In Search of the European Identity: A Return to Ancient Greek Tradition

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In Search of the European Identity: A Return to Ancient Greek Tradition

Today we can witness the formation of a truly interdisciplinary discourse, built upon attempts to explain multiple transformations in contemporary society and fueled by ongoing globalization and informatization of the life world. In the framework of this discourse, many classic reflections on social reality are being revised. The focal point of the discussion deals with two key problems that represent a major shift in social theory: the future of the nation-state and the construction of new types of social identity. The discussion is closely connected with active debates about the future of European integration. Therefore, much attention once again is paid to the question of Europe's heritage and its historical, cultural, and political origins. The philosophy and sociopolitical tradition of ancient Greece are seen to be at the core of this heritage.

The point I would like to stress here is that conceptual understanding of the European identity and the legitimacy of the European Union should be perceived in relation to the project of European modernity, which in turn has its roots in ancient Greek cultural tradition. Following a classic reading of the idea of modernity—human consciousness as a key to understanding reality, belief in rational universal laws, applying rational analysis, perceiving progress as a law, understanding conflict as leading to universal progress—we can see that its core values originate in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations (Finger 1993). In particular, these are the originally Greek notions of human reason, humanism, and democracy, together with the Roman emphasis on civil law and technological transformation. These ideas found a renaissance in the time of the European Enlightenment and constitute the project of European modernity. Contemporary discourse on European identity continues this project. This discourse is closely interlinked with the idea of Europe, which throughout its history has served as both a political idea and a cultural grounding for it (Pagden 2002). But now, owing to the free-floating character of the discourse, the basic concept of Europe today has become dereferentialized and somewhat vague.

The topicality of the problem of identity and its relationship to the politics of treating differences in the contemporary era—we would like to call it the reidentification era—is indisputable. Beginning with the collapse of the USSR in 1989, the world community was dragged into an ongoing process of reconstruction in the arena of political and symbolic influence. To consider this reconstruction as a purely institutional shift in fragmented national societies of the former so-called socialist camp would be an oversimplification. The crucial social fact that has led further social transformation processes inside the separated countries of the fallen giant and far beyond was the decay of existing social identities (collective and individual alike). Deprived citizens of the Soviet Union once again had to answer the question “who are we?” because the key referent of their civil, political, and to a great extent social identity—the political and ideological body of the USSR—could no longer perform its duties.

However, the need for reidentification has also swept the citizens of countries outside the borders of the USSR. With the disappearance of such an influential agent of world politics, they have lost the “enemy” image attached to the Soviet constellation, which fed the construction of their own identity. Consequently, collective identities that had been already formed in the countries of Western Europe, the USA, and other allied anticommunist states were bereft of their antipode—the “Other.” A clearer illustration of the importance of the “Other” in shaping collective identities can be found in Samuel Huntington’s famous Clash of Civilizations (1996).[1] This, however, is only one of the possible patterns of identity construction. In contemporary discourse on European identity, it is usually labeled “exclusive” and “negative,” which is mostly inherent to national identities (Žagar 2001; Kantner 2006).

Uncertainty in defining the “Other” has led to growing diffuseness of the “We.” As Gerard Delanty (1996) put it, describing this reidentification in the modern process of Europeanization, the eastern frontier is becoming more like so many national borders within the EU: flexible, negotiable, and porous. Eventually and evidently, this lack of shared collective we-feeling can be found in the contemporary struggle to construct a c ommon European identity. The concept of European identity was reborn in the process of integration among countries on the European continent that formed the European Union—yet another powerful global geopolitical actor and a meaning-formation centre. The EU became a new supranational political body that took on the mission of integrating the historically and culturally torn nations of Europe to bring “peace and prosperity” to the continent. Yet, in the ideas that were formulated to realize this union, Europe is perceived not merely as a continent or a certain geographic locality, but rather as a cultural tradition. Being a part of this tradition meant sharing the basic (or “core”) European values, such as democracy, Roman law, natural human rights, and more. This notion of common cultural roots sustained the political will to build common institutions and the belief in their effectiveness. But to speak of Europe as a culture would be incorrect, due to some indisputable distinctions between national cultures of the European countries. This is why Europe is mostly referred to as a cultural space, or a cultural history, rather than a culture of its own. The focal point, as well as the horizon, of this history is most commonly thought to be found in ancient Greece. Such views are rather widespread in the domain of German scholars, who have demonstrated their philhellenic attitudes in explaining the origins of both European identity and German national identity (Breger 2006).

