Conference
Europe: A Beautiful Idea?
Nexus Conference 2004
The conferences on Europe culminated in an Intellectual Summit focused on the questions: is Europe a beautiful idea? If it is: why? And what does this imply? What is the ideal and what is reality? What can we do to continue realising the idea of Europe? One thing is certain: the idea of Europe has no future without the citizens of Europe. As Winston Churchill pointed out in his United Europe speech in 1947: ‘Europe is a spiritual conception. But if men cease to hold that conception in their minds, cease to feel its worth in their hearts, it will die.’
Speaker(s)
Jan Peter Balkenende
former Prime Minister
José Manuel Barroso
former president, European Commission
Modris Eksteins
historian
Maxim Febuari
columnist, philosopher, writer
Iván Fischer
conductor Budapest Festival Orchestra
Michael Ignatieff
politician, intellectual and moral philosopher
George Klein
oncologist and humanist
Atzo Nicolaï
liberal politician
Thomas L. Pangle
Plato translator and political philosopher
Jacqueline de Romilly
classicist
Yvonne van Rooy
administrator
Michael J. Sandel
political philosopher and Socratic educator
Karl Schlögel
Eastern Europe expert
Fritz Stern
described the rise of national socialism in Europe
Hassan bin Talal
Jordanian prince
Bassam Tibi
philosopher and political theorist
Tzvetan Todorov
philosopher and historian of ideas
Mario Vargas Llosa
winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Adam Zagajewski
poet and essayist
Adam Zamoyski
historian of Poland and Europe