Editorial
Nils Andersson continues the series he began previously on the subject of war, which he views as inseparable from capitalism, in the words of Jean Jaurès, who, before the First World War, referred to the chaotic situation that followed that era and which contradicts any notion of the ‘end of history’. Transposed to our own era, this hypothesis remains a defining framework at a time when Trump’s United States serves as its embodiment, whilst simultaneously fuelling cyberwars in a world that has become multipolar.
As hopes for a better future fade, Nicole Morgan reminds us that the peoples of Europe have been confronted with the spatial limits of their expansion, with an ‘end of empires’ overtaken in the 20th century by a new version of a future paradise based on a combination of technology, social sciences and political-economic miracle cures. The exhaustion of this worldview sees the closing of temporal frontiers with the announcement in the 21st century of an end to the future.
Tanguy Struye de Swielande analyses the transformation of a world formerly perceived as immutable and unipolar, dominated by the United States militarily, politically and economically, and indeed culturally and technologically. This order is now reaching its limits, faced with the emergence of new powers that challenge Western dominance and are restructuring it into a multipolar world centred on regional poles, fuelled by intensifying geopolitical tensions, technological rivalries and energy transitions.
Whilst in 2026 empires are making a comeback, Pierre Calame notes that the rejection of international law painstakingly crafted in the aftermath of the Second World War is exacerbated by the imposition of the law of the jungle by the United States, Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. Their vision of national sovereignty threatens a peaceful European integration—the only form of responsible solidarity that transcends these sovereignties—weakening it from within and without.
There is, however, a unique form of sovereignty—food sovereignty—which Zainal Arifin Fuat describes as the right of peoples to healthy and ecological food, produced by sustainable agricultural systems. Drawing on millennia of experience and traditional knowledge, it is essential for its harmonious integration within natural ecosystems. Rather than the demands of markets and transnational corporations, it is called upon to defend the interests of future generations and must, to this end, be determined by local producers and consumers.
In the first chapter, Alain Papaux raises the question of animal rights within the framework of a genuine cosmopolitics of the Living. These rights simultaneously call into question the fate of anthropocentrism, without necessarily requiring equality between humans and animals, but by recognising—in a manner that is more metaphysically coherent and politically innovative—the fundamental difference between animals and humans, in the form of a ‘speciesism of responsibility’.
Cristina Elena Popa Tache sets out to analyse the legal and ethical issues surrounding social media platforms in the European Union affected by disinformation capable of undermining privacy, and the effective or desirable response from the authorities and society. She draws Europe’s attention to foreign interference that manipulates information to destabilise democratic processes.
At the end of this section is a presentation of a report on UN reform presented by Maurice Bertrand, an inspector with the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit in Geneva in 1985. This document is particularly relevant at a time when the international order established after the Second World War is disintegrating, under the influence of a resurgence of empires and the dismantling of international law, contrary to the notion of universality that was emerging in the 1980s.
Christian Tremblay advocates a form of identity fostered by European multilingualism, which is under threat from the hegemony of English—a situation that can only have disastrous cultural and economic consequences. Under the guise of international education, the circulation of knowledge and research cannot be confined to a single language.
Nicole Morgan conducts a philosophical interview with the German-American libertarian Peter Thiel, whose commercial, financial and communications projects betray conservative political and activist values which, according to Peter Thiel, are intended to replace Leo XIV, an anti-Christian ‘woke American pope’, with… himself.
Photographs of small-format artworks by Claude Gauthier are presented and discussed by Norman Cornett. Exhibited at the Galerie Éclats Art Contemporain in Montreal, they bring together artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, from Canada to Romania, from France to the Netherlands, from Cambodia to Guatemala and South Korea. The scope of the exhibition is distinguished by the coherence of its presentation and a visual diversity that never dissolves into fragmentation.
Jeffrey Levett conveys his impressions of time as he experiences them through various places illustrating different eras, from Athens to 14th-century Granada and from the Pyrenees to Hemingway’s village. To immerse himself in a book permeated by the fleeting figures of an enchanted past and an unknown future.
Paul Ghils