by Boaventura de Sousa Santos 15 November 2011

Europe is haunted by the ghost of historical exhaustion. Having ascribed to itself the mission of teaching the world for the past five centuries, it now appears to have very little to teach. Even more tragically, it appears to have no capacity to learn from the experience of the world as a whole. The little European corner, albeit increasingly smaller in the larger world context, cannot grasp the wider world but by resorting to general concepts and universal principles, and does not even realize that, on its own grounds, loyalty to such concepts and principles is little more than a mirage. Assuming that the understanding of the world by far exceeds the European understanding of the world, the difficulties that Europe is undergoing may provide a fertile learning field for the whole world. Here are the main lessons. Read the rest of this entry »