Emanuel L. PAPARELLA - Ex Professor of Italian at the University of Puerto Rico, currently on the adjunct faculties of Florida Atlantic University and Broward Community College

By Emanuel L. Paparella, Ph.D.

It is proper and fitting that we should gather here in Miami to celebrate our transatlantic partnership. This is a forward-looking multicultural cosmopolitan city rooted in ancient cultures and open to diversity and innovation; the lynchpin between Latin and Anglo-Saxon culture. However, there are dark clouds gathering on the horizon of an enduring and ongoing cultural relationship, rooted in a common Western Civilization and going back score years and indeed centuries between two continents and two cultures around the Atlantic pond.

An often heard cliché on transatlantic relations is this: “there is so much more that unites us than divides us.” That is certainly true and I dare say it remains true today. But one would have to be blind and deaf not to perceive that those transatlantic bridges of understanding, those ongoing dialogues so laboriously built by our fathers and grandfathers after World War II are now in disrepair and in dire need of a second look. All I can hope to offer within the time constraints of this forum is a very brief analysis of the problem, a preliminary diagnosis so to speak which may be useful to those of us who may eventually attempt a prognosis, especially those of us who have the resources and the authority to affect cultural and political changes.

It perhaps bears mentioning here that a few weeks ago at a symposium at the University of Florida we were privileged to hear the résumé of a speech subsequently given in Chicago (on October 3) by the EU Commissioner Patten. In that speech Mr. Patten identified some general areas which unite us on both sides of the Atlantic. In short they are: 1) common roots in the European Enlightenment, 2) common sacrifices of blood and treasure in defense of freedom and containment of communist totalitarianism, 3) promotion of open markets, democracy, the rule of law through global institutions such as the UN, NATO, the Briton Woods institutions, WTO, CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation) where the principle of intercession to protect human rights within the boundaries of another state was enunciated and established.

I happen to agree in general with that list of commonalities, with one caveat: I would want to stress that the identity, the very soul of Europe, or better of Western Civilization, will not be discovered till we focus more intensely on the Leitkultur of Europe, how it arose, how it developed, how it has become what it is today. To find that identity one needs to go further back than the Enlightenment and the spirit of Voltaire. For, what comes at the end of a process is not necessarily the best. Sometimes it is the worst, if Roman history is any guide. I remain convinced that we need to explore more carefully that wonderful synthesis of Antiquity with Christianity which is Italian Humanism. In short, it seems to me that the Enlightenment still needs to enlighten itself. We need to go back to the future, so to speak, and take as our guide not only Voltaire but Montesquieu, Vico (the father of historicism), Joyce who knew Vico well and revolutionizes Western Literature, Dante, who in the 14th century had already envisioned in his De Monarchia, a United Europe based on cultural principles. I have elaborated this idea of LeitKultur in an essay published on line in the think-tank section of the debate on the future of Europe and titled “Voltaire or Montesquieu? The Janus-like Face of the EU: A transatlantic View on Cultural Identity and the Emerging EU Constitution.”

Be that as it may, to return to Patten’s proclamation of common interests and concern, it is perhaps even more interesting that at the very outset of his speech Mr. Patten also mentions some glaring areas of misunderstandings and differences in outlook. I would like to focus on one in particular, in Mr. Patten’s own words: “There has long been an ugly tendency for some on our side of the Atlantic to measure their commitment to the European cause by their anti-Americanism. And there has been a tendency on this side of the Atlantic to dismiss European consensus-seeking as wimpishness: condescension masquerading as sophistication. There is resentment, too, that Europeans—never properly grateful for your help in two World Wars and for being put back on their feet with Marshall aid—have for so long taken free shelter under your security umbrella.”

