Abstrakt
While distancing themselves from Eurosceptic views, major findings have been critical in their assessment of certain theoretical approaches that have focused on various scenarios of the reconstruction of the European institutional framework through modification of the economic, political and social subsystems. To put it more specifically, individual perspectives proposed by European intellectual opinion leaders, such as Ulrich Beck and Jürgen Habermas, have offered different solutions for their improvement.
When pointing to the crisis of the Eurozone, which threatens the existence of the European Union, Habermas reconstructed a conception of the world order of Immanuel Kant and ascribed special importance to legal universalism and its importance for human dignity. When differentiating between cosmopolitan claims and methodological nationalism, Ulrich Beck created a thesis about cosmopolitan vision anchored in a cosmopolitan worldview as well as the superiority of cosmopolitan realism to national standpoints.
Ulrich Beck and Jürgen Habermas have also been two important thinkers who have dealt with issues of transnational democracy, the European Union, democratic juridification, human rights and the importance of human dignity. Given the similarities of their reflections and perspectives, the article highlights distinctions between Beck's and Habermas's conceptualizations of the institutionalization of European space, their understanding of human rights as well as their critical attitudes to the policies of the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.