Emanuel L. Paparella is a former professor of Italianlanguage and literature at the University of PuertoRico and the University of Central Florida. He is the author of various books: Hermeneutics in thePhilosophy of Giambattista Vico (Mellen Press, NewYork, 1993), A New Europe in Search of its Soul (Au-thorhouse, 2005), Europa: an Idea and a Journey(Exlibris, 2012), Tre Novelle Rusticane di GiovanniVerga (ed. 1975, Florentia Publisher), as well as innu-merable articles on Italian literature and philosophy.

He holds a BA from St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y., an MA from Mid-dlebury College in Italian Literature, a M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in Italian Human-ism from Yale University. He has also studied Comparative Literature atNew York University, is a former Fulbright scholar and has directed for fivesummers the study abroad program of the University of Central Floridasnd Broward College at the University of Urbino. He has published for Ital-ian journals and newspapers, the latest for Libro Aperto (April-June 2012)with an article commemorating the anniversary of the death of BenedettoCroce titled "Una rivalutazione della Filosofia di Benedetto Croce" (pp.186-190) which was reviewd in La Repubblica (July 28, 2012). He has done a major translation: Vittorio Possenti's Philosophy and Reve-lation (Ashgate Publishing, 2001), Since 2000 he has actively participatedin the debate on the European Union while lecturing and teaching hu-manities and philosophy at Barry University in Miami and Broward Collegein Davie, Florida. Over the last ten years or so he has published some 400 articles of a philo-sophical-literary nature in the on-line international magazine Ovi. He livesin Sunrise, Florida, with his wife Cathy of forty six years. He has threedaughters: Cristina, Alessandra and Francesca and three grandchildrenSophia, Nicholas and Adriana. A fourth is on its way.

07Special Report 07 | January 2015Christianity and the European Identity

by Emanuel L. Paparella

www.moderndiplomacy.eu

10. Western Civilization at the Crossroads

16. A Revolutionary New View of History and Humanity

22. Vico’s Hermaneutical “Understanding” of Humanity

26.“Man is his own History” Leads to Self-Knowledge

30. Christianity: a Private Affair or Part of the European Heritage and Identity?

36. Alcide De Gasperi”s Humanistic Vision of the European Union

42. Klaus Held on Religion, Science and Democracy in European Culture

46.The Tragic Loss of the European Spiritual Identity

56. The Return of the Gods and the EU Constitution transformed into a Treaty

62. The EU Constitution: The Cart before the Horse?

CONTENTS

72. Dante’s Vision of a United Europe

74. Vaclav Havel: Authentic Humanist and Cultural Hero for our Troubled Times

82. Jurgen Habermas on the Vision of a Post-Secular Europe

86. Christianity and Europe: Tony Blair at Yale University

92. Christopher Dawson and the Making of Europe

98. Europa Quo Vadis?

etween the years 2005 and 2012 Ipublished three books on the Euro-pean Union. They are titled A New

Europe in Search of its Soul: Essays on the Eu-ropean Union’s Cultural Identity and theTransatlantic Dialogue (Authorhouse, 2005),and Europa: an Idea and a Journey: Essays onthe Origins of the EU’s Cultural Identity andits Present Economic-Political Crisis (Ex Libris,2012), and Europe beyond the Euro (Ovimagazine e-book).The titles and even the illustrations of thegoddess Europa embarking on a journeystraddling Zeus disguised as a bull, give thereaders a preliminary idea of what thosebooks are all about. In analyzing the present thorny geopoliticaleconomic problems of the EU, those essays

attempt to identify the root causes of thoseproblems which ultimately are found to beintegral part of the wider problematic of cul-tural identity, beyond mere political and eco-nomic considerations. The three bookscontain a minimum of 60 essay on a varietyof topics, out of which I have carefully se-lected 16 conforming to the theme of this ar-ticle, slightly changing their titles at times.Several of those essays have been publishedalready in Ovi magazine. It is instructive that when Italian national uni-fication was finally accomplished in 1860Massimo D’Azeglio, an Italian patriot, prover-bially quipped that “now that we have madeItaly, we need to make the Italians” which, inmy opinion is a perfect exemplification ofplacing the cart before the horse.

B

“If the religious and Christian substratum of this continent is marginalized in its role as inspiration of

ethical and social efficacy, we would be negatingnot only the past heritage of Europe but a future worthy of European Man—and by that I mean

every European Man, be he a believer or a non believer.”

Pope John-Paul II(from a speech at the EU Parliament on 10/11/1988)

Similarly, now that we have made a unitedEurope we need to ask the crucial question:“Do we know who exactly is a European andwhat is the best cultural glue that can holdsuch a union together?” How many Europesare there? The questions are crucial given theominous signs indicating that the union en-visioned as based on solidarity by its found-ing fathers, is now not holding very well andthat good old ugly nationalism and xeno-phobia may be on their way back.

The writing is already on the wall as the di-vide and conquer strategy of Vladimir Putinwould suggest. We now have Euro-parla-mentarians siding with a virtual dictator andjeopardizing democracy itself. Such a disas-ter can only happen when a whole peopleforget the lessons of their own history andare seized by the loss of collective culturalidentity and self-knowledge.

The loss of the self and identity always im-plies a loss of memory. Nietzsche used toquip that we only remember what we wishto remember. That question is at the core ofthe 15 selected essays which examine andanalyze the history of the EU but not only atan historical level but at the philosophicallevel, at the level of ideas leading to Europeas an idea; an idea that can be traced back toDante and even the ancient Greeks whoidentify a civilization that is Western as dis-tinct from the Eastern. Which is to say, theyattempt to place the horse before the cart. To help us do that we have brought to thefore certain luminaries of European culturewhich have envisioned a European Union:first and foremost the founding fathers’ideals and vision (the Italian statesman DeGasperi is dealt with extensively), thenDante, Havel, Habermas, Blair, Dawson, Held,Benedict XVI.

At the philosophical level there are three es-says dedicated to the philosophy of historyof Giambattista Vico which constitute thephilosophical underpinning of this criticalanalysis. They all seem to have something incommon: the insight that it is highly mis-guided to throw the baby out with the dirtybath water; that is to say to discard religionoutright as impeding progress. The dirtybath-water is the corruption that is presentin any institution built by man, the baby isthe traditional faith, i.e., Christianity, that used to inform Europe andprovide a cultural glue at one time and isnow been reduced to a passing mention of“spiritual tradition” in the EU constitutionwhich does not even mention God as 90% ofthe world’s constitution do. It is argued inthose essays that no amount of economic,political, Machiavellian power-play consider-ations will substitute for the hastily discardedcultural glue that is religion. Habermas cer-tainly makes a persuasive case for the needfor a post-secular Europe, and so does PopeBenedict XVI. All I ask of the readers is to phenomenologi-cally suspend their “pre-judgments” for awhile as regards the issue of religion andprogress and ponder those sundry essaysplaced on the table, so to speak, in order toarrive at a reasonably sound judgment onthe issue.

Western Civilization

at the Crossroads

hat will future historians and cul-tural anthropologists have to sayabout Western Civilization at the

turn of the new millennium? If history has al-ready ended, as Fukuyama has asserted, theywill of course have precious little to say. How-ever, given the fact that, for better or forworse, we are still living within time andspace, “the end of history” remains a dubiousproposition and I dare say that it will remainsuch even a thousand years from now. Futurehistorians will indeed attempt to define ourera in some fashion.

The Neapolitan philosopher of history Gi-ambattista Vico would have had no hesita-tion in situating it within the third of hisrecurring cycles of history and civilizations(the cycles of gods, heroes and men): that isto say, an era of extreme rationalism in tan-dem with relativism vis-‡-vis the concept ofTruth, what he dubs “the barbarism of the in-tellect.”

But more specifically, we may ask: which willbe the outstanding symptomatic phenom-ena that future historians will identify ascharacteristic of our age? I would venturetwo: 1) the speed of communication coupledwith its banality, 2) thinking in the closet andherd thinking. Let us explore them briefly.The first one is the more visible and perva-sive. It is the kind of phenomenon that wouldhave a great novelist begin his recounting ofour times with “it was the best of times, it wasthe worst of times.” We now possess a nearmiraculous ability to communicate instanta-neously across oceans and continents; to for-ward entire texts in seconds and have thempublished within days. But there is a snake inthis utopia come of age and it is this: thereseems to be an inverse proportion within thisphenomenon, the faster the means of com-munication, the more trivial and banal thecommunication seems to get and the lessauthentic the dialogue. That applies to atleast 90% of what passes for dialogue.

W

It has become increasingly difficult to discernthe authentic from the bogus. Whether theexoterism of what is published on-line willcompensate the former esoterism of won-derful insightful articles languishing in aca-demic libraries, remains to be seen. But ofcourse this is a symptom of a deeper malaise(that a Kierkegaard might even call “the sick-ness unto death”) which has to do with theinability of people to really dialogue andcommune (different from merely communi-cating) with each other, and which may pointto the real underlying problem: the loss ofmeaning in life; what philosophers define asnihilism.

The second above mentioned phenomenonis less visible and therefore, like radiation,much more dangerous. It is in the very cul-tural air we breathe and goes by the name ofextreme rationalism. It is an attempt to re-duce the whole of experience to purely ab-stract rational categories to the exclusion ofimagination, the mystical and transcendent,the emotive and the intuitive within reality;in short, to the near exclusion of the poetical.The poetical is reduced to frosting on thecake, to mere poetry to delight oneself orothers at a wedding party. In ancient timesthis mind-set begins with Plato banishingthe poets from his Republic.

In modern times it begins philosophicallywith Descartes’ famous “Cogito ergo sum,”continues with Hegel historicism declaringthat the synthesis of the thesis and the anti-thesis at the end of a process is always nec-essarily the best of all possible outcomes,and is underpinned by scientific positivism,the industrial revolution and the advent ofMachiavellian real politik in the relations be-tween nations wherein the end always justi-fies the means.

It is in short a mindset that believes itself “en-lightened”, and therefore doubts everythingexcept one thing: that it itself may need en-lightenment. It begins with the so called “ageof reason,” which believes that it can easilydispense with what is childish: the fables andmyths spun by poets and visionaries, thewhole of the humanistic world based on thepoetic. It believes that adults endowed withreason must preoccupy themselves primarilywith issues relating to the economic and thepolitical and leave the rest to the DonQuixotes of this world, i.e., the losers. It is amind-set unable to conceive that the poeti-cal may well be complementary to the ra-tional; that one does not have to choosebetween one or the other; that both are in-deed desirable and possible within a holisticview of Man. And so we get to the point thateach individual that perceives itself thinkingis convinced that he/she possesses the truthor can arrive at it individually beginning withthe tabula rasa that is Descartes’ “cogito.” Theslogan “everyone is entitled to his/her opin-ion” really means “to each his/her truth ashe/she sees it.”

11 / 12

Paradoxically, rather than the Cartesian “clearand distinct” ideas we have ended with thetower of Babel and herd thinking. To each hisown version of the truth. Everyone has anopinion in this regard, and the sum of allopinions is the truth. One cannot but wonderon how we arrived at this sad state of affairsin the age of full-fledged rationality and sci-ence.At first glance, Vichian paradoxical thinking(the both/and) seems to defy the Aristotelianprinciple of non-contradiction (theeither/or). The various rationalists and mysol-ogists of our era often parade as classicalthinkers above the fray of the existential vi-cissitudes of the "unwashed masses" withtheir common sense, beyond the clouds, onOlympus; they present us with an isolatedreason that gives no ground to the poeticaland the pure intuitive promptitude of themind as a mode of reasoning (as even a Platodid with his myths…despite his protesta-tions against poetry).

They seem to have no inkling whatsoeverthat such an operation is dangerous, sterileat best. How so? Because it can convenientlyprove anything with its complete impartial-ity, it can in fact choose any hypothesis towork from and then say “nothing personal,” Iam presenting you with reality.That is why madmen’s arguments are sounassailable on the level of logic; it is theirpride and joy. Hitler for one was proud of histalent for presenting logical iron-clad, unas-sailable arguments. It would appear that themore vigorously logic prosecutes its own in-ternal pursuit, the greater is the danger of itsturning away from direct experience andfact. Its arguments may be perfect, but it is anarrow and circular perfection; that of thesnake eating its own tail. The rationalists whodefend an absolute idealism are using themadman’s detailed reasoning; no contradic-tions or exceptions intrude into this perfectcircle, because direct experience of differentlevels of reality is not taken as its own test.

Logical consistency is more important to ra-tionalists than the immediate reality of fact.They may even deny that if they bang theirhead hard enough against a tree it will bleed.At that point, to disprove their point, all onecan do is in fact bang their head against atree.

The above begs the question: why cannotreason meet its own test? Vico teaches usthat it is not because the intellect is a uselesstool, far from it. In fact he comes to its de-fense when he insists that pure reason is ir-rational reason, i.e., the use of an instrumentagainst its proper aim. The mind is construc-tive, as those medieval thinkers well under-stood when they called logic an art as well asa science. Syllogisms are pieces of architec-ture; the mind must take the materials forthis manufacturing process from life,through man’s entire perceptive apparatus.When reason takes upon itself the task of en-tire discovery and construction, it makes dis-covery impossible. That is the point wheremythology is confused for children's fairytales superseded by full-fledged reason, infact, for this rationalistic mind-set, to call astory a myth is equivalent to calling it a lie.They would even expunge myths fromPlato's philosophy.

A sculptor who wants all the credit for hiswork is a bit vain if he only jealous of his rivalsor teachers (recognize the type?), or his pred-ecessors, and will inevitably end up in the fu-tility of re-inventing the wheel. But if he isjealous of the marble and refuses any helpfrom it, no statue will ever receive his proudcare. This applies to the mind as well. Whenpure reason asserts that it will accept noth-ing which it cannot justify on its own terms,it proceeds to destroy itself. If Vico hadtaught us nothing but this he would havebeen a great European philosopher.

Descartes, on the other hand, wrote “Cogitoergo sum,” beginning his journey in thechamber of his own intellect, literally in acloset. Because he did not look out from thatcloset but at it, his journey never got underway; and the man is still sitting inside a nar-row room cogitating on cogitation. If we areonly because we think, then logically we arewhat we think, and all things are what wethink or do not think them. Indeed, the lu-natic is God for whom thinking and doingare one and the same. The difference is thatGod is sane the lunatic is insane. Rational-ism’s attack on faith becomes also an attackon reason. The more astute rationalists (suchas Leo Strauss, to mention one) will of coursemake a nice dichotomy between the two,even asserting that the reasoning in Plato’sEuthyphro is not a natural theology.

Is it time to think paradoxically: of the new as the old and of the old as the new:

novantiqua. It is time to go back to the future.

Time is fast running out.

“ “

But there are different degree of exhaustionby which a rationalist will re-invent thewheel. Another is pure volition which usuallywill take Nietzschean-existential forms, butbecause this was merely an escape fromCartesian intellection, it remained a reflec-tion of it, opposed only as things are whenreversed in a mirror. Rationalism is the ally ofall unreason. In his motion of mere escapefrom reason, Nietzsche had to deny all per-ceptive tests and fixed norms of facts; butthis takes away the point of the will, the gripand exclusion, the creative and destructivechoices. It is a Dionysian worship of will, sim-ple ecstasy and expenditure in the void lead-ing to nihilism. It gives the will no goal, itcarries the will nowhere: pure self-destruc-tion. Dionysius is after all the god of dissolu-tion.

Vico teaches us that there is a higher dialec-tic: not that of the mind with mind but ofmind with fact (the particular and the con-tingent) where men remember once again,via the poetical, that conclusions are madeto follow but not to be. This is the fallacy ofthose who transfer the rules of the mind toexternal processes discerning necessitywhere there is none.

Because the sun comes up every morningthe mind assumes that it must do so. But rep-etition is not proof of necessity and it merelydulls our sense of wonder with which philos-ophy began. As St. Augustine aptly pointsout, the birth of any baby is more miraculousthan the resurrection of Lazarus. To discernthat the mind must first admit that it is notdealing with a fact that it did not invent butsimply found. This is the wonder of being, ofpure existence. When the mind so admits,then sanity returns.In conclusion, Western Civilization as a wholeneeds to heed Vico who is the culmination ofHumanism and return to its origins. Is it timeto think paradoxically: of the new as the oldand of the old as the new: novantiqua. It istime to go back to the future. Time is fast run-ning out.

A RevolutionaryNew View

of History andHumanity

ico’s New Science (1725) is a water-shed to modern historicism. He washowever too far ahead of his con-

temporaries to have any direct impact onthem. They had already embarked on aCartesian paradigm of reality which now per-vades modern culture. We modern men canhear Vico’s wake up bell much more clearlyin the wake of what rampant rationalism haswrought on us.For all the modernity of his philosophy,Descartes shared with the ancient Greeks abias against history which held that historyis not the proper subject of science; that itrepresents a dimension of being in which thequestion of truth has neither purpose nor an-swer. Within this historical tradition search-ing for absolute certainty there is no place forany knowledge based on the particularity ofsensory experience and contingent historicalevents. Tradition and the senses are seen assources of permanent deception and truth isnot found in them.

VDescartes was convinced that he had foundthe final basis of certainty in his thinking “I”(the famous “cogito ergo sum”) which is be-yond history and all its contingencies anddelusions. The only way this “I” and its relatedideas can get back to the physical world iswith the help of mathematical ideas that de-termine it. There the true language of natureis to be discovered. In other words, truth is tobe found in nature, not in history.

This ancient Greek tradition was now livingunder the cover of the Christian West.Descartes was trapped within it. The Greekworld could not, and in fact never producedany kind of philosophy of history. It could notsince it held that the contingency of histori-cal events did not yield truth and could nottherefore be the content of authentic philo-sophical reflection. When truth was soughtin the empirical world, it was derived fromthe calculability and rationality of nature.

Moreover, this drive to see truth only in whatis uniform and not in what is contingent andchanging (well symbolized by Plato’s worldof timeless unchanging ideas, the transcen-dent forms) led Greek historians to look forlaws and continuities in history and to treatthem as analogies to the uniformities of na-ture.

Herodotus finds in history the “law” thathuman hubris brings down divine punish-ment. This is analogous to the idea that thereare limits within nature beyond which noman dare venture beyond. Thucydides, onthe other hand, is even more radical in hispursuit of uniformity. He finds the historicalprocess dominated not only by objective fac-tors in politics and economics but also by im-pulses and passions driven by subjectivepsychological emotions. Thus the movementof history is subsumed to the movement ofcosmic occurrences. The driving forces forboth is the same. Here Plato’s remarks inGeorgias is relevant. There he proclaims thata mathematical relation (based on timelesslaws) governs the relation between gods andhumans. Thus Thucydides also believed thatregard for the timeless laws of historicalmovement gives a better view of what hap-pens and what will happen, for it will alwaysbe in accord with human nature. In otherwords, to see the timeless in time makesprognosis possible and enables us humansto plan for our future.

The above, broadly outlined, was the classi-cal view of history that greatly influencedDescartes. On one hand it holds that historyis contingent, that it cannot be part of the or-derly course of the cosmos and thus it is ulti-mately irrelevant to the question of truth. Onthe other hand, it also holds that history maybe integrated into the cosmos but has to beseen in mere analogy to processes that arecontrolled by natural laws. Either way historyper se is robbed of its driving force and is dis-credited scientifically.The geniality of Vico’s conception of historyis that he turns the above upside-down. Hecalls his philosophy of history a science sincefor him history is not only a possible, but alsoa privileged object of science. In fact, for anoetic standpoint, he sees the natural sci-ences as burdened by a lack of truth. At leastin the West, this is indeed a reversal of theusual movement in the search for truth. It hastaken us modern and post-modern mensome three centuries to realize that it is trulyrevolutionary.Not that Vico rejects everything that pre-ceded him. He accepts much that is norma-tive in tradition, borrows from what isuniversally acknowledged and then makesnew unexpected inferences. His beginningpoint is an idea for which he can formally ap-peal to Aristotle. Simply put, the ideas is thatreal knowledge of something is present onlywhen that something is understood to becaused and its causes and origins are known.

a mathematical relation (based on timeless laws)

governs the relation between gods and humans

“ “17 / 18

From this idea Vico draws a revolutionaryconclusion and it is this: if knowledge isknowledge of causes and we can speak oftruth only in as much as we can establishthose causes, then properly speaking wemay know fully only what we ourselves havemade. That is to say, we can only do justiceto the Aristotelian equation of truth andknowledge of causes when we ourselves arethe cause of something. Therefore, since his-tory is the sphere of human achievementswherein we function as causes, we can attainthere to true knowledge as in no othersphere.In this concern of Vico, to demonstrate thateven the shadows of the most distant pastmay prove to have more truth than the exactsciences, we begin to sense the far reachingimplications of his speculation. Let us ex-plore briefly the most important of these im-plications. In the first place it is worthnoticing that after Vico the very facticity de-spised by the Greek world is worth knowingand can in fact be accorded the privilege oftruth.

