Wolf Lepenies in search of the European intellectual

In an interview conducted by Jean-Baptiste Marongiu, the German sociologist and essayist Wolf Lepenies, who has just published a book called 'What is a European intellectual ?', explains that there is no such thing. "Strictly speaking, there are only intellectuals who are French, British, German etc., but there is also something that links them whilst differentiating them, for the time being, from the rest of the world, in the sense that they share the same notion of the individual and of freedom. On the whole this space tallies with what we call the West. ... Let us allow differences to exit, it is very important. For me, the real danger is that nationalism, which we tried to cast out of the Europe of nations, may reappear on a European scale. A policy defining a non Eurocentric spirit takes into account the fact the Europe is no longer the continent that sets the pace and direction of the whole wide world.The Europeanisation of the world is over, perhaps because of its great success, since it is everywhere now. From now on, it should be recognised that there are other centres."

» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » History, » Philosophy, » Europe
All available articles from » Wolf Lepenies, » Jean-Baptiste Marongiu

» To the complete press review of Thursday, April 19, 2007