--Karl Jaspers

There is little doubt that Europe finds itself at a paradoxical turning point. The rejection of the proposed Constitution is a mere symptom of a deeper malaise. Europe’s institutions have so far failed to generate what every political community needs in order to survive and grow: a feeling of belonging that goes beyond a, by now, parochial nationalism and the acknowledgment of a common purpose. This is another way of saying that it is not clear to the outside observer why Europeans wish to be together and what their shared vision and purpose might be.

The proposed Constitution reads like the language of accountants and bureaucrats rather than that of political visionaries and founding fathers that comprehend what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. Now the very word constitution has been abandoned and we are back to a mere banal treaty. And here is the crux of the challenge, in my view. A vision is not born overnight. Community values and bonds evolve over a long period of common experiences with historical, and even mythological, experiences which give that experience the appearance of having evolved naturally and organically. In other words, only a vision can show the path leading to a collective or individual identity that European unification requires.

This short preamble leads to the urgent question: are there previous examples in European modern history of such community building at a continental level from which Europe could draw for inspiration? I see two such periods of community building:

1) Medieval Christianity culminating in the 13th century with a community united around a common faith, with Rome as its unifying power center. It should not be forgotten that St. Peter’s successors as Roman pontiffs oversaw a network of Church-run universities which educated cultural elites in one universal language (Latin) and a common curriculum. Even the churches had a common gothic or Romanesque style with a common calendar and liturgy. Aside from purely religious or confessional considerations, it cannot be denied that this medieval Christianity was by its own nature European.

2) The “Republic of Letters,” lasting from Petrarca and Erasmus till the Enlightenment. As vernacular languages displaced Latin, religious discourse gave way to observation and analysis with an unlimited faith of sort in reason and scientific progress. The word Renaissance literally means re-birth. What was reborn was Greco-Roman civilization, but it was not as a slavish imitation; rather it was as a synthesis with Christianity. A communication network was set up which allowed rapid dissemination of ideas and a common humanistic spirit; those ties were reinforced by travel so that it was natural for a Montesquieu to utter statements such as “Europe is just one nation made up of many.”

May those two communities function as key reference points for a genuine European identity? At first sight those two communities’ goals seem to be divergent: one belongs to the sacred and the other to the secular. They have at times been at loggerhead with each other beginning with the struggle for investitures in the medieval period. Many in the modern world consider them antithetical and mutually exclusive; a sort of contradictory essence of the European spirit. Yet, I’d like to suggest that the only hope for a genuine European cultural identity is the affirmation of both medieval Christianity as a community of faith and the modern era’s community of reason. A Thomas Aquinas, who saw no contradiction between faith and reason, could well indicate the way to harmonization of the two. He however considered imagination and the poetical as integral part of reason.

By that standard the preamble to the proposed, and failed, European Constitution is utterly inadequate. Initially the drafting Convention refused to even mention the Judeo-Christian heritage of Europe in the preamble and cited only the Enlightenment tradition. At the convention’s opening ceremony, the chairman of the Convention Valerie Giscard D’Estaing merely paid homage to the Greek pagan goddess Europa. Thus a thousand years of European heritage were effectively bracketed.

While a compromise was eventually devised that mentions a European spiritual heritage, its language and its message is weak and obscure. It was not too surprising for me, and I predicted a year ahead that such a kind of bureaucratic Constitution would be unable to bring the EU closer to its citizens. It failed to speak to them on why Europeans should have came together in the first place, why they are staying together and what exactly they want to do together. In other words, it failed to speak about Europe as an idea and provide a noble vision for all the people.

PART ONE
PART TWO