For Anselm, the cosmos that God conceivedand made (one and the same operation forGod) was the object of truth. In other words,the truth consists of knowing the logos con-tent of the world. Its content are not facts buttheir reference to the Logos. As we have ob-served, for Descartes the ontic givenness ofthe thinking I is truth of the first order, whilededuced truths are secondary. So, in bothAnselm and Descartes a form of being is thetruth. In the former being as a conceived andmade totality; in the latter being focused onthe existing subject of thought. Somethingis true because it has a share in being.

With Vico it is otherwise: historical facticity isprivileged to be the content of possibletruth. We know this truth and its causes be-cause we ourselves are causes. Here the the-sis is this: something is true as, and because,it is made by us. Secondly, Vico dares to lightup even mythical prehistory with the torchof truth, despite the fact that objectiveknowledge of events is largely ungraspablein this sphere.

He can do so because he is convinced that hehas found a new and modern form of knowl-edge; a form of knowledge by now familiarto us as hermeneutics, a truth that is dis-closed in the grasping of causes; a truth of“understanding” which is present whensomething that is related to us reveals itselfto us. For example, when we encounter an-other personal life that affects our own per-sonality. Admittedly it is rare but itconstitutes the essence of true friendshiphardly graspable in a cold objective fashion.That is what Vico means when he says thatwe may find the principles of the prehistoricworld within the modifications of our ownhuman spirit. In other words, there is an anal-ogy between prehistory and us that makes itintelligible.This should intimate that properly speakingVico is the grandfather of modernhermeneutics even if little or no credit is ac-corded to him in courses on mythology orhistory of religions. It is on the basis of Vico’sspeculation that Bultman attempts later thefeat of demythologization and Jung that ofthe interpretation of myths and the arche-types of the human mind. Even if Vico doesnot use the term “understanding,” it is obvi-ous that he has entered the field ofhermeneutics to break through to new mod-ern aspects of human experience: humanitycan comprehend history because history de-rives from it.

Vico’s speculation is nothing less than theproclamation of the historicizing of the un-derstanding of reality. The modern age is thestory of the implications deriving from sucha view of reality. This view was so novel thatit went largely ignored.

Later on we shall explore more thoroughlyVico’s concept of Providence alreadybroached above. Here we should take noticethat throughout his speculation Vico’s an-thropology remains always anchored to atheological base. That such is the case can begathered from his restriction of the humanknowledge of truth to the knowledge of his-tory.

19 / 20

The world of nature remains accessible onlyto the divine insight, since God created na-ture, not us, and therefore only God can seeit as his work. Even when Vic asserts that wemay know history as “spirit of our spirit,” henever means to say that history can be re-garded wholly as our own creation. On thecontrary, he says that treating the historicalpast as a kind of objectification and echo ofour own spirit is possible only because ourspirit is privileged to have a part in the divineSpirit and is thus put in a position to see inhistory the providence of God and thethoughts of his divine spirit. In other words,the meaning of history is manifest to ourspirit to the degree that we look to provi-dence.

A corollary to the above view is Vico’s rejec-tion of a conclusion that one may betempted to draw from his anthropologicaloutlook, namely that within modernity phi-losophy can replace theology as the repre-sentative of the human spirit. Vico expresslyopposes the notion of the rationalisticphilosopher of history Polybius (second cen-tury B.C.) that religion becomes unnecessarywhen philosophers undertake the explana-tion of the world. Vico argues that philoso-phers did not suddenly fall from heaven butemerged from an intellectual traditionrooted in religion.

By taking an anti-Cartesian stance Vico is ba-sically saying only a belief in providence canrelate us to the orders of family, tribe, and na-tion. It is only when these institutions aretransparent and let the divine planning thatis operating in them shine through that theycan bind us together. The very semanticmeaning of the word religio in Latin is “tobind together.” So, despite Vico’s importantprinciple that things are true and perceptibleonly for those who cause them, humanity isnever for him the wholly autonomous lord ofthe history that it creates. His concept ofprovidence give things a different aspect: hu-manity meets itself in history because it isbuilt into it as the agent of providence andtherefore it can perceive the earlier self-man-ifestation of providence.

Vico'sHermeneutical

“understanding” of our Humanity

ico’s most important hermeneuticalinsight is that human beings can-not be explained objectively, they

can only be “understood.” The element offreedom in human nature resists the reduc-tion to object of observation. Indeed, under-standing is radically different fromexplaining. I can only understand and em-pathize with the personal life of another onlybecause I have the same personal structureof being. Since I have a responsible relationto the meaning of my existence (i.e., to itslogos), I am able to understand others in asimilar relation. I can be affected by the bore-dom and emptiness, the failure or success ofothers and can understand that other beingsare also called, like myself, to grasp their owndestiny (in theological language, their salva-tion) with the same fear and risk of failure,the same hope of success.This solidarity is underpinned by the samelife-agenda, the same human journey fromcradle to tomb.

Moreover, the ability to understand rests ona relationship or analogy between thosewho understand and those who are under-stood. In more literary terms, this idea of con-geniality is the psychological superstructureof the basic Vichian literary, anthropologicalinsight that readers and/or commentatorsare in solidarity with an author. Simply put,this is the solidarity of a common humanity.Both reader and author are bearers of per-sonal life and marked by the gift and fear offreedom.

The most basic Vichian principle that we canderive from this hermeneutics is that people,being intrinsically free, cannot be explained,they can only be understood. In turn thismeans that in practice I first need to under-stand myself if I am to understand others.How can I possibly speak seriously about theguilt of others if I loath to face my own? Sothe question becomes: how do I get to knowmyself?

V

As per the above outlined Vichianhermeneutical principle, self-knowledgecannot be reached by mere self-analysis fo-cusing obsessively and narcissistically on myself (as much self-help literature would sug-gest), rather I will begin to discover it in asmuch as I get to know the world in me andmyself in the world.

Sadly, the me-generation of the seventiesand eighties and beyond, so concerned withits “life-style,” has yet to discover that Christi-anity is psychologically much more sophisti-cated in its insistence that paradoxically onefinds oneself when one loses oneself, andthat narcissism inevitably leads to selfishegotism. As I encounter others, they becomemirrors for me in which I may more clearlysee myself. Medieval and Renaissance Manhad no problem understanding that weknow ourselves only in humanity, and lifeteaches us what that is. Action is needed toaffect the world and in turn let the world af-fect us. In other words, we can never knowourselves directly by contemplating ournavel in a lotus position. The process of self-knowledge begins with a detour, via and en-counter with history. The basic reason for thisdetour is that we are never “objects” ofknowledge, not even of self-knowledge.

Only free beings can understand other freebeings. We understand ourselves only in asmuch as we attempt to understand others.Which is to say, the world is a macrocosmicreflection of me and I am a microcosmic re-flection of the world; the inner and the outerare analogous. I receive self-awareness byencounter with the world. This is particularlytrue of the world of history which as thehuman sphere is my direct analogue. Evenmore simply expressed, my life-history re-flects the history of human-kind. Only thuscan the Bible or others’ autobiographies haveanything to say to me personally. Vico for onewrote his autobiography with such anhermeneutical principle in mind.

It should be stressed here that this Vichianunderstanding of one’s humanity asgrounded in historical reality is very impor-tant in the writing of a human history, i.e., inthe writing of what Man has achieved in theworld, be it the history of science, or of art,or of law, or of any other cultural artifact. Inother words, when an author writes such ahistory he has to keep in mind that in relationto history Man cannot document himself asa mere object. As an historical being I amconstantly included in my understanding ofhistory.

How can I possibly speak seriouslyabout the guilt of others if I loath to face my own? So the question becomes:

how do I get to know myself?

“ “

23 / 24

We experience ourselves only by the detourof encounter with history, but the oppositeis also true: we experience history only by thedetour of self-understanding. That is theVichian hermeneutical circle. As Vico himselfaptly puts it: while it is true that Man makeshistory, it is also true that history makes Man.The way I see myself is influenced by thecourse of history. Such a course may producea Hegel with the vision of Man as a spiritualbeing, or a Marx with the vision of Man asconstituted by economics. These pre-judg-ments are practically inevitable for they aredirected by Man’s understanding of himself.

The understanding of history can never be“presuppositionless.” When the historianclaims that he has broken free from the pre-suppositions of his self-awareness, he is nolonger viewing human history but a degen-erated form of pseudo-nature. Only as abearer of freedom can the historian under-stand history as the sphere of freedom. Butthat freedom ought not be understood as anabstract kind of “choice.” “Pro choice” by itselfis a meaningless statement, for choice alwaysimplies commitment to something. Choicewithout responsibility and commitmenttransforms freedom into license. Confusionabout this important distinction abounds inso called free democratic societies, but call-ing ourselves free ought to mean an abilityto pursue a goal, to actualize ourselves bygrasping our destiny as humans, for in thefinal analysis, what we know or don’t knowof our nature and the goals of such a natureinevitably affects the way we view and inter-pret other people and even history as awhole.

As an historical being the author of a humanhistory has to bring himself to the under-standing of history. Many scientists find thiskind of Vichian hermeneutics uncongenial.They shun it since their pride and joy is Carte-sian rationalism in tandem with a conde-scending attitude toward what is alleged tobe a “retrograde and primitive” mytho-poeticmentality steeped in magic (usually under-stood as mere superstition) and religion.They have no use for authors such as NikolaiBerdyaev who always keep in mind the non-objectifiable element of freedom in historyand present myth as a deeper reconstructionof life; for indeed myth grasps a dimensionof human life that is simply inaccessible to anobjective scientific study.

An exclusively objective kind of history is in-conceivable, for there will always be a needfor mystification, a longing for worlds be-yond that secretively direct things. That long-ing derives from the fact that the subjects areincluded in the history they seek to knowand, unless they are mere robots with nofeelings and emotions, they are bound tofeel and disclose the historical in themselves.Berdyaev for one points out that penetratingthe depths of the ages means to penetratethe depths of the self.

As Vico has well taught us, history presentsitself from within by recollection of the ori-gin, goal and meaning of our existence. Hewas the very first philosopher in the West tounderstand, way ahead of Cassirer, that mythforms an element in all historical interpreta-tion, and that it a nefarious intellectual habitto pose the dichotomy of poetic myth and“objective” history. It is that false dichotomythat renders many modern history textbooksdistasteful to most young students. Theyhave intuited that those texts which presentthemselves as “scientific” fail to grasp the un-derstanding subjects share non-objectivelyin historical understanding; that the authorand the students of history too are integralpart of history; that behind the illusion ofcomplete unbiased documentation there isa human being who is also concerned atsome level with actualizing meaning of somekind. The mere writing of a history text pointsto it. And meaning relates to the totality ofbeing.

Indeed, in all historical understanding of de-tails a preliminary attempt is made to graspthe whole of history and its meaning. Willynilly, these subjects who choose what theydeem important out of the millennial vortexof history, are involved in an “act of faith”which cannot be objectively explained as isthe case in science. We will return to the exploration of this bot-tom rock “act of faith” on the part of science.For the moment we can confidently assertthat since Vico’s speculation on history theinvestigation of human existence and its his-tory in the sense of objective science is nolonger feasible and that moreover humanexistence as a whole is subject to the Vichianhermeneutical law of understanding. In other words, from Vico on human exis-tence has to be disclosed by way of under-standing rather than by way of explanation.It is here that historicism touches the circleof science. Science, on the other hand, intouching the circle of history has to graspthat we can understand humanity and its his-tory only in a venture. Individually, thiscourage for venturing on a journey of self-knowledge and actualization of meaning canbe drawn from the basic realization that thesecret of humanity is also our own secret.

“Man ishis own History”

leads to Self-knowledge

n 1976 A. Robert Caponigri of NotreDame University published an essay inhonor of the great Yale Dante and Vico

scholar Thomas Bergin (in Italian Literature:Roots and Branches, Yale University Press) inwhich he stated that “In the ‘Scienza Nuova’Vico anticipates by two centuries contempo-rary man’s most profound discovery concern-ing himself: the fact that he has a history,because by creating history man discoversand actualizes his own humanity.” That state-ment alerts us to the fact that Vico is wellwithin the Italian humanistic tradition. He is,in fact, nothing short of its culmination. A tra-dition this which is interrupted by Descartes’anti-humanistic stance and now waiting, likeambers under the ashes of a technocratic ra-tionalistic society, for a new rebirth.

I am not suggesting that the concept of his-tory is a special privilege of Western Man.Non Westerns too have a history. However, itis only in 18th century Europe that Man be-comes aware of the far reaching implicationsof that fact.

While Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Muslims hadchronicles and archives, they were not intel-lectually conscious of the astonishing factpeculiar to Western Man, that the history thatman makes expresses his freedom vis à visevents, nature and social life; which is to say,that when Man creates history out of noth-ing (as a sort of creation ex nihilo), he createsan eminently human factum, a sort of arti-fact, which is then knowable to the humanmind that created it. In short, the awarenessthat Man has, is, and makes history is a para-digm, or a myth of reality if you will, which isunique to Western thinking and is intimatelyrelated to the idea of freedom.Carl Marx for one utilized this paradigm ofMan as his own history, but he was not itsdiscoverer as some surmise. Its discovererwas Giambattista Vico who first proposed itto his contemporaries as a sort of antidote tothe then rampant abstract, rationalistic phi-losophy of Renè Descartes. In fact, I suggestthat to perceive Vico’s originality one needsto explore this peculiar Cartesian rationalisticbackground of our culture.

I

Only in contrast to the thought of Descartes,which has shaped the modern mind-set, canwe grasp the relevancy of Vico’s thought.In the first place, it should be noted that a-historical thinking, a tendency to emphasizeand privilege the universal and abstract as-pects of thought, at the expense of the par-ticular and the contingent, has been aroundin the West since Plato. But Descartes be-lieved that he had reached the end of hisepistemological ventures with what he con-sidered the final solution to the problem ofhuman knowledge. He accomplishes it bydeemphasizing the humanities and claimingthat the main criterion of truth for man is thatthe judgments asserting it must consist of“clear and distinct ideas.”

In his Principles of Philosophy Descartesstates that “I term that clear which is presentand apparent to an attentive mind, in thesame way as we assert that we see objectsclearly when, being present to the regardingeye, they operate upon it with sufficientstrength. But the distinct is that which is soprecise and different from all other objectsthat it contains within itself nothing but whatis clear.” Obviously, within this kind of episte-mology symbols related to seeing predomi-nate over those related to hearing. Theinsistence throughout is on clarity and math-ematical knowledge. Mathematics is in factspecifically mentioned in Descartes’ Dis-course on Method where he states that“Most of all I was delighted with Mathemat-ics because of the certainty of its demonstra-tions and the evidence of its reasoning.”

And what exactly is Descartes’ true founda-tion for his theory of knowledge? Hisrenowned “Cogito, ergo sum,” that is, thoughtin the act of thinking or reflecting upon itself.In other words, if I think, I exist or at least per-ceive myself as existing. This first certitude ofone’s existence is characterized by the evi-dence thought has of itself with no other un-clear elements. Therefore, Descartesconcludes, the criterion of truth must be ev-idence accompanied by clarity and distinct-ness. What is dismissed out of hand are all“unclear” ideas upon which history rests:memories, inner psychic states, motives, im-ages, symbols, myths, imaginative fairy tales,works of art with their ambiguous possibili-ties of meaning. In fact, the vast realm of per-sonal and inter-personal knowledge, definedby Martin Buber as the realm of the “I-Thou,”is summarily rejected. Now, it does not takemuch intellectual acumen to realize thatsince Descartes Western thought has beendominated by a rampant rationalism which,with the possible exception of Nietzscheanromantic anti-rationalism culminating withexistentialism, has a peculiar view of the re-lationship existing between a knowing expe-riencing subject (the self ) and the objectsand events around it (the observable world)which it perceives and knows. Since the sev-enteenth century this has been the almostexclusive domain within which the nature ofreality has been considered in the West. It isa mode of thought wherein all of reality con-sists of “external” objects and events whichare responsible for the perceptual experi-ence of an observing subject.

27 / 28

This is the realm of “I-it” as also defined byBuber; a realm concerned with the world ofthings and objectified events. It reaches itsmost restrictive form with modern sciencewhich, by its very nature, is exclusively con-cerned with observable objects and events.Vico’s peculiar genius lies in the fact that hewas the first thinker within Western cultureto clearly perceive that Descartes left noroom for history; that on this road Manwould end up dehumanizing himself. In con-trast, he proposed a theory of knowledgewhich emphasizes and demonstrates the im-portance and validity of historical thinking.His opus spanned fifteen years (1710-1725)and culminated with the publication of hisNew Science (the second edition appearedin 1730 and the third edition in 1744).Vico’s initial attack on the Cartesian paradigmbegins with his inaugural lecture at the Uni-versity of Naples in 1710 titled De Antiquis-sima Italorum Sapientia. There he inquires asto what it is that makes mathematical ideas,the prime example of Descartes’ “clear anddistinct ideas,” so irrefutable?His answer is that such clarity and irrefutabil-ity derive from the fact that we ourselveshave made them. In geometry we are able todemonstrate truth because we ourselveshave created it.

Vico employs a Latin formula to explain thisidea: Verum et Factum convertuntur, whichbasically means that we can only fully create,and hence fully know, the things that we de-sign and make out of nothing. In otherwords, the privileged position of mathemat-ical propositions, as regards clarity and per-suasiveness, rests upon the fact that they arearbitrary creations.

Vico then proceeds to qualify Descartes’ po-sition before setting out the theoretical basisfor historical knowledge proper. His basic in-sight is that truth is a dimension of the sub-ject and it is a fallacy to think with Descartesthat it can be conceived as a property of ob-jects themselves. In other words, truth is themode of presence of the subject to itself asmediated by the objects it observes. This cir-cularity establishes the integrity of the mindas total presence to itself. Within it the dual-ism subject/object is mediated. To say it ineven more simple terms Vico, as the consum-mate humanist that he is, proposes that be-sides metaphysics (rational intuition),mathematics (deductive knowledge), andnatural science (empirical knowledge), thereis a fourth, very important kind of knowl-edge: self-knowledge.

Christianity:A Private Affair or

Part of the European Heritage

and Identity?

n his book A Christian Europe? Europeand Christianity: Rules of Commitmentfirst published in Italy as Un’Europa

Cristiana, professor JHH Weiler, of New YorkUniversity, who has studied the process ofEuropean integration for more than twenty-five years, speaks of a European Christianghetto. Such a provocative statement is ofcourse a mere metaphor rooted in a sad re-ality used purposefully by Dr. Weiler to joltpeople out of their complacency. It shouldalso be prefaced at the outset that ProfessorWeiler is neither a Christian nor a Catholicbut a practicing Jew. This is important be-cause in his knowledge of the history of theChurch and its importance for the EU’s iden-tity, he puts many Christians to shame.Weiler writes that the manifestations of theexternal walls of this ghetto are very much inevidence in the refusal to include in the Pre-amble to the European Union Charter ofRights even a modest reference to Europe’sreligious heritage, completely ignoring therequest of the former Pope John Paul II.

In the recent draft Constitution there is stillno reference to Europe’s Christian heritage–but a generic allusion to its religious inheri-tance tucked between the cultural and thehumanist…!What exactly does Dr. Weiler mean by the in-ternal walls of the European Christianghetto? The reason he calls them “internal” isthat these are walls created by Christiansthemselves. This fact for Weiler is even morestriking than the refusal of the Conventionsto make any explicit reference to Christianity.He points out that despite the explicitCatholic orientation of the founding fathersof the European construct, there isn’t onemajor work, in any language, that explores indepth the Christian heritage and the Chris-tian meaning of European integration. Whilewriting his book Weiler pulled out from thelibrary of his university 79 books publishedin the previous three years on the generalphenomenon of European integration.Noneof them had a single allusion in the index toChristianity and its values.

