ABSTRACT
This conclusion reflects on the underlying anthropological theme of this book by looking back at the Enlightenment’s revolutionary tradition through the events of November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. It notes that the longstanding contemporary emphasis on the inherently political nature of European calls for emancipation has obscured an underlying naïveté in the Enlightenment views of both human capacity and meaning in history. It then reflects on European thought’s broader rhythm and notes that what we think of as a secure geographic space (i.e., Europe as a continent) is actually the product of longstanding and arbitrary intellectual claims to a given patch of soil. In these respects, it pays attention to the work of Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952), Georg Hegel (1770–1831), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592).
