European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

300 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYIn short, and to our purpose, I believe we could “summarise”modernity as the position which totalizes the comprehension of thehuman in the socio-political horizon: that is to say, it conceives what ishuman as determined to fulfil a social organization that establishes thelegality of law, in which what is human is fulfilled.In what follows, I will focus on the question raised above. Will I doso in order to answer it? I would not dare to do such a thing. I will limitmyself to pursuing the reflection somehow more concretely, appealingfirst to Kant as the great current reference precisely when it comes tothe problem of the realization of morality in historical life. Kantcalibrated the “divine” sense of the “gods” of modernity subduingthem to the challenge of their never-ending transformation under thecosmopolitan principle. And all under the basic assumption that whatcan nourish, in history, the very slow advance of such a challenge is theabsolute primacy of the dimension of morality in human life.That is why Kant is the author where secularization has, at thesame time, the deepest impulse and the most critical continence andmeasure. Let us try to analyse him closer.Anthropology and Politics: Historical ReasonThe socio-political phase of Kantian thought has been projected inwritings defined as “minor” yet immensely important, indeed the “ripefruits” of his thought. The modesty that it is attributed to them isbased on Kant´s attempts to not tear off the political in order to let itbe seen from its backdrop, from the anthropological question or fromthe existentially pressing question which keeps modernity in suspense:what is man?; what can this species with such a high idea of itselfexpect of itself and of its making in the world?If reason is such a high endowment, why is human life so pitifuland history a process so little gratifying and fulfilling? Indeed, whatexperience throws at us, such as the chain of human facts, is anythingbut rationality: passions, conflicts, violence, war: a tremendous sarcasmis what history gives back to us... How can we explain this? How couldrevolution after 1789 and specially after 1792. The proclamation of the right of peoplesto self-determination questions monarchical law. War is overly determined once againin Europe (which already knew a lot about religious wars) from feelings that appeal totradition and/or the sacred., because the concept of ‘nation’ is used to appeal to boththe “sacrality” stemming from the past and the subtle newly minted ‘sacrality’ thatrepublican France hoists.