I

Weiler then writes that we ought not be sur-prised that the Convention failed to make areference to the Christian heritage of Euro-pean integration, if that Christian heritagehas not been proclaimed, explored, debated,and made an integral part of the discourse ofEuropean integration by Christian scholarsthemselves.This is puzzling indeed. Weiler has three pos-sible explanations for the phenomenon. Thefirst is a puzzling internalization of the falsephilosophical and constitutional premise ofthe most extreme forms of laicit‡ (secularity)as practiced, for example, in France. Freedomof religion is of course guaranteed andrightly so is freedom from religious coercion.But on top of that there is the steadfast con-viction that there can be no allusion or refer-ence to religion in the official public space ofthe State, that such allusions are considereda transgression. A transgression of what ex-actly?

There is the naÔve belief that for the State tobe assiduously secular it needs to practice re-ligious neutrality. Weiler considers this falseon two counts: first, there is no neutral posi-tion in a binary option. For the State to ab-stain from any religious symbolism is nomore neutral than for the state to espousesome forms of religious symbolism. The reli-giosity of large segments of the populationand the religious dimension of the cultureare objective data. Denying these facts sim-ply means favoring one worldview over theother, masking it as neutrality.

The second explanation is that to accept thatview of the relationship between State andreligion is also to accept a secular (basically18th-century) definition of what religion ingeneral, and Christianity in particular, are. Itis a vision that derives from the culture ofrights which treats religion as a private mat-ter by equating freedom of religion with free-dom of speech, of belief, and of association.But then Weiler asks this crucial question: canone accept that Christianity be consigned tothe realm of the private by the secular au-thorities of the State?

That question is not to imply that Weiler doesnot believe in the liberal constitutional orderwith its guarantees of democracy and free-dom. He does indeed, but he also believes ina vigorous and articulate religious voice andviewpoint in the public spaces guaranteedby constitutional democracies.

The conundrum here boils down to this:many Catholic scholars have confused thepublic disciplines of constitutional democ-racy with a private discipline of religious si-lence in the public sphere. Worse than that,Christian scholars have internalized the no-tion that to integrate Christian thinking andChristian teaching into their reflections onconstitutional law, on political theory, on so-cial science, is a betrayal of their academicstanding, of their objectivity, of their scien-tific credentials.Another reason adduced by Weiler is fear.Fear that in an academy dominated by an in-tellectual class which often leans to the leftor to the center-left and insists on “politicallycorrect” principles, an incorporation of Chris-tian insight (other than a study in scientificfashion of religious phenomena) wouldbrand the scholar as lacking in scientific ob-jectivity; of not being a “free thinker.” And fi-nally Weiler mentions sheer ignorance.Precious few in the intellectual classes haveread, studied, and reflected on the teachingsof the Church, even less those of the currentpontificate, its encyclicals, the apostolic let-ters, etc, with the same assiduousness thatthey study the latest offering from the secu-lar intellectual icons of our generation.Weiler maintains that while it is shocking thatthe explicit request of the Holy Father wouldbe denied by the Convention, it is even moreshocking that the call of this pontiff to thelaity to be the messengers of Christian teach-ing in their own private and professional livesgoes in many cases equally unheeded.

The lives of those touched by faith cannot,once they exit the sphere of home and fam-ily, become identical with those not touchedby faith. This is true for the shopkeeper in themarket, for the conductor on the train, for aminister of the republic, as well as for thosewhose work is in one way or another a reflec-tion on the public policies of public authori-ties.One is led by the above reflections to inquireas to what is the relevance of Christianity andChristian teaching to the narrative of Euro-pean integration. Weiler finds it laughablenot to recognize Christianity as being ahugely important element in defining whatwe mean by European identity–for good andfor bad. In art and in literature, in music andin sculpture, even in our political culture,Christianity has been a leitmotif–an inspira-tion as well as an object of rebellion.There isno normativity in affirming this empiricalfact. There is only normativity in denying it.

a Europe that does not deny its Christian inheritanceand the richness that public debate can gain from engagement with Christian teachings

““

Weiler goes on to explain that while Christi-anity is a sociological and historical phenom-enon, it is also a a living faith based onrevealed truth. Here is where Christian teach-ing becomes relevant.

The reader may ask at this point: what has allof this got to do with European integration?Wealer, speaking as a scholar and not merelyas a believer, insists that it is indeed a greatdeal, that the narratives of history such as thestory of European integration have no inher-ent meaning. They have the meaning wegive them. What is at stake is what meaningwe want to give. A Christian Europe is not aEurope that will endorse Christianity. It is nota call for evangelization. A Christian Europeis one that can learn from the teaching ofChristianity. To reflect, discuss, debate, andultimately assign meaning to European inte-gration without reference to such an impor-tant source is to impoverish Europe.

For lay people and for non-Christians, thisbecomes a challenge to match. Christianitytoday offers interesting “takes” on the centralissues, the core issues, the deepest chal-lenges in the very self-understanding ofwhat Europe is about but few, even amongChristians, are aware of it.Weiler offers some examples which he hopeswill motivate the reader to read and reflecton those teachings: the relationship to the“other”–within our society, across ourboundaries within Europe, and beyond Eu-rope–is arguably the most important chal-lenge to which European integration tries torespond. Well, the encyclical RedemptorisMissio is a profound statement on how tothink, to conceptualize a respectful relation-ship with the other. The Catholic teachingsexpressed in this encyclical are concernedwith tolerance, respect and inclusion, con-cepts inextricably connected with freedomand democracy.

On the one hand, the encyclical bravely es-chews the epistemological and moral rela-tivism of post-modernity by affirming thatwhich it considers to be the truth. But at thesame time, it treats with the utmost respectthose who do not share in that Truth. Onecannot truly respect the other if one does nothave respect for oneself, individually and col-lectively. Forgetting one’s heritage is indeeda shabby mode of respecting oneself individ-ually and collectively. Much can flow fromthis insight in the various debates on Euro-pean integration.For Weiler, the marketplace is another coreissue of the European Union. Some wouldeven argue that it is the core issue. Hereagain, Weiler points out that the encyclicalCentesimus Annus offers one of the mostprofound reflections on the virtues of a freemarket but also of its dangers to human dig-nity. It is a reflection that goes well beyondthe mantra of “solidarity” so dear to politicalactivists of many stripes and which one findsendlessly in the debate of European integra-tion. Europe need not espouse the teachingsof the Church in this matter. But why excludethem from the debate? And there are manyother examples in the book.And of course the logical last inquiry is this:how would non-Christians react to the no-tion of a Christian Europe? Are we to excludeTurkey for example? Professor Weiler ex-plains that a Christian Europe does not meana Europe for Christians. It does not mean anofficial endorsement of, or call for, evange-lization.

That is certainly not the role of the EuropeanUnion. It simply means a Europe that doesnot deny its Christian inheritance and therichness that public debate can gain from en-gagement with Christian teachings.

Weiler points out that there is somethingcomic, bordering on the tragic, in observingthose most opposed to any reference to reli-gion or Christianity in the draft Constitutionat the forefront of opposition to Turkishmembership in the Union. It is indeed an in-sult to Christianity and its teaching of graceand tolerance to claim that there is no placein Europe for a non-Christian country orworse, for non-Christian individuals. Weilerobserves that he is an observant Jew, son ofa rabbi with European roots that go backhundreds of years and that his ancestorswere often the victims of Christians andChristianity; yet he finds it puzzling that any-one would fear the recognition and acknowl-edgment of the dominant culture (i.e.,Christianity) as an empirical historical fact,and reveals a fear of his which is also an in-sight, and it is this: “If I have a fear, it is the fol-lowing: to deny the relevance of theChristian heritage in European public sym-bolism and European public space, for todeny that is to deny, too, the relevance of myown religiosity in that same public space.”That would probably be just fine for thosewho wish to eliminate religion altogetherfrom both the public and the private sphere,but it remains a shortsighted social and po-litical strategy, for is a body politic is basedon the rejection of one’s history and heritageit will be built on sand and will not survive forvery long.

Alcide De Gasperi’sHumanistic Vision

of theEuropean Union

he words above encapsulate the Eu-ropean spirit of Alcide De Gasperi.Most historians and scholars con-

sider the statesmen Robert Schuman, JeanMonnet, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide DeGasperi the four most significant visionaryfounding fathers of the European Union.Sadly, some sixty years later, one detects onthe political horizon of the current EU (nowcomposed of 27 nations as compared to the6 original founders sixty years ago) someunimpressive uninspiring political midgetshalf clowns and half villains who far frombeing competent and able to confront thepresent EU economic-political crisis and leadthe people of the United Europe back to

the original vision of its founding fathers,may be presiding over its dissolution. One senses an ominous nostalgia for thegood old ways of rabid xenophobic nation-alism of some seventy years ago. Indeed,those who forget their history are bound torepeat it, and perhaps it is high time to recallonce again the vision and inheritance ofthose legendary founding fathers. I’d like todwell on one in particular: Alcide De Gasperi,the statesman who represented Italy at thefounding of the Union in the early 50s, in-forming and nurturing the spirit that forgedEuropean integration, the very opposite ofthe present prime minister who is a moraland political embarrassment.

“Faith sustains us; and optimism, where a great political andhuman ideal such as European unification is to be attained,is a constructive virtue.”

Alcide De Gasperi (Achen, 1952)

T

De Gasperi was born in Trentino, an Italian-speaking region that formed part of the Aus-tro-Hungarian empire before the First WorldWar. In 1911 he was elected to representTrentino in the Vienna parliament. In sodoing, he represented a minority within avast multinational and multicultural group-ing of nations within the Austro-Hungarianempire. After the First World War, he oncemore became a member of parliament, thistime the Italian one, Trentino having becomepart of Italy. Like Schuman, De Gasperi camefrom a border region that experienced par-ticularly acute suffering during the wars inEurope. This experience marked him for life,and helped him to form the conviction that:“the lesson that all Europeans can learn fromtheir tumultuous past is that the future willnot be built through force, nor through de-sire to conquer, but by the patient applica-tion of the democratic method, theconstructive spirit of agreement, and by re-spect for freedom. (Speech on the award ofthe Charlemagne prize, 24 September 1952,Aix-la-Chapelle).

To understand what made De Gasperi tickone must grasp that his commitment to Eu-rope was also rooted in his deep faith andguiding principles. As a committed Christian,he opposed all forms of totalitarianism. AsChairman of the parliamentary group of theItalian People’s Party, he opposed the rise ofthe fascist party. In 1927 he was imprisonedfor his participation in the Aventin move-ment. Sentenced to four years in jail, he wasreleased after sixteen months when theChurch intervened, but was then forced towithdraw from political life for fifteen years,and worked as a junior employee in the Vat-ican library. But from 1943 he was to occupyvarious ministerial positions, and continuedto oppose the powerful Italian CommunistParty.

De Gasperi responded immediately to Schu-man’s call for an integrated Europe, andworked closely with the latter and with Kon-rad Adenauer and Albert Schuman. After theallies entered Rome in June 1944, as the un-challenged leader of the Christian Democratshe became Minister for Foreign Affairs andlater the first Prime Minister of the new Ital-ian Republic.

While Italy was still at war, he resumed diplo-matic relations with many countries. In 1945,De Gasperi was given the task of organizinga government of national unity. The head ofseveral governments between 1945 and1953, he chose, despite the strong influenceof the Communist Party, to take Italy into theAtlantic Alliance, to participate in the Mar-shall Plan and, from 1949, to join NATO.

Europe had to get rid of,once and for all, of the seeds of conflictand disintegration that existed within her

“ “

37 / 38

He enabled Italy to regain its rightful role andplace. For De Gasperi, gaining a firm footholdin the Western camp and European integra-tion were two parallel paths. Military al-liances had to respond to the needs of thepost-war period, the Soviet threat and the es-sential redefinition of power relations. Euro-pean integration was something muchworthier and much more noble, that wouldlead to a community of peace and ideals: “weare aware that we must save ourselves, thatwe must save the heritage of our commoncivilization and secular experience. Becausewhile it is true that the Atlantic Pact covers alarge part of the world, it is equally true thatin this world, Europe has within it the mostancient sources and the highest traditions ofcivilization” (Ibid.).

As far as his vision of a united Europe, his ap-proach was simple. The ultimate objectivewas peace - peace within Europe. Europe hadto get rid of, once and for all, of the seeds ofconflict and disintegration that existedwithin her:

“it is essential for Europe to defend herselfagainst a disastrous heritage of civil wars -the cycle of attack and counter-attack, of adesire for dominance, a greed for wealth andspace, of anarchy and tyranny that has beenthe legacy of our history, otherwise so glori-ous. What hope can we offer to the youngergenerations in the aftermath of the SecondWorld War? An absolute ethical vision of thenation with its trail of conflicts and demandsor, rather, a quest for a higher expression anda wider fraternal solidarity?

What path must we take in order to maintainthat which is noble and human in nationalstrengths, whilst coordinating them in thesearch for a supranational civilization thatcan balance them, represent them and makethem part of an unstoppable tide ofprogress? We can achieve this only by imbu-ing national strengths with the commonideals of our history and by allowing them tooperate in the sphere of the variety of mag-nificent experience of common Europeancivilization.

We can achieve this only by creating a meet-ing point where these experiences can cometogether so that we may take the best ofthem and thus create new ways of living to-gether, inspired by the aim of greater libertyand greater social justice.

It is on the basis of this association of na-tional sovereignty, founded on democraticconstitutional institutions, that these newways can flourish.”(Ibid.). De Gasperi was con-vinced of the existence of a desire for Euro-pean unity, a unity that he saw as alreadypresent in people’s minds, but lacking in ma-terial expression: “Europe will exist, and noneof the glory and happiness of each nationwill be lost. It is precisely in a wider society, in a morepowerful harmony, that the individual canassert himself and fully express his own ge-nius. (Speech to a round table organised bythe Council of Europe in Rome, 13 October1953). De Gasperi’s constant worry as regardsachieving this unity was the ongoing institu-tional challenge of preserving national iden-tities and avoiding the creation of ahierarchical relationship between the Mem-ber States. Herein lie the key and the secret to the suc-cess of the European project: “we must seekunion only where it is necessary or, rather,where it is essential. By preserving the inde-pendence of all that forms the basis of thespiritual, cultural and political life of each na-tion, we safeguard the natural bases of ourlife together’. (Ibid.) The only way of ensuringbalance in the system was through a built-in

guarantee, i.e. by institutions responsible forjointly supervising shared resources. Butthese institutions must be energized withnew life: “If we restrict ourselves to creatingshared administrations, without a higher po-litical will invigorated by a central body inwhich the wills of nations come together, arefully expressed and come alive in a higherframework, we risk the possibility that com-pared with the various national strengths,this European venture may seem cold andlifeless – it could even at times appear a su-perfluous and even oppressive extrava-gance, like the Holy Roman Empire at certainmoments in its decline.’(speech to the Con-sultative Assembly of the Council of Europe,Strasbourg, 10 December 1951). A higher po-litical authority was thus essential. It wouldbring “greater cohesion and increased re-sponsibility” (Ibid.).

It is important to point out that the goal ofthe construction of Europe was never purelyeconomic, as some maintain. It was the prod-uct of a more overarching aspiration that, forDe Gasperi and Schuman and Aidenauer,drew on Christian teachings on fraternity, so-cial questions and unity: “Christianity has anactive and constant moral and social influ-ence. It is expressed in the law and social ac-tion. Its respect for the free development ofthe human person and its love of toleranceand fraternity are reflected in the quest forsocial justice and international peace. Butthese principles cannot operate withoutpeace. In peace the spirit of cooperation willtruly flourish.”(Ibid.).

39 / 40

Europe should develop, then, on the basis ofthese great principles: ‘the fundamental aimof European unity must be to preserve ourdemocratic way of life and our traditions ofcivilization and freedom, and to strengthenour free national institutions” (Speech to theConsultative Assembly of the Council of Eu-rope, Strasbourg, 16 September 1952). DeGasperi’s message may be summed up in afew words: the objective of European inte-gration must always be the search for peace,solidarity and fraternity among Europeanpeoples. Alcide De Gasperi visionary mes-sage remains relevant today. He always be-lieved that it was the Union’s destiny to grow:“this circle where six countries are alreadygrouped together must remain open so that,as in nuclear attraction, other countries mayjoin or come closer”. (Ibid.). Indeed, the mo-tivations of the founding fathers were rootedin a higher order, independent of materialand national interests.

As De Gasperi put it: “to unite Europe, wemay have to destroy more than we create: todiscard a world of prejudice, a world of fear,a world of resentment. What it took to createa united Italy, where every town had learntto hate its neighbour over long centuries ofservitude! The same thing will be needed tocreate Europe.”(Ibid.) De Gasperi drew fromfaith the motivation for a fierce defense ofChristian values in the service of freedom. Ashe expressed it: “Christianity is at work, per-petually at work, in its moral and social ef-fects. It can be seen in law and in socialaction. Its respect for the free developmentof the human being, its love of tolerance andbrotherhood are reflected in its work of dis-tributive justice in social matters and in inter-national peace. However, we cannot putsuch principles into practice without peace;it is in peace that the spirit of cooperationwill gain its full impetus.”( September 1952 inAachen).

As an international statesman, he played ahighly constructive role and he is creditedwith having had the insight to understandthe role that could be played by parties withCatholic leanings. Christianity could be a ce-ment of sort that could transcend the cen-tripetal forces of cultural diversity.

The Atlantic Pact represented for De Gasperinot only a military-based defense alliance,but also an instrument of political and eco-nomic cooperation. In the political structurehis pro-European vision had the crucial ele-ment which could lend Europe a close andorganic unity. “It is necessary to overcomenational interests as forms of social selfish-ness” stated De Gasperi. Indeed, his roots, hisculture and his religious background werethe raisons d’être for his particular sensitivityto supranational matters. He found the samereligious background in two statesmen who,with him, laid the foundations for Europeanunity: Schuman and Adenauer, bothCatholics and activists in Christian Democratparties. But De Gasperi probably had a moredelicate role, taking on the function of medi-ator between the other two, who repre-sented countries divided by almost a centuryof war.

He shared with Adenauer a strong dislike ofextreme nationalism, from either the right orthe left. For both, the unification of Europerepresented the principal foreign-policy ob-jective: this was regarded as the only way toprotect Western and Christian civilizationagainst totalitarian forces and, at the sametime, to give Europe a leading role in theworld.

De Gasperi’s great merit was really that heacted courageously and positively to build,in addition to a common defence, a politicalEurope which would not replace the individ-ual Member States, but would allow them tocomplement one another. According to DeGasperi’s vision, the Europe of the Six wasonly a beginning, a first step through whichit was possible to explore new ways to en-able a wider European union to be created.He was fully aware that this union should notremain isolated, but should have links withthe rest of the world. The pro-European strat-egy advocated by De Gasperi met with unan-imous and warm approval. De Gasperi offered us a testimony of faith inthe powers of good and of peace. Indeed,the European Union will only find its culturalidentity and its very soul when it manages toremember its origins as expressed by the vi-sion of its founding fathers. The people arestarving for such a vision. Neither economicprosperity nor soccer games will ever fill thatvacuum.

It is necessary to overcome national interests as forms of social selfishness

“ “

41 / 42

Klaus Held onReligion, Science

and Democracy inEuropean Culture

laus Held, from the University ofWuppertal, wrote a brilliant essayon the identity of European culture.

It was translated into English by Sean Kirk-land of Goucher college. It can be found inthe journal Epoche', Vol. 7, issue 1 (Fall 2002)and its title is The Origins of Europe with theGreek Discovery of the World. This essayought to be a must for anybody seriously in-vestigating the origins of European cultureand concerned about its future.

Held begins his analysis by observing that itwas by no means a mere coincidence thatscience and democracy arose in the sameage among the same people, that is, amongthe ancient Greeks. Heraclitus is identified asthe very first thinker who begins to seriouslyreflect upon the earliest scientific activityand at the same to contemplate communallife in the Greek polis.

