I published my book in France a couple of weeks ago, Europe in Flesh and Bones, with the intention of drawing the ultimate lesson as far as this is possible from my own traumatic past as a European Jewish child arrested by the Gestapo and the Vichy milice.
Françis and his mother in front of the Vichy town hall in 1943
Even at the age of seven, when one perceives all too bluntly and clearly the issues at stake, I had to rid myself of the grip of my bullies by fiercely resisting any intimidation, giving a living substance to what the word resistance can mean. There was no question of cheating or of games-for-adults-only. I discovered then that European History can be more obscene than anything else: that humanism hardly copes with the intervals between these acts, for the play goes on, inexorably, stripped of its literary niceties.
I certainly feel in tune with Jorge Sempruns remarks about the amazing explosion of cowardice in non-Jewish German intellectual circles in the mid thirties, when the Jewish taboo fell so heavily on this strange and disappointing country. Germany indeed was undergoing a self-mutilation process, a kind of intellectual suicide. The vanishing of book dedications to Jews had become a kind of self-purifying exhibitionism: salvation through the gutters of shame.
The Heidegger/Husserl relationship is only one example, symptomatic of many; there are Carl Schmitt examples too, sometimes tempered by exchanges of letters across the Atlantic or the Channel. Quite relevant to the Stimmung (climate) during this period, although from the other side of the mirror, is the fascinating correspondance between Freud, still in Vienna, and Stefan Zweig already in London an eloquent beginning to the first Jewish transcontinental aliya (migrations to Israel). Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Prague, and many other places, not forgetting Poland and the Baltic States were both politically and intellectually seized by this agonising. Simultaneously, the European miracle of a Judeo-Christian symbiosis died, for ever.
The ambiguous dream of a new Jerusalem probably evaporated on the deck of that Exodus. However, Jewish culture, as a common heritage of mankind will certainly not disappear, whereas German culture has certainly undergone a fundamental loss in the auto-da-fe of the murderous Third Reich.
Against this background, and ignoring what childhood actually means, I managed almost spontaneously to become what is maybe a real European, participating in the early fifties in my first peaceful Franco-German meetings discussing anti-semitism, writing about European issues both in France and Germany even before joining the Council of Europe in 1965 , and coming across Carl Schmitt and Albert Speer through either our common publishers or friends.
There were passionate discussions in those days, never forgetting the stimulating beat of the famous BBC drums which kept us hoping and fighting during the dark years of the war, a European war indeed. And at the liberation, I was fortunate enough to come back to my native Strasbourg, only to encounter the unpleasant experience of suddenly being a stranger in my own home. This, also, was a painful European episode, far removed from European humanism. (But better a stranger in hell, than stranger in paradise!)
Goethe used to say die deutsche Seele ist enormidas (the German soul is considerable). He probably meant the European soul. It still remains to be proved that Europe has a soul; but is it actually that important? Isnt a political conscience enough to preserve us from the evils of exemplarity?
Over the years, Heinrich Heines German warning has for me acquired a genuine European dimension: denk Ich an Europa in der Nacht, so werde Ich um meinen Schlaf gebracht! (When I think of Europe during the night, all sleep vanishes.)
Beyond Disneyland and Euro-vacuity
For a while now, a lot of well-intentioned talk and writing has gone on about so-called European identity not to be confused with that pathetic search for European humanism which is also a rather desperate favourite.
Let us be clear: building a political Europe cannot be like window-dressing a provincial pastry-shop where the less adventurous elderly women get titillated by a first and possibly last glance; where the pieces displayed are misleading, in shape, colour and taste, even for the most sophisticated palates; where no catalogues are available for family parties either! Catering for temptation, disgust, mistrust and repulsion has been on the European menu for centuries. The shops inventory is cumulative and not selective. But diet and orgy dont fit together: a lot of bones and uncontrollable overweights as well!
Whereas identity might allow itself to be located through description or perception, humanism in the sense of a so called European humanism can hardly be locked up within geographic borders. European humanism is a narcissistic paradox, a kind of updated placebo to be packed in the first aid kit of belated euro-boy and girl scouts. It is a self-destructive paradox: an intellectual betrayal.
Europe supported by Africa and America, by William Blake (click for bigger image)
On the other hand, I would like to venture the thought that the consciousness of such a paradox of the actual gap between European dream and European realities might be the best product of a humanistic intuition: a kind of realpolitik ideal.
This kind of Euro-consciousness is not at all the same thing as Euro-scepticism: quite the contrary. I gladly join ranks with Jorge Semprun in considering myself as the kind of European who hopes through ruins. How could you ever hope in Disneyland? This is, I believe, no more and no less than the constitutive ability, the point of departure of Europeanity.
The European idea was not born on the imaginary altar of our cathedrals. But medieval canonists ingeniously and perfidiously introduced into its socio-political landscape precisely the monstruous assumption of the sacred nature of power and the state: that confusion between sin, duty and responsibility the linkage between protection, obedience, loyalty and salvation. Gott mit uns is an eternal motto (even when unwritten) on any soldiers belt although not quite a life-belt.
