Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development

Goethe’s 1832 Faust offers a vision of humanity enjoying freedom and prosperity through the transformation of nature. The book returns to Faust as a way of taking stock of today’s Europe and the rise and fall of European humanist aspirations to build free prosperous national political communities protected from natural disasters.

However, ambitious Faustian development visions to eradicate natural disasters have been replaced by anti-Faustian risk cosmopolitanism. The yearning for human freedom is being replaced by the fear of human freedom. If Faust captures the European spirit of earlier centuries, what is the European spirit today and what future does it offer for humanism?

Faust remains a compelling reference point to explore Europe’s existential crisis. We are at a critical juncture for humanist Europe and its nation states, and their democratic freedom and development. Europe remains politically, culturally, and intellectually haunted by European culpability for world war and totalitarianism. In some respects, the impact of these events looms larger today than in earlier decades and is shaping European governance. Today’s risk cosmopolitanism is sceptical of human creativity and imagination, wary of popular democracy, and opposes Faustian development visions and seeks to rein in human activity. This book seeks to contribute to rekindling European humanism and Faust’s vision of ‘a free people on free land’.