Régis Debray on the end of the European dream

In his work 'Aveuglantes Lumières' ('Blinding Enlightenment'), the French philosopher Régis Debray does away with some of the founding concepts of 18th century European thinking. He explains in an interview with William Bourton the reasons why "Europe is a dissolving dream. ... On cannot but notice that Europe is at its lowest, as is its capacity to act on the running of things political and economic. We may well ask ourselves whether this dream, rationalist and technocratic, was not the child of the Enlightenment. The notion that Reason is the faculty of unity, that economic and technical Reason will be the death of national cultures, that 'economics is clean, politics is dirty', that no conflict between nations is insurmountable, that we can adopt a common language ... All of these postulates are oblivious to an historical fact, which is that all identities are formed 'by opposition'. One takes position through opposition: what counts for individuals counts for nations and even federations."

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