He credits him with the designation of theword "kosmos" as encompassing the wholeworld. He also designates the word "logos"as the relation among everything there is inthe world and the openness to this relationamong human cultures, Europe beingmerely one of those cultures. What howeveris unique to European culture is its readinessto remain open to the relation of belongingtogether, that is, the logos.The next impor-tant insight comes from Parmenides and it isthis: the human perception of things (noein)and the existence of things (einai) belong in-extricably together. As far as Held is con-cerned these two insights of Heraclitus andParmenides mark the beginning of Europeanculture characterized by a basic openess toother cultures, a going out, so to speak, fromone's own culture to other foreign culturesand having as its foundation the life-world ofhumanity, that is to say, the "kosmos."

K

Thus begins a type of investigation which ischaracterized by freedom from bias (themeasuring criterion of science) and called"historie" or exploration. At this point of ori-gin scientific exploration is indistinguishablefrom philosophy.The twin institution which is born togetherwith science in ancient Greece is that ofdemocracy which according to Held "can bespoken only where a free space in the gen-eral freedom of opinion among the citizensis expressly institutionalized." These two in-stitutions are the outward form of the "inau-gural spirit of Europe." At this point Heldutters a warning, namely this: "The tempta-tion of Europe, and in the modern period, forthe whole Euro-American Western culture,lies in identifying the one world discoveredhere, a world of all human beings that pro-vides a place for all their various life-worlds,with one of these worlds...namely equatingthe one shared world with our own Euro-pean Western home world."Nevertheless, Held asserts that "no other de-veloped culture has managed to perceivethe proper claim of foreign life-world withsuch a lack of prejudice as that which occursunder modern international law."

It is this lack of bias that may eventually allowfor the "europeazation of humanity", whichsounds like a very eurocentric assertion butremains valid if the proper openness to for-eign cultures is maintained; for as Karl Jasperhas aptly put it: "Europe is peculiar perhapsonly in that it is, in possibility, everything."Which is to say that Western Civilization(which includes the Americas and Australiaand other places in the globe) distinguishesitself by the fact that it is never finished, it isalways coming-to-be; there is always a nextrenaissance, a re-birth, on the next horizon;a new synthesis is always in the making. Eu-rope's self understanding is provided by for-eign cultural forms.

Here Held arrives at what I would considerhis most important insight concerning Euro-pean cultural identity, and it is this: "...theChristianization first of the Roman Empire,then of the people pouring into the Mediter-ranean region from the other side of theAlps, constituted the second great beginningof European culture." He is alluding to thatgreat synthesis of Antiquity and Christianityculminating with Christian Humanism (pre-pared partly by Christian monks copying andpreserving ancient Greek and Latin manu-scripts) whose pioneers are Dante and Pe-trach, then soon afterward followed by theItalian Renaissance.

The Christianization first of the Roman Empire, then of the people pouring into the Mediterranean region from the otherside of the Alps, constituted the secondgreat beginning of European culture

“

“

Constant change and re-birth constitutes infact the paradigm of a religion that has as itsmost important symbol that of the Resurrec-tion ('Behold I make everything new"); a ca-pacity to begin anew which (and this maysurprise euro-fanatics) which Held individu-ates in "the founding fathers of North Amer-ican democracy, who brought it from Europein the 18th century; these men elevated fed-eralism to the principle of the Americandemocratic constitution, as is demonstratedin their 'Federalist Papers.'...European culture,due to its openness in natality [i.e., re-birth]to the universal world as place for many par-ticular life-worlds, has the chance to showthe world how its own multiplicity can bekept alive."The essay in itself is a model of a lucid histor-ical survey of a complex culture which man-ages to remain unbiased because it does not

fall into mere Machiavellian considerationsof "real-politik". The question arises: "can thishoped-for model become a future reality oris it a mere chimera, an utopia, never to bereached?"

In my opinion, it can happen on two condi-tions: 1) that the principle of federalism is re-spected and implemented on the politicallevel, and here the EU can learn much fromthe US, 2) that Europe's cultural identity as a"novantiqua," that is to say, a synthesis of antiquity and Christianity is recognized andacknowledged as part of the cultural patri-mony of Western Civilization. Held himselfgives a dire warning in this regard: "A Euro-pean Community grounded only in politicaland economic cooperation of the memberstates would lack an intrinsic common bond.It would be built upon sand.

The Tragic Lossof the European

SpiritualIdentity

he renowned Church historianErnst Troeltsch once boldly de-clared that Europe had ceased to be

Christian in the 18th century. Of course sucha statement referred not to individuals but tothe cultural identity of Europe as a whole.

Some post-modern thinkers not only wouldwholly agree with that statement but wouldalso point out that indeed the 18th centuryis the watershed separating Christendom, socalled, or the old Europe, and the new mod-ern Europe. This New Europe, after World WarII has finally transformed itself in the Euro-pean Union and is based on purely neutral,that is to say, non-ideological, economic, sci-entific, educational foundations. This leads to a crucial question: are thosefoundations reliable and solid enough bythemselves, or is there something sorely

missing? Is the absence of spiritual founda-tions a sign that a more perfect union tran-scending nationalism will forever elude theEuropean Union?Some post-modern philosophers attributethe problem of modernity to a mistake madeat the beginning of Western culture, to Platoin particular. They assume a continuity be-tween modern rationalism and the principlesof reason as formulated by the ancientGreeks. Others draw a distinction betweenthe original principles of rationality and theirmodern interpretation. They trace the root ofthat distinction, with its dramatic political im-plications, to the modern turn toward thehuman subject as the only source of truthand its consequent pragmatism. This turnwas initiated, to be precise, by RenËDescartes, widely considered the father ofmodern Western philosophy.

T

What post-modern thinkers reject is not onlyEnlightenment rationalism, but also the orig-inal Greek form of rationality. For them ra-tionality is little more than behavioralattitudes, a sort of incessant self-correctionand perfectibility patterned after the exper-imentalism and self-correction of science.This is considered progress. In fact, it isbranded as deterministic inevitable progress:the newest is always the best. Allegedly, itdoes away with disastrous and destructiveuniversalist totalizing ideologies, the grandscheme of things a la Hegel, the grand nar-rations, often at war with each other. The ar-gument is this: it is better to be more modestin one’s goals and humbly attend to imme-diate social and economic needs. WelcomeEpicurus and Lucretius, away with Plato’sgrandiose Forms.What is conveniently side-stepped are somefundamental issues at which we shall look abit more closely. Indeed, the ineluctable factis that Europeans no longer agree on spiri-tual values; those values that, despite politi-cal conflicts, were in place prior to theEnlightenment. It took the Czech philoso-pher Jan Patocka (who in turn greatly influ-enced Havel) to dare propose, in the middleof the 20th century, a return to an idea thatused to be characteristic of the European tra-dition since the Greeks but in the 20th cen-tury is seen as a scandal and an anomaly: thecare of the soul by way of a great respect fortruth and the intellectual life, holistically con-ceived. Plato had claimed that it is throughthat life that we, as human beings endowedwith a soul, partake of the life of the Ideasand share the life of the gods themselves.

Later, Christians adopt this notion butchange its direction. For Christians, theoria,or contemplation, remains the fundamentalprinciple of any viable culture. Bereft of it, acivilization is left with nothing but a sort ofaimless and blind praxis leading to its even-tual destruction. Christopher Dawson for oneexplored and clarified this idea in his famousThe Making of Europe.

So, the next question is this: can such a prin-ciple as advocated by Plato play a role in thespiritual unification of Europe? Which is tosay, must the commitment to reason aban-don a sort of rationalistic universalism thatopposes it to an anti-rationalist particular-ism? To deepen a bit more: is not abstract ra-tionalism and its irrationalist reactionresponsible for much of the ominous ni-hilism which Nietzsche, for one, claimed hov-ers over Europe like a menacing specter? Hasit not, in fact, corrupted the very principle ofreason that, up to the Enlightenment, hadconstituted Europe’s spiritual identity? Has itnot turned wisdom against itself?

Prior to World War II, the philosopher whomost acutely perceived the spiritual crisisthat rationalism has caused in Europe wasEdmund Husserl. In a famous lecture deliv-ered in Prague on the very eve of one of thedarkest chapters of modern European his-tory, he said this: “I too am quite sure that theEuropean crisis has its roots in a mistaken ra-tionalism. That, however, must not be inter-preted as meaning that rationality as such isan evil or that in the totality of human exis-tence it is of minor importance.

47 / 48

The rationality of which alone we are speak-ing is rationality in that noble genuine sense,the Greek sense, that became an ideal in theclassical period of Greek philosophy.”All we need to do is give a cursory look atHusserl’s philosophy of phenomenology tobe convinced that Husserl regarded modernobjectivism as the quintessential expressionof this rationalism. It reduces the world,which for the Greeks was a spiritual structure,into an object, and reason into an instrumentfor manipulating matter. One may ask, how then did Husserl view thespiritual identity of Europe? He advocatedthat the particular must be fully reintegratedwith the universal, an idea that Kierkegaardtoo had proposed. Husserl says: Clearly thetitle Europe designates the unity of a spirituallife and creative activity--no matter how in-imical the European nations may be towardeach other, still they have a special inneraffinity of spirit that permeates all of themand transcends their national differences…

There is an innate entelechy that thoroughlycontrols the changes in the European imageand directs it toward an ideal image of lifeand of being. The spirited telos of the Euro-pean in which is included the particular telosof separate nations and individual persons,has an infinity; it is an infinite idea towardwhich in secret the collective spiritual be-coming, so to speak, strives.But the question persists: is it possible at thispoint in its history to revive the spiritual ideaof Europe? An idea that, despite its violenthistorical conflicts still ongoing in Bosnia, haskept its people united within an unrestricteddiversity? Food for thought, to be duly di-gested by those of us who, like Husserl, areperceptive enough to sense the spiritual cri-sis he was talking about. In his Philosophical Discourse on ModernityJurgen Habermas attributes the failure of theEnlightenment to the intrusion of foreign el-ements which derailed its original programof full human emancipation.

He finds nothing wrong with the project it-self, aside from the fact that it was prema-turely abandoned for a romantic return tosome form of pseudo-religion, such as theworship of nature in the 19th century, the eraof Romanticism. Undoubtedly there is some-thing unfinished about the Enlightenment,but contrary to what Habermas believes, it isnot the execution of the project that failed toreach a conclusion but the concept itself.Many question nowadays the very principleof rationality that directed Enlightenmentthought. This may sound paradoxical, for in-deed it is the adoption of reason by theGreeks and the subsequent synthesis withChristianity as achieved by Augustine andAquinas that distinguishes European culturefrom all others and defines its spiritual iden-tity.To be sure, the real culprit was not reason orrationality but rationalism, which was un-known to the Greeks. Rationalism is a mod-ern invention inaugurated by Descartes andconsisting in a separation of the particularfrom the universal and assigning supremacyto the universal while misguidedly assumingthat a rationality constituted by the humanmind could function as the same compre-hensive principle that it had been for theGreeks.

To the contrary, a rationality of purely subjec-tive origin produces mere abstract, emptyconcepts in theory and pursues limitedhuman objectives in practice, mostly nar-rowly focused upon economic and politicalconcerns. Einstein had it on target: our era ischaracterized by perfection of means andconfusion of goals.Indeed, in developed societies where eco-nomic concerns have become all-importantand dominant, the protection of sub-na-tional identities and minority groups are atrisk. One place where any obstacle to eco-nomic development has been successfullyeliminated is the United States, usually men-tioned as a model of federalism encompass-ing many nationalities. Many EU politiciansadvocate a United States of Europe. That maysound progressive, but it remains a chimeragiven that the nationalistic and regionalidentities are still very strong in Europe; noris it desirable.It would be a mistake for the EU to imitatethe US and attempt a repetition of a mega-nation which would translate into a super-power bent on power and the forcibleexportation of democracy (an oxymoron ifthere ever was one). The price that will haveto be paid will be further erosion of Europe’soriginal spiritual unifying principles, the veryroots of its cultural identity, and the embrac-ing of a bland mixture of varied cultures lev-eled to its least common denominator.

It would be a mistake for the EU to imitate the US and attempt a repetition of a mega-nation

“ “

Soccer games heralded as a unifying princi-ple may indeed be emblematic of that mis-take. What some Europeans fail to grasp isthat what keeps so many ethnic nationalitiesand groups together in the US is a constitu-tion which guarantees certain basic rightstranscending nationality and even the verypower of the State in as much as they areconceived as inalienable. Those enshrinedideals make “a pluribus unum” possible, asthe dollar bill proclaims.

As the recent conflicts in the Balkans haveshown only too well, it will prove quite diffi-cult for Europeans with different languagesreflecting diverse cultures to create a UnitedStates of Europe, nor should they. As it is, allthe worst features of American popular cul-ture are imitated, even by those who are anti-Americans, while the best is largely unknownor ignored. That is not to deny that one of themajor achievements of the European Unionhas been the preventing of a major destruc-tive conflict on the continent at the level ofa world war for the last sixty years or so. How-ever, to count on mere political-economicmotives to completely free Europe from its

past destructive legacies may be a miscalcu-lation.Calling oneself a Newropean will not do thetrick either. It would suffice to take a hardlook at the xenophobia that has raised itsugly head and pervades the EU especially itsmost affluent countries. Superficially itseems directed at immigrants coming fromoutside Europe but often the real target is aneighboring country.What seems to be lacking within this eco-nomic, political, educational coordinationthat is the EU is a deeper kind of integrationbased on an inclusive spiritual idea. How isthis to be achieved in a secular democraticsociety pledged to protect the rights of all itscitizens and their diversity? A nostalgic re-turn to the Greek-Christian synthesis and theChristendom of medieval times (at times im-posed politically) will not do and is not evendesirable. That was a synthesis meant for Eu-ropeans Christians (many of them forced toget baptized by their kings who found it po-litically convenient to switch from paganismto Christianity), not for non-Christians, not tospeak of the non-Europeans which are nowcounted into the millions in Europe.

In any case, it is undeniable that at presentno spiritual foundation for a genuine unifica-tion exists. The present proposed Constitu-tion which nobody even calls constitutionany longer but a compact, mentions a fuzzykind of spiritual heritage almost as an after-thought. Many Europeans don’t seem to betoo concerned about such an absence, if in-deed they even perceive it. And yet, somekind of new synthesis is needed. Unfortu-nately, it will not even be envisioned, nevermind implemented, unless Europeans, begina serious reflection and a debate on the orig-inal idea to which Europe owes it culturalunity and identity. That carries the risk ofbeing perceived as an old European, maybeeven an anti-modern and anti-progressive,rather than a “Newropean,” but I would sug-gest that without that original idea, whichprecedes Christianity itself, a crucial novanti-qua synthesis will not be perceived eitherand Europeans will be sadly condemned torepeat their history.

What is this European original foundationalspiritual idea that precedes even Christian-ity? Simply this: a commitment to theoria,the theoretical life which in its Greek etymol-ogy means the contemplative or reflectivelife in all its various aspects: the philosophi-cal, the scientific, the aesthetic; in short theprimacy of a holistic life of contemplation. Allthis sounds strange to modern and post-modern ears accustomed to hear praxis anda purely pragmatic notion of rationality em-phasized over and above theory. Marx, forone, expressed such a mind-set in the 11thof the Theses on Feuerbach with this catch-all slogan: “The philosophers have only inter-preted the world differently, the point is tochange it.” Indeed, but to start with praxis isto put the cart before the horse.Unfortunately, postmodern theories, in an at-tempt to reject an extreme kind of rational-ism, have also rejected the primacy of reasonunderstood holistically and tied to the imag-inative, which had ruled Western thoughtsince the Greeks. Precisely the belief in thatprimacy, together with a common faith thatcould envision the transcendent, had beenone of the spiritual foundations of Europe. Itwas that kind of devaluation and departurefrom foundational traditions that Husserlwas decrying before World War II.

Here the question naturally arises: is it stillpossible to revive the ideals behind Europe'sspiritual identity? If this requires returning toa common Christian faith and to a pre-mod-ern concept of reason, it will prove practicallyimpossible. Science demands a more differ-entiated notion of reason than the one inher-ent in ancient and medieval thought.

As for the common Christian faith thatforged such a strong bond among Europe'speoples, many Europeans have lost it, if theyever had it, and most recent immigrants,many of them Muslims never had it to beginwith. This is not to forget that Moslem civi-lization in Spain during the Middle Ages wasmore developed and advanced than a West-ern civilization devastated by the Barbarians.

Does the above reflection intimate perhapsthat Europe must be satisfied with a merelypolitical, technical, scientific, and economicintegration? Such a spiritually "neutral" uniondoes indeed appear to be “enlightened” in asmuch as it avoids the unfortunate conflictsof the past. Furthermore, many Europeanstoday think that social and cultural differ-ences obstruct or slow down the process ofeconomic growth and social progress. Why,then, don't all Europeans adopt English asthe common language for science, business,and technology, leaving French, Italian,Spanish, German, Dutch, and Scandinavianlanguages to private life?

Again, this may sound strange to post-mod-ern ears, but if the European Union were re-duced to a means for smoothing out politicaland economic transactions among its mem-ber states, not only would the individualstates, not to speak of regions, gradually losetheir identity, they would also be doomed toplay a very subordinate role on the worldstage in the future. Even today, only a halfcentury after the United States has econom-ically and politically come to dominate theworld, its powerful media and commercialenterprises have deeply affected the

languages, the communications, and the cul-tural patterns of Europe. The effect is mostvisible in the smaller nations. Thus in the LowCountries the language of the news mediahas become infected with American idioms,bookstores are filled with American publica-tions or translations thereof, television andcinema compete for the most recent Ameri-can shows or films—all this at the expense oflinguistic purity and respect for indigenousliterature. The result is a general decline ofnative creativity. What is even more perplex-ing is that what is being imitated is not thebest of American culture (which is there ifone takes the trouble to look for it) but theworst and the mediocre.Be that as it may, whoever controls the econ-omy of another country is likely to control itsculture as well, as Benjamin, Adorno andMarx have well taught us. Building a strongeconomy of one's own, as Europe is doing atpresent, is a necessary step to resisting suchdomination.

A European communitygrounded only in political and economiccooperation of the member stateswould lack an intrinsiccommon bond. It would be built uponsand

“

“

But that alone may not be sufficient. If theEuropean Union were to be reduced to amere economic union, its leveling effect onEuropean culture would in the end be com-parable to the one the United States hasbegun to exercise. We are all Americans be-cause we all drink Coke; and we are all Euro-peans because we all go to soccer games onSunday! To the contrary, Europe's politicaland economic unification must be accompa-nied by a strong awareness of a distinctivecultural and spiritual identity. This is the rea-son why the dispute over Europe's Christianheritage is so important. In writing the pre-amble to the EU constitution, the most sig-nificant element in the European tradition iserased at the peril of building on politicalsand, as Kurt Held reminded us in his essayon Europe titled The Origins of Europe withthe Greek Discovery of the World,” with thefollowing words: “A European communitygrounded only in political and economic co-operation of the member states would lackan intrinsic common bond. It would be builtupon sand."The American techno-economic model of apolitical union is not suitable for Europe, es-pecially of a Europe which has forgotten itsspiritual roots and in the past has substitutedthem with political ideologies. Being a newcountry, with immigrants from various tradi-tions, the United States had no choice but tobuild politically on a spiritually and culturallyneutral foundation but the separation ofChurch and State is deceiving.

Its spiritual roots remained strong and werein fact a unifying principle. This base enabledthe United States to integrate the economyand the social institutions of its states into astrong and coherent unity that resulted inthe most powerful nation in history. But theglue that held the uniform structure to-gether were the ideals of the Enlightenment(ultimately based on a Judeo-Christianethos) as enshrined in its Constitution. Thereis a lesson there for Europe to be ponderedcarefully before embracing anti-American-ism or, even worse, a slavish imitation of allthe worst features of American culture.

Contemporary Europeans have preservedtheir diverse languages, customs, and histo-ries, even at the regional level, and thatpoints to an appreciation for tradition andheritage which is indispensable for a strongcultural identity.But, to reiterate, Europeneeds a strong spiritual reintegration as wellas a political-economic one. That requiresthat it assimilate essential parts of its spiritualheritage: the Greek sense of order and meas-ure, the Roman respect for law, the biblicaland Christian care for the other person, thehumanitas of Renaissance humanism, theideals of political equality and individualrights of the Enlightenment. The values leftby each of these episodes of Western cultureare not as transient as the cultures in whichthey matured. They belong permanently toEurope's spiritual patrimony and ought to re-main constitutive of its unity.

