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