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In the wake of the Iraq war of 2003, and in response to the European reaction to the war, a number of prominent European intellectuals launched a new debate on Europe's identity, and in particular the extent to which it differed from American identity. The debate was sparked by a newspaper article by Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, which was circulated to several other intellectuals for comment. The Europe-wide debate which ensued — in which several Americans joined — provides a revealing snap-shot of European opinion on the question of Europe's identity. It illustrates in particular the dangers as well as the seductions of seeing that identity mainly in terms of a contrast with America, putatively to the advantage of the Europeans. This article argues that such a contrast fuels an anti-Americanism that is disabling to Europe and conceals many significant — and less selfflattering — aspects of the European inheritance.

The Western utopia has it roots in both classical & Judaeo-Christian thought. From the Greeks came the model of the ideal city, based on reason; from Jews & Christians, the idea of deliverance through a messiah & the culmination of history in the millennium. The Greek conception placed utopia in an ideal space, the Christian conception in an ideal time. The modem utopian tradition, dating from Thomas More's Utopia (1516), drew upon both traditions & added something distinctive of its own. Following More, the utopia has developed as a literary genre whose closest relative is the novel. This, I argue, is its greatest strength. As compared with abstract speculation on "the good society" in traditional social & political thought, the literary utopia -- as practiced by such writers as Edward Bellamy, William Morris, & H. G Wells -- is a "concrete utopia," in which writers are forced to confront all the details of daily life in the ideal society It is this that allowed utopia -- and its mirror image, the anti-utopia or dystopia -- to develop as a distinct genre, separate from other ways of thinking about the ideal society. Adapted from the source document.