Speech : Emanuel L. Paparella

New Cultural Paradigms for The Idea of Europe

(Speech given on Thursday April 29th 2004 at The Children’s Museum for the Miami Transatlantic Conference within the Section “Transatlantic Leadership Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges”)

Were we to glance at the description of the venue we find ourselves in [The Children’s Museum] on the TIES web-site, we would notice this invitation directed to all children of all ages: “Visitors of all ages are encouraged to play together, learn, imagine and create.” That invitation could also function as an encouragement to all of us to envision new imaginative cultural paradigms for a new global millennium; what I like to dub new wineskins for the wine of solidarity and shared values. The making of wine can be as much fun as its tasting. As we come together from both sides of the Atlantic in a city that has become the multi-cultural commercial capital of the Americas, we shall need the spirit of wonder and openness of children. For, as a wise man in Palestine, by the name of Joshua the Nazarene, pointed out long ago, a child open to wonder and the unexpected is more likely to understand a parable than a learned self-complacent Pharisee guarding his pearls of wisdom. It is wonder that predisposes us to listen to “the other.”

Ivan Illich, who was an advocate for intercultural communication, gifted us with a great insight found in his book Tools for Conviviality: he wrote there that foreign languages ought to be pursued not so much to communicate with those native to them, but rather, so that we may listen to the particular silences found in the background of all languages, and thereby retrieve the original cultural humus from which they sprang. Notice the metaphor of the germinating seed in tandem with that of the historical journey back to origins. I would suggest that without an in-depth listening, the journey will not begin and any meaningful transatlantic dialogue may forever elude us. In this global village in which we live, there is an urgent need to return to the future for a novantiqua kind of civilization. It is good to have lights on a car to see what’s ahead, but a rear-view mirror is also necessary to avoid a disaster.

A fruitful dialogue is always underpinned by an exchange of ideas, the envisioning of new imaginative paradigms and a courageous execution of those ideas and visions. Let us however be aware of Illich’s caveat: assuming that the soil is good, little will germinate and even less will be gathered in the spring, unless the seed has undergone the rigors and silence of winter. Within that silence we can hope to find the space and the courage for a friendly dialogue. Then we may hope to repair worn out transatlantic bridges of understanding and retrieve shared values. And so, I would urge you to connect the dots and read in between the lines of what because of time constraints will necessarily be a rather schematic presentation cut to bare bones. That is possible if we resort to that wonderful natural endowment of children of all ages, what the Neapolitan philosopher of history and civilizations G. Vico called “fantasia.”

It may prove helpful to keep in mind a few memorable quotes of famous cultural guides and heroes in various fields and have them function as a leitmotif to this presentation. I have chosen four to begin with. The first one is by the poet Paul Valery who wrote this refrain in an essay on European identity: “As far as I am concerned, any people who have been influenced throughout history by Greece, Rome and Christianity are Europeans.” The second is from a statesman, the founder of the European Union Robert Shuman, who said the following: “I never feel so European as when I enter a cathedral.” The third is by the philosopher, Edmund Husserl who in a lecture given at the University of Prague in 1935 stated this certainty of his: “I am quite sure that the European crisis has its roots in a mistaken rationalism.” Finally, the fourth one is by a scientist, Albert Einstein, who declared that “perfection of means and confusion of goals seems, in my opinion, the character of our Age.”