53 / 54

None can be imposed in a democratic soci-ety. Yet none may be neglected either, thetheoretical no more than the practical, thespiritual no less than the aesthetic.

In recent times Europeans, discouraged bythe self-made disasters of two world wars,have been too easily inclined to turn theirbacks on the past, to dismiss it as no longerusable, and to move toward a different futuredeclaring themselves “Newropeans” with anew identity. In the years after World War II,the model of that future was America. In re-cent years, Europeans have become moreconscious of their specific identity and arebeginning to intuit that such an identity re-sides in the past; it stems from a unique past,created by the hundreds of millions of menand women who for three millennia havelived on "that little cape on the continent of

Asia" (Paul Valery) between the North Seaand the Mediterranean, between Ireland'swest coast and the Ural Mountains. It hasgiven Europeans, in all their variety, a distinctcommunal face.This new awareness of cultural identitymakes Europeans view the entire continentand its many islands, not only their countryof origin, as a common homeland with com-mon purposes. This unity of spirit in a rich va-riety of expressions must be remembered inforging the new European unity and oughtto be mentioned in the EU's constitution. Itought to be remembered also by NorthAmericans whose roots are indeed Euro-peans; in that sense they too are also West-erners and inheritor of Western civilization,albeit accepting and integrating other expe-riences such as the African, the Native Amer-ican, the Latin-American, the Asian.

The Returnof the Gods and

the EU ConstitutionTransformedinto a Treaty

arl G. Jung pointed out in his Mod-ern Man in Search of a Soul thatMan is naturally religious and when

he throws religion out the window, it willpromptly return via the back door in theform of a fanatical cult or a totalitarian ideol-ogy. Giambattista Vico, the 18th century philoso-pher of history and civilizations who fully un-derstood and explained the connectionbetween myth and religion, points out in hisNew Science (1730) that the burial of thedead, hinting at belief in an afterlife by prim-itive man, is concrete proof of some archaicform of religion which he considers a sinequa non (together with language and the in-stitution of marriage) for the beginning ofany kind of primordial civilized society. Indeed, religion and atheism (see Lucretius'De Rerum Natura) have been around sincetime immemorial, but it is only with the ar-rival of nihilism in the 20th century that wewitness the political installation and practice

of the religion-less State, to wit Nazi Ger-many; a State which descends into the cultof self-worship or race worship, not too dis-similar from that of the ancient Romans wor-shipping goddess Rome, or the Soviet Unionworshipping an ideology called Marxism andconceiving any religion as poisonous to thebody politic, a rival ideology of sort. We knowquite well the nefarious fruits of those socialexperiments. Indeed, it is by their fruits thatthe wolves in sheep's clothing are bestknown.We ought to remember and reflect on thosefruits which are only a few decades old, orsooner or later those wolves shall return. Insome way they have already showed theirugly face once again in Kosovo only a fewyears ago. Some of them are now at the In-ternational Court of Justice at The Hague.Christianity comes to Europe via the MiddleEast but, as hinted above, there were in Eu-rope already native archaic religions goingback to the Stone Age.

C

Moreover, as Klaus Held points out in hisessay on the origins of European culture,never was religion so discussed in ancientGreece as when science and democracywere making their debut in the 4th centuryBC. Perhaps the best example to support thisassertion is Plato's Euthyphro. There we readabout Socrates and Euthyphro discussing thenature of holiness. After some debating backand forth they finally come to a consensusthat the holy is what all the gods agree in ap-proving. Socrates however, true to form, fol-lows with another more penetratingquestion: "Is the holy holy because the godsapprove it, or do they approve it because itis holy"? At first Euthyphro misses the pointof the question. For this is the question of the"reasonableness" of the gods (or God as thecase may be). To ask the same question in aslightly different way: "Would absolutely any-thing the gods approved of, be holy just be-cause they approve of it, or are they boundto approve of only what is holy"? Which is tosay, are they free to approve or disapprove orare they bound by reason just as humansare?

As Nietzsche well grasped, with that pene-trating question Socrates has discovered thebasic dilemma of the relationship betweenreligion and morality. The dilemma is basically this: either good-ness cannot be explained simply by refer-ence to what the gods want, or else it is anempty tautology to assert that "the gods aregood." In that case the praise of the gods issimply power-worship. For us moderns the question may be putthus: is Aquinas right in his faith in reasonthat leads him to found his theology on thescaffolding of Aristotelian rationality? With that question we arrive at the state-ment of the U.S. founding fathers in the Dec-laration of Independence: "We hold thesetruths to be self-evident." Which is to say, it isuniversally evident to reason that humanrights are universal and inalienable, inde-pendent of agreements among men oramong gods. If God created us human crea-tures with reason, She expects us to use it asa way of reaching the truth, and the truthshall make us free. Even God, if She respectstruth, cannot let a Lucifer out of hell, theangel who said "evil be thou my god" (seeMilton's Paradise Lost).

Moreover, was Aquinas right in pointing outthat Truth can be distinguished as scientific,religious, and philosophical but it neverthe-less remains one and indivisible? Perhaps themost important point of his Summa is thatreligious faith cannot contradict reason;when it does, then we have separated truthsand we may be dealing with a fanatical cultof sort leading to falsehood.

57 / 58

By the 12th century the Olympian andNordic gods have dwindled to one God andWestern civilization is entirely monotheisticand Biblical. The Enlightenment however be-gins the work of God’s liquidation culminat-ing with Nietzsche's madman shout: "God isdead" at the end of the 19th century. Leibnizbasically poses the same dilemma asSocrates when he writes that: "Those whobelieve that God has established good andevil by an arbitrary decree.... deprive God ofthe designation ‘good’: for what cause couldone have to praise him for what he does, if indoing something quite different he wouldhave done equally well?"

The problem here, as Nietzsche and otherswithin Christian Western Civilization also sawquite well, is that Socrates really believes that"knowledge is virtue," and that by merely dis-cussing the virtues and clarifying theiressence, one is then bound to become a vir-tuous person. Plato, who is actually the onewho presents Socrates to us, is more skepti-cal. He posits the irrational in the human soulwhich needs to be rained in (see the imageof the charioteer and the two winged horsesin The Phaedrus). He had observed the likesof Critias, Charmides and even Alcibiades,converse at length with Socrates and then gooff and become elitist sophists, corrupt peo-ple who use language not as a means to asincere dialogue aiming at truth, but as a toolto control and manipulate others. They werethe precursors of Machiavelli and his philos-ophy, still alive and well within Western Civi-lization.There are two other more modern views onvirtue.

On one extreme there is Machiavelli's posi-tion which takes hold of the Aristotelian con-cept of virtue (understood as a good habit asopposed to vice, a bad habit) and turns it up-side-down: virtue is nothing else but some-thing done well, competently andthoroughly. The virtuous Prince is he whogets a hold of power and holds on to it at anycost. Pushed to its ultimate conclusion, thelogical rationalist who operates by pure rea-son (what Vico calls "the barbarism of the in-tellect") will make the trains run on time andefficiently, will gas millions of innocentwomen, children and men, and then con-ceive himself as a "virtuous" person; some-body to be admired and praised for hissupreme competence in doing a thoroughand efficient job.Then there is the Christian view as expressedby St. Paul: "I know the good, but I do evil." Inother words, there is something withinhuman nature that is perceived as flawedand less than ideal at its source, which makesSocrates' dictum "knowledge is virtue"sound rather hallow and a bit naÔve.

Is the holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy"?

““

Paul and to a certain extent Plato are a bitmore realistic about human nature. Platoknows about the irrational part of the soul;Paul knows that there is a garden which hasbeen left behind, and that there is a snake insuch a utopian garden and there are fallenangels as Milton points out. As pure spirits,they know what virtue is, rationally unen-cumbered by the weakness of the senses,but freely embrace evil nonetheless.

It is naive on Socrates' part to think that no-body would choose evil by simply knowingwhat evil is. In a flawed universe, knowledgeis not automatically convertible into virtue.In the same way, it is naÔve to think that aConstitution proclaiming the universal rightsof man with no appeal to a Creator of humannature (through which they become inalien-able, not to be granted and not to be vio-lated by any State no matter how powerful)is any kind of guarantee that those rights willbe always respected.

To wit, the former Soviet Union and the pres-ent People's Republic of China who havewonderful theoretical ideals in their consti-tutions, or “on paper” so to speak, for themost part violate them in practice.

To be sure, these three understandings ofvirtue were proposed in one form or anotherunder the guise of rationality, piety, moralityor holiness at the Plenary Session of the Con-vention for the EU Constitution held in Brus-sels a few years ago. Unfortunately, theywere never thoroughly debated. One of thefrequent contributors to the forum on the fu-ture of Europe (Carlos del Ama, a Spaniardwho teaches philosophy in Madrid) submit-ted a document at the conclusion of the Con-vention, on which I assisted him for theEnglish version. It showed that, contrary towhat the modern anti-religion sophists andrationalists go around peddling nowadays,historically, most of the Constitutions of theworld at the very least mention a Creator intheir preamble as a way of grounding them-selves in something more durable than thehistorical vicissitudes of humankind and itspower politick. The decision not to do so forthe EU Constitution, while enthusiastically in-voking on the part of Mr.Valerie D'Estaing thegoddess Europe at the opening session ofthe Constitutional Convention, leaves onewondering if the above examined distinc-tions were at least discerned, if not discussed.

What remains to be seen now is whether or not the people will insist on a Constitution that reflects their traditional and democratic values

“ “

59 / 60

And so it was not too surprising that the feastof the gods on the Mount Olympus to cele-brate the EU Constitution proceeded fullspeed ahead on Rome's Capitoline Hill wherethe draft Constitution was signed by thehead of states of the EU. But it now appears that an apple was thrownon the banquet table by an angry rival god-dess who had not been invited at the party:the goddess of discord. As of now, the diffi-culties of reaching a harmonious agreementon a viable EU Constitution continue un-abated. The Rubicon seems to have beencrossed and sadly there is no willingness onthe part of the political leaders who pushedthe draft through, democratic deficit and all,to reconsider much of anything, albeit thereis much obstaculation on the part of individ-ual states such as Poland and the UK.

What remains to be seen now is whether ornot the people will insist on a Constitutionthat reflects their traditional and democraticvalues, or if they will opt for submission towhat the EU bureaucrats and the politicianshave carried out in their name without sub-mitting it to a universal referendum. So farthe French, the Dutch and the Irish have re-jected it in a referendum. The politicians havedevised a stratagem to ram it down the peo-ple’s throat: change the name from a Consti-tution to a Treaty, thus referenda will nolonger be needed. Ultimately though, thepeople will get the Constitution they de-serve, for better or for worse. As Erick Frommhas well taught us, there are many ways ofescaping from freedom. The flip side of thatphenomenon is the dictum of Thomas Jeffer-son: "Eternal vigilance is the price of free-dom."

The EUConstitution:

The Cart beforethe Horse?

hile the signing of the EU Consti-tution in Rome in 2004 was hailedas a “new beginning” by the

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Galkenende,who at the time presided over the EU Coun-cil, there were, and there still are, ominousdisturbing signs that by ignoring the “old be-ginnings” the cart was placed before thehorse once again, as had already happenedwith Italian unification.On Friday, October 29th 2004, twenty-fiveheads of state comprising the then EuropeanUnion put their signatures to the proposedEU constitution in the Palazzo dei Conserva-tori, Rome, Italy. Other signatories were threecandidate states: Bulgaria, Rumania andTurkey. Two of them have since entered theUnion.

The Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Galke-nende hailed the event as “a new beginning.”To be sure, the “old” beginning hark back al-most half a century to 1957 when the Treatyof Rome was signed in the very same AugustRoom where the EU Constitution was signed.That treaty established a permanent allianceamong six founding European nations. Thosewere the days of De Gaulle, De Gasperi, Eide-nauer, Churchill, Shuman, Monet: the vision-ary founding fathers of a United Europe. Onehas to wonder why inexplicably, one hardlyever hears of them anymore. It’s as if they had been relegated to the gen-eration of the old Europeans of the “old be-ginnings,” a sort of passè generationsuperseded by the generation of “new begin-nings,” born after 1950.

W

“I never feel so European as when I am in a cathedral”Robert Shuman

The drafting of this important document bythe Constitutional Convention, headed byGisgard D’Estaing, began in 2001 and tooktwo years of debates, negotiations and com-promises, not to mention fierce disagree-ments of various kinds, the most notoriousperhaps revolving around the issue of thementioning of Christianity or whether or notthe document ought to have any referenceto a deity, something present in some 90%of constitutions around the world. The focuswas particularly on whether or not to includea reference to Christianity, which manyknowledgeable Europeans, even the atheistsamong them, consider not only a sine quanon for understanding the European culturalidentity, but the cement needed to hold to-gether disparate countries with disparatelanguages and mores.As it happened, the acrimonies continued tillthe last minute before the planned signing.The secularist liberal politicians would notcompromise on this issue reasoning that astrict separation of Church and State had tobe honored thus insuring “laicitè,” or secular-ism.

This, in turn, insures that each individual’scivil rights, including the right to worshipand practice the religion of his/her choice, ornot to practice any religion at all, are hon-ored. Paradoxically, they were asking thatpeople be anti-clerical to protect Christianityfrom itself. The specter of the Inquisition andpast religious wars was duly resurrected,never mind the more glaring failed experi-ment of the Soviet Union, a State without re-ligion, underpinned by a political ideologycalled Marxism with all the trappings of asecular ideological fundamentalism, not tospeak of Nazism.In any case, this fierce opposition to the ref-erence to Christianity in the EU Constitutioneffectively derailed its planned signing on 13December 2003. It seemed that Iris, the god-dess of discord had made her appearance onMount Olympus on such a day throwningher famed apple on the banquet table. Thiswas an embarrassment for the presidency ofItaly’s Silvio Berlusconi at the EU Council ofNations. The Irish presidency which followedalso failed to produce a signing.

The Dutch presidency succeeded however. Itmanaged to settle the issue of proportionalvoting and insure that the signing took placein Rome, exactly forty seven years after thebeginning of the new entity called the Euro-pean Union. Thus the concluding ceremonyof the Constitutional convention in Rome re-sembled its beginning in Brussels, when themythical Europa was invoked by GisgardD’Estaing.

Indeed, Santayana was on target when hesaid that people change their gods buthardly their way of worshipping them. So theevent begs the question: was it a genuinesuccess or a Pyrrhic victory of sort? Let’s an-alyze those still fresh events in the light of thepast events of Italian unification. There is aforgotten lesson there that I believe will re-turn to haunt the European Union; for whileMarx might have been wrong on many as-pects of his social philosophy, he was right inone particular aspect: those who forget theirhistory are condemned to repeat it, even if,as Santayana also reminds us, the secondtime it may come about more as a farce thanas a tragedy.In 1870 Rome was snatched away from PopePius IX and became the capital of a unitedItaly. A latecomer to the community of Euro-pean nations, since 1861 it had proclaimeditself a liberal constitutional monarchy underVictor Emanuel II. The architects of this newpolity were Count Benso di Cavour, GiuseppeMazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. This was in-deed a new Rome with a fresh “new begin-ning” epitomized in Giuseppe diLampedusa’s famed novel Il Gattopardo. Itwas not the first Rome of the ancient RomanEmpire, or the Medieval Holy Roman Empireaping it; nor the second one of the Renais-sance King Popes who governed the wholeof central Italy, the so called Papal State, butthe third Rome: the capital of a new liberalsecular nation intent on claiming its rightfulplace among the nations of Europe, colonial-ism and all.

Sixty short years later, the king of Italy wasproclaimed Emperor of Italy, Ethiopia, Eritreaand Libya by none other than the strongman of Italy, Benito Mussolini, holding thebridles of power as a sort of omnipotentRoman consul who, to better obfuscate andmystify matters, had resurrected the Machi-avellian myth of the direct genetic line of theItalian people to the Romans. Mussolini strut-ted about on the world’s stage calling theMediterranean “mare nostro.” The reality is that 90% or more of the genesin present day Italians are not Roman. Inpresent day Italians there are genes that be-long to Arabs, Normans, Longobards, Visig-oths, Fenicians, Greeks, French, Austrians,Spaniards, Celts, you name it and they arethere. So the national anthem which pro-claims that “Italy has woken up and dunnedon her head the helmet of Scipio,” to finallyevict the invading foreigners as Scipio haddone with Hannibal, rather than a Machiavel-lian political reality is a caricature, a sort of“the impossible dream” of simple-mindedracist nationalists and imperialists: thePetains, and the Mussolinis and the Hitlersand the Bossis and their descendants.

Shuman and his generationwere very aware of the necessity of a common cultural patrimony;that the cement for a unified Europe needs to be cultural, not racial, not nationalisticeven if it be that of a hyper-nation.

“

“

This was so because the foreigners now livedinside the very genes of the people who hadinvaded Italy after the fall of the Roman Em-pire. The pure Roman race as well as the pureAryan race were chimeras pure and simple,an historical fraud perpetrated on the peo-ple; for Italians were now one of the mostbastardized races of Europe, and all the bet-ter for it. But despite the bastardization, peo-ple somehow managed to live together inharmony because they could be inspired bycertain ideals rooted in universal experiencessuch as the Roman Empire and the Catholic(the word means universal) Church. Dante’sDe Monarchia reflects that reality and pro-poses it as an ideal. No more in 1861. Thisnew modern nation was now bent on apingthe imperialism of the other nations of Eu-rope and donning the tight jacket of a secu-lar centralized nationalism contemptuous ofregional differences, an experience to whichshe was not well-accustomed.

Alessandro Manzoni, the devout Catholicand the greatest literary figure of the 19thcentury, had fervently hoped, withBeethoven, that Napoleon would restorethose larger trans-national, cosmopolitan,European universal values, but they wereboth to be greatly disappointed. What wasstill at work, despite the proclaimed ideals ofthe French Revolution, was good old nation-alism coupled with good old imperialism; agreater France masked as Pan Europeanism.Manzoni, however, despite his great reserva-tions about Napoleon, saw no contradictionbetween being a good Catholic and being agood liberal and accepted a seat in the newlyminted Italian Senate of the new nation. Buthe was the exception which few followed;for, to make matters worse, the Pope had re-treated to the Vatican palaces as a sort ofprisoner excommunicating all those whosupported what he considered a usurpingnational secular State.

So in the Pope’s eyes, the pious Manzoni wasalso a bad Catholic. Paradoxically, it was Mus-solini who some sixty years later, while con-quering Ethiopia a la Caesar, ignoring theprotests of a feckless League of Nations,came to an accommodation with the Churchby making the Vatican an independent State.The anti-clericalism of many liberal Italianswas not diminished however and persistseven today. It is an ancient grudge apparentin Rome more than other Italian cities andpartly explains the strength of the Commu-nist party in Italy.By 1930, with the establishment of VaticanCity, one could have said “all is well that endswell” as far as relations between Church andState were concerned. The Italian State waslegitimized in the eyes of the Church and Ital-ians could once again be patriotic and reli-gious at the same time. But the demarcationbetween the secular and the sacred were stillblurry. The Italian Constitution continued todeclare Italy a Catholic country till recentlywhen that proclamation was abrogated. Re-ligion was taught once a week in publicschools. Moreover, the proclamation of free-dom of religion would have to wait for theVatican II Council thirty some years later.Indeed, there was a snake in this heavenlygarden called the New Liberal Italy. It washinted at by the Prince of Salina in the abovementioned novel when he tells his nephewTancredi, who has been fighting with Gen-eral Garibaldi for Italy’s political unification:“We need to change everything so that it allremains the same.”

What did the prince mean by that enigmaticstatement? Simply that what would happenin Sicily and most of Southern Italy, as far asordinary people were concerned, is that oneKing (Ferdinand II of the Bourbon) would besubstituted with another (Victor EmmanuelII of the Savoy), and things would return tonormal. As it happened, things worsened.Rather than bringing unity and harmony andsome kind of social justice to Southern Italy,Italian unification exacerbated the socio-po-litical plight of Southern Italy; the industrialNorth was privileged at the expense of theagricultural South, giving rise to banditry fora while, so that by the turn of the 20th cen-tury millions of Southern Italians were forcedto emigrate to the Americas or to Australia.