Allow me to now furnish an example of the above, out of my own experience, my one-year-plus participation in the on-line debate on the future of Europe inaugurated by Tony Blair and Romano Prodi some two years ago and still ongoing. There are scores of examples I could have picked but I want to briefly look at a rather recent one. On 17 of September 2002 I wrote a four page piece for the debate titled “On the spirit of the Age and reinventing the Wheel.” I added a postscript furnishing the other participants with the web site address of this very Congress we are now participating. I offered the information as a sign of hope that ordinary citizens, having recognized that there were misunderstandings in the transatlantic alliance, were wisely coming together to examine and discuss them openly and democratically. The very next day a reply to this particular contribution of mine was posted. It was from a French man (or perhaps a French woman) by the name of Arpad. First name? Last name? Assumed name? Assumed country? No way to know really. But that should not be important in a debate where ideas are being discussed and those ideas can as well be enunciated by masked individuals. Leaving aside for the moment the psychological Pirandellian problem of the point at which one becomes one’s mask, let me read verbatim the short reply; I believe it illustrates my concern about bridges in disrepair and the need for a frank dialogue between the two sides of the Atlantic:

"The programme for your Miami conference is quite self-revealing. I don't see any imprint of the anti Machiavellian 'spirit' you try to disseminate in this Forum. Phrases like 'global governance', 'global leaders', 'Americans and Europeans lead the world' sting into the eyes. But the most threatening is the title of your own panel: 'Will Europeans and American societies tend to converge in the next decade?' Jesus, I hope not. And it should not be in your interest either if you take your own contributions to this Forum serious [sic]. Let's hope that Europe will be able to escape the sirens of materialistic over-kill from across the Atlantic."

What Mr. Arpad seems to have overlooked is that the Congress was organized by his own French-European connationals, not Americans. He judged the book by its cover before having a chance to read it. Also he conveniently overlooks that the title of the panel is not a statement but a question to be answered.

This brings us back to Mr. Patton’s declared “ugly tendency” as exemplified by the above response. It seems to me that the understanding of how those transatlantic relations are damaged, and consequently how we may proceed to repair them, would be a lot easier if we explored the historical roots of the current cultural wars going on both sides of the Atlantic, and then examined how and why Europeans and Americans perceive them differently. I would suggest that the first thing that needs to be done is to clear the underbrush of a superficial analysis that pits European cultural superiority smacking of cultural elitism to American condescension and naiveté in world affairs, redolent of neo-imperialism and issuing in slogans such “Americans from Mars, Europeans from Venus.” I am suggesting that we should understand the current culture wars as an internal struggle going on within Western Civilization on both sides of the Atlantic. Let me attempt to paint the broad outlines of that struggle, as a sort of working tool for those who wish to explore the issue further.

The culture war that one can easily discern in many forums of the 21st century has to be seen for what it is; one that pits “orthodox” against “progressive.” It cuts across religions, faiths, secular ideologies, agnostic ideologies, national and transnational boundaries, even those with an ocean in between. In general the progressive identify with the radical Enlightenment of a Voltaire and Rousseau all the way down to their philosophical heir Richard Rorty. This Enlightenment is not to be confused with the Enlightenment of a Montesquieu who wants to simply understand historically what Western Civilization’s identity might be. The radical Enlightenment of Voltaire and Rousseau combines rationalism with individualism. Truth itself seems to be progressive, to be understood as a process, a reality that is never stable and absolute but continually changing and unfolding within time and space. Hence that mind-set will brand itself as “progressive.” The political right and left extreme of this process philosophy spectrum is what in America goes under the name of libertarianism, radical freedom taking precedence even over truth, if it must. It is not “the truth shall make you free” but “freedom shall yield you truth.” Here there is no right or left, just the freedom to be an individual and ignore, if one must, even the common good. Somehow, within this laissez-faire doctrine, if everybody takes care of his own individual good, the common good will take care of itself. This of course has echoes of Alfred Whitehead’s process philosophy, not to speak of Adam Smith. Progressive ideals tend to re-symbolize even historic faiths, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, in line with the prevailing assumptions of modern contemporary life. Where those assumptions may came from is not questioned too much; the future destination is much more important than a hard look at the past and recovering one’s lost historical memory and imagination. These are the men and women with binoculars but no rear view mirrors. The true believers in this group have a tendency to become fanatical and brutal once they accept and implement an ideology such as that of Nazism or Communism.

