The making of the West

Core Course

Is the West the best? This subject offers an advanced introduction into history of ideas, which have shaped contemporary Western civilization, with a particular focus on Europe. We will learn how the current project of European unification – the European Union – has emerged out of a specific historical constellation. We will trace it back to the age of the enlightenment, which brought about radical social and political transformations in Europe. We will see how the emphasis on the individual and his ability to think for himself, articulated by Rene Descartes, gave rise to a democratic ideal of self-government conceptualised by the likes of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. We will study the emergence of ideologies, such as conservatism (Edmund Burke), communism (Karl Marx) and liberalism (John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville) and see how the rise of totalitarian ideologies in the Twentieth

Century shattered Europe’s self-confidence. Finally, we will examine how Europeans reclaimed the best aspects of their history after the defeat of Nazism in 1945 (Hannah Arendt) and the collapse of communism in 1989 (Jürgen Habermas).