ABSTRACT
The strongest spokesman for a federal Europe was Jean Monnets. His goal of European integration remained at least after the failure of the plans for a defence community and a political community in the first half of the 1950s basically a rhetorical figure, although as such it had a strong appeal. The realistic historical perspective on the European integration evaluates Maastricht differently. The authors have argued that a democratic European Union (EU) would require a strong public sphere for political contention and for formulation of social critique, and a strong political centre to respond to the critique. They argued for a different historical understanding of the European integration project but not because there is no historical perspective in the mainstream analysis of Europe in social and political sciences. The philosophy of history is a trademark of modernity and emblematic for the temporalization of social imagination. The teleological perspective has a long tradition in European philosophy of history.
