S-a pus intrebarea: Oare integrarea politica si economica va necesita la un moment dat si crearea unei identitati europene comune?

Si daca da,care va fi natura acestei identitati si care va fi relatia ei cu identitatile nationale deja existente? Sa ne uitam la factorii cu care identitatea europeana a fost asociata in general: Mostenirea istorica culturala a continetului european se bazeaza pe 3 pilieri: ratiunea,justitia si spiritul caritabil. Sunt 3 factori care alcatuiesc adevarata identitate europeana: ordinea si legea romana,credinta crestina si spiritul critic al Greciei, si al patrulea perioada Iluminismului si importanta sa pentru dezvoltarea ratiunii critice. Alte valori care contribuie la alcatuirea identitatii europene: drepturile omului,democratia, guvernarea de catre popor,ideea de pluralism si importanta acordata discursului dialogic? Radacinile Europei sunt cautate intr-un trecut putin indepartate. Imaginea conventionala este urmatoarea - incepe cu "leaganul" civilizatiei europene din Grecia antica,care a produs valorile individului precum demnitatea si gandirea independenta,critica.Dupa asta urmeaza civilizatia Romana,in care gandirea legala este dezvoltata la dimensiuni impresionante (codul civil roman) si in sanul careia s-a nascut si a treia traditie,aceea a crestinismului,care acorda mare importanta spiritului de comunitate.Unii autori adauga a patra traditie,si anume traditia Renasterii,Ratiunii si Iluminismului in care sunt dezvoltate idealurile rationaliste si umanitare. Unitatea culturala a Europei este asadar rezultatul unei traditii vechi,continue,succesive si amestecata cultural,care a produs un amalgam unic care s-a concretizat printre altele in stiintele organizate,protectia institutionalizata a drepturilor omului si institutiile politice democratice. European culture should be diverse and pluralist rather than striving towards political homogeneity.If what was called the spirit of Europe was allowed to die, then political integration would lose all its meaning.Eliot did in fact stress diversity in unity not in a unified organization but in natural, spiritual unity. RELIGION AND SCIENCE AS POTENTIAL RESCUERS OF EUROPEAN CULTURE Many cultural theoreticians of the time came to the conclusion that religion alone can rescue our culture from decay and ultimate destruction. Toynbee saw in Christianity the life force by which Western culture could, through transfiguration, be reborn on a higher spiritual plane as a Respublica Christiana. According to Sorokin, the body and soul of Western society are sick. The cultural crisis was manifest in the fact that our culture was plagued by internal conflicts, by a chaotic syncretism, its worship of anything colossal, and its creative forces had run dry. Nevertheless, he said that this was not necessarily the road to ultimate destruction, since Western culture could be progressing from an age of the senses to a new age of ideas. This could in practice be achieved by reinstating the Christian values and God as the only absolute value. Although religion was in many peoples opinion the only option as the cornerstone of the European identity, there was in fact a second candidate for the job, and that was science.

 The American anthropologist A.L. Kroeber claimed that a certain decline in the creative powers of the arts, in particular, had been evident in Western culture ever since the late nineteenth century. This had been manifest in, for example, the various modern schools devoid of any sense of shape and harmony, in literature, sculpture, painting and music alike. The Wests only hope was, Kroeber felt, therefore science, which unlike the arts had maintained a high standard. Kroeber believed that as long as science and the nations general well-being flourished, Western culture was not in any mortal danger. Europe was neither old nor tired; so far it had always had the sense to rejuvenate itself at the right time. THE TRIPARTITE DIVISION OF KARL JASPERS Jaspers himself relied on three factors which he considered to be the essence of Europe: freedom, history and science. Freedom, he said, meant a sense of justice and reality, and he in fact defined it as a victory over despotism. The second factor mentioned by him, history and, specifically, the need to understand time, was born of freedom. Only in the history of the Western world was the striving for freedom manifest as a quest for political freedom.Freedom also demanded the third characteristic mentioned by Jaspers, science science specifically as an absolute endeavour to get to the heart of everything that could be penetrated. Europe could, in his view, arrive at any ultimate goal, because freedom, history and science knew no borders. CRITIQUE OF THE EUROPEAN ETHOS People also began to have their doubts about science and technology as the means to happiness and bliss,since they also appeared to contain the seed of destruction. The technical world with all its laboursaving gadgets came to be regarded by many as a false paradise that caused disturbances in the human body and soul. Husserl saw European culture as being faced in the 1930s with an irreversible choice in which the descent into barbarianism could still have been prevented by reason. This reassessment was at the same time a return to the pillars of European culture, to the philosophical approach. EUROPEANISM AS A CONFLICT OF VALUES There are two diametrically opposed views of the state of our culture in the present day and age. One is that the European spirit is still alive and thriving and is still founded on a combination of pluralist and shared values. The other view is that Western idealism is dead, that there are no longer any shared values on which to found a European spirit of unity. The death of this idealism is not, however, altogether a bad thing, because some say that only by relinquishing past values is it possible to construct a global culture based on new values. As an example he mentions the tradition of political thought characterized by unceasing competition between the community model derived from antiquity and the individual model born in the late Middle Ages. These conflicting ways of thinking are still causing tension even today, as manifest in, for example, the debate on the welfare state or the nanny state ( adica atunci cand guvernul sau politicile sale

