Videos

Videos

From a Multiethnic Empire to a World of Nation States

The CEU Democracy Institute’s journal, Review of Democracy, the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW/IKT) and the Department of European, International and Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna cordially organised a book discussion on Central Europe's function as a laboratory of our current world order based on Natasha Wheatley's bold and fascinating new book The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton University Press 2023)

13.09.2023

Videos

Gregory Claeys on Utopianism and Democracy

In this public lecture, Gregory Claeys – Professor Emeritus of History – reviews the development of the anxious relationship between utopianism and democracy, touching on the fundamentally anti-political aspects of the utopian tradition, and the charge that the eternal search for near unanimity of opinion is fundamentally anti-democratic. The lecture examines the (mis)interpretation of utopia as "perfection", and the optimal role played by consent in utopian relationships. Finally, it asks whether we can achieve an environmental consensus in time to avert the catastrophic destruction of the planet, and what we can do in the absence of such a consensus.

21.07.2023