Resume
Iidentity Crisis of the Western Society (Reflection on Philosophical Assumptions and Challenges)
PhDr. Petr Nesvadba, CSc.,Faculty PA security management of the Czech Republic in Prague Department of Social Sciences
The author focuses on the issue of collective social identity formation. He thinks of the irreplaceable role of reflection of the constitutive values for healthy development of each society and specifically focuses on the spiritual roots of the Europeanism (and more broadly, “the West”), which he finds in the Antique-Christian and Enlightenment legacy. He confronts the Western rationality model with the “postmodern” criticism and leads to necessity of seeking a new form of identity of the West in the context of new challenges; the key task from his point of view is to cope with the legacy of the European Enlightenment, either through a meaningful reinterpretation and completion, or – in an extreme form – through its deconstruction.
Keywords: Antiquity, Europeanism, Christianity, Enlightenment, post-modernism, universalism, the West.