What is Geopolitical Enlightenment? - Lu Xiaoyu

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Join us on October 5th at Casa dei Tre Oci for a lecture by Lu Xiaoyu! In 1784 Kant asked "What is Enlightenment?" and answered that it meant leaving behind a comfortable immaturity and daring to see for oneself. Today the question is back, this time on a geopolitical scale. Europe has woken from its belief that trade and engagement would slowly transform its partners. China has woken from its confidence that it could rise peacefully within an open world economy. Both now find themselves awake in a great disorder, with the old maps gone and no new ones in hand. Drawing on his new pamphlet Geopolitical Enlightenment, Xiaoyu Lu follows the metaphor of awakening to its limits. Enlightenment has a ceiling: seeing clearly isn't the same as knowing how to act. It also has a dark side, because the quickest cure for lost illusions is a cynical turn to pure power politics. Geopolitical enlightenment asks for something harder: acting with open eyes and no guarantee that the new frameworks will hold, in a squeezed present where societies have woken at different times.