The above quotes shed light on some of the false assumptions based on old paradigms that have ill served Western Civilization. It is generally assumed that a culture war is presently going-on between the two sides of the North Atlantic and we need wise leaders to show us the way to the future. The confirmation for this premise is identified on this side of the North Atlantic in the perception of as a pervasive anti-Americanism currently present in Europe, while over there in Europe it is identified as anti-Eurocentrism, especially in academic circles where one hears constant appeals to de-emphasize Eurocentric notions in the teaching of Civilizations, all in the name of political correctness, multiculturalism and relativism. In Europe one hears pleas for a return to a more authentic European cultural identity that distances itself from a globalizing, pervasive, technological fix-all, market oriented American culture contemptuous of regional cultures; it is that fear that fuels the anti-global movement. Boudelaire already in the 19th century had warned us that “technology shall Americanize us all,” and he was no anti-American. By technology he meant a rationalistic mode of thinking that does away with the poetical. In any case, it seems to me that it is an erroneous assumption to conceive the two cultures as being in different boats going their own way in different directions toward different political destinies. If we recollect the first quote from Valery and grant its validity, we may begin to perceive how misguided such an assumption is. it loses sight of the fact that, despite the particular cultural differences on both sides of the Atlantic, the roots and the trunk of the tree are the same. To shift metaphor, we are in the same boat, and it called Western Civilization; in it we shall float or sink together. That thought alone ought to unite, more than divide us. A civilization this, that goes back to the ancient Greeks who perceived themselves as Westerners vis a vis the Persians, the Romans with Virgil as the grandfather of Europe and an empire that paves the way for the spread of Christianity and medieval Christendom and Scholastic philosophy in Europe, with a Dante advocating a United Europe in his political tract De Monarchia, the Judeo-Christian heritage, the Moslem influence in the Dark Ages, Germano-Saxon ideals of freedom, the synthesis of Graeco-Roman civilization and Christianity that is Humanism, the new beginning that is the Renaissance, the Enlightenment (that of Vico and Montesquieu as well as that of Voltaire); all largely positive elements of Western Civilization.

When Valery says that anyone influenced by the universality of the idea of Europe is a European he does not mean it in a chauvinistic mode, nor as a geo-political reality, nor in Machiavellian-Nietzchean terms of “will-to-power,” or in terms of real-politik. He is simply stating a cultural reality shared by people in Australia and the Americas and Africa and even some parts of Asia. Contrast, if you will Valery’s statement with this one: “…by the favor of universal Enlightenment, it might become possible to dream, for the great European family, of going the way of the American Congress…what an outlook then of power, of glory, of well being, of prosperity! What a great and magnificent spectacle!” Notice if you will, the comparison with America, it looks as if the economic rat race has already taken off; notice also the stress on power and glory. I submit that this is the opposite of Valery’s idea of Europe. Try as you may, the word freedom is nowhere to be found in this statement proffered by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. That may explain why a Beethoven withdrew the dedication to him from his Eroica symphony.

Indeed the cement for a genuine union of disparate people can only be found in the cultural sphere, and not in Machiavellian considerations of “real politick.” The lesson of Italian unification is instructive here: after it was achieved, Camillo Benso de Cavour, one of its architect said: “now that we have made Italy let us make the Italians.” That was like putting the cart before the horse. Unfortunately, even nowadays cultural concerns are more often than not, conspicuously absent from the pronouncements of our political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. Gone are the Monets, the Shumans, the De Gasperis, the Adenauers, the De Gaulles, the Churchills of a generation ago with a vision of the spiritual boundaries of Europe and the assumption that Western Civilization is constituted by an idea: the idea of Europe. Nevertheless, I would suggest that any European of any nationality and faith aware of her/his cultural roots, can also sincerely assert the second statement by Shuman. An atheist and an American such as George Santayana who left Harvard University to go and live in a monastery in Italy, did in fact assert it. As someone deeply concerned with the life of reason, he was acutely aware that one cannot understand the essence of Western Civilization by ignoring the positive contributions of its Christian heritage and influence independent from whether one is or is not a believer. Which is not to deny other influences and shared values, such as democracy, free speech and exchange of ideas, the philosophical-scientific spirit which began together in ancient Greece, all inextricably interrelated.

