Editorial

Citation

(2002), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 14 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2002.05414fab.001

Editorial

Editor John Coleman

Deputy Editor Aidan Rankin

Alice in the modern world

It is hard for poor inadequate humanity to realise that the world is as it has never been before. This is really the theme of David Howell's article and it is developed at even greater length in his remarkable book The Edge of Now. Of course previous ages have felt that they are at the forefront of new thought and yet this is really rather a new thought that grew up in Victorian England. If we look back to earlier times we find enormous pessimism in the world's leaders; Julius Caesar spoke of how week and feeble the government was compared with the greatness of their ancestors; Queen Elizabeth thought her age was pretty desperate and precarious and Oliver Cromwell had similar things to say about his times; Disraeli came to side with Carlyle in trying to explode the myth of progress and expressed the view that this was the first age in which people thought they were wiser than their forefathers.

Aidan Rankin goes on to examine an additional area of looking-glass confusion in the modern world in his article "A question of balance". He shows how two of the most practical philosophers of the eighteenth century, Rousseau and Adam Smith, expressed views which were exactly contrary to the way in which their followers consistently expounded them.

Sanda Miller, an outstanding art critic and writer, writes on "Art and money". The very value of art today is misunderstood and is judged as an expression of the artist's individual ego, whereas in the past – from the cave artists onwards – the artist was simply a member of a school of painting and the art, not the individual ego, was what was expressly valued. The placing of ego before art is yet another example of our looking-glass world.

Next come three books and Stephen Hill's The Power of Plato must surely come first if only for the reason suggested in the review that the "School of Athens" was the beginning of Europe. No one was more aware than Plato of our looking-glass temporal existence.

Sir Michael Franklin reviews both Europe's Wider Loyalties and Questions of Identity, one looking at the global implications of the European adventure and the other by contrast focusing on what is perhaps the only cement that will ultimately hold Europe together as General de Gaulle once said, only the nations have the "souls" to exercise authority over the peoples of Europe and these are the "building blocks" for its construction which its peoples are willing to obey. As Europe enlarges. how these souls can unite into a true Community of nations must be the fundamental question which the present shaky European experiment must address.

Coming as it does from a former distinguished Financial Times legal writer, Celia Hampton's letter must be left to speak for itself. In many ways it is more than an article and gives an angle on the euro that is not normally considered in the public debate, as well as many aspects of our topsy-turvy modern world.