Europe is founded on an inviolable legal system and a substantive discourse. The world, however, is shifting towards a system of relations based on violence, threats, power, and geopolitical might. As far as I am concerned, the European system—the unshakable authority of the judiciary and the power of argument—is morally and socially far preferable to a 19th-century system based on the law of the strongest.
Europe must therefore go back in time. The necessity of doing so is evident, but that does not mean we would want to, nor that we would wish to squander our societal achievements. We need a new Gründerzeit architecture.