Nevertheless from the mouth of the innocent the truth of the imagination is born, as my friend Pierre Legendre says, author, amongst other books of Le Desir Politique de Dieu (Edition Fayare, Paris). I would not like the tempting formula European humanism to join this virtual catalogue.
Probably the Euro will do more for the creation of a European citizenship than any Gothic church, not to pick out the French or any other particular retro-revolution (since all revolutions end thus). Awareness itself might be a misleading concept, simply because it can be both subjective and objective: it is not value-laden, and has nothing to do with either truth or reality. When it comes to political assessment, consciousness is probably both more accurate and more compelling.
These are some initial reasons for looking away from the misleading notion of European humanism so frequently referred to these days, as I saw for myself again during a recent colloquy on Victor Hugos contribution to the idea of a united Europe. One should never forget the philosophers warning: Society is ill, but it suffers from an illness which kills doctors.
European humanism as democratic politics
So if we ask ourselves what lessons we should draw from the past when thinking about European humanism we should concentrate first on the sum total of what it actually is not and can never be.
If humanism is what we feel it should be why should it not be American, western and universal as well? Does our European record, past or present, allow us Europeans to require a monopoly of superlatives? If such a questionable European humanism existed, would it be a kind of alternative or adapted humanism which required an ongoing inventory permanently in pursuit of an unachieved consensus: a surrealistic exercise where bullies, victims and heroes got mixed up in a frantic bacchanale which could only come to a stop in the over-loaded graveyards of history? Crusades, Inquisition, Magna Carta, Hobbes and Rousseau, Auschwitz and Valhalla, Freud, Stalin and Hitler, Fleming and Dr Mengele; de Gaulle, Churchill, Monnet and Schumann as well!
Looking at this strange catalogue, the words fragility and vulnerability spring to mind, reminding us of what the French philosopher Alain said: something can be true without being either beautiful or great, or good or holy.
When speaking of European humanism, if at all, one should concentrate on the political dimension: a dimension of absolute relativity where democracy is a basic unit for evaluation and Max Webers distinction between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility, its parameter.
This European humanism would constitute a culture for the democratic management of our vulnerabilities. No sooner said, but here again comes Carl Schmitts ancient friend/enemy dialectics and the obsessive question: Quis interpretabitur? A government of the Real cannot exist without a government of those who interpret the Real. So who should do it ? Again we reach the limits of the paradox. Again we touch on the focal point of any political contract: protection in exchange for total obedience.
Indeed Europe is the birthplace of self-destructive convictions: a common heritage of killer bacteria for which political immunology is still in a very experimental stage. Fortunately the European unification process whether it be integration or intergovernmental cooperation cannot pretend to be an exact science. So, there is still room for that technocratic alchemistry which has become quite a European specialty in our times. This being said, I would not like Europe to become a world leader in political decline. But any European uniqueness, positive or negative, would disappear without the centrality of political consciousness: the primacy of judgment over belief. (And yet again I must ask: is this still European? Should it be?)
To be exceptional not an exception
Political observers today are confronted globally with an ongoing process of disorientation. This is especially true for Europe, but not only there. There is an overall questioning of the notion of sovereignty which is undergoing profound change in space and substance. The traditional actors of the political game are changing while new and old actors are still coexisting more or less peacefully.
Traditionally, the sovereign was easy to identify and to locate: this is no longer the case. The anchor places of sovereignty have acquired a more subtle profile and become increasingly scattered across the borders between the political, the economic and the social world. Loyalties therefore get disoriented, and traditional power spheres frustrated.
We have to guard against this creeping process leading to a premature fossilisation of our long standing political landmarks: parliament, political parties, etc. before a new normality can emerge. Even in Europe, the political shop cant afford to close down for the taking of inventories. A genuine European humanism must be able to demonstrate that management of the past and innovation are not only compatible but jointly indispensable, simply because both are unavoidable.
But in addition to this well-known process of globalisation with which we have been confronted now for many years, how could anybody sensible raise the issue of Europeanity or European uniqueness or exception after the events of 11 September? Conceptually, we reached a point of no return on that day. Traditional political references were swept away, and the ultimate political taboos brutally removed. Politics presuppose the perpetuation of otherness in its diversity. So, the basic consensus of any political dialogue, albeit in its most extreme forms, was simply eradicated.
Uncertainty has become the new global enemy. Symmetry of weaponry is no longer required. On the contrary: a new conflict-calculus is born. Political, diplomatic and geographic sanctuaries no longer exist buried for ever by the dust, flesh and bones of the Twin Towers. And what about intellectual sanctuaries? Arent they the suicide of conscience? With the dramatic transformation of the notions of conflict, war and peace and all its related notions terrorist, combatant, prisoner, victim, humanitarian aid and many others acquire new profiles and dimensions. Obviously there is today a tremendous legal if not political vacuum at national and international levels, in the light of which any references to Europeanity or European humanism, as an assumed added value, would appear futile, to say the least.
Such lessons have to be drawn on the broadest geographic scale, in intellectual, political and legal terms as well. If Europe could now resolutely diversify its initiatives in that direction, it might for once demonstrate its ability to overcome its own ethnocentrism and pave the way for some kind of an international humanism. To sum up, an exceptional Europe is certainly preferable to any European exception!
