Europe

Stefan Elbe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134201280
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There has been a deliberative, but as yet unsuccessful, attempt by scholars and policy makers to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe, which would enhance the legitimacy of the European Union and provide the basis for a European identity. Using a detailed analysis of the writings of Nietzsche, Elbe seeks to address this problem and argues that Nietzsche's thinking about Europe can significantly illuminate our understanding. He demonstrates how Nietzsche's critique of nationalism and the notion of the 'good European' can assist contemporary scholars in the quest for a vision of Europe and a definition of what it means to be a European citizen.

1 Europe

Plato once suggested that one could not imagine a city where the idea of a city was completely lost and no longer recognizable at all. Over two thousand years later one of the pressing questions confronting European policy-makers is whether a peaceful, united, and prosperous European Union can be brought about without the articulation of an underlying idea of Europe. Many committed Europeanists remain deeply sceptical as to whether the political project of Europe can ultimately flourish in the absence of such a unifying vision. They have consequently sought to stimulate considerable public and academic debate about the meaning of ‘Europe’ over the past decade. ‘At no time in history’, one scholar finds, ‘have people talked more about “Europe” than today.’¹ Another concurs, noting that ‘[n]ot since the end of the last “World” War has the notion of Europe in its totality been so incessantly interrogated’.² Yet a third observes how ‘“Europe” has become a powerful and contested issue in political debate’.³ The European debate is thus no longer confined to the institutional, legal, and economic aspects of integration that traditionally tended to dominate the domain; it has also entered the cultural realm by opening up the debate about the deeper meaning of the European idea itself.⁴

This growing engagement with the idea of Europe is one of the most notable developments in contemporary European affairs.⁵ It reflects a greater openness toward ethical considerations regarding the politics of Europe, and marks a partial return to the boundary between the political and the intellectual realms from which the European debate initially embarked.⁶ It is also this emerging dimension of the European debate — this recent desire by Europeanists to deploy a more meaningful idea of Europe — that the following book would like to address in a more sustained fashion. By way of introduction it is worth considering in greater detail the multiple motivations animating this debate, as well as delineating the reasons for why an analysis of Nietzsche's European thought is of considerable relevance within this context.

The legitimacy of the European Union

One important reason for the growing interest in the meaning of the European idea is undoubtedly the pragmatic consideration by European policy-makers that a more compelling vision of Europe is needed in order to ensure the continued public legitimacy of the European Union. As early as 1989 François Mitterrand had argued that ‘[t]he Europe of the Community will not work, in the short-term, if it doesn't have a vision, a perspective’.⁷ The institutions of the European Union need to articulate a compelling and visionary idea of Europe if the project of integration is ultimately to prevail over those who, in his words, ‘grumble, put the brakes on, and pull up in front of any obstacle, however, small’ because they oppose political union.⁸ The wager underlying this account is that the articulation of a more visionary idea of Europe will endow the European institutions with a greater sense of purpose, and will thus enhance their public legitimacy and political influence. In this political strategy it is hoped that long-term vision will ensure short-term policy success.

The 1990s did much to bear out Mitterand's intuition. The debates surrounding the Maastricht Treaty, for example, clearly exposed the underlying fragility of the European political project, and drew attention to grave fears of technocratic domination and the democratic deficit inherent in the hitherto chosen approach to integration. Although Europeanists were quite willing to inform their respective constituents about the detailed aspects of the treaty, they faced great difficulties in convincing their constituents of the benefits of the European Union on the basis of these technical points alone.⁹ How, one scholar understandably wondered at the time, can one possibly ‘ask millions of citizens to think in European terms, to give up the usual national state framework and to adopt a new entity with a symbolic value reduced to rules, regulations and quotas?’¹⁰

In retrospect the Maastricht Treaty has consequently been reproached for its inability to properly engage the European imagination.¹¹ It is frequently also seen as having finally exposed the limits of a solely institutional approach to integration. Although the functional approach may have constituted a solid strategy for embarking upon the European project, it is increasingly seen as insufficient for completing this project. Joseph Weiler, for example, suggested at the time that the disillusionment about the European project extends much deeper than the mere content of the treaty. ‘The Europe of Maastricht suffers from a crisis of ideals’, he found, ‘[a]nd “Europe,” once avant-garde, has, it seems, become … politics as usual’.¹² Michael Brenner concurred, observing that ‘Maastricht, the ultimate embodiment of benign technocratic management, is in one sense the endpoint of a logic that places material gain at the apex of social values. However, it may be a dead end as far as political union is concerned.’¹³ The growing interest in the meaning of the European idea is thus closely tied to the conviction held by many Europeanists that the functional and institutional wager on European integration has reached its limits, and that something more is needed to propel the European project forward in the twenty-first century.¹⁴ Ultimately, the European project as a whole may even stand or fall depending on its ability to succeed in this area. ‘[W]ithout something resembling a “European identity”’, Peter van Ham argues, ‘the process of Europeanization will inevitably grind to a halt or even rupture.’¹⁵

Europeanists plausibly responded to Maastricht with a plethora of calls to provide their fellow Europeans with a more compelling vision of Europe.¹⁶ The President of the Trans-European Policy Studies Association, Jacques Vandamme, exhibited this response when he argued that ‘[a] political entity such as the European Union is inconceivable without the existence of a collective identity for its citizens’.¹⁷ His position was backed throughout the 1990s by Jacques Delors, whose influential support culminated in the financing of a variety of research programmes, spawning several academic studies from political scientists and historians, through to sociologists and intellectuals.¹⁸ ‘Europeans’, Delors famously predicted, ‘will not fall in love with a Common Market.’¹⁹

Yet the success of these attempts has been modest at best. The problem of articulating a more meaningful vision of the European project is proving remarkably intractable even a decade after Maastricht. ‘The Irish “no”, just as the Danish “no” of last year’, the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt observed as recently as 2001, ‘is the consequence of the identity crisis, which the European Union is going through. There is a gap between the European Union and its citizens, a gap which since Maastricht has not decreased.’²⁰ We currently have no idea, Romano Prodi echoes his predecessor as President of the European Commission, about how to delineate the ‘soul’ of Europe.²¹ If anything, Prodi's concern is becoming more acute as the European Union contemplates not only deeper integration but also eastward expansion, raising yet more questions about what it means to be European and what the European enterprise ultimately stands for.

Europe's cultural heritage

This planned eastward expansion of the European Union has also generated a second reason necessitating more sustained reflection on the European idea. To many eastern European intellectuals ‘Europe’ represents far more than an expedient political arrangement; it forms a deeply held value. As the European Union expands into central and eastern Europe it must, in their view, begin to reflect more plainly the depth of Europe's cultural heritage. In 1984 Milan Kundera had already been able to provoke intense debate on the European idea by voicing his concerns about the state of the European imagination in his widely read article ‘The Tragedy of Central Europe’. At a time when Europe was still divided by the Cold War, Kundera openly lamented that ‘western’ Europeans no longer cherished a common European idea. Kundera illustrated his argument by recalling the plight of the director of the Hungarian News Agency who, in November of 1956, had dispatched a telex to the world alerting it of the Russian attack on Budapest. The dispatch ended with the following words: ‘We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe’.²² In order to make this latter claim intelligible, of simultaneously belonging to Hungary and to Europe, Kundera emphasized that to a Hungarian, a Czech, or a Pole the word ‘Europe’ is not a geographical expression but a ‘spiritual notion synonymous with the word “West”’.²³ Ironically, the plight of the director of the Hungarian News Agency had thus revealed that the:

real tragedy for Central Europe … is not Russia but Europe: this Europe that represented a value so great that the director of the Hungarian News Agency was ready to die for it, and for which he did indeed die. Behind the iron curtain, he did not suspect, that the times had changed and that in Europe itself Europe was no longer experienced as a value. He did not suspect that the sentence he was sending by telex beyond the borders of his flat country would seem outmoded and would not be understood.²⁴

The speed with which the borders of ‘Europe’ became redefined after the Second World War exposed all too clearly the extent to which the underlying cultural unity of Europe had evaporated in light of the new geopolitical realities. Kundera's desperate plea, of course, was to not forget ‘central’ Europe, which undoubtedly belonged to Europe, whereas Russia did not. In his view the political frontier had been disastrously misplaced following the Second World War — a fact that could not be obscured with the passage of time.²⁵

When, in the late autumn of 1989, the Germans collectively razed the Berlin Wall to the ground, effectively abolishing this geo-political frontier, the unexpected prospect of expanding the European Union eastwards provided an expedient historical and political context for Vaclav Havel to continue the line of argument opened up earlier by Kundera. In a speech delivered to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1996 Havel maintained that the European Union found itself at a difficult crossroads, conducting important negotiations about its future, while simultaneously facing growing doubts about the whole integrationist cause. His appeal was that:

Europeans should give deeper thought to the historical significance of their magnificent unification effort, that they should look for the true and innermost reason behind it and for its broader mission, that they should reflect upon their relationship to the world as a whole, to this future, to nature, and to the grave dangers looming over humankind today.²⁶

Havel thus remains such an exemplary figure in the current debate not just because he believes in the importance of an overarching idea of Europe, but because he also wants the political project of Europe to reflect the spiritual depth of Europe's cultural heritage. As Europe goes ahead with its unification ‘it has to rediscover, consciously embrace, and in some way articulate its soul or its spirit, its underlying idea, its purpose, and its inner ethos’.²⁷ In this account the legitimacy of the European Union resides not merely in its ability to generate widespread attachment of the European publics, but more importantly in its ability to reflect this longer cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. In contrast to the more pragmatic argument that a meaningful vision of Europe would advance the political agenda of the European Union, he finds on the contrary that there is a deeper European heritage to which the political arrangements of the European Union must remain true, and must actively cultivate in the European consciousness in the years ahead.

A European community

Yet a third reason animating the growing interest in the idea of Europe is the particular understanding of community that informs a significant body of literature on European integration. This conception of community emphasizes the importance of shared values and identities for bringing about a genuine European community — a European Gemeinschaft rather than just a Gesellschaft, to draw upon Ferdinand Toennies's broad distinction. Diversity is greatly valued by Europeanists, to be sure, but it is also widely felt that underlying this diversity there has to be some common sense of unity if a genuine European community is to emerge in the twenty-first century.

This conception of community as shared basic values and identities has accompanied the European endeavour from the outset. The Treaty o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Europe
• Routledge Advances in European Politics
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Europe
• 2 God or nothingness?
• 3 Labyrinths of the future
• 4 Europe wants to become one
• 5 We good Europeans
• 6 Free thoughts
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index