Introduction

The United Nations (UN) was created in 1945 to avoid war, reaffirm human rights and dignity, promote social progress and justice, and ensure security and peace – as stated in the preamble of its charter. In Emancipation(s) (1996), Ernesto Laclau reflects on this endless historical quest for a better world, and poses it in terms of universalism and particularism. And the history of the West turned into an endless quest of spreading the European (universal) truth. Laclau concludes: The various forms of Eurocentrism are nothing but the distant historical effects of the logic of incarnation. The importance of meaning and significance in Heidegger’s philosophy has been conflated with the work of many other important philosophers of the early 20th century – especially that of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein – in what Richard Rorty called ‘the linguistic turn’. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.