It is not an accident that 90% of Italian-Amer-icans have grandparents who emigratedfrom Southern Italy. It was the very politicalarchitect of Italian unification who put it bestwith his famous dictum: “Now that we havemade Italy, we need to make the Italians,”which is to say, the cart had misguidedlybeen put before the horse. Italy had been de-signed and built, and now the people wereasked to simply accept the design of a fewelitist politicians who thought that theyknew better than them. So much for liberal-ism and democracy. Most of the one thou-sand patriots, the so called Red Shirts, wholiberated Sicily in 1859 were university stu-dents, intellectuals and professionals, theelites of their society; this was hardly whatone might call a populist movement. Thepeople were merely asked to vote on the an-nexation or on the Constitution imposed onthem.

So the Prince of Salinas was correct in hiscynical statement: we must change every-thing so that nothing will change. As it hap-pened, what was constructed after theunification was a “little bourgeoisie Italy”composed of merchants bent on accumulat-ing wealth, blissfully neglectful of the univer-sal ideals of both the Roman Empire and theCatholic Church, of Humanism and the Ren-aissance, not to speak of cultural patrimony,values and cultural identity. They felt little allegiance toward the newNorthern King (who did not visit SouthernItaly till 1900 prompting the famous Neapoli-tan song “Come back to Sorrento” a thinlyveiled allusion to his neglect of the South).And so the unity of Commerce and a CentralItalian Bank, without the consent of the gov-erned, did not hold water for very long, andthe experiment with democracy endedabruptly sixty short years after unificationwith the advent of Fascism and the strong-man Mussolini. After the Second World WarItaly was proclaimed a Republic and becameone of the original founders of the EuropeanUnion.

What are the insights to be derived from thisbrief and schematic overview of the historyof Italian unification—insights which mayprove useful to the present day architect ofEuropean unification? The first insight couldbe this: a cultural identity of disparate peoplewith disparate mores and even disparate lan-guages (which reflect their culture and there-fore are to be jealously preserved) cannot beimposed from the top down by elitist lead-ers, philosopher-kings with esoteric ideas. Ithas to come from the bottom up, democrat-ically. Before drafting a Constitution oneneeds to listen carefully to the people anddetermine which are the universal commonvalues that can function as a sort of culturalcement of their political union. Then oneneeds to obtain their consent. Not to do soand proceed with the formation of a unitedEurope without determining what does itmean to be a European is to put the cart be-fore the horse.Shuman and his generation were very awareof the necessity of a common cultural patri-mony; that the cement for a unified Europeneeds to be cultural, not racial, not national-istic even if it be that of a hyper-nation. Itneeds to recognize cultural heritages suchdemocracy, science, Greco-Roman civiliza-tion, Germanic concepts of freedom, Christi-anity (which when authentic is alwaysuniversal and trans-cultural), the synthesis ofGreco-Roman civilization and Christianitywhich is Christian Humanism and the Renais-sance. A Central Bank and the promise ofprosperity, or Machiavellian concepts of Re-alpolitik, or universal soccer games on Sun-day simply will not do.

A Constitution is not a treaty among States

but a social compact

among the people

“ “

67 / 68

Even a common language could not preventa civil war in the US. That civil war proves thatit is dangerous to put ideals in a Constitutionwhich are not meant to be honored. Thepeople will not stand for it forever, for as Lin-coln put it: one can fool all the people someof the time and some of the people all thetime, but one cannot fool all the people allthe time.Were one to glance at the very first article ofthe EU Constitution one would read thesewords: Inspired by the will of its citizens andthe European States, to build a common fu-ture, this Constitution establishes the Euro-pean Union... So the second insight to bederived from the mistakes of Italian unifica-tion is this: that unless those first words ofthe EU Constitution are really meant andhonored in the future, then that common fu-ture will be built on sand and one is perpe-trating a great fraud on one’s people.One notices in that first article that the will ofits citizens is declared the original inspiration;the will of the people takes precedence, as itought in any democracy worthy of its name,over the will of its elitist aristocratic leaders,and the will of its member States.

Assuming that the people have already beenlistened to, the member States need to letpeople ratify the polity that they have cre-ated in their name. A Constitution is not atreaty among States but a social compactamong the people. Those people have a pastas well as a future and that past needs to beknown and respected before forging a viablefuture. A car without a rear-view mirror mayeventually end up in a ravine. The French, theDutch and the Irish, voted down the Consti-tution in a referendum.To switch metaphor again: to make Europefirst and the Europeans later, is to put the cartbefore the horse. That cart and its horse maytoo end up in a ravine. The twenty-five headof states present in Rome pledged to ratifythe Constitution within two years; eleven ofthe twenty five pledged a referendumamong their people, which is all well andgood, but there are ominous signs that thosemay be empty promises. There is talk now ofbypassing referendums and leave the ratifi-cation to the individual states’ congresses.Even more ominously the very word Consti-tution has been dropped and the old oneTreaty has been resurrected.

The racist and fascistic Italian Lega for oneseems to be balking at the idea of a referen-dum. Silvio Berlusconi, the then PM nowback in power went on record saying that“We shall commit ourselves to ensuring thatItaly ratifies the new treaty without delay.”What is ominous in those words is thatBerlusconi refers to the Constitution as “atreaty among States.”

But a Constitution is more than a legallybinding treaty to insure prosperity, greatercommerce and movement of goods amongnations. It is also a document that ought toinspire the people to create a greater moremeaningful union aiming not at goods butat the Good, the Beautiful, the True. It takesmore than a bank to inspire people. RomanoProdi, the ex PM who then presided over theEU Commission, reveals that he has a betternotion than a Berlusconi of what a constitu-tion is all about when he declared that “Thenew Constitution goes beyond existingtreaties. It has an innovative content of thesocial rights…and new social clauses.” In-deed, to ignore the will of the people willmean that the cynical politicians will have todeal with the wrath of the people later on.The people in their rage may bring down thewhole structure called European Union, oncethey realize that it is being constructed with-out their consent.

Finally, let us take a brief imaginary look atthe symbolism and the semiotic signs pres-ent at the very signing of the Constitution on29 October 2004. In the first place one oughtto note the silence of the people. That is a powerful sign in itself. There wereneither demonstrations, nor festivitiesamong the people at this august event; anevent overshadowed by the Borroso/Buttiglione crisis in the EU Parliament. Couldit be that Iris, the goddess of discord wasthere, invisible perhaps, but there nonethe-less to continue the mischief she initiated onDecember 13th 2003? There were other dis-turbing signs. Those who are familiar withRome know that piazza Campidoglio was theancient citadel, the core of Imperial Rome,the first Rome that is. There is an equestrianstatue in the middle of the piazza portrayingthe anomaly of a philosopher-Emperor, Mar-cus Aurelius. But the architecture of thebuildings surrounding the square belongs tothe second Rome, the Renaissance Rome ofthe Popes. The square was in fact designedby none other than Michelangelo. The headsof states must have passed silently by thatstatue of Marcus Aurelius and then climbedthe scalone Michelangelo in order to enterthe great hall of Sala degli Orazi e Curiazi, an-other throw back to ancient Rome. But heretoo, that “sala” is more Renaissance then an-cient.

The people in their rage may bring down the whole structure called European Union,once they realize that it is being constructed

without their consent.“ “

Another irony: the Constitution, whichmakes no reference to Christianity, was actu-ally signed under the prominent bronzestatue of a Pope in full regalia and wearinghis tiara. And who pray was this Pope? Noneother than Innocent X, the last Pope of theCatholic counter-reformation. He is the onewho wrote a bull of condemnation againstthe treaties of Westfalia in 1648 which, afterthirty years of religious wars, declared theend of the so called “Sacred Roman Empire”and authorized religious freedom in Europe.Pope John-Paul II who had declared religiousfreedom as part of the Church Constitutionin the 20th century was not as much as con-sulted or even mentioned at the ceremony;as if he lived on another planet somewhere.

And for obvious reasons: he is the one whohad been insisting that Christianity be ac-knowledged in the EU Constitution as one ofthe pillars of Western Civilization while hon-oring and keeping separation of Church andState and religious freedom. He was ignored and the EU Constitution wassigned in his face, so to speak, under the aus-pices of the goddess Europa and the god-dess Iris (perhaps represented by Buttiglione,the rejected minister of Barroso’s EU Com-mission) and the vigilant watch of a reac-tionary Pope who condemned religiousfreedom in the 17th century. Dante must beturning in his grave in Ravenna at the sightof those strange ironies of history.

Dante's Visionof a

United Europe

here is a rather naive notion that thevision of a politically United Europewas born ex nihilo in 1950. The no-

tion is naive because it loses sight of the factthat there is no such thing in history as cre-ations ex nihilo. We stand on the shouldersof giants. It is therefore both proper and fit-ting to remember and celebrate those Euro-pean cultural giants who, after the fall of theRoman Empire, began envisioning a UnitedEurope.As a Christian humanist, Dante exemplifiesthe synthesis of Antiquity (i.e., Greco-Romancivilization) with Christianity. The mere factthat he chose Virgil, the poet of Latinity, ashis guide in the Commedia, hints at it. Withthat synthesis Dante becomes the poet ofthe Italians just as Virgil had been the poet ofthe Romans. By giving them a written litera-ture (The Divine Comedy) he gives them anational language and a cultural identity.

There is a passage in The Divine Comedywhere Dante is transported in spirit abovethe vicissitudes of men and flies higher andhigher in the blue sky till he sees the earthjust as 20th century astronauts saw it fromthe moon. I suppose that makes Dante the first global space walker, albeit viaimagination. Two intriguing characteristics inthis passage are worthy of notice: in the firstplace Dante does not discern any geograph-ical or political borders on the earth: he seesthe whole earth, holistically, so to speak, justas the astronauts saw it from the moon in1969.

Thereafter Dante comments that "vidi quel-l'aiuola che ci fa tanto selvaggi" which trans-lates loosely as "I saw that puny garden thatmakes us so vicious." He is addressing notjust the Florentines or the Italians, or the Eu-ropeans but the whole of humankind.

T

In effect Dante with this contrast ofgood/bad, ugly/beautiful, true/false,puny/precious, is saying that this uniqueearth which is Man's only home within timeand space is meant to be beautiful as a gar-den at the outset, but the sad ugly presentreality is that in this garden brother killsbrother; it is one of general viciousness andincessant warfare. Dante is pointing out thatthis garden is a garden of exile and hu-mankind's journey is a journey back to thefuture, a journey of a return toward thatutopist garden it originally left behind. Laterin his imaginary journey Dante will enter theearthly garden of Eden on top of the moun-tain of Purgatory, but his journey transcendseven that beautiful earthly garden.

It is crucial to remember here that Dante, ashe writes the Commedia, is himself in exile.He has been expelled from his beloved Flo-rence because there too brother is fightingbrother; Ghibellines are fighting Guelfs.Dante used to be a Guelf; they were dividedin the Blacks who saw in the Pope an allyagainst the Emperor (Henry VII of Germanyat the time), and the Whites who were deter-mined to remain fiercely independent ofboth Pope and Emperor. When the Blacks,supported by Pope Boniface VIII (later placedin hell by Dante for politicizing his spiritualmission) seize power, Dante, as a White, issent into exile.It is this condition of exile, of constant frus-tration of having "to eat the hard bread ofothers' homes," of constant hardship and un-easiness and dissatisfaction, that propelsDante into a spiritual quest aptly depicted inthe Commedia and ending with his famous"tua volont‡, nostra pace" (your will, ourpeace). Had he stayed in Florence he wouldhave remained just another self-complacentmediocre politician.

The experience of exile transform Dante'spolitical views; he ends up embracing thecause of the Ghibellines and begins to cham-pion the unification of Europe under an en-lightened Emperor. He writes a Latin politicaltract titled "De Monarchia" where this visionis set forth. Dante has now come full circle,from the particularity of his city of Florencehe is now envisioning a Europe unified byuniversal ideals such as justice, peace, thecommon good, the True, the Good, the Beau-tiful; ideals to be privileged above and be-yond mere Machiavellian powerconsiderations. His is a Humanistic politicalethic founded on universal Christian princi-ples.

The Europe that Dante envisions in DeMonarchia is one that keeps a strict separa-tion between Church and State (what Italiansnow call "lo Stato laico") so that which is Cae-sar's will be given to Caesar and that whichis God's will be given to God. That means re-ligious freedom and tolerance for other faithsand traditions such as the Moslem, fully wel-comed at the Court of Frederick II in Palermoand which greatly influenced Italian culture.Italy will be just another country among Eu-ropean countries and its preeminence willconsist less on its militaristic Roman heritage,and more on its Humanistic foundations.

Dante is therefore one of the grandfathers ofthis vision of a United Europe. As the con-summate poet he is, he reminds all Euro-peans that, in the words of the Dante scholar,the British-American poet T.S. Eliot, "...Theend of all our exploring will be to arrivewhere we started from and know the placefor the first time." At that place we shall redis-cover "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle"[The love that moves the sun and the otherstars]—Paradiso XXXIII, 145.

73 / 74

áclav Havel’s humanistic philoso-phy is a powerfully heroic voice ofthe post-cold War political land-

scape, advocating that Europe recover itsown soul; urging a global revolution inhuman consciousness; reconnecting thestory of man to a transcendent principlewithin the cosmos; nothing less than thevoice of Hope. "Kafka’s hero is, above all ahero for our time, a godless age in whichpower endowed with a higher meaning hasbeen replaced with a vacuous power of tra-dition and legal and bureaucratic norms, thatis, by human institutions.

Man, deprived of all means and all weaponsin his effort to achieve freedom and order,has no hope other than the one provided byhis inner space". Ivan Klima (in The Spirit ofPrague)With the possible exception of Franz Kafka, Iknow of no modern Czech writer whose po-litical philosophy, within the Western Hu-manistic tradition, is more inspirational thanVáclav Havel’s. To my mind the best way toimagine him, is as one of Kafka’s “heroes forour time,” a powerful voice calling us backhome to our humanity and urging that Eu-rope know its cultural soul.

Vaclav HavelAuthentic Humanist

and Cultural Herofor our Troubled

Times"Kafka’s hero is, above all a hero for our time, a godless age in whichpower endowed with a higher meaning has been replaced with avacuous power of tradition and legal and bureaucratic norms, thatis, by human institutions. Man, deprived of all means and allweapons in his effort to achieve freedom and order, has no hopeother than the one provided by his inner space".

Ivan Klima (in The Spirit of Prague)

V

This is not to make Havel an esoteric thinkercoming out of some Olympian cloud. He is tothe contrary, the last arrival of a long line ofCzech visionaries and political philosopherswho were formed within the crucible of theCold War. Particularly important as Havel’spredecessor, greatly influencing his thinkingis Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937), abrilliant philosopher, member for 15 years ofthe Austrian-Hungarian Parliament, andchampion of an independent Czechoslova-kia who in 1919 became president of the firstCzechoslovakian Republic, just as Havel be-came president of the post-cold war CzechRepublic.

Masaryk was in turn greatly influenced byFranz Bernano while studying in Vienna. LikeBernano, he was alarmed by the fact thatwithin Western civilization, increased scien-tific sophistication did not result in any dis-cernible moral progress. He also discernedthat modern reason had become detachedfrom the world of good and evil had re-gressed to a Protagorean clever sophistry de-tached from the ethical. Later on, Masarykdeveloped a friendship with EdmundHusserl.

It was he who conveys to Husserl a sense ofthe spiritual crisis of modern Europe. Husserleventually publishes his famous The Crisis ofEuropean Science (1936) where he affirmsthat in the Western World theoretical knowl-edge has somehow lost contact with livinghuman experience, and that the morally or-dered world of our pre-reflective lived expe-rience is the life-world of humankind. Allthese ideas are perceivable in Havel’s ownthinking.Another strong influence on Havel’s thinkingis the philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977)who had studied with Husserl and thentaught Havel. He was instrumental in pub-lishing Charter 77, the statement of resist-ance to Soviet occupation and communistideology for which both Patocka and Havelwere jailed by the Communist authorities. Itwas Patocka who had brought Husserl toPrague as a guest lecturer when Husserl wasexpelled by the Nazis from Freiburg Univer-sity. In any case Patocka grouped his writingsin a book titled Heretical Essays in the Philos-ophy of History. There, we find ample evi-dence that the subject which mostcaptivated him was that of the human strug-gle. In the last essay of this book titled Wars of the20th century and the 20th century as War Pa-tocka writes a brilliant commentary on frag-ment 26 of Heraclitus, and interprets hispolemos as “struggle, fight, war,” a kind of ad-versarial relationship with reality, a struggleagainst the world which ontologically can becompared to realities such as love, compas-sion, happiness, justice. In fact, for Patocka,polemos, had priority over the other realities.Thus Patocha corrects Husserl’s assumptionof an underlying harmony within reality.

A moral system does not exist to help society function but simply so that man can be human…it is morality which defines man

“ “

75 / 76

These “heretical essays” became a sort ofmanifesto to rally the Czech citizenry againstthe Soviet forces of occupation. Those essaysinsisted that when the ontological supportsof hope fail, then personal responsibilitymust be evoked, in order to establish a com-munity of solidarity. Out of this solidarityarises what Patocka calls “the power of thepowerless.” The legal basis of this solidarity was the 1977Helsinki Agreement on human rights whichaffirms that human beings are obliged to dis-cover and protect a valid moral foundation,and one ought not to expect that it be pro-vided by the state or social forces alone. AsPatocka himself explains: “There must be aself-evident, non-circumstantial ethic, andunconditional morality. A moral system doesnot exist to help society function but simplyso that man can be human… it is moralitywhich defines man.” This concept of humanrights is redolent of the concept of “inalien-able rights” which accrue to being humanand no state can give or take away, as pro-claimed in the American Declaration of Inde-pendence.

Be that as it may, what Masaryk, Patocka andHavel have in common is a recognition thatas a result of a disharmony which began withCartesian rationalism, European life andthought were in profound crisis. This ofcourse echoed Husserl’s Crisis of EuropeanSciences where the problems of modern phi-losophy are traced back to Descartes, the be-ginning of a crisis of self-alienation;something also noticed by Vico but alas ig-nored some two hundred years before in hisNew Science (1730).

Husserl insists that this profound alienationand dysfunction could not be resolved un-less normative status was attributed toLebenswelt (life-world), the basis of ethicalautonomy. Mechanistic science had unfortu-nately substituted the old awareness thathuman life belongs to an ordered moral uni-verse. This idea is especially evident inMasaryk’s Suicide as a Mass Phenomenon ofModern Civilization. Nineteenth-century sci-ence has, in fact, usurped the authority pre-viously accorded to faith and reason.

Masaryk is convinced that it is crucial that hu-mans return to a world of primary experiencein order to be reconnected to a vital sense ofgood and evil. This is also the vital concern ofDostoyevsky’s existential novels.Havel is part of an ongoing Czech intellectualtradition which, in order to be able to "live intruth" has recourse to Husserl’s Lebensweltto counter an oppressive Marxist ideologytending toward manipulative, rationalisticand mechanistic theoretical deductions. Thisis possible only by paying attention to “theflow of life.” Indeed, for Havel “time is a riverinto which one cannot step twice in thesame place” (fragment 21 of Heraclitus).

When Havel in his “Politics and Conscience”(1984) makes reference to Husserl’s distinc-tion of the natural world from “the world oflived experience” by which to approach thespiritual framework of modern Western Civi-lization and the source of its crisis, he is byimplication also invoking Vico’s distinctionbetween the world of nature made by God,and the world of culture made by man. Inany case, Havel’s brilliant insight is this: thereis a fundamental distinction between theworld that can be constructed out of an ide-ological viewpoint and the world rooted in atrustworthy lived-experience.