The orthodox, on the other hand of the spectrum, are those who just as fanatically, and of whatever religious stripe, want to impose on the rest of society the idea that moral authority comes from above and is for all time. They want to rest cultural norms on a commitment to an external, transcendent authority. Within Catholicism they are more Catholic than the Pope in Rome. Within Protestantism they are fundamentalists who have made the Bible an idol of sort conveniently forgetting that for the first 60 years or so of Church history there was no New Testament but just an oral tradition on Jesus of Nazareth.

This culture war cutting across religious and moral traditions within Western Civilization, appears to be a conflict over the means of cultural production and the power to define the meaning of Western Civilization. Because both groups do not bother much to examine and reason over their assumptions which are taken on faith, so to speak, no reasonable compromise or synthesis seems achievable at the moment; one that in any shape or form resembles that wonderful synthesis of reason and revelation brought about by a Thomas Aquinas. Hence, religious and political traditions that were formally united are now split. For example, the former enemies, Catholicism and Protestantism, are now busy conducting a cultural war between the orthodox and the progressives in their own midst. In other words, the struggle is over the “Enlightenment”, understood not as an historical era but as what does it mean to be in the light, on the side of truth and outside of obscurantism. I have suggested elsewhere that in their eagerness to throw away the dirty water of clerical corruption these progressives have ended up throwing the baby with the dirty water and setting up the goddess Reason on their altars and proclaiming brotherhood without fatherhood.

As hinted above, historically, there is a more moderate, less fanatical Enlightenment, that of Montesquieu and Vico, an Enlightenment that wants to understand the historical conditions of the origins and development of Western Civilization so that its survival may be envisioned, if indeed it be worth preserving. This more moderate and imaginative Enlightenment understands reason not as the slave of passions or an absolute in itself, a la De Sade or a la Descartes (cogito ergo sum) or a la Bacon (knowledge is power”), but as a tool to better understand history. This is crucial, given that as Vico has taught us, Man is indeed his own history. But it would appear that within Academia, this moderate Enlightenment has won precious few supporters. While enjoying all the material comforts of the West, these intellectually pusillanimous men that Nietzsche would call “the last men,” are busy predicting the “end of history” and the demise of the West. They go by the name of multiculturalists, environmentalists, gender scholars, post-modernists, deconstructionists, you name it. They want to save the whale but cannot save their soul. They can all be grouped under the umbrella of Anti-Westernists. Anti-Westernism has indeed become another “politically correct” position. Some of them will claim that they wish not to subvert but to improve the West, make it live-up to its own ideals. In reality they are sabotaging in susceptible young minds any cultural confidence in the enduring legacy and the future of the West. This happened especially in the 90s when a revised story of the West was taught, one as a flawed experiment by mostly white European old men needing a cure from an enlightened progressive elite, themselves.

Let us now briefly examine how this culture war has been misinterpreted and promoted by fanatics on both sides of the Atlantic as EU culture vs. US. Culture. There is even a song out in England titled “I am afraid of Americans.” How have we gotten from “the Russians are coming” to “The Americans are coming!”? On this side of the Atlantic, the multi-culturalists who attack the modern West argue that the United States in no longer part of the West and that in fact it should be seeking for a new identity that goes beyond passé anachronistic European legacies such as Judeo-Christian liberalism, or scientific positivistic knowledge. Paradoxically, in Europe America is no longer seen as the core of the West but as an immoral, uncultured, exploitative West best left behind. This echoes Toynbee’s thesis that the West should jettison an American influence which does not respect the particularities of the European cultural heritage. Not to speak of Boudelaire assertion that “technology shall Americanize us all.” The Cold War, after its demise, begins to be seen as an American device to impose American economic and cultural hegemony. Allegedly this phenomenon was not perceived when Western Europe being under Communism’s gun, so to speak, accepted unconditionally the protection of the American nuclear umbrella. No wonder people on both sides of the Atlantic are now wondering if this transatlantic partnership has always been one of mutual convenience and exploitation having nothing to do with an understanding of common origins and common values.

