In 2025, more than twenty years after ten new Member States joined, of which Slovenia was one, the European Union is facing institutional, political, migrant, military, economic, climate, cultural, and intellectual crises. The challenge of crisis, or rather the nihilistic split, evinces a blockage of the critical reflection on the fundamental humanistic values that have constituted the spiritual meaning of Europe. The question is whether the European Union is able to sustain and support unity in diversity (in varietate concordia), as it is nowadays confronted with the divergences in political positions of the Member States on the one hand, and the complex regulation of “European Unity” on the other. 

If European dialogue since the end of World War II has mainly been concerned with maintaining peace, today we are confronted with the fear that existing military conflicts may spill over into the European Union itself, although the conflict of a wider dimension is not entirely the decision of Europe alone. This leads to the question of to what extent Europe is still a global political actor today. Given this complex international situation, the consideration of the meaning of Europe as a way of existing, living, or dwelling seems to be marginal. 

This may well be true, as long as we do not consider the sense of dwelling, and in particular the sense of European way of dwelling. The European way of dwelling does not only mean the well-being of the citizens – as economic, political, cultural, and media propaganda suggests today, and as that which technological and scientific progress can provide. Rather, we are confronted with a crucial responsibility towards dwelling itself. Responsibility, first and foremost, involves the ability to respond to the challenges of a life-world that largely lacks a determinative orientation. Without this capacity to respond, our way of dwelling turns out to be random and indifferent. Furthermore, this indifference dictates the mode of dwelling itself, which is therefore incapable of fulfilling the meaning of existence and coexistence. How to overcome this indifference is the central theme of our discussion, which includes not only the question of (post)humanism but also of nihilism, not only of information but also of communication, not only of ethics but also of bioethics, not only of politics but also of biopolitics, not only of “societas” but also of “communitas,” not only of identity but also of differences, not only of culture but also of interculturality, not only of the universality but also of the particularity, and not only science but also thinking. 

The fact that such a reflection on the question of the European way of living is taking place with representatives of Italian philosophy, which has been present, actual in Slovenia for a long time, has a special relevance. Such philosophical collaboration contributes directly to the necessary establishment of a European discourse and to political decisions on how European coexistence will be constituted in the future and how, perhaps most importantly, how we will find a way to dwell in it.