Another peculiar point in the construction of the European identity is the way in which difference is perceived. Whereas in national identities the image of the “Other” is used to stress the homogeneity of the “We,” in the case of European identity internal differentiation is recognized as the inherent characteristic. Moreover, the issue of difference is understood not as disruptive of identity, but conversely as a means of social progress and creative power. This understanding stems from valuing pluralism and tolerating difference as the key principles essential for building democratic institutions in culturally different European states. The European Union’s well-known motto “United in Diversity” reveals this message quite clearly. Thus the European identity’s lack of cultural grounding is implicitly compensated for with political intent.

Although this seems at first sight a skilful way of sidestepping the problem of cultural differences, European identity remains a blurred concept, if it is realistic at all. Its construction and formulation remains strongly related to the image of the “Other.” In 2003, when worldwide attention was brought to the beginning of the Iraq war—with US troops leading the campaign—debate about contrasting the European identity to that of America started as a reaction among intellectuals. As a clear example of this debate comes a joint insight into the matter by the two respected theorists Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, who emphasized the distinctiveness and autonomy of European political and cultural values. In their view, “Christianity and capitalism, natural science and technology, Roman law and the Code of Napoleon, the bourgeois-urban form of life, democracy and human rights, the secularization of state and society” have become the common property of the West, if not indeed much of the world as a whole (Habermas and Derrida 2003:294). However, Europeans possess a number of distinctive features that have been attained through centuries of living together and sharing a common legacy, and form a priori constructs of identity. An important point of Habermas’s thesis is that he acknowledges the European identity as a constructivist project. He understands European identity as a matter of conscious choices and distinguishing between “the legacy we appropriate, and the one we want to refuse” (Habermas and Derrida 2003:295). This logic leads Habermas to articulate a list of “core European values,” which he presents in a way that displays the deep divergence in culture and traditions as compared with America.

Such an approach to defining European identity unfortunately does not show anything conceptually new. As Volker Heins ironically noted, “The place once held by different eastern others in European identity formation has … been taken by an imagined ‘America’” (Heins 2005:434). A detailed critique of this way of perceiving European vs. American can also be found in the work of Krishan Kumar (2008). We tend to agree with his main argument that the path of radical disassociation of Europe with the USA will most probably lead us back to a “fortress Europe” that does not correspond to the cosmopolitan European project that Habermas and Derrida both wish to dedicate themselves to. An alternative and more positive path to constructing a European identity lies not through burning the bridges and cutting Europe off from the rich historical relations with its neighbors—be it the United States or Eastern European countries—but through recognizing Europe’s rich experience of international and intercultural alliance.

In this context, as another powerful legacy from ancient Greek times, comes the concept of cosmopolitanism. It has recently been picked up by social scientists as a handy explanatory force to analyze contemporary Europeanization and its future possibilities. Cosmopolitan thought has its roots in ancient philosophy, but it emerges as a modern political and philosophical project in Enlightenment thought (Fine and Boon 2007). Its contemporary rediscovery places it as an alternative political vision to neoliberal concepts of a global market.

Cosmopolitanism means—as Immanuel Kant argued 200 years ago—being a citizen of two worlds—”cosmos” and “polis.” Literally translated from the ancient Greek κοσμοπολίτης , it means “citizen of the world.” The concept can be traced back to the Cynics and Stoics of antiquity (Diogenes, Democritus, and Hippocrates). With the political decay of Greek city-states after the Peloponnesian war, local patriotism came to be seen as a negative and limited conception. It was especially in the time of Macedonian and Roman dominion, when the city-states lost their independence and importance, that citizens began to feel themselves attached no longer to a polis but to a bigger entity, namely the world. The concept of cosmopolitanism has developed from a growing debate about difference and cultural otherness: “The moral difficulty of cultural relativism was the central issue of the historical writing of Herodotus, and exercised the Greek imagination in its confrontation with the outside world. The problem of strangers lay at the roots of Greek political thought about the preservation of the polis” (Turner 2002:51). In a positive sense, cosmopolitanism grows out of the perception of the unity of humankind, which subordinates the interests of fractional states and individuals to the common good of mankind as a whole.

Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande (2007) argue that subsequently—after its first appearance in ancient Greece—the concept of cosmopolitanism always played a role in European societies when they found themselves confronted by fundamental changes. Up to the present time cosmopolitanism has developed a wide range of meanings, expressed in a plethora of combinations with adjectives or nouns, such as: universal cosmopolitanism, banal cosmopolitanism, realistic cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan nationalism, and cosmopolitan patriotism (Pichler 2008). In due course, ways of understanding cosmopolitanism multiplied. An attempt to summarize and reflect deeply on this variety of meanings can be found in Vertovech and Cohen 2002: a condition; a philosophy or world view; political cosmopolitanism; attitudes or dispositions; practices and competencies. This shows that today there is no single view of the concept of cosmopolitanism, but rather a range of ideas that have in common the attempt to characterize contemporary Europe and its future perspectives as a supranational constellation.

