Abstract

Nostalgia for the present -- Identity and contingency: zones of conflict -- Dämmerung: the twilight of sovereignty: state, subjects, and fundamental rights -- The exile of the Nomos: Carl Schmitt and the Globale Zeit -- Gift, exchange, obligation: Karl Polanyi and social philosophy -- Universalism and politics of difference: democracy as a paradoxical community -- The oriental mirror: Voltaire and the roots of intolerance -- Ciphers of difference -- Europe after the Leviathan: technology, politics, constitution -- After Babel: towards a cosmopolitanism of difference.