Institute for Human Sciences

The climate justice position is necessary but not sufficient for comprehending the current crisis, writes Dipesh Chakrabarty. As a geophysical force, the human species wields a new kind of agency unaccounted for in familiar narratives of the history of capitalist growth.

9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed exploited his trial to remind the court of its own human rights obligations, while Osama bin Laden’s video statements include appeals to religious pluralism. Al-Qaeda’s use of liberal categories is central to its rhetoric on war and justice, writes Faisal Devji.

“Democracy” in post-communist Europe is strongly associated with high levels of state-sponsored social protection, indicating a culture far removed from the prevalent system of market-mediated private provision. The dissatisfaction with democracy expressed by the many not to have benefited from transition suggests CEE welfare states have a long way to go before they attain western levels of credibility. Their democracies depend on that gap being bridged.

An historian can define European identity descriptively, as Krzysztof Pomian demonstrates in a tour of European culture since the first millennium before Christ. But the real controversy lies elsewhere, in the political question: what of the European past is worth preserving?