Prof Simon Glendinning

This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe, MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Columbia), MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Sciences Po), MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Political Economy of Europe in the World, MSc in Political Economy of Europe in the World (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Political Economy of Europe in the World (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

To apply for a place, ALL students should submit a statement via LSE for You outlining your specific reasons for applying, how it will benefit your academic/career goals, and how you meet any necessary pre-requisites (maximum 200 words).

The first round of offers will be made from 12-noon on the Friday before Autumn Term week 1. The final deadline for applications is 12-noon on the Friday of Autumn Term week 2.

For queries contact: ei@lse.ac.uk

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students from the European Institute, so students from outside this department may not get a place.

Our study has two broad dimensions. The first broad dimension concerns the integration of Europe’s old nation states, and its cultural presuppositions. It is perhaps surprising that in a time when the EU is playing an ever larger role in the lives of anyone who holds a European Union Common Format Passport, the idea of a common European cultural identity has never seemed less certain. Yet, until quite recently, Europe, or at least an idea of Europe, perhaps an old idea of Europe, had seemed to speak to an idea of European culture with a global destiny. Europe wanted to make a name for itself not just as a regional economic power but as the exemplary leader of a world-wide ‘spiritual mission’ with a cosmopolitan character.

This mission has given Europe’s own project of integration an extra-European and global countenance. This is the second broad dimension of our study. Writing in the 1930’s, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl claimed that the name of ‘Europe’ refers not to a specific geographical region – the headland or peninsula on the western edge of the Eurasian continent – but to ‘the unity of a spiritual life’. This spiritual life is understood as something charged not by ‘regional customs’ but by a ‘culture of ideas’ with its roots in classical Greek rationalism and Judeo-Christian values: a culture imbued with ‘a spirit of free critique’ – a spirit of autonomous self-responsibility whose scientific and moral authority deserves to triumph over forms of human life which remain dominated by myth, superstition, prejudice, and (perhaps) religion. The idea was that European humanity is a special kind of ‘spiritual’ leader for all humanity, the head of a historical movement which aims at nothing short of the globalisation of the European world, the becoming world-wide of (European) ‘civilisation’. 

The idea of a distinctive world-wide process of civilisation is as magnificent as it is troubling. And today it seems old. Nevertheless, the old idea has not simply evaporated into the past. Aren’t we also – whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not – the inheritors of that old cosmopolitan idea? In this course we will read and reflect on that inheritance, and its future.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
1.5 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The Lecture slots will consist in a flipped lecture with the pre-recorded lecture available on Moodle beforehand.

A review session will be held at the start of the Spring Term to prepare for the e-exam.

Essay (2000 words).

Essay (2000 words).

• Norman Davies, 'Introduction' to Europe: A History
• Anthony Pagden (ed) The Idea of Europe

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period.

The summative assessment will take the form of an e-exam in the Spring Term. E-exams are assessments run under invigilated exam conditions on campus. Students will complete the assessment using software downloaded to their personal laptops.