The American political scientist Joseph Nye has provoked a great debate with his reflections on the role of soft power in foreign policy. He suggested that a state can assert its will in its relations with other states either by economic or military means (hard power), or by means of its attractiveness or sex appeal.  One might say that national states emanate charisma in that they are formed around civilizational values, a term [the late Czech philosopher] Jan Patočka coined for systems of ideas and experiences capable of being universally human by definition rather than through the assertion of the […]