074 Anti-Kantian Europe: The Anti-Enlightened Idea of Europe in French Thought (1750-1950)

Tuesday, June 25, 2013: 4:00 PM-5:45 PM
C3.17 (Oudemanhuispoort)
Over the last decades many publications have seen the light on the development of the 'Idea of Europe' from the Middle-Ages to the Present. This tradition of research focuses mostly on the Enlightened idea of Europe represented among others by Abbé de Saint Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, Saint Simon and Victor Hugo (culminating perhaps in Jurgen Habermas). However, there exists another Europeanist tradition that has received far less attention from historians and other scholars: the anti-Enlightened idea of Europe which emphasises the role of religion and tradition/ history as defining elements in the European idea. This anti-Enlightened idea of Europe did not develop in isolation but in exchange with Enlightened ideas of Europe from the later eighteenth century onwards. In this panel we will examine the development of the anti-Enlightened idea of Europe in French thought between 1750 and 1950. As France provided many influential thinkers on the European idea, France is a good national framework for studying anti-Enlightened idea of Europe. Authors such as Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald but also right-wing authors in the Interbellum and student groups in postwar Paris formed part of this tradition. One of the questions the panels addresses is the extent to which a genuine tradition of this type existed in France (for instance: to what extent did twentieth century authors draw upon predecessors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?).
Chair:
Michael Wintle
Discussant:
Annelien de Dijn
Conservative History Writing and the Idea of Europe
Matthijs Lok, University of Amsterdam
Joseph de Maistre's antirevolutionary Europeanism
Carolina Armenteros, University of Cambridge
Rightwing French Europeanist writers in the Interbellum
Marleen Rensen, University of Amsterdam
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