Modernity arose to tame the chaos and carnage of 16th and 17th-century European wars. To form a Europe reduced to formlessness, modern thinkers and politicians drew boundaries – the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic established in the Peace of Westphalia and the boundaries between religion and political life, among others.
Now, under the circumstances, was that an entirely bad thing to do? Isn’t division the way to form a new world from the chaos?
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