanding that dominated Europe was fundamentally ‘Eurocentric’. Europe’s rational-technical-scientific culture was regarded as unproblematically superior to other world cultures, and its value was accorded universal human significance. The mission of ‘we Europeans’ was nothing short of the world-wide-isation of the European world.

Today that self-understanding seems old. And yet ‘we Europeans’ of today can hardly be said to have found a new vision to replace it. We lack a clear view of what it means to be European.

It is in response to the profoundly uncertain situation of contemporary European identity that four cultural and academic centres in London, the Institute of Philosophy (University of London School of Advanced Study), the Forum for European Philosophy (London School of Economics), the Goethe Institute and the Institut Français, have come together to host a special series of discussions with some of Europe’s leading thinkers to explore central questions related to this theme.