I have often argued that Europe presents us with a Janus face: on one side Humanism which begins with Petrarch on the other Enlightenment rationalism which begins with Descartes. This too needs to be recognized before we can even hope to recover lost humanistic modes of thinking, often misguidedly considered superseded or synthesized by the Enlightenment. A common bank or a common army, may be useful and even necessary but they alone do not constitute the cement needed to hold together disparate people with different languages. Ideas and ideals are a sine qua non for a genuine union. Moreover, we ought to take heed of what Klaus Held has warned us about only last year. At the end of a brilliant essay on the essence of European culture titled The Origins of Europe and the Greek Discovery of the World he writes that: “A European community grounded only in political and economic cooperation of the member states, would lack an intrinsic common bond and would be built upon sand.” And if indeed we are in the same boat running full speed ahead in the middle of the Atlantic, we need to ask: where are we coming from, where are we heading for, do we have a map and a compass, what are our shared values, what is our common identity as Westerners, what is our Leitkultur, what are our common dangers? Are there icebergs ahead? For indeed even luxury liners declared unsinkable even by God, have sunk, and as that Einstein quote powerfully suggests, it does no good to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic, for similarly, great civilizations have vanished before, Plato called one such Atlantis.

A bit closer at home, Jacques Ellul also sounds the alarm in his The Betrayal of the West. Moreover, Jacques Deridda, in a lecture given at the University of Turin on the 20th of May 1990 asked this crucial question: “To what concept, to what real individual can we today ascribe the name of Europe?” He answers his own question in an essay he wrote later titled “L’autre cap suivi de la démocracie ajournée” where he envisions a future Europe (more of a promise than a reality) that conceives of itself as an idea around the guiding principle of “a mature sense of democracy” placed within the context of Western Civilization. He even suggests that this mature Europe ought to get rid of a geographical capital and opt for a polycentric network similar to medieval universities. As he puts it: “Europeans need to re-discover their spiritual frontiers beyond petty nationalities around the idea of philosophy, reason, monotheism, of the Jewish, the Greek, the Christian, Islamic memory, around Jerusalem, around Athens, Rome, Moscow, Paris.” If nothing else, Deridda has revived the notion that more than a geo-political reality Europe is a still largely unexplored and unrealized idea. Several philosophers have in fact explored this idea that is Europe, and have attempted to answer the question of its essence and identity. Unfortunately, not many on both sides of the Atlantic bother to read what they have to say on the subject; we seem to prefer the media.

I have already mentioned Dante, but within modern times, besides Deridda, we could include at a minimum the following contributors to this idea: Leibnitz in the 17th century, who first identifies the proto-language (Germanic-Celtic) as the fountainhead for the union of the people of Europe, and then Kant who promotes universal values with an ethical component, followed by Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Croce, Ortega y Gasset. With the arrival of the new polity called the European Union in mid 20th century we have Adorno, Berdjaev, Habermas, Gadamer, Havel, Levinas. Should you be interested in exploring the last three mentioned, you may wish to consult our Newropeans on-line magazine, where I have posted my recent research on those philosopher’s contribution to the idea of Europe.

Finally, let us analyze the above mentioned quote from Edmund Husserl. What is he alluding to by that “ mistaken rationalism”? As a philosopher, he cannot possibly be talking about the life of the mind or the life of reason. Rather, he is talking about a calculating kind of rationalism devoid of imagination that ends up making trains run on time but never asks where those trains may be headed for. A rationalism that rationalizes what ought never to be rationalized, that begins with the ego but, as Lévinas points out, fails to realize that there is kernel inside the ego with an ethical component called the self, thus ending up with the logos without the mythos. The kind of reason which has produced political ideologies that substitute religious dogma (the mythos without the logos), what Vico identifies as a cancerous growth of Western Civilization, dubbing it “the barbarism of the intellect.” More particularly, Husserls is referring to the major shift which occurs in the 17th century with the advent of Cartesian rationalism, followed in the 18th century by the age of Enlightenment.

