What is left out in Habermas’s deliberations on Europe is any possibility for political, social or cultural contingencies; the assumption is that things simply get better if not all but then at least most of the time.
The greatest reward of being a doctor - relating to patients as fellow complicated human beings - has been lost amidst the growth of tick-box, corporatised management that treats all doctors as if they were 'duffers'.
The risk to Europe is a perpetuation of crisis by implacable erosion, and with this the abdication of political institutions from protecting the interests of citizens that they are responsible for and to.
The task of philosophy then becomes an opportunity to dialogue. We have to risk being in search of what joins us in our dissimilarity.
In the experience and activity of political dissidence, care for the soul realized itself through denying the falsehoods imposed by the authorities and exalting truth above any imposed scheme.
The individual should learn to expose himself to the risk of giving up his egoistic prerogatives, in order to build a new form of community.
Does the attempt to rationalize mindfulness and make a tool for better performance and efficiency undermine its core concept?
The idea of solidarity has its roots in the history of the workers’ movement, and as this is usually excluded from conventional tales of human endeavour, it is seldom understood.
Dagmar Wilhelm--see here her video conversation on solidarity with Darian Meacham-- has been consulting her students’ views on the same subject.
Post-Europe, for Patočka, must be acutely aware of its own contingency even when it proclaims (above all when it proclaims) the sanctity of universal principles.
The Greek government has the mandate to revive the idea of solidarity and social justice, but also the idea of the economy itself.
Patočka calls for a renewed effort in Europe today to reestablish some kind of equilibrium between “the rationality of means” and “the rationality of ends”.
