Join the Tocqueville Program for this event co-sponsored by EURO, IAUNR, the Department of Political Science, and REEI. Professor Balázs Trencsényi (Department of History, CEU) will present his recent book A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe - Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’ on Thursday, February 22, 12:00-1:00 PM in GISB room 2067. Professor Aurelian Craiutu (Political Science, IU) will serve as respondent. See below for an overview of the book.
The outcome of a joint eight-year collaborative effort led by a core international team coordinated by Balázs Trencsényi, a professor of history at CEU Budapest, and assisted by a broader circle
of international experts with local knowledge, this is undoubtedly one of the most important, ambitious, and original books in intellectual history and comparative political thought published in the last few decades. It provides a much-needed overview of the history of political thought in East and Central Europe. Volume I of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe (Oxford, 2016) arrives at a good moment as we are trying to rethink the European intellectual heritage and find a new identity for the enlarged European Union. The book focuses on negotiating the meanings of modernity in what the authors call “the long nineteenth century” that ended with the Great War that began in 1914. The book demonstrates how East Central European thinkers created new and distinctive ways of thinking about history, society, culture, and politics that sought to build bridges between several different worlds, such as Western and Eastern Europe, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, and the Muslim parts of Southeast Europe.