Ideas and Their Destinies: Enlightenment, Communism, Europe

Abstract

This article addresses the discussions on the idea of Europe in the aftermath of the series of crises that have hit the project of European integration over the last decade. It does so via problematising the ambivalent structure of political ideas more generally, with emphasis on the tension between the gradual continuity of progress and the discontinuity implied by emancipatory political subjectivation. The article analyses this tension first in Kant’s writings on the Enlightenment (and the contemporary calls for a return to the legacy of Enlightenment) and then in Badiou’s text on the idea of communism. These analyses open the perspectives from which the discussions of Europe are finally examined: beyond serving as a reservoir of values used for proposing institutional reforms and launching new narratives, how does the idea of Europe feature as a stake in processes of political subjectivation?