La vingtièrne siècle ouvrira I'ére de fédérations ou l'hurnanité recornrnençera un purgatoire de mille ans.
The twentieth century will herald the age of federalism, or humanity will enter another thousand years of purgatory.
(Pierre- Joseph Proudhon [1809-1865] 1863: 108)
Der tiefste Grund für den Aufstieg wie auch für die Gefährdung Europas liegt vielleicht in dieser imrnerwährenden Suche nach der verlorenen, der geahnten und gehofften aurea aetas, die stets gleich hinter dem Horizont beginnt.
The most profound reason for Europe's ascent, as well as for its perilous position, lies in this never-ending search for the lost, the anticipated and hoped for “golden age” that always begins just over the horizon.
(Hagen Schulze [born 1943] 1999: 24)
Europe cannot and should not be a “superstate”; nor can it be a kind of revival of the European nation state which is threatened by globalisation. Even less can it be a community of post-national deliberators as Jürgen Habermas would have it. Europe should be constructed as an entity of its own which responds to the heterarchical relational logic of fragmentation which characterises postmodernity and globalisation of which it is a part. It cannot be its counterpart. Europe does not need a “constitution”, and it does not need a “people” either.
(Karl Heinz Ladeur [born 1943] 2008: 147)