Il saggio offre una riflessione sulla prospettiva simbolico-religiosa che anima l'intera attività letteraria e diplomatico-politica di Borgese, dagli anni prebellici fino alla morte. Gli scritti di natura saggistica, le riflessioni critiche in rivista, infine, il primo suo romanzo, Rubè (1921), mostrano quanto radicata fosse nello scrittore l'esigenza di un rinnovamento morale attraverso l'edificazione di una nuova cultura e, quindi, di un mondo nuovo. L'impegno politico-culturale profuso negli anni del secondo dopoguerra costituisce l'epilogo di una ininterrotta ricerca di utopia nel segno di un umanesimo civile e cristiano.
"The twentieth century is replete with scientific and mathematical discoveries that have profoundly changed our world view. In physics, within a mere century, our view of the cosmos changed from a classical (Newtonian) to a relativistic one following Einstein's relativity theory in the early 1900s. In mathematics, Hilbert's faith in the closure of formal axiom systems fell apart with Gödel's incompleteness theorem in the 1930s. Out of these ashes of lost deterministic foundations arose the sciences of complex systems, first in the study of non-equilibrium thermodynamics (under the intellectual leadership of Ilya Prigogine in Brussels) and later, in broader interdisciplinary terms, in New Mexico with the establishment of the Santa Fe Institute. Interestingly, a core element of this new paradigm-the notion of emergence-reflects the passage of the sciences and mathematics from a focus on closed and deterministic systems to open and dissipative systems where order, structure or patterns arise seemingly out of nowhere (at least as far as initial and boundary conditions are concerned)."--
The book analyses the processes of institution and identity building of the European Union Diplomatic Service working on matters of foreign policy and external economic relations, both in Brussels and in the Commission's Delegations across the world. The book examines what images high ranking officials in charge of the EU foreign policy hold of the EU's and of the Commission's role in international politics. The author explains how the EU diplomatic network came into being, how it is currently organised and what changes are likely to take place with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. Through an empirically grounded and theoretically informed approach, it analyses how their idea of Europe is enacted through the Commission's diplomatic practices. Carta demonstrates how processes of socialization can bring about different foreign policy priorities, role conceptions and identities. This book makes an important contribution to debates about the idea of Europe, the European Union and European foreign policy, as well as more generally to the analysis of how ideas, identities and self-images shape the daily practice of large institutional bodies in international politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, foreign policy, international organizations, international relations and diplomacy.