According to Ulrich Beck’s view, the key element in the formation of a cosmopolitan spirit in Europe is difference. Differences ought to become a common value and be understood as positive implications of peaceful and prosperous coexistence. “In a cosmopolitan perspective, it is vital to perceive others as different and as the same—something that is ruled out by both hierarchical ordering and universal equality. Whatever is strange should be regarded and evaluated not as a threat, as something that brings disintegration and fragmentation in its train, but as enriching in the first place” (Beck and Grande 2007:71). Such cosmopolitan tolerance must therefore be based on common norms, which ensure society’s integrity when facing differences. Thus the idea of cosmopolitanism connects tolerance and difference to universal norms, and brings together unity and difference.

A simultaneous recognition of similarities and difference comes as a distinguishing feature of the contemporary cosmopolitan project. The question here is whether the mere recognition of difference is enough for a substantive collective identity to emerge. Due to the “polynational, polyethnic and multicentric” state of current European reality, Gerard Delanty (2003) sees the main challenge for the future of united Europe in finding a way to accommodate already existing multiple divergent cultural identities. His suggestion is to “reimagine European history,” not limiting it to the history of nation-state formation or a single civilizational model fixed in territorial frames. Instead, he proposes to approach the study of European history using civilizational analyses.

Delanty’s key argument is that European history should be seen as based on the interactions of three “civilizational constellations”—different, yet all having their historical origins in ancient Greece—that over time split and produced three “paths to modernity.” These are: (1) the Occidental Christian constellation; (2) the Byzantine-Slavic Eurasian constellation; and (3) the Ottoman Islamic constellation. Delanty argues that “European modernity has been shaped in the image of not one modernity but all three in the process of their historical interaction” (2003:16). With this, he stresses that the Greco-Roman vision of European history and its specific project of modernity—which evolved through Christendom, the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightment, the secularization of the state, and cultural rationalization—represent only one side of the modernity constellation. The meeting of Greek and Jewish cultures, the religions of Islam and Christianity, and its Greek and Latin versions has made possible different “modernities” that together constitute the heritage, the present, and the future of Europe.

These three civilizational constellations, according to Delanty, are characterized by: (1) distinctive geopolitical or spatial configurations, (2) shared paths to modernity, and (3) distinctive cultural models (2003:17). But to our way of thinking, the most important feature of this division lies in constructing distinct types of collective identities which at present can equally claim to be European. In conclusion, Gerard Delanty notably states that “European identity becomes a plural, perspectival discourse consisting of many languages, civilizational models and political projects” (2003:21).

An important corollary is that contemporary Europeanization processes—enlargement, integration, and construction of a common identity—should be regarded as multiple appropriations of the Greek historic and cultural background, where pluralism comes as the genetic trait. In this discourse, ancient Greece is presented not only as a realm of both cultural identification and otherness, “the epitome of Europe.” Rather than “one” Greece, a multiplicity of often contradictory appropriations—Apollonian and Dionysian, Doric and Corinthian, emphatic and critical—has contributed to the articulation of European identities in different historical moments. Plurality is thus inherent in the discursive formation of multiple projects of European identity. The multidisciplinary character of the discourse on European identity appears as yet another endorsement. We can conclude that plurality is probably the most important and characteristic trait of Greek, and thus European, cultural tradition. Yet even if we perceive difference as positive for processes of social cohesion, this does not abolish the historical lessons of the European continent whether united in conflict or divided. Whether it is possible to generate a grounded collective identity and a stable framework of political institutions on the basis of this plurality is a matter yet to be revealed empirically.

Bibliography

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Delanty, G. 1996. “The Frontier and Identities of Exclusion in European History.” History of European Ideas 22:93–103.

———. 2003. “The Making of a Post-western Europe: a Civilizational Analysis.” Thesis Eleven 72:8–25.

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Footnotes

Note 1
We tend to disagree with the author's emphasis on the “enemy” image as the basic constituent to form collective identities on the scale of large social groups. Although Huntington refers to the concept of civilizations, his arguments about identity crises refer to a certain concrete modality of identity-being that can only be analyzed in relation to real social groups. In the case of analyzing civilizations, these can be nations, ethnic or religious groups, or cross-national sociocultural organizations.