Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

34 Bernhard Giesen
foundation of European identity. Others – the Enlightenment, the idea of civil
equality and civil rights, the individual as the source of creativity and carrier of
rights in contrast to the authority of the state, the separation of state and religion,
the constitutional nation-state – are of similar importance and have been exported
to other areas of the globe – mostly even without keeping a mark of their European
origin. But confessing the collective guilt of the past may provide a European identity
that can neither be accused of missionary triumphalism, nor be regarded as
darkening the future of Europe.
Notes
1 This concept is largely borrowed from the US paradigm of national identity.
2 Even the rule of the Staufian emperor Frederic II come close to this model for the
political system of empires see Eisenstadt (1993) and Mann (1986).
3 For a critical perspective on the modernising efforts of absolutist states see Scott (1998).
4 It is less easy to find such nodes in Germany or Italy where networks of small university
towns did fulfil the same function.
5 The myth of the divine king sacrificing himself was quite common in African kingdoms
too. See Mircea Eliade (1963).
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