Impersonal manipulative forces can be resis-ted only by the one true power we all pos-sess: our own humanity. This is nothing lessthan Humanism at its very best.It all begs this question: Where does Havel lo-cate the foundation for this humanity whichhe finds in the phenomenal experientialworld? The answer can be glimpsed in a let-ter written in 1989, from prison, to his wifeOlga:“Behind all phenomena and discrete entitiesin the world, we may observe, intimate, or ex-perience existentially in various ways some-thing like a general “order of Being” Theessence and order of this order are veiled inmystery; it is as much an enigma as theSphinx, it always speaks to us differently andalways, I suppose, in ways that we ourselvesare open to, in ways, to put it simply, that wecan hear.” (“Letters to Olga,” letter n. 76)The reader should notice here that withinthis “order of Being,” the emphasis is not onsight, on clear and distinct Cartesian ideas,but on hearing, on the perception of themysterious. In 1994, in a lecture at StamfordUniversity Havel also makes reference to “un-conscious experience,” as well as “archetypesand archetypal visions.” This echoes Jung’scollective unconscious and the archetypes,or the idea of fundamental experiencesshared by the entire human race, found in allcultures, no matter how distant in space andtime they may be from one another. What is unique to Havel is that, like Vico, hesees the history of the cosmos recorded inthe inner workings of all human beings: themicrocosm reflects the macrocosm. More-over, the history of the cosmos is projectedinto man’s own creations, it is the story ofman, and it joins us together.

77 / 78

Even after thousands of years, people of dif-ferent epochs and cultures feel that some-how they are parts and partakers of the sameBeing, which they carry part of the infinity ofsuch a Being. As Havel aptly puts it: “all cul-tures assume the existence of somethingthat might be called the ‘Memory of Being,’in which everything is constantly recorded.”Which means that the guarantees of humanfreedom are not found in systems ofthought, or ideologies, or programs of actionbut in “man’s relationship to that which tran-scends him, without which he would not be,and of which he is integral part.” (In “Democ-racy’s Forgotten Dimension,” April 1995, pp.3-10)

One of the constant refrains in Havel’s politi-cal philosophy is that of the loss of respect,including self-respect, apparent in the mod-ern and post-modern world: loss or respectfor what Havel calls “the order of nature, theorder of humanity, and for secular authorityas well.” Gone is the sense of responsibilitythat inhabitants of the same planet ought tohave towards one another. Havel sees thecauses of this loss of respect in the loss of a“transcendental anchor” which he considersthe source of responsibility and self-respect.He pleads that humankind must reconnectitself to “the mythologies and religions of allcultures.” Only thus they can engage in thecommon quest for the general good. What exactly is the general good? Havel’s an-swer is that a “global civilization” is already inthe process of preparing a place for a “plane-tary democracy.” But this planetary democ-racy here on Earth must be somehow linkedwith the Heaven above us, with the transcen-dent.

Havel is convinced that only in this setting“can the mutuality and the commonality ofthe human race be newly created, with rev-erence and gratitude for that which tran-scends each of us, and all of us together. Theauthority of a world democratic order simplycannot be built on anything else but the re-vitalized authority of the universe.” (ibid. p. 9). Havel does not assume that such an orderhas already arrived in Europe. To the contrary,his essay titled “The Hope for Europe (TheNew York Review, June 20, 1996) stands as aprovocative survey of Europe’s enormous in-fluence on human civilization, but this influ-ence is ambiguous; it can be constructive butalso destructive.

Let us examine more closely Havel’s views onideology, European Civilization and the Eu-ropean Union. In an essay by the title of “Pol-itics and the World Itself” published in 1992,Havel critiques the Cartesian-Marxist as-sumption, which is the general assumptionof philosophical rationalists, that reality isgoverned by a finite number of universallaws whose interrelationship can be graspedby the human mind and anticipated in sys-tematic formulae. He insists that there are nolaws and no theories that can comprehen-sively direct or explain human life within thecontext of an ideological fix-all.

The authority of a world democratic ordersimply cannot be built on anything else but the revitalized authority of the universe

““

Consequently, we need to abandon “the ar-rogant belief that the world is merely a puz-zle to be solved, a machine with instructionsfor use waiting to be discovered, a body ofinformation to be put into a computer withthe hope that, sooner or later, it will spit outa universal solution.” Moreover, as far as Havelis concerned, there is no “universal key to sal-vation.” We must recognize the pluralism ofthe world within an elementary sense oftranscendental responsibility. This kind of re-sponsibility is anchored in “archetypal wis-dom, good taste, courage, compassion, and,not least, faith in the importance of particularmeasures.”

In 1990 Havel addressed the U.S. Congresson the subject of democratic ideals and therebirth of the human spirit where he re-flected on the end of the bipolarity of theCold War and the beginning of “an era ofmulti-polarity in which all of us, large andsmall, former slaves and former masters willbe able to create what your great PresidentLincoln called ‘the family of men.’” He also de-clared that: “consciousness precedes being,”by which he simply means that the salvationof the human world lies in the human heart,the human power to reflect, and in humanresponsibility.

More specifically Havel proclaimed that:“Without a global revolution in the sphere ofhuman consciousness, nothing will changefor the better in the sphere of our being ashumans, and the catastrophe toward whichthis world is headed—be it ecological, social,demographic, or a general breakdown of civ-ilization—will be unavoidable.” (“A joint ses-sion of the U.S. Congress” Toward a CivilSociety: Selected Speeches and Writings,1990-1994, pp. 31-45). This echoes MartinBuber or C.P. Snow's insight on the twoworlds: the world of "I-it" of science con-cerned with manipulation and use of matterout there (what Descartes calls extensioninto space), and the world of "I-Thou," theworld of the humanities and the poetic char-acterized by dialogue and ethical concerns.

So, what is to be done? Havel answers notwith another ideology or a program or a Pla-tonic blueprint but by simply reminding peo-ple that the way out of the crisis is dedicationto responsibility: “Responsibility to some-thing higher than my family, my country, mycompany, my success—responsibility to theorder of being where all of our actions are in-delibly recorded and where they will beproperly judged.”

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness,

nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans,

and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed

will be unavoidable

“ “

79 / 80

In 1995 Havel gave a commencement ad-dress at Harvard University where he recog-nizes that the world has already entered asingle technological civilization and in thespirit of Husserl, Masaryk and Patocka hesounded the alarm: there is also afoot a con-trary movement which finds expression indramatic revivals of ancient traditions, reli-gions and cultures. In other words there is anattempt at the recovery of “archetypal spiri-tuality,” a searching for “what transcends us,whether we mean the mystery of Being or amoral order that stands above us…Our respect for other people, for other na-tions, and for other cultures, can only growfrom a humble respect for the cosmic orderand from an awareness that we are a part ofit, that we share in it and that nothing ofwhat we do is lost, but rather becomes partof the eternal memory of Being, where it isjudged.”What about Europe? In 1996 in his address at Aachen which hecalled “The Hope for Europe” (See The NewYork Review, June 20, 1996) Havel surveysand analyzes Europe’s enormous influence inworld civilization but articulates someprovocative thoughts: this influence can beboth constructive and destructive.

The challenge is to discern the positive con-structive influences on which to build. Heidentifies the best that Europe has to offerthe world in “a place of shared values.” To talkof shared values is to talk about Europeanspiritual and intellectual identity, the Euro-pean soul, if you will. His sincere hope is thatEurope, for the first time in its history “mightestablish itself on democratic principles as awhole entity.”

There is a caveat: this will happen only if thevalues that underlie the European traditionare supported by a philosophically anchoredsense of responsibility. More precisely: “Theonly meaningful task for the Europe of thenext century is to be the best it can possiblybe—that is, to revivify its best spiritual andintellectual traditions and thus help to createa new global pattern of coexistence.”(ibid.).In Havel's “The Politics of Hope” one readsthat “in my own life I am reaching for some-thing that goes far beyond me and the hori-zon of the world that I know; in everything Ido I touch eternity in a strange way.” With thisgrounding, politics becomes ‘the universalconsultation on the reform of the affairswhich render man human.” There is no doubtthat in Havel we have today a rare strongvoice of the post-Cold War “new Europe" ad-vocating a sort of "conspiracy of hope." Aconspiracy this that insisting that politicsmust be accorded a transcendental sourceand foundation or it will be building on sand.

Jurgen Habermason the Vision

of a Post-SecularEurope

he above quote is lifted from a bril-liant essay published in the Fall of2002 by Klaus Held titled, “The Ori-

gins of Europe with the Greek Discovery ofthe World”. The essay is a must read for any-one interested in exploring the very originsof European culture and concerned about itspresent trajectory and its future destination.Now that the whole Western world is in themidst of an unprecedented economic crisis,his words on the inadequacy of a mere eco-nomic vision with an attendant banal tradetreaty parading as a constitution of sort, res-onate with special vibrancy.

Held insists throughout his essay that to for-get the vital component of religion, whichwas at the root of science and democracy’sappearance in ancient Greece, is to under-stand precious little of what makes Westerncultural in general the unique culture that itis. This is a theme previously explored byChristopher Dawson (in his The Making ofEurope, 1932) as well as by George San-tayana, an atheist who nevertheless heldthat the enigma that is Europe will foreverelude us without a clear and unbiased under-standing of the phenomenon of Christianity.

T

"A European community grounded only in political andeconomic cooperation of the member states would lackan intrinsic common bond. It would be built upon sand."

Klaus Held

Two years later, on June 9, 2004, Held's wa-tershed article was followed by a report bythe European Policy Center in Brusselsdrafted by a senior research fellow, Dr. Joce-lyne Cesari. In it Ms. Cesari reports that Eu-rope is the only region of the world whichhas a general hostility toward religion—thatEuropeans have a tendency to explain everysign of backwardness in terms of religion.

The European tendency, according to thisscholarly report, is to equate Muslim religion,and indeed all religions, with fanaticism. Thisphenomenon unique to Europe was alsodocumented by the World Values Surveyconducted by a group of social scientistswho identify its roots in the EnlightenmentPeriod, the period of Voltaire, the very icon ofEnlightenment who while asserting that hewould defend to death the right of dissentand free speech of any citizen, at the sametime, and paradoxically, writes the famed“Mahomet, of Fanaticism” in 1745, withoutever retracting his misguided tract.

In fact, he dies cursing Dante whom he con-sidered a bigoted Medieval (Gothic was hisfavored slur) poet and therefore not a greatpoet. That spirit, according to Cesari and theWorld Values Survey lives on today.

But there are signs that the anti-religion vir-ulence is in abeyance in Europe and one whodetects those signs is none other than thepresent day European philosopher JuergenHabermas. He seems to detect what he callsa “post-secular” age on the European hori-zon. This has all the self-proclaimed secularhumanists, who generally disdain religionand advocate its liquidation, a bit worriedlately. Their strident vitriolic statementsagainst religion have been on the increaselately. For they have always fantasized ofbeing at the very cutting edge of what itmeans to be modern and “enlightened” andnow feel such a position challenged not onlyby theologians and religious leaders but bya philosopher to boot. The misnomer “secularhumanism” was certainly not invented by theoriginal European humanists in 14th centuryItaly. Its acknowledged father, Francesco Pe-trarca was a deacon of the Church and in-deed most humanists were and remainedpious believers. Secularism by itself is a neu-tral term distinguishing the sacred from thesecular or temporal. Dante certainly madethe distinction and places three Popes in hellfor failing to make that distinction and con-fusing the sacred with the temporal. Indeed,Humanism by itself does not indicate an un-friendly stance toward religion.

Europe is the only region of the world which has a general hostility toward religion—

that Europeans have a tendency to explain every sign of backwardness

in terms of religion

“ “

83 / 84

The modern fallacy consists in placing secu-lar as an adjective before humanist as if toimply that to be a humanist one needs to bea secularist inimical to religion which is defi-nitely not the case. It is also not the case thatall secularists (what the French and Italianscall “laicite” or “laicità”) are ipso facto atheistsand agnostics unfriendly to religion. One ofthose secularists was Robert Shumann whois up for canonization by the Catholic Church,another was De Gaperi who was also a de-vout practicing Catholic.

But the vitriolic language persists. Here is aquote from a famous avowed atheistic scien-tist, Richard Dawkins, whose book The GodDelusion: “The God of the Old Testament isarguably the most unpleasant character in allfiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, un-just, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive,bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal,filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

One may object that the likes of Dawkins aremere aberrations and therefore my argu-ment against them is an ad hominem one,that I am fighting straw men and windmills,but to the contrary I would submit that theyare examples of a type of “enlightened” mod-ern prototypes ready to fantasize a bully Godwhile denying his existence, convinced thatthe sooner religion is liquidated, the better.They are willing and ready to throw the babyout with the bathwater and eliminate the useand the practice of religion because of itsabuses.

Jurgen Habermas must have surely readHeld’s influential essay. Habermas is verymuch involved in the debate on the EU iden-tity and has even signed manifestos on thesame with Umberto Eco, the late Derrida andother influential philosophers. In 2005Habermas delivered a lecture on the occa-sion of the Holberg prize which then becamean article in 2006. See “Religion in the publicsphere” by J. Habermas, in European Journalof Philosophy 14: 1-25. The core of that essay is that secular citizensin Europe must learn to live, the sooner thebetter, in a post-secular society and in sodoing they will be following the example ofreligious citizens, who have already come toterms with the ethical expectations of dem-ocratic citizenship. So far secular citizenshave not been expected to make a similar ef-fort.

Habermas addresses the debate in terms ofJohn Rawls’s concept of “public use of rea-son.” At the beginning of the article Haber-mas introduces two closely linked ideas: onthe one hand the increasing isolation of Eu-rope from the rest of the world in terms of itsreligious configurations, and on the otherhand the notion of “multiple modernities.” Hechallenges the notion that Europe is the leadsociety in the modernizing process and in-vites his fellow secular Europeans to what hecalls “a self reflective transcending of the sec-ularist self-understanding of Modernity,” anattitude that goes beyond mere tolerance inas much as it necessarily engenders feelingsof respect for the world view of the religiousperson, so that their pronouncements don’tautomatically engender derision and con-tempt a la Voltaire.

In other words, Habermas while advocatingreciprocity and the “public use of reason” inthe agora and not in the privacy of one’schurch, synagogue or mosque, is proposinga new challenging question: Are religious is-sues simply to be regarded as relics of a pre-modern era, or is it the duty of the moresecular citizens to overcome their narrowlysecularist consciousness in order to engagewith religion in terms of what Habermas calls“reasonably expected disagreement”?

That of course assumes a degree of rational-ity on both sides. It is indeed a challengingargument, one in which the relative secular-ity of Europe is increasingly seen as an excep-tional, rather than prototypical case.

Christianityand Europe:Tony Blair at

Yale University

n 1996, the year before he becameprime minister, Tony Blair published acollection of his speeches and articles

under the title New Britain: My Vision of aYoung Country. In that book Blair inserts thehistory of Britain within the larger context ofthe history of Christianity and very much inthe tradition of Christopher Dawson, C.S.Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and George San-tayana, underlines the fact that one will un-derstand precious little of Great Britain andeven less of the whole of Europe’ s historyand development, on every level, unless onemanages to learn well the history of Christi-anity. To do that one need not be necessarilya believer. And in fact, the approach in thatbook is analytical and intellectual revealinglittle of Blair’s personal relationship with thedivine.

Nevertheless, we do know that Tony Blair, theson of a militant atheist began his explo-ration of Christianity while at Oxford in theearly 1970s and subsequently embraced An-glicanism in 1974 and later on Catholicism;this too was in the tradition of C.S. Lewis, G.KChesterton, and Christopher Dawson.

Here are a few excerpts from chapter 7 of theabove mentioned book (titled “Why I Am aChristian”): “First a politician’s health warn-ing: I can’t stand politicians who wear God ontheir sleeves; I do not pretend to be any bet-ter or less selfish than any-one else; I do notbelieve that Christians should only voteLabour; and I do not discuss my religious be-liefs unless asked, and, when I do, I discussthem personally.

I

Of course, they influence my politics, but I donot wish to force them on anyone else…Easter, a time of rebirth and renewal, has aspecial significance for me, and in a sense,my politics. My vision of society reflects afaith in the human spirit and its capacity torenew itself…I am often asked how my reli-gious convictions have played a role in theemergence of my political thinking. First, myview of Christian values led me to opposewhat I perceived to be the narrow view ofself-interest that Conservatism—particularlyits modern, more right-wing form—repre-sents. But Tories, I think, have too selfish a defini-tion of self-interest. They fail to look beyond,to the community and the individual’s rela-tionship with the community. That is the es-sential reason why I am on the Left ratherthan on the Right…Christianity is more thana one-to-one relationship between the indi-vidual and God, important as that is. The re-lationship also has to be with the outsideworld. Second, Christianity helped to inspiremy rejection of Marxism….The problem withMarxist ideology was that, in the end, it sup-pressed the individual by starting with soci-ety. But it is from a sense of individual dutythat we connect the greater good and the in-terests of the community—a principle theChurch celebrates in the sacrament of com-munion.”During his lengthy tenure as Prime Minister,Blair seldom revealed to his constituent thekind of private compass to his life that faithrepresents for him.

He has established the Tony Blair Faith Foun-dation whose mission is to foster greater un-derstanding among people of variousreligions by involving them in collaborativeprojects, such as development efforts and di-alogue. It is a simple yet vast undertaking: tomake religion a force for good as globaliza-tion mixes together people of different cul-tures and faiths.The US operations of the foundation will beheadquartered at Yale University. In the fallof 2008 Blair has co-taught a course at Yale,with the eminent Christian theologianMiroslav Volf. The course’s theme was the in-tersecting forces of faith and globalization. Itwas the first of three seminars that Blair hascommitted himself to teach at Yale and it im-mediately followed the unveiling of his FaithFoundation in the summer of 2008. A pressconference launched the foundation at theTime Warner Center in New York was hostedby Christiane Amanpour and Bill Clinton whoprovided the opening remarks.What all this activity amounts to is an initialgiving voice to a belief that faith can and infact should have a role in public decisions.This, in a country mind you, and in a cul-ture—modern Western culture—whichkeeps religion and politics separate andtends toward a secularism which loudly andcontemptuously proclaims the exclusion ofthat voice from the public square to relegateit to the purely private in a church on Sunday,a synagogue on Saturday or a mosque on Fri-day. It is a controversial proposition, to saythe least.

87 / 88

Nevertheless, Eboo Patel, executive directorof the Interfaith Youth Core, an non-profit or-ganization based in Chicago has lauded theBlair enterprise:I think this movement needed a world leader,and Tony Blair is a world leader. He is one ofthe type of people who can take the inter-faith movement to the next level. There is anew category emerging of interfaith ac-tivists, along the lines of human rights or en-vironmental activists. I am now consistentlyspeaking to several hundred or several thou-sand people, when just five years ago I wastalking to seven people in a church base-ment. And Tony Blair is the first leader of thisstature to take this issue this seriously.

Gustav Niebhur, director of the Religion andSociety Program at Syracuse University andauthor of Beyond Tolerance: Searching for In-terfaith Understanding in America chimes in“This is a testing time for him, when he hasto move from one stage to another and showpeople he is sincere and committed and canachieve something real.”

Reverend Rick Warren, senior pastor of Sad-dleback Church in California and author ofthe best-selling book The Purpose DrivenLife, who delivered the benediction at Bar-rack Obama’s inauguration, and serves onthe group’s advisory council, has revealedthat the foundation has already “raised sev-eral million dollars” for its projects and thiswas largely due to Blair’s contacts andstature.One of the insights that Blair has brought tothe course on Faith and Globalization at Yaleis that while Globalization obliterates bor-ders and frontiers, faith often becomes a re-action to it and pulls people apart and thatis unfortunate. Blair points out that he sawsuch a phenomenon when he was a primeminister, before and after 9/11 and he addsthat “even if you are of no religious faith anddon’t even like religion, you should be inter-ested in this. But specifically, if you are a per-son of faith, the question is, what role doesfaith have in the future? My view is globaliza-tion needs strong values to guide it make itequitable and just.”

It should be stressed at this point that theFaith Foundation of Tony Blair is not dedi-cated to mere theoretical and abstract proj-ects but has placed on the table concreteactive projects such as Malaria No More, withthe aim of providing insecticide-treatedmosquito nets to people in sub-SaharanAfrica. Another is that of selecting 30 menand women of various faiths, aged 18 to 25,from the United States, Britain and Canada towork for African countries combating malariaand then return home to raise money for anawareness about the disease. Moreover, theFaith foundation has also asked Harry Stout,chairman of the Yale’s religious studies de-partment, to develop a secondary schoolcurriculum for the foundation’s use in foster-ing interfaith discussion among teenagers.

