The New
Old
Europe, New Europe, Core
Core
term
proposed by Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in their
May 31,
2003 article
"February
15, or What Binds Europeans Together:
A Plea
for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core
Significance
of these two working together
Most
famous philosopher of the 20th Century
A Theory
of Communicative Action
French
philospher
Post-modernist,
Deconstructionist
Arguments
between them, mirror larger cultural, ontological differences between
German
and French cultures, worldviews
Try to
work together, create opportunity for joint action across
Their
Letter:
Published
in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and
Liberation
Argue
that Feb 15 marked the birth of a European public sphere
“brought
Europeans jointly to their feet”
Made
explicit several problems in the EU, and the international system,
namely:
US
Hegemony
The need
for strengthening international law and the UN;
Rifts in
Between
the continental vs. Anglo-Atlantic
countries
Between
the “Old Europe” and the “New
Europe,” i.e., the CE (at that time) applicant countries
CE
European countries
Not ready
to give up sovereignty so long denied them
Brought
out problems lurking in EU
Constitutional
convention,
Calls for
European Foreign Minister
What good
is such a position if there is not common foreign policy (CFSP)?
Thus,
need for CORE EUROPE to step up, band together, do it!
CORE
Europe
Not
small
Franco-German
alliance at center
The
euro-zone
i.e.
the EU 15 (minus
NEED for
not only US hegemony, raw power, military might but also
“the soft
power of negotiating agendas, relations, and economic advantages (6)
Call for
a TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS
Based on
the Common Will of the Citizens
Note link
to Rousseau
They also
note this presupposes common sentiments
Call for
a Europeans “build up their national identities, and add to them a
European
dimension”
Move from
“abstract form of civic solidarity” to an identity based on
“the
consciousness of a shared political fate, and the prospect of a common
future”
[who does
this sound like?]
to “halt
out-voted minorities from obstructing a majority will”
(i.e., against
the war, militarism, etc.)
Ask: are
there historical experiences, traditions and achievements offering
European
citizens the consciousness of a shared political fate that can be
shaped
together?” (7)
[Here too
echoes of
That
there are not answers to these questions already is testament to the
failure of
European intellectuals
**I
agree; what have they been doing instead?
Arguing
esoteric points of theory, method
“The
Treacheries of European Identity”
based on
what?
Many
things that seem to define
e.g.,
Christianity, capitalism, natural science, technology, Roman law, Code
Napoleon, bourgeois-urban form of life, democracy, human rights,
secularization
of state and society
Extend
well beyond it
To the
“West”
And, in
some cases, to the whole world
And, at
the same time, nationalism mitigates against these cohering forces
They
offer the idea that the painful process of learning how to communicate
across
these differences, to institutionalize these tensions can be basis of
identity
Perhaps,
the means of it?
“reciprocal
acknowlegment of the Other in her otherness can also become a potent
feature of
common identity” (9)
In other
words, acceptance of difference as constitutive of Self, society;
pluralism,
multiculturalism
9 –
common agreements
no
naivete about tech
pref for
welfare state as basis for social solidarity
low
threshold for use of force against people
desire
for multi-lateral, legally regulated international order
effective
global domestic policy
within
framework of a REFORMED UN
Process
of identity building both
“natural”
in that it grows out of real common experiences, authentic
but also
“constructed”
consciously
articulated, discussed, emphasized or rejected (10)
Historical
Roots of a Political Profile
“privatization
of faith,” i.e, practice of faith limited to private sphere;
secularization
“For us,
a president who opens his daily business with public prayer, and
associated his
significant political decisions with a divine mission, is hard to
imagine (10).
**11
paragraph 1 extremely important
Party
System that emerged from the French Revolution, often copied
“But only
in
“This
fosters the sensitivity of citizens to the paradoxes of progress.”
“The
contest between conservative, liberal and socialist agendas comes down
to the
weighing of two aspects: do the benefits
of a chimerical progress outweigh the losses that come with the
disintegration
of protective, traditional forms of life?
R do the benefits that today’s processes of ‘creative
destruction’
promise for tomorrow outweigh the pain of modernity’s losers? (11)”
Asserts
that the constitutive experiences are:
1. Faith in
collective action, social solidarity,
commitment to social justice (growing out of workers and CHRISTIAN
socialists
traditions
as
antidote to
“individualistic
ethos of market justice that accepts glaring social inequalities as
part of the
bargain”
2.
horror
and pain of Holocaust created a consciousness of the moral basis of
politics
and
an
absolute rejection of state power to kill; commitment to bodily
integrity
3.
bellicose
past = imperative of developing new, supranational forms of cooperation
need
for mutual limitation of sovereignty
on global as well as nation-state level
4.
experience
of empire, then decline
reflexivity
dubious
role of victors
called
to account for the “violence of a forcible and uprooting process of
modernization”
a
Kantian future??
What
does that mean?
Perpetual
peace based on ability
To
come to reasoned, ethical decisions
Krzeminski
retort
Tone: anger,
resentment
Here
we go again feeling. The Germans
defining
Defining
Kant
Perpetual
Peace
Hardly
enlightened in his views on
Said
they enjoyed on “barbaric freedom” based on raw military power
Historically,
for Germans,
When
it was dismembered, partitioned by
(time
of Kant’s writing) for which it had no one to blame but itself
a
pre-modern nation at turn of 19th to 20th Century
(no
culture here; no middle classes)
as
a beneficiary of
gave
it its statehood
German
intellectuals
only
became more interested
Exclusion
clear message: We are
Guess
what? CE going to have the last laugh
now, because it is now at the table
Get
used to it. Not WE’s lapdog
Where
is
Note:
only 4% of public supported it but only 4000 turned out in
Most
Poles in the middle AND
Have
a different view of
Mil
intervention, force for the right reasons; been hung to dry before,
maybe it’s
their turn to step up to help others become free? Be
on the winning side???
pacification
of class conflicts within the welfare state
self-limitation
of state sovereignty throught the EU