Europe, or the beautiful Cunning of Reason - by Adolf Muschg
When asked what was the nature of “time” the church father Augustine said: he knew what it was, when people didn’t ask him; but when someone asked him, then he didn’t know. Europe is a similar kind of phantom – but this doesn’t make it any less real. Until 1945 it was impossible to treat the political project “United States of Europe”, “Pan Europe” or “Europa Union” as a subject of sober consideration. Paradoxically, it took a dramatic upheaval of reality: a sudden rush of sobriety to transform inveterate representatives of national or imperial interests into statesmen who saw an association of the countries of Europe as the only remaining option. The Europe of national competition had run itself far too radically into the ground.
This European culture is not organized in Brussels , not even in Paris or Berlin , nor in Biberach an der Riss – although we’re getting closer to the heart of the matter by choosing venues with slightly less grandeur, but with “real” cross-border character. A prominent European, Denis de Rougemont of Geneva , envisaged the growth of his Europe as the combination of the regional with the universal. This cultural network cannot be bound to the geographical surface of Europe , otherwise we would run up against false borders in every direction, no matter where we happen to apply them: in front of or behind the Urals, with or without Turkey . These should never be the boundaries of Europe . Yet it’s boundlessness is in fact limited. Europe tried its hand at boundless expansion in the age of its colonialist empires – “plus ultra” (Latin: ever wider) was the motto of Emperor Charles V – and in the end it ran up against an “absolute” border with the totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin. This very own experience of European history must remain a binding commitment. It must remain a binding commitment for that part of the world which, like Europe , had to learn through its own destruction, that it is only a “part” of the world and as such has to fundamentally adjust its relationship to the whole.
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