Abstract: Europeans must reject the choice between a humane belittlement of their focus in peace and a savage broadening of their sights in war. They must take it as a principle in every area of society and culture to shorten the distance between the ordinary moves made within the established social and cultural order and the extraordinary moves by which pieces of this order may be changed. They must develop a politics that moves outside the two historical categories of a mobilising politics of energised majorities, led or misled by the marriage of leaders and catastrophes into the reconstruction of social life, and a demobilised politics of deals and disenchantment.