European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

THE ETHICAL DIMENSION IN EUROPEAN IDENTITY 311Secondly: Moralization, fundamental openness. This could appearheterodoxical, speaking in Kantian terms. However, I say it provocatively,trying to open a wound, which allows us to adequately relate, withoutconfusing them, “moralisation” as an effectual dimension in historyand morality itself in its essentiality. With this I refer to suggestions Ifind in Kantian texts which examine the moral deficit of civilization,when situations are embedded in it which restrict civilised fulfilment.Kant expressly says that such situations “restrict the work towardsmoralization.” (Cf. Idea...VII among other possible texts.) The Kantianwords speak in this precise moment —as someone who points to whatremains impeded— of the “slow effort that is applied to the interiorformation of the way of thinking,” in danger of marginalizing itself ifthe states give preference to energies in vain expansionistic desires...In this front we find one great Kantian suggestions: the moralizationconsists, at first, in the work for the metanoia (education). To myjudgement, we clearly have here, at the limit, a human course of actionrecognised as moralization, because it returns to the work ofcivilization to value it. It is critical work, of course, assumed in its mostfundamental critical sense, in its role of metanoia. It is a course ofhuman action that, in its essence, is