Europa: quale futuro per l'umanità

In this unpublished essay, that was submitted as a contribution to a conference on European Legal Cultures, held in 1990 in the Netherlands, professor Jan F. Glastra Van Loon (1920-2001), who was one of the pioneers of contemporary legal sociology and president of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law between 1974 and 1980, stressed that the Europeans should tackle the problem of their own image and reflect seriously upon themselves and their historical tradition, which combined good and evil quite oddly. Van Loon criticised toughly, on the one side, those philosophical conceptions which claim to be absolutely true, such as monotheism and Cartesian rationalism, while also refusing, on the other side, radical relativism, that sees all views about humanity as equally acceptable. He then advocated humility, communication, dialogue and the capacity to learn from the others, as preliminary conditions for the civil life of the future generations of Europeans. At the light of today’s discussions especially harsh and trivial in Italy on Europe’s cultural roots, these words of a European liberal intellectual look as if they were forewarning.;

Jan F. Glastra Van Loon, Europa: quale futuro per l'umanità in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2004, pp , DOI: