Europeana (Dalkey Archive Essentials)

quand les princes et les évêques, au lieu d'armures, se mettent à collectionner des tableaux, des livres et des manuscrits : tous reconnaissent par cette capitulation inconsciente que le génie créateur commence à l'emporter en Occident et que les œuvres artistiques sont destinées à survivre aux œuvres politiques et guerrières. L'Europe a acquis le

it made possible the dissemination of what he takes to be ‘purely’ European notions of freedom, equality before the law, and human rights to the survivors.

The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, trite, old-fashioned. I wrote this book because I have come to realize that it is not. More than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense. We take its gifts for granted: newborns who will li

Historian Tony Judt notes that the state of affairs was so bad in postwar Europe that only the state could offer hope of salvation to the masses of displaced people. So it did. Everything from generous unemployment insurance to universal health care became common after the war in ways that never caught on in America.

Only a European author could have concluded that the natural state of man was to be in a constant state of violence; and only a European author would have been right.