sunt supraprotective si interfereaza in mod nedorit si prea mult cu alegerile personale). Europeans have, within what is in fact their relatively brief history, generated common values that have simply accumulated without ever being ordered to form a harmonious synthesis.The dilemma of European sense and sensibility lies in precisely this mass of values not ordered to form any balanced entity. The European mind is not, according to Knuuttila, therefore very reliable, having a ready tendency to assimilate various fashions, ideals and values. The Finnish marketing professor Liisa Uusitalo claims that there is a constant collision in the European Union between the stress on the role of markets operating in a spirit of liberalism and strivings to develop a communicative form of community. The architects of the European Union have so far not succeeded in finding any balanced compromise between extreme market liberalism and the communicative society valuing community and diversity within it. The next chapter will examine the attempts being made to solve the various value conflicts within the debate on the outlook for a common European identity and its substance. CAPITOLUL 11 - European Political and Cultural Identities GOING TO EUROPE First, we are there already. Second, Europe is not that set of nations but includes also Warsaw, Belgrade, Prague. Thirdly, the Market defines the diversity of Europe cultures at its crassest level as a group of fat, rich nations feeding each other goodies. Fourth, it defines this introversial white bourgeois nationalism as internationalism. Defining identity does nevertheless have its own functional significance in the European Union, for it is a tool for promoting the ECs political legitimacy as well as the goal of evercloser union. The term Europe has not been officially defined. It combines geographical, historical, and cultural elements which all contribute to the European identity. The Commission believes that it is neither possible nor opportune to establish new frontiers of the European Union, whose contours will be shaped over many years to come. Europe can, he said, be divided into different time zones according to the development of nation states; in the case of Europe he identified five such time zones. The nation states (in the sense of states with a uniform culture) in the westernmost or Atlantic zone have the longest history and, according to Gellner, include the European Identity British Isles, the Netherlands and the Iberian Peninsula. The second time zone could be called the Roman zone with France as its historical centre; here the emergence of the nation state is closely tied to the Revolution of 1789 and Napoleonic rule. The third European time zone covers Central Europe and mainly consists of Germany and Italy, where nation states were established in the second half of the nineteenth century. The fourth of Gellners time zones comprises the eastern parts of Central Europe in

which the nation states date only from the collapse of the imperialist AustriaHungary and Russian regimes and of Turkey in conjunction with the First World War. One feature of the political development of this area has been its subjection to Soviet influence from the end of the Second World War right up to the early 1990s. The fifth time zone is described by Gellner as the area covered by the former Soviet Union with the exception of the Baltic republics in the fourth zone. Opposition to the forming of a national identity has in this area been marked throughout the twentieth century, which, according to Gellner, accounts for the fact that it has been strongest and the most difficult to control in the 1990s. Nation states do not all proceed through similar stages to the vanishing of national identity and national frontiers. Although the nation states are much older in the west than in the east, their position has not shown any signs of declining in any of the time zones presented by Gellner. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE The revolutionary concept of nationality was closely tied to the ideals of radical democracy and popular sovereignty. The idea of self-determination thus lay at the core of the early nationality concepts. The individual was seen primarily as a democratic citizen and no longer as the subject of an autocratic monarch or the church. But in the nineteenth century citizenship/nationality became associated with the concepts of nationalism and the state, and in the process lost its former meaning of popular sovereignty. The concept of nationality thus lost some of its idea of free civil action in which each citizen is a free political actor. One popular theme in the European identity debate is nowadays the concept of civil society and its development as a substitute for the diminishing power of the state. Civil society means the political organization of the people in the sphere of the state (parties) or indirect, non-political organization to further individual issues and thus to influence the government (social movements). In this respect civil society can exist only as long as the state exists. FROM FEDERATION TO UNION? Tingsten presented three factors that have customarily been deemed necessary for a federation to be formed. First, it must cover a single geographical area, and in most cases one that is clearly distinct. Second, the federation must have indisputable foreign policy and economic advantages for those involved. And third, it must as a rule have a common cultural tradition and a common language. Nico Wilterdink has also identified three factors in the process of nation formation. As the first he gave the equalization of living conditions in a certain area, accompanied by political democratization. Secondly, the inhabitants of the area must be aware of the borders of the area, which must coincide with the political and cultural borders.Thirdly Wilterdink went on to say that national cultures are not born of their own accord, and that there must be continuity with regard to earlier cultures. Wilterdink stressed that these criteria are only partly fulfilled at the level of European integration. Even though some degree of economic equality is taking place, there are no signs of any great political democratization. The absence of clear borders

is another obstacle to the formation of a clear image of Europe. The idea of European identity will remain relatively vague, the object of lofty reflections rather than a source of spontaneous emotions THE POTENTIAL FOR A COMMON EUROPEAN CULTURAL IDENTITY The question of a new dichotomy in Europe (Smith, 1992). On one side of the balance are historical myths and memories; these do not, however, concern the entire continent and are thus not universally shared. On the other side there is the nonhistorical, scientific culture held together purely by the politicians and economic interests while yet being easily susceptible to change. INTEGRATION AS AN ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL ISSUE According to him, the European Union will enter a federalist stage so long as it satisfies three vital conditions: (a) the EMU really does materialize; (b) the revision of the joint decisionmaking procedure gives the European Parliament a status completely equal to that of the Council of Europe and at the same time broadens the procedure into the main areas of Union activity; and (c) foreign and defence policy is gradually transferred to the Union institutions (Pinder, 1992). A COMMON POLITICAL IDENTITY AND NATIONAL CULTURAL IDENTITIES According to Waever, it might be possible to construct a supranational European identity a sort of European citizenship in the field of politics and economics, European Identity while at the same time adhering to national identities at the cultural level and leaving the decisions on culture to the national governments. In this way we could, he has said, be citizens of Europe while still representing our national and regional cultures. The political construction of the continent would thereby signify a command of the multiple identities.