The 25 students who took the course co-taught by Blair (chosen from 270 who ap-plied; a microcosm of globalization fromvarious cultures and faiths) describe histeaching method as Socratic; one of probingquestions and tentative answers.

He has discarded the air of seasoned author-ity on the subject. He appears to be explor-ing the truth himself rather than deliveringit. His co-teacher has said that Blair gives theimpression of moving toward somethingwithout being completely sure yet, what it is.The course basically explores the extent andcauses of religious resurgence, also situa-tions in which religion has proved to be anoppressive force, as well as situations whenit has been largely positive. As per the syl-labus of the course: “the conditions underwhich robust religious allegiances can con-structively be employed in the pluralistic en-vironment of an increasingly interconnectedworld.” Which is to say, the aim is to arrive ata holistic picture; not a cherry picked or bi-ased one, for or contra religion wherein cari-catures abound and few insights aregarnished. The course was developed in concert withthe Yale Divinity School (a school acrosswhich I resided for the four years of my resi-dence at the Yale Graduate School in the 70swhen I was studying for my Ph.D. in Italianhumanism) which has been working hardlately on Muslim-Christian reconciliation.Also with the Yale School of Managementwhich has highlighted the work of religiousgroups to bring about debt relief for Africannations. Blair hopes that the course will serve as atemplate for similar courses at other institu-tions and to that goal he has made a threeyear teaching commitment to Yale. It oughtto be noted here that Blair, as mentionedabove, has further converted from Anglican-ism to Catholicism but only after leaving of-fice because he did not wish that action tobe misunderstood.

My view is globalization

needs strong values to guide it

make it equitable and just

““89 / 90

His wife and children were already Catholicsand now he can take communion with themwhen they worship together. As he put to hisstudents in a class in October:If you are a person of faith and are engaged,people seem to think that everything you dois because of some special relationship youare claiming with God. But, for example, ifyou take a decision, as I took on several oc-casions, to engage in military conflict, to goto war—leave aside whether you agree ordisagree with individual decisions—thereisn’t a transmission where your faith tells youthat this the right way to decide this issue.But if you are assessing of whether you aregoing to do it or you are not going to do it,the issue of right or wrong is important, andactually in my view should outweigh theissue of constituency—or indeed, I wouldeven say, constitution. I put that up as a ques-tion. I think that faith in that sense can beprogressive. Not—and you must understandwhat I am saying here—not because the de-cision is necessarily the right decision. Butprogressive in the sense that issues to dowith right and wrong are part of the deci-sion-making progress.

Now, if I understand Blair, he is saying thatthe classical universal ethical criteria to judgeright and wrong, which are not purely reli-gious but go back to Plato and Aristotle,ought to be applied in arriving at momen-tous decisions and not simply judge whetheror not they are in the interest of one’s coun-try in a relativistic mode.Be that as it may, those 25 chosen studentswill eventually disseminate those ideasfound in the seminar’s syllabus by develop-ing curricula for secondary school students.

To be sure, the cynics, believers and non-be-lievers, whom we’ll always have with us, havedecried the futility of such an enterpriseagainst the rage and the violence perpe-trated in God’s name and will continue con-fusing freedom of religion with cults ofvarious stripes which enslave and coerce. ButBlair has a different view and remainsadamant insisting that “what most peoplewant is a sense of purpose derived from spir-ituality in their lives.” Ultimately his fight is against those who’dlike to use faith to shut themselves off fromother people and against the religion bash-ers who’d like to reduce religion to a merecaricature. Like President Obama, he is gam-bling on the idea that there is an immenseconstituency for peaceful coexistenceamong all nations and all people. In fact,Obama’s recent inauguration may be seen asa symbol and emblem of such an idea.

Christopher Dawsonand The Making

of Europe

In 1932 Christopher Dawson publisheda book titled The Making of Europewhich had enormous success and es-

tablished his reputation as a scholar of in-credible range and erudition who couldcommunicate with great clarity and ele-gance. He had previously written two otherbooks: The Age of the Gods (1928), andProgress and Religion (1929) but this wasunique.The book avoids the conventional burden-some footnotes, bibliographies and theoret-ical frameworks and reads like a romanticnovel, hence its popularity. Indeed, 19th cen-tury Romanticism was a corrective to theprevious century, the so called age of En-lightenment.

It did this by questioning the rationalist con-viction that the empirical physical sciencesconstituted the paradigm of all knowledgeand thus reinstated Giambattista Vico’s reval-uation of history against the Cartesian depre-ciation of it as mere gossip.

Vico had observed that the external world ofnature is ultimately impenetrable, for thehuman mind can only attempt to manipulateit within the strict limits set by God who cre-ated it. The stream of history, on the otherhand, is essentially the world that the humancreative spirit has made, and therefore de-spite its recurring mysteries, it can come tobe known by humans in an incomparablydeeper sense.

I

Dawson shared this revaluation of history asdid Hegel when he declared history the high-est form of knowledge: the self-realization ofthe absolute spirit in time.

And what was the single idea, the keynote ofDawson’s thought as found in The Making ofEurope? I was this: religion is the soul of a cul-ture, and a society that has lost its spiritualroots is a dying society, however prosperousit may appear externally. The fate of our civi-lization was endangered not only by the fad-ing of the vision of faith that originallyformed it, namely Christianity, but the failureto integrate the world of reason and sciencewith the world of the soul, which has lost thepower to express itself through culture. InDawson’s view this was the tragedy of mod-ern man. Before writing his famous book, Dawson hadread and pondered deeply the works of Au-gustine (The City of God) and Edward Gib-bon (The Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire). He was also influenced by LordActon’s World History, wherein Acton affirmsthat “religion is the key of history.” He slowlybecame aware of the continuity of historyand of how the coming of Christianity hadtransformed the dying Roman Empire into anew world.

He spent fourteen years of intensive studybefore writing his twenty some booksamong which Enquiries into Religion andCulture (1934), Religion and Culture (1948),Religion and the Rise of Western Culture(1950), The Crisis of Western Education(1961), The Formation of Christendom(1961). All these books dealt with the life ofcivilizations. The underlying idea in them wasthe interaction of religion with culture andsubsequently with civilization. Religion is dis-covered to be the dynamic element in everyculture—its life and soul. He discovered thatworship, prayer, the rite of sacrifice, and themoral law were common to all religions andso what the object of worship, and thatmoreover, the destiny of the human race wasconditioned not only by material progressbut by a divine purpose or providence work-ing through history. Dawson also discoveredthat “the world religions have been the key-stones of the world cultures, so that whenthey are removed the arch falls and thebuilding is destroyed” (Progress and Religion,p. 140).

As he surveys the two millennia of Christian-ity, Dawson noted four landmarks. The firstone is the new element which defines thedifference between the new faith and the oldmystery religions of Europe: this is the prin-ciple of a dynamic and creative spirit that in-spires the whole of life. The Christian religionhas a power of renewal that has accompa-nied it through the ages.The second land-mark was the extraordinary development inthe fourth century A.D., when Constantinedeclared Christianity the official religion ofthe Roman Empire. After centuries of livingon the inherited capital of the Hellenistic cul-ture, this fountainhead seemed to run dry.

religion is the soul of a culture, and a society that has lost its spiritual rootsis a dying society, however prosperous it may appear externally

“ “

Yet the achievements of Greece and Romewere not rejected by this new faith. Theywere merely transformed. Classical learningand the Latin language became fused withthe ideals of a Christian society that wasfounded not on wealth, tyranny and powerbut on freedom, progress, and social justice.Latin became “not only a perfect vehicle forthe expression of thought but also an arkwhich carried the seed of Hellenic culturethrough the deluge of barbarism” (The Mak-ing of Europe, p. 49).The third great change of thought, accordingto Dawson, came about in the 16th centurywith the Renaissance and the Reformation,which brought an end to medieval unity. Thefourth came about after the industrial revo-lution in the 19th century and led to the 20thcentury.In one of his last books, The Crisis ofWestern Education, Dawson calls our ownera the age of Frankenstein, “the hero whocreates a mechanical monster and thenfound it had got out of control and threat-ened his own existence” (p. 189).

He had in mind atomic warfare and he ar-gued that if Western society were to gaincontrol over these forces there would haveto be a reintegration of faith and culture, andthat there is an absolute limit to the progressthat can be achieved by perfecting scientifictechniques detached from spiritual aims andmoral values. This is similar to Einstein assess-ment of our era as one characterized by per-fection of means and confusion of goals.

But let us go back to The Making of Europewhich remains Dawson’s best-known book.In it he demonstrates that Christianity hasbeen the spiritual force that created the unityof Western culture, indeed the common-wealth of Europe itself, from the chaoticworld of myriad warring tribes. He shows inthat book how the Dark Ages, the period be-tween 400 and 1000 A.D., became a dawnwitnessing to the conversion of the West, thefoundation of Western civilization and thecreation of Christian art and liturgy.

And he then asked a crucial question: If sucha transformation could happen in the age ofthe barbarians could it not be repeated now?Like the founding fathers of the EU, Dawson,after the Second World War, was already en-visioning a new united Europe. But he soonrealized that there was a problem whichfaced not only Europe but America too andall societies that consider themselves West-ern.The problem was this: the disastrous separa-tion of culture from its religious base broughtabout by the modern “barbarians of the in-tellect” and assorted nihilists had not beenstemmed by the modern educational systemwhich considered the study of religion su-perfluous and in fact aimed at its liquidation.The unity of thought, which had prevailed inEuropean civilization over a thousand years,was shattered by excessive specializationwhich allowed the educated elites to see thetree and miss the forest; moreover science,philosophy and theology had long since splitapart. Education, rather than being a prepa-ration for life, had become purely utilitarianand vocational. Humanistic studies neededto be resurrected in all schools and not pre-served, almost as a relic of the past, in places

like Harvard, Yale and Princeton universitiesas a sort of frosting on the cake of education.This was urgent since the Trojan horse of theneo-barbarians had already entered thecitadel of learning and was hard at work todestroy it from the inside.Humanism as inte-grated with Catholicism was at the forefrontof Dawson’s speculation. It was that human-ism which produced the medieval unity ofthe 13th century exemplifying Christian cul-ture par excellence.

For the flowering of art in every form reachedits zenith in Europe between the 13the and15th centuries with the poetry of Dante andPetrarch, the fresco painters of the Florentineschool Giotto and Fra Angelico, and thesculptures of Michelangelo. It was also theage of saints and mystics, both men andwomen: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominick, St.Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Hilde-gard of Bingen, just to name a few.

the world religions have been the keystones

of the world cultures, so that when they are removed

the arch falls and the building is destroyed

““95 / 96

It must be mentioned that Dawson was notadvocating a nostalgic return to the MiddleAges; neither was he commending the exter-nal apparatus of medievalism, nor Charle-magne’s so called Holy Roman Empire, butrather “a return to the forgotten world of spir-itual reality” to which these centuries bearwitness. He was not recommending an eva-sion of the present day cultural dilemmas. Hewas indeed an intellectual for whom ideaswere important but many of his colleaguesnoticed a paradox in him: together with theremote facts of history, he knew of the latestcurrent events in remote corners of theworld, and understood and spoke several Eu-ropean languages. Indeed, he had the gift ofseeing deeper and further than many of hiscontemporaries because he had the capacityto interpret the present in the light of theevents of the past. As he put it: “The more weknow of the past, the freer we are to choosethe way we will go.”

To conclude, it is a mistake to think of Daw-son as an anti-modern. Both he and Vicohave been so branded. Rather, what he wasadvocating was a retrieval of spiritual valuesin a godless and nihilistic world. The reasonhe was assigned the first Chair of RomanCatholic Studies at Harvard University wasthat he had the well earned reputation ofbeing a very broad-minded scholar, able tocontemplate opposite ideas and integratethem. He was, in short, a consummate hu-manist who understood the universal char-acter of the Church; she belongs neither toEast nor to West but stands as a mediator be-tween the two. It was in fact his humanism which led him toconversion to Catholicism as it also hap-pened for G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greeneand David Jones. I hope that this brief sketchof a great and beautiful mind will motivatesome readers to a deeper exploration of itsideas.

Europa,Quo Vadis?

A book written by Pope BenedictXVI, before he became Pope,whose title translates from the Ital-

ian as Europe: Its Spiritual Foundation of Yes-terday, Today and Tomorrow, ought to beread by every European of whatever faith orno faith to better understand the roots of acrisis that lies in the very soul and culturalidentity of Modern European Man.This book explores the issue of secular salva-tion within modern European society. It waspublished shortly before Cardinal Ratzinger’selevation to the Papacy. It is basically the ex-pansion of a lecture he gave on May 13,2004, in the library of the Italian Senate, i.e.,the Sala Capitolare del Chiostro della Min-erva. He was invited there by Marcello Pera,who besides being the president of the Ital-ian Senate at the time, is also a professionalphilosopher. The general theme of the bookis this: modern Western Civilization finds

itself in a crisis which many political and cul-tural pundits see as the crisis of the EU Con-stitution, or perhaps as the demise of theNATO alliance, or the war in Iraq, or globalterrorism, or the entrance of Turkey in the EU.In reality the roots of the crisis lie muchdeeper, in the very soul and cultural identityof Europe, a continent that besides being ageographical place is also an idea which hasdeveloped over many centuries.

The very title of the book alerts the attentivereader that we are dealing here not only withgeography, history and spirituality but withcultural anthropology and philosophy of his-tory. Those roots lie in the spiritual emptinessin the heart of Europe, in its low birth rates(there are now more old than young peoplein Europe), in its failure to understand its ownorigins and uniqueness and to forge newparadigms for its future.

K

Mere praxis is not light” Pope Benedict XVI

It is as if this new polity called the EuropeanUnion were being asked “Quo vadis, Europa?”This European Pope has chosen the name ofSaint Benedict who is none other than thefounder of Western monasticism and the pa-tron saint of Europe. Few have commentedon the historical significance of such achoice, and yet it seems to me crucial for un-derstanding the mind-set of a Pope who,contrary to the conventional wisdom, willnot be a mere clone of John-Paul II. Were I to choose an appropriate metaphor todescribe this spiritual emptiness of modernEuropean man to which the Pope refers, Iwould have recourse to a horrific scene in adark cave in the deepest part of Dante’s hellwhere Dante and Virgil encounter a man, theso called lantern man, holding his own headin his right hand and “doing light unto him-self.” (Inferno XXVIII). Historically the man isthe French poet Bertrand del Born, a man forwhom action is everything; the kind of ac-tivism which does not need truth as its un-derpinning and that assumes that somehowone can act first and ask questions later; thatone needs not ask first what is a just action,and what is justice, not in a relativistic modebut in an absolute way.

Appropriately Dante places him in the circleof the disseminators of discord. He epito-mizes quite well, seven hundred years aheadof its time, modern man running full speedahead in the grip of political ideologies of in-evitable deterministic progress that promiseto change the world without ever askingwhat is good and what is not good for theworld or what is indeed the ultimate Good.The result is not light but more dissensionsand wars. By showing us a man who holdshis own head to make light unto himself,Dante shows us the man who enlightenedhimself by a reason devoid of any sense oftranscendence, thus turning upside downthe biblical statement that “the truth shallmake you free.”On the contrary, this man believes that it isfrenetic action and praxis (one thinks of thefuturism of a Marinetti) that yields truth, orbetter, partial, relativistic, particular truths.The sorry fruits of this positivistic-rationalisticmind-set which within modernity beginswith Descartes and continues with the En-lightenment, the French Revolution,Hegelian and Marxist philosophy, all the wayto modern times, are the lagers and the gu-lags of the 20th century underpinned by ide-ologies galore that promise a secularsalvation of sort and paradise on earth.

The Pope points out that one such modernideology is liberation theology which in LatinAmerica ended up substituting the Christianidea of redemption. The relation of personalresponsibility to sin and redemption wasshifted to the relation between social struc-tures and redemption. The approach is nownot that of conversion of the heart but thatof social engineering: the redesigning of thesocial order in order to eliminate evil fromthe world.

Europe, in this very hour of its maximum success,seems to have becomeempty from within, paralyzed in a certain sense by a crisis of its circular system, a crisis that puts at riskits very life…

“

“

The Redeemer himself is looked upon as asort of Superman fighting for justice democ-racy and the Western way of life. Redemptionbecomes a secular political process. This isthe myth of secular redemption, of politicsthat misguidedly promises what it cannotdeliver: spiritual renewal and redemptionand elimination of evil and injustice from theworld. Dostoyevsky gave voice to that mythwith his novel The Devils.After tracing the history of the very idea ofEurope and its relation to Islam beginningwith St. Benedict and Charlemagne, thePope’s book then deals with the traditionalChristian basis that made Europe and whichseems now to be fleeing, thus condemningEurope to an inevitable decline. It is paradox-ical that while its economic successes havespread world-wide via modern science andeconomics, they seem to have left the Euro-pean mind with little sense of its own mean-ing.

Traditional Christianity is now opposed byolder Asian and African religious traditionswhich are becoming increasingly attractiveto a spiritless people who have forgottentheir own religious tradition grounding thedignity of each individual in divine creation.What seems to have replaced this tradition isMachiavelli’s “ragion di Stato,” or a real politikbased on rational cold reason and on purelyeconomic, political and military considera-tions. This reason considers the religious view apurely mythological view of the world. Godbecomes a private affair to be taken care onSunday and not to be dragged in public lifeor in the formation of values. Often thosewho do worship on Sunday are branded asbigots. A soccer game on Sunday is seen asof more value. Some have gone as far as con-sidering soccer games the cement that isneeded to unify disparate European culturesand races.

It is no wonder that to Africa and Asia, Eu-rope appears empty of worthy values. Toquote the Pope: “Europe, in this very hour ofits maximum success, seems to have becomeempty from within, paralyzed in a certainsense by a crisis of its circular system, a crisisthat puts at risk its very life…There is a cer-tain strange lack of will for the future of Eu-rope. Its children, which are the future, cometo be seen as a threat to the present…Theydo not come to be felt as a hope, but ratheras a limit of the present.”

The Pope speculates that in order not to dis-appear, Europe must rediscover its religiousroots and with them the “unconditional sta-tus of human dignity and human rights” in-dependent of any civil jurisdiction. But thewords “value” and “rights” ought not be con-ceived in the voluntarist mode given themby modern philosophy. Those values andrights are inalienable, not created by any leg-islature, not even democratically conferredby the citizens to themselves. They are partof a natural law that even non Christians likeCicero and Marcus Aurelius well understood.

They are part of a superior order, rooted inGod and not to be manipulated by anyone.Abuses such as genetic manipulation,cloning, commercialization of human or-gans, the recycling of corpses are mentioned.These actions “justify what is not able to bejustified.”

Another insight of these reflections is that ofthe West’s excessive criticism and hatred ofitself (examined in this page in the article onBin Laden). This is found paradoxical in amulticultural Europe that is open to all tradi-tional cultures. The Pope identifies this lackof appreciation for one’s own culture in theloss of the sense of the sacred and the tran-scendent which is integral part of the Judeo-Christian ethos. Thus Europe has become atotal stranger to itself, to what made it whatit was and what is.So, while rejecting what is worst (things suchas imperialisms of all kinds, and colonialismand nationalism), Europe needs to recuper-ate what is best in its heritage: service to thewhole of humanity. For Europe to be Europe,it must recover the “what” which is at its ori-gins and which founded it. It must re-exam-ine with a critical eye its multi-culturalalternatives. Returning to revitalized pre-Christian pagan cults and life-styles willhardly provide the cure for modern nihilism.That would mean seeing Christianity as anexternal imposition and pave the way for areturn of the European gods; or the rejectionof political absolutism such Communism inthe name of a Nietzschean transcendence ofrationality; another pseudo-solution.

In the future we may well expect BenedictXVI to continue asking “Quo vadis. Europa,”and to urge it to “nosce te ipsum,” i.e., knowthyself. For the moment, as we search for self-knowledge and a proper answer to those ex-istential questions, it may prove beneficial forall Europeans, with or without faith, to pon-der those reflections on the plight of Westerncivilization and on the spirit of the times bya European Pope who knows both phenom-ena quite well.

101 / 102