ABSTRACT
This chapter wishes to suggest a meaningful idea of Europe that contemporary Europeans could demonstrate great spiritual vitality. The traditional relationship between Europe's spiritual vitality and the ability to articulate a meaningful idea of Europe would then be reversed. In order to substantiate this argument, it will be necessary to arrive at an understanding of why the articulation of a meaningful idea of Europe remains so difficult in the post-Cold War era. Such an understanding, the chapter argues, can be derived from Nietzsche's discussion of European nihilism which still constitutes one of the most compelling accounts of the difficulties inherent in endowing European existence with meaning within the cultural configuration of European modernity. Based on the analyses of contemporary European culture reviewed at the outset of this chapter, there is little to hinder us from recognising the similarities between the contemporary predicament and the one described by Nietzsche.
