European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

16 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYmodel to the present-day hierarchy of values”. He asserts that the meaningof Europe is the result of what Humanism has historically meant forEducation and stresses the role of schools as the instrument to educateyoung people both in moral autonomy and in citizenship awareness.In the chapter The Ethical Dimension in European Identity, ProfessorTorrevejano raises the subject from the present-day scenario,interpreting the concept of Europe as an idea which integrates andextrapolates —at least intentionally— the domains of category types“state” and “nation”, categories which constitute “the highest symbolicvalue of modernity”. Thus, Europe should be regarded as the singularreality which has constituted lifestyles whilst reflectively and criticallyarbitrating the concepts that theorize them and legitimize them.In this sense, what we understand by modernity essentially belongsto Europe. In this sense too, the identity of Europe, which can beinterpreted as a rationality project, appears as a task demanding what ishuman, embodied in the value of freedom. If this is so, Europe´s ethicalidentity, beyond being acknowledged within the cultural systemexpressing it, is a question open to the ways in which that task can becurrently continued. The task has various fronts: on the one hand, theforging of a political conformation that deeply examines the “good”within the liberal democratic state, as a domain of law, all the moreuniversal the more it can appear as a unity-community of differences;on the other hand, the delving into understanding morality as theunfailing structure of what is human. Lastly, says Torrevejano, if it makesany sense at all to talk about the ethical dimension in European Identity,Europe cannot be configured as a fortress in front of any external space.In this respect, Margarita Usano, in her chapter entitled Difference asa Destabilizing Factor, contributes some statistics about population andimmigration and gives us a close overview of the concepts of humansecurity, globalization and anti-globalization movements, citizenship,active and equal democracy as well as of the key themes of Educationfor Development, which lead us to the conclusion that acceptingdiversity, he and she who is different, demands experiencing forms ofcoexistence of which we can all learn. It is not only about tolerating butabout building social peace, indispensable for human development.In their respective contributions, these authors set out “thenegotiation of a global social and environmental contract” in whichEurope would have a prominent position. In this realm, the messagesof solidarity, peace and sustainable development acquire a meaningcorresponding to our values.On her part, Professor Donnaruma brings up the issue that theEuropean Union currently has “two objectives: to conclude the process