The Federative Argument

Abstract

This chapter examines the federative argument, according to which the erasure of boundaries was the shared ideal of the age of questions. It first considers the Jewish question as an international problem requiring a universal solution before discussing how the social and European questions followed a trajectory from indefinite to definite, as did the solutions to those and other questions. It then explains how the notion of a European question was preceded by a rhetorical bundling of emergent questions, and goes on to analyze the concern expressed by many nineteenth-century querists that unresolved questions threatened the precarious unity of “Europe” itself, along with their argument that there should be a unified European response, the creation of a true and unified European field of action. The chapter also explores the idea of federation as a solution that provides equilibrium between geopolitical and social questions, and between East and West.