![]() In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”, Isaiah Berlin draws a distinction between those who hold this kind of view of history and those who find such grand narratives of emancipation and progress both unbelievable and dangerous. However, one of these views regards that transition as having a universal appropriateness for humanity: the process of civilisation is understood in terms of progressive advances in learning how to live together that move societies ever closer to an ideal form of individual and social life for Man. Both of these views understand the trajectory of world history as involving a transition from a primitive condition to an increasingly civilised one. The distinction at issue grows from rival European views of human history. I will give labels at the end, but for the moment will describe the distinction without them. However, there is another philosophical distinction hovering around Oborne’s mixing things up, and this one is exceptionally important for thinking about different approaches to European union today, though like the distinction in ontology it is not clear that it follows nationally configured contours. Hegel is a paradigm idealist, Marx a paradigm materialist, both are German. The distinction between idealists and materialists is also a good one, but it is not clear that this lines up philosophical nationalities at all. The distinction between empiricists and rationalists is a good one, and there is some justification for thinking the former is more commonly found in British philosophy and the latter more commonly in French and German philosophy. This is a distinction in ontology concerning the fundamental nature of reality. And idealism is usually opposed to materialism. This is a distinction in epistemology concerning the foundations of knowledge. Empiricism is usually opposed to rationalism. The distinction Oborne draws between a British “empiricist” tradition and a Continental “idealist” one mixes up two standard distinctions in philosophy. And while I don’t think his distinction between empiricists and idealists will do the trick, I do think that significant philosophical differences are lurking behind political disputes around Europe today.įirst, a correction. Oborne’s attempt to align contemporary European politics with traditional European philosophy is fascinating. Anglo-Saxon empiricism and the idealism found on the Continent therefore prescribe directly opposite courses of political conduct.” This school of metaphysical idealism can be traced back through Hegel (for whom history itself is the realisation of an idea) and Kant to Plato. Most European schools of philosophy claim the exact opposite, namely that ideas are the only things that truly exist. Empiricism insists that all knowledge of fact must be based on experience. “In Britain, empiricism – most closely associated with Hume, though its roots can be traced back to William of Ockham and others – is the native inheritance. In a recent article in the Telegraph, Peter Oborne draws the debates over Britain’s future in the European Union into relation to an age-old philosophical quarrel: “The problem is that European and British leaders tend to come from rival intellectual traditions”: This article was first published on LSE’s EUROPP blog ![]() Instead, he writes, we should resist these harmonising ambitions and work towards ‘unity in diversity’: a Europe whose peoples have the freedom to debate and choose their own ends. Simon Glendinning takes an in-depth look at the philosophical underpinnings of the contemporary debate over European integration, arguing against those who take a ‘dogmatic’ view of the march towards an idealised federal union. For many, Europe appears to be on an inevitable path towards greater integration and federalism, with the UK looking more and more for a way out of the EU.
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