Hannah Arendt in 1944. Portrait by photographer Fred Stein (1909-1967) who emigrated 1933 from Nazi Germany to France and finally to the USA. Fred Stein/Press Association. All rights reserved.In this Festrede, I will try to use an Arendtian inspiration (the "right to have rights” and “citizenship in the making”) to address current developments in the crisis of European construction, contradictory aspects of Europe’s unity and disunity, as well as the prospects for a “new foundation”, taking Europe as an institution whose foundations are neither to be found in a transcendent revelation nor in some eternal natural rights, but purely in the action of those human beings who jointly apply their diversity to its constitution.[1]
I have relatively little time, therefore I must remain at a very general level, only touching superficially on many questions which deserve a complex discussion. Still, I want to frame a problematic that brings together all the dimensions which need to become correlated if we want to understand what kind of history is now affecting us, what the choices are that now lie before us, and also why we have problems in defining them clearly.
In the first place, I will describe what I suggest we might call ‘the double bind’ of Europe: on the one hand, a political constitution of Europe is more necessary than ever, in the best interest of its population, and even others in the world; on the other hand, it has become indefensible and unsustainable in its current form. To follow, I will discuss the conditions required for a “New Foundation” of Europe. This has become a widely debated concept, albeit interpreted in contradictory ways, but in my view these versions are still not radical enough. Finally, I will invoke a Machiavellian principle (which is typical of the “political theory” whose legacy Arendt was reclaiming) to discuss how such a New Foundation could also be related to the origins of European Construction in the after-war period.
