ABSTRACT
Seriously relating Europe and Asia today seems to require two fundamental intellectual operations. One is to distinguish current Europe from the “West”, both as a historical signifier and as a contemporary notion of allegiance, or denunciation, as “Western civilization” or as “West-toxification” or “occidentalism” (see Buruma and Margalit 2005). The other is to take systematic account of the incomparable plurality of Asia. That is, while Europe historically as well as today can be grasped as (approximately) one unit, Asia is irreducibly divided, now as yesterday.
