European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

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304 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYWar and peace; culture and civilization or the road to legalityThe unsociable sociability which dynamises history offers us theunadulterated diagram of its countenance in the phenomenon of war,of war as destructive violence of some against others. Even thoughKant also covers in his descriptions the type of phenomena understoodas “war” in primitive society, more attention is placed on thephenomenon of war as the type of ritualised human action that buildsup self substantiveness in the political praxis, as a system of conflictresolution by armed force and in the instrumentalization of humanlives which have not directly decided on war.In this sense, “war” —and its counterpart “peace”— are the twogreatest potentials of human life which affect the face of history, asstrokes that embellish or distort the very sense of what in that facewants to be culture and civilization. Nonetheless, Kant does not allowus to understand war as an eventuality that could not be thereabstractly. It is more complicated than that. The path that historytravels points at war as something that can cease to exist, becausesomething has been done with it. (This becomes essential since, Ibelieve, for Kant the pure negation of war as a way of postulatingpacifism does not enter into historical reason. Controlling war will be,thus, a difficult job.) However, war is not contemplated by Kant as aphenomenon with a perverse or negative face —which is there— butrather as one fulfilling a function in the social and universal perspectiveof rational action; precisely because it is the most quintessentialexpression of human “unsociabilities” that are emptied into civilization.That is why the role of war in the course of life is literally intriguing:because it is the permanent subtraction of stability that seems to belooking for a life individually and socially centered. War does not allowone to live in peace. This seems obvious. (Even though Kant alsowarned us that life peace is not the peace of cemeteries). What Kantsuggests is that the dreadful intrigue of war is from all pointsimpossible to extirpate, and there is no reason for it to be extirpatedregardless of tempo itself which develops sociopolitical humanmaturation, i.e. the process of civilization.Hence, we cannot be surprised (even though the affirmation isdifficult) by this Kantian anthropological-philosophical theoreticalstatement: “…Therefore, considering the level of culture in whichhumanity still remains, war still constitutes an unavoidable medium tomake it advance.” 77Vid. Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History (1786).
THE ETHICAL DIMENSION IN EUROPEAN IDENTITY 305Nonetheless, what underlies this reflection that initially adopts anaura of lucidity —and I would like to make this clear— is a moralcommitment. There is indeed restless lucidity, the lucidity of reasonguided by interest, urged by self care. In reality, what concerned Kantin his historical epoch was that the system of peace in the despoticpolitical system of European States had made war an omnipresentphenomenon , it had made it inexorably present as a return of thesame. War: an endemic plague that deforms the human face of historywith evil traits because it withers human wishes of more humanity 8 .Kant acutely observed the interpenetrated system of peace/warcalibrating the existing intimate relation between the forms of libertyof individuals in the core of societies, the type of economic structures,generators of wealth and scientific and technical development and thetypes of political organization. Those correspondences in each caseinexorably carry with them, as a thread that weaves them, a differenttype of bet in the game of war. That is the question. Said in otherwords, Kant’s analysis always tries to detect the kind of social individualliberty that each type of structural situation creates, in reference to theideal citizen of a universal civil society, which serves as a regulatingidea. Evidently —and it is implied in what we are saying— what hisreflections of past and present make evident is that the outline of the“universal citizen” advances in the darkness, to say it this way. (In theframe of bourgeois societies that sustain the state system Kant had beforehim when he wrote the Idea..., that citizen is clearly an economic subject—a very important step forward— but not yet fully a political subject...).Therefore, complementarily, it has to be observed that as long as thepower of war is represented and manipulated by historical reasons thatadopt the name of State, it is evident that citizen and State expressanother dimension of the tension between war and peace. 98Let us make a parenthesis about the European wars of the 20 th Century of whichKant could not talk about. In a certain way, their absolute character or “total war”character as Jünger said and thought, would turn out to be a “mortal argument” vis-àvisKantian discourse on war. However, Kant would have thought that man had reactedin a proper Kantian manner after them, when the horror before the almost absoluteexperience of evil that they have implied has carried an evident mobilization of demandsaiming at institutionalising peace, international relations... increasingly so in acosmopolitan code. But this perspective is too challenging, in the frame of thisreflection, for me to simplify it here. I refer among other works to the studies thatappear in Sánchez Durá, N. (ed): Ernst Jünger: Guerra, Técnica y Fotografía Valencia,Universidad de Valencia, 2002.9Kant always refers to the individual in the heart of societies considering him or herthe vitalising element of historical reason. Of course, Kant always paid attention to the
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Inés María Gómez-Chacón (ed.)Eu
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European Identity.Individual, Group
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ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS 914. The Construction of E
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12 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, G
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Opening AddressCamino Cañón Loyes
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OPENING ADDRESS 29throughout histor
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OPENING ADDRESS 31—To gather expe
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OPENING ADDRESS 33European nature a
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1.What do we Mean When we Say Europ
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 39W
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 41O
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 43u
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 45e
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WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY EUROPE 47A
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3.Europe, from the Institutional Re
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EUROPE, FROM THE INSTITUTIONAL REFE
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4.The European Dimension of Educati
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THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF EDUCATION
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100 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL,
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6.European Programmes from SpainEnc
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 113(
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 115S
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 117s
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EUROPEAN PROGRAMMES FROM SPAIN 119A
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7.Is the European Model Being Rejec
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IS THE EUROPEAN MODEL BEING REJECTE
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IS THE EUROPEAN MODEL BEING REJECTE
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8.Boderline Europeans:Nationalisms
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BODERLINE EUROPEANS: NATIONALISMS A
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9.Difference as Destabilizing Facto
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DIFFERENCE AS DESTABILISING FACTOR
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11.What Makes us European? Identity
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WHAT MAKES US EUROPEAN? IDENTITY CO
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12.The Meaning of European Identity
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THE MEANING OF EUROPEAN IDENTITY: P
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14.The Construction of the European
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN ID
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ConclusionTHE CONSTRUCTION OF THE E
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