Crisis as a trigger for new ways of thinking about politics

In this conversation concerning the recently released volume “Crisis and Renewal in the History of European Political Thought,” co-editors Cesare Cuttica, László Kontler, and Clara Maier discuss how the history of political thought can help us reflect on crisis; how the key concept of crisis has triggered new ways of thinking about politics and new modes of conducting politics; how it is a deeply politicized question what gets to be called a crisis and how such a label makes things doable or permissible which under normal circumstances would not be; and that current crisis should give us the opportunity to go back to the basics of our thinking and how, instead of focusing on the crisis of democracy, we might wish to consider again how democracy leads to or engenders crisis.Cesare Cuttica is Lecturer in British History in the Department of Anglo-American Studies at the University of Paris 8.

László Kontler is professor at the Department of History of the Central European University, Pro-Rector for Budapest and KEE, and an affiliate of the Democracy in History research group of the CEU’s Democracy Institute.
Clara Maier is a lecturer in political science at Columbia University.