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The 12th
International Conference of
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ISSEI
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In cooperation
With
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International Society for the Study
of European Ideas
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Section
V: Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology, Language
Workshop: How God Disappeared From Europe: Visions of a United Europe From Erasmus to Kant
Chair:
Annemarie van Heerikhuizen
The aim of
this workshop is to discuss how from the time of Desiderius
Erasmus to the time of Immanuel Kant, peace thinking in Europe developed
from a mixture of humanistic-religious pleas for peace into political and
scientific arguments in favour of a United Europe.
Erasmus
(Querela pacis, 1517)
was inspired by the lessons of Jesus Christ, his prayers for one God, one
Father and, so Erasmus deduced, one
European community. Erasmus was one of the first to believe that in Europe an arbitration system could be set up that could
bring peace in conflicts between competing countries. Duc
de Sully in his Memoirs (1638)
oriented himself on the succesful peace politics of
the French king, Henry IV. Europe simply had
to copy, instrumentally, French politics, and all conflicts would cease to
exist. Finally, at the end of the 18th century, science came in. On
the basis of natural, legal thinking Hugo Grotius (De jure belli ac pacis, 1625) and after
him Immanuel Kant (Zum Ewigen Frieden, 1795) argued that international society was a
community, held together by international laws. A League
of Nations had to be set up, founded by European republics. In
this way Europe could eventually reach peace,
without the help of religion or politics.
After
Kant, in the 19th/20th century, Europe
also became the concern of sociologists, economists and political thinkers. The
interesting question is - and I hope to discuss this in the workshop - were
they still influenced by the writings of Erasmus, Sully and Kant?
Dr. Annemarie van Heerikhuizen
University
of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
a.vanheerikhuizen@uva.nl
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