The problematic of the Enlightenment is this: when Descartes in his Discourse on Method does away with humanistic modes of thought, he ushers in rationalism which eventually becomes modern relativism and nihilism. So, we are all “Cartesian rationalists” in the 18th century before we are “technocratic Americans” in the 19th, fascinated, on both sides of the Atlantic, with technological wonders, and obsessed with rational computerized fix-alls. The currents of civilizations’ influences on one another are indeed mysterious. Perhaps E.F. Schumacher explains the matter best when he writes in his A Guide to the Perplexed that: “The change of Western man’s interest from ‘the slenderest knowledge that man may obtain of the highest things’ (Aquinas) to mathematically precise knowledge of lesser things marks a shift from what we might call ‘science for understanding’ to ‘science for manipulation.’ The purpose of the former was enlightenment of the person and his liberation; the purpose of the latter is power. ‘Knowledge itself is power,” said Francis Bacon, and Descartes promised men they would become ‘masters and possessors of nature.’ In its more sophisticated development, ‘science for manipulation’ tends almost inevitably to advance from the manipulation of nature to that of people.”(pp. 53-54). As per Shumacher, the Enlightenment refuses to enlighten itself and considers itself the culmination of full-fledged reason doing light unto itself; everything can be doubted except one’s own method. The concept, abstract reason, logical thinking is privileged at the expense of the poetical. It is reason eating its own tail with no outside point of reference and no reference to “common sense,” a sort of grammar of lunacy which begins innocuously enough with Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” The ability to hear the gods is lost. A sad condition indeed which Kierkegaard calls “the sickness unto death.” Vico who is the culmination of Italian Humanism, offers a corrective to Descartes with his “poetic philosophy” he interprets wisdom and knowledge in a fresh new imaginative mode as “sapienza poetica,” and alerts us that when reason detaches itself from “poetic wisdom” and refuses to retrace its steps back to the wonder of the child, it becomes pure rationalism or the “barbarism of the intellect” best exemplified by Dante’s image of Bertrand del Bornio in a cave in hell holding his own decapitated head as light unto himself. Vico on the other hand, keeps reason and imagination together, he blends the rational and the poetical to arrive at a new understanding of both image and idea, a synthesis that is novantiqua, in between Geist and Leiben.

Closer to our times, Emmanuel Lévinas attacks the whole European philosophical tradition for what he considers its indifference to the ethical and its “totalizing of the other.” He indicts Western philosophers for an uncritical reliance on vast concepts such as Hegel’s “Spirit” or Heidegger’s “Being,” assimilating countless individuals to rational processes and negating their individuality. He argues that this taken-for-granted totalizing mode of doing philosophy in the West denies the face-to-face reality in which we—philosophers not excluded—interact with persons different from ourselves.

I have mentioned Vico, Havel and Levinas merely as shining examples of cultural guides for the construction of new paradigms, the new wineskins for the new Europe. The rest depends on our courage to take responsibility for our existential condition and do something about it. In fairness to European politicians let me conclude with a thought from a from a Spanish Euro-parlamentarian, Raimond Obiols, who on March 4, 2002 wrote the following in the Debate on the Future of Europe: “We Europeans should not ourselves be overwhelmed by the pessimism caused by an inappropriate comparison with the role of the US a political military superpower. We should set ourselves the target of building up civilian power, with a growing capacity for political, diplomatic, cultural and economic influence capable of exporting stability and equilibrium, encouraging and creating positive international consensus by intelligently employing Europe’s enormous potential for “soft power.” And this is how Mr. Obiols defines soft power: “hegemony by means of asserting values, cultural influence, leadership in knowledge and communications. Getting what one wants through attraction rather than coercion.” Obviously Mr. Obiols is proposing the substitution of a Humanistic imaginative paradigm to a tired old Machiavellian one, a peace oriented one to a power-oriented one. In the old days, the days of Thoreau, Ghandi and King it was called “soul power.” Havel has a similar insight when he declared in his Politics and Conscience way back in 1984 that impersonal manipulative forces can be resisted only by one true power we all possess, our own humanity. In effect, Havel is calling Europe back home to its true identity, to the recovery of its soul. He is asking her: Quo vadis Europa?