A Heritage to Come
by
the editors &
This is
The Talent’s final issue. A farewell issue? Yes, but that’s not the issue. Not the only issue. It is as much about bidding goodbye as it is about a new beginning. Not here, not now. But a beginning
will come, and we shall go meet that beginning together. Not as
The Talent, but as having been part of it. We leave
The Talent with a heritage. A heritage we do not yet know. A heritage to come. That’s the issue. In fact, the idea was simple: gather our heritage together so that we could, one day, receive it. As a result, we asked the staff on the editorial board to contribute a short piece on their experience at
The Talent. Unsurprisingly, a rather “personal” issue emerged, for which we’d like to apologize in advance. In many respects, the individual accounts that follow are in agreement. On other levels, they contradict each other. Readers will find ample reasons as to why
The Talent should end and why it should continue. Enough said. One more word: thank you all, readers and contributors, for having walked this path with us.
* * * * *
We Shall Not Cease From Exploration
by Paolo Natali &
The Talent forced us to reflect upon our own conception of global politics. And I believe that the idea that politics in our time need to be understood as taking place not simply among, but actually beyond nations, underpinned all of our otherwise different views of the prospective international order – be it a new Atlanticism, a world split in peaceful blocs, or a catch-all European dream. We were voices of a Western generation that developed its own political awareness in times of rapid change. In this light, I am convinced that the idea of a politics beyond nations is going to prove useful in order to describe contemporary and future global politics.
21st-Century Man
by Jon Shifrin &
Take pride. You’re smart, very smart. Brilliant, perhaps. Yesteryear’s Talmudic scholar has nothing on you. Isaac Newton? A moron in comparison. Benjamin Franklin is but a country bumpkin next to you. Who are you? You’re 21st-century Man. You represent the realisation of Nietzsche’s dream, the Übermensch whose predecessors are but less-evolved species, Neanderthal to Homo sapien. Of course, you cannot take credit for your precocity. Your achievement is the result of circumstance. Luck, really. But nothing succeeds like success, and when it comes to smarts, you’re a star. It can hardly be denied.
Never-Ending Project
by Angel Alonso Arroba &
I will remember The Talent as a comforting companion in the crossing of the international wasteland that was – that still is! – the Bush presidency. These have been very trying years for international relations, with a senseless and reckless war on terror driving Washington’s foreign policy and transatlantic relations undergoing historical lows. The Talent represented not only an escape from the political gloom and frustration of these past years; it was also a demonstration that many of us believe world politics can be different if we build them beyond nations, on the ground of diversity, which, far from separating us, binds us closer together through mutual enrichment.
Politics Beyond Community
by Hannes Opelz &
It began – or better, continued – with a pretentious name. A pretension which perhaps only the Latinate original – Il Talento – could attenuate. A coin, a talent, a weight. An investment, but with no return. A currency for political barter, but without political concurrence. An economy where the transaction of thoughts and policies is more valuable than any single thought or policy. A state of mind, then, rather than the mind of a particular state, party or think tank. The very opposite of thinking within the safe, armoured walls of a tank.
A Political Project Worth Pursuing
by Emiliano Alessandri &
The Talent was not meant to remain a game that a group of friends enjoyed playing to accompany their intellectual growth. It contained in its aims something far more important: a sense of urgency, almost a duty, through which our personal lives and experiences would no longer remain only ours. Don’t get me wrong: to give publicity to our thoughts and explore their political meaning wasn’t assuming that we had something new, or particularly clever, to say. It was not arrogance, or at least it was not intended to be so. The idea was, more simply, to live as conscious citizens of a rapidly changing world, and interpreting that “consciousness” as something more than being “well-informed”; it meant to be “active”, too: not just observers of history but also contributors to history.
