I posted this on my (private) Facebook page a few weeks back, just to vent. Since it resonated with quite a few people, I am reposting it here.
I thought it was a platitude, but given the sea of self-congratulatory discourse about Europe (here’s an example for those who read Italian, but there are plenty) we seem to be surrounded with, maybe it bears saying after all. So here you go.
Europe is not a worthy ideal because the region has had the best art, philosophy, and literature in the world, or because its history and its present constitute a beacon of civilisation, freedom, and rights. It is not the only part of the world that has distinguished itself for amazing creativity and innovation, and it has been on the wrong (very wrong) side of history for much longer than it has not. If Europe is worth championing as a political ideal, it is because, however imperfectly, it represents the quite opposite thought: that we can gather around an acknowledgment of our mistakes, a reckoning with our crimes, and create something better because of it, motivated by the desire not to repeat those mistakes and those crimes. In that, its founding values are unique, and maybe uniquely modest. De facto, that has only happened fairly superficially, very selectively, and often hypocritically – but it has been one central regulative ideal for the past 80 years, and one still worth supporting. If you go on and on about how great Europe is and always has been, you actually betray that very ideal.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
otto 04.28.25 at 10:07 am
Interesting post. I think the EU has always been presented in part as “Europe learns from its big mistakes”, quite rightly. I dont think however that requires a generally miserable attitude towards the European past or present, which would supporting European integration like some sort of Maoist “struggle session”, likely counterproductive for policy institutions that already have limited popular appeal. The EU should also be supported by people who think Europe is great and enjoy celebrating its particular music, literature, religions etc.
BTW the EU can also be just straightforwardly presented as a “pretty good practical solution” to trade politics/other international externality concerns, without taking any position on European history and its crimes etc.
Ray Vinmad 04.28.25 at 10:25 am
Even thinking about Europe as the villain of the world makes Europe seem central to the world. I am guessing that idea of world spanning inevitability would be one of the things to get away from, even if it is conceptually difficult to do this with the Eurocentric worldview people tend to have, and also because Europe has shaped the whole world., But making European culture part of some narrative of world-historical inevitably is one of the mistakes of the Euro-enamored rightwing.
Or maybe I think this because I am thinking about the USA in its particular moment as fading now. If I had to explain the value of the USA in case it all burns up in the current fire I would want to think ‘why did this nutty and sometimes very horrible thing but also fascinating society happen the way it did–this US culture, this whole process of US rise?’ Thinking about it from a distance helps to genuine appreciate what it was–what it would look like from many years later. Almost the way you would appreciate a person more holistically if they were dead and gone.
Most of what is of value in the particulars of any place or culture or period are arbitrary because it didn’t have to be this way–and something else could have existed instead that was equally valuable. What is valuable about any contingent thing like a political culture might be similar to what is valuable about any unique event or landscape–just that it exists can be valuable. We can champion it because it’s there. It doesn’t have to instantiate any universal or timeless thing of value. Maybe it would be good to get distance from it to see it more clearly–the way that people do with an ancient culture ‘the vanished kingdom of such-and-so.’ Look at all the wacky and terrible things they did! Why did they do these? Even if Europe is not disappearing.
To clarify–I’m asking if Europe has to be valuable as a political culture in any universally recognizable sense (thought that’s an option) –or just valuable to the Europeans themselves, for some very specific reasons, and concrete interests they have. And whether it is valuable in the future might be clarified by the process of focusing on what they might continue to want to happen. The specifics were arbitrary just like the specifics of a species are arbitrary–but they can still be valuable anyway. The worth to all of humanity at large is that it is a demonstration of what people can do together–both in its admirable and cautionary tale aspects.