Description du projet
Au-delà du clivage Est/Ouest: la santé en tant que bien commun dans l’histoire européenne
Qu’est-ce que l’Europe? Lorsque l’on étudie l’Europe d’après guerre, l’accent est mis sur les divisions idéologiques, les modèles économiques concurrents et les différents systèmes politiques séparant l’Europe de l’Est et l’Europe de l’Ouest. Or le projet LEVIATHAN, financé par l’UE, entend remettre en question les interprétations Est/Ouest existantes de l’identité européenne. Plutôt que d’étudier séparément les deux moitiés de l’Europe d’après guerre, son objectif est de la comprendre comme un tout. Il soutient que l’histoire européenne est caractérisée par le souci de la santé en tant que bien commun. En analysant la situation sous l’angle de la médecine, il créera une histoire commune de l’Europe allant au-delà de la dichotomie Est/Ouest habituelle. LEVIATHAN adoptera une approche pluridisciplinaire: ni l’économie, ni la politique, ni l’idéologie, ni la vie quotidienne à elles seules, mais une fusion de ces points de vue permettra de mieux comprendre la quête du bien commun européen.
Objectif
What is Europe? The status of the European Leviathan is in doubt today as never before. Whether in the form of authoritarian governments or populist agitation, there is intense contention over what the role, size, and scope of the state in the 21st century should be. What can a historical account tell us about the European Leviathan then and now? What holds our European community together?
Amid this uncertainty our project calls attention to a common concern for the health of the individual and the well-being of the social body. We argue that post-war European history on each side of the so-called Iron Curtain is characterized by a preoccupation with health as the common good. Taking medicine as an analytical lens offers a common reference point through which a shared and integrated history of Europe can be developed beyond the usual clichés and dichotomies of the period. That is the unusual but promising argument that underlies our project.
Our project is distinguished by its multidisciplinary approach: Neither economics nor politics nor ideology nor everyday life, but an integration of these perspectives makes it possible to pursue the development of the common good both, in state socialism and in the capitalist state. To do this, we propose a multi-layered investigation of medicine, which came to represent a significant—if not the decisive—institutional, conceptual and legitimating framework for all efforts towards the common good.
Thus, on the one hand, the life sciences’ claim to universal truth offers a privileged perspective beyond the usual oppositions of ideology, economic and political systems. On the other hand, medicine is socially, politically, economically, technologically and culturally determined more than nearly any other field of our modern life. The innovative approach of our project goes beyond our heuristic methodology. Rather than merely studying postwar Europe’s two halves separately we aim to understand Europe as one.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
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Régime de financement
ERC-SyG - Synergy grantInstitution d’accueil
10117 Berlin
Allemagne