A striking new building, which represents a multi-million pound investment in Arts and Humanities by the University of Sheffield, has been completed this week. The £21.2 million landmark development, which sits on the west corner of the former Jessop Hospital for Women site, will provide leading facilities for the University´s Department of History, School of English and the School of Modern Languages and Linguistics (SOMLAL).
The constitution of the European Union as a political body, rather than as a depoliticized space of self-contained states, depends on the creation of a collective bond among individuals assembled around a determinate set of shared political values and ends. The possibility of a European demos requires thus the definition of a sensus communis at the supranational level to legitimize the rule of the communitarian institutions and constitute Europe as an intersubjective "community of destiny" able to permeate the borders of the nation-state.
The conceptualization of this European common space requires clarification as to which values ought to orient European practice towards its citizens, and in particular whether EU institutions should "pedagogically" favour certain conceptions of the good or, conversely, refrain from adopting (and imposing) some form of ethical conception or social model regarded as the most suitable. At stake is the creation of a collective European identity and the choice in terms of values that this involves. In terms of political theory the debate about the ideational foundation of European values leads us generally to the theoretical debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists. It also raises more specific theoretical questions: for example, how to characterise the constitution of the European Union within the terms of Rawlsian theory: might it be established in the light of the principles of justice for a domestic society presented in "A Theory of Justice", or must we turn to the framework for a confederation of liberal peoples found in "The Law of Peoples"?
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Av. de Berna 26-C
1069-061 Lisboa
Portugal
www.ifl.pt
www.fcsh.unl.pt