Be that as it may, beginning with the 60s cultural anti-Americanism in its left wing version was a definition of the West as a capitalist, secularist, money-grubbing, oppressive culture with its source and its core in America. To abolish this kind of West and emancipate humanity one had to abolish America first. This thesis was of course accepted at the time by all the neo-Marxists of Europe still looking to Russia for their ideological inspiration and condemning an Ignazio Silone and a Solzhenitsyn for having dared denounce the Machiavellian real politik paradigm of Russian Communism. When Solzhenitsyn and Silone, however, came to America to denounce the same Machiavellian real politik in the West, (what Kissinger used to call the “ultimate aphrodisiac’), they found themselves declared “personae non gratae.”

Anti-Americanism also has its right wing version such as that of Augusto Del Noce, an Italian philosopher and an anti-communist, who advocated a distinction between “Westernism” centered in America and the religious spirit needed to recover its identity in opposition to the godless American West. Curious indeed, given that this is the only country in the world with the slogan “in God we trust” on its currency and invoking the Creator in its Constitution, a country wherein some 65% of the population attend religious services weekly compared to 25% for Europe. Be that as it may, Del Noce correctly predicted that Communism would be defeated because it was less able than secular capitalism to provide consumerism to the masses of Europe. But, as the argument goes, this general “Western” hedonism promoted by capitalistic America, would eventually usher in a return journey to the transcendent faith and genuine Western values. In other words, before they got better, things had to get much worse. I would wager that many present day fundamentalists in America, the children of Calvin and Puritanism, (see Charles Colson’s Beyond the Night: Living in the New Dark Age) would wholly subscribe to such a thesis.

And here is the paradox: Del Noce, in denouncing a West devoid of history, culture, religion, tradition, was advocating precisely what the American anti-Westerners wanted. The West that they rejected was what people like Del Noce wanted to keep, the common transatlantic culture of Christianity, democracy, liberal philosophy, science, the common literary and political traditions; in short, the west of the Enlightenment which did not reject religion, that of a Montesquieu more than that of a Voltaire.

And here is how the misperception developed: outside the United States the attack on the West took the form of Anti-Americanism. In America, especially in Academia, it took the form of anti-Eurocentrism. One party’s target was the other’s goal. Some Anti-Americanists (and one can easily spot them in the debate on Europe) vehemently proclaim that they want to restore those cultural traditions that in America are called Western and are attacked or defended accordingly. More often, the American anti-Westerner wants a rootless, content-less culture. The kind of culture declared by the likes of Del Noce as empty, meaningless, nihilistic and defined as “Weternism.” Indeed all those students shouting “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go” at American campuses in the 80s and 90s would have been quite surprised to find out that, according to their European counterparts, they were not rejecting the West but representing its worst aspects. Oh, the ironies of history!

One modest suggestion and I close: it seems to me that one way of resolving the above described paradox of a West that is hated in America for being European and hated in Europe for being American is to begin to perceive, as Montesquieu and De Toqueville certainly perceived, that culturally we are dealing with two sides of the same Janus-faced complex of institutions which have a common origin. When one returns to those origins one begins to perceive that within Western Civilization, for better or for worse, scientific reason, tradition, consumer culture, secular liberalism, are not necessarily parts of opposites but parts of the New West on both sides of the Atlantic. Once that is understood, the core issue that would then remain to be explored is this: does this New Transatlantic West, the West of the 21st century, know where it is coming from? Does it have a strong identity that will allow it to forge ahead and plan a viable future? Does it have a soul, or should it imagine itself as the Titanic journeying full speed ahead among the icebergs of nihilism? Rather than full speed ahead into the future, would it not be wiser to envision “back to the future”?