Wolff, Larry | Athens, GR: Institute for Neohellenic Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2001
The scholarly research undertaken by Larry Wolff, an Enlightenment scholar from Boston College, contains important policy lessons about the region of Southeastern and East-central Europe. The author re-evaluates the East-West European divide present in Enlightenment literature and makes a well-founded and pungent critique of the ideological and intellectual self-centeredness of Western culture and identity. The origin of Western (mis)perceptions about Eastern Europe and of the concomitant East-West divide lies at the crossroad of religion, nationalism, and political power and marks the birth of modern international politics. Rather than primordial, unavoidable, and irresolvable, the difference between East and West are modern and constructed. On the basis of an array of literary and archival sources the research makes the case for the integrity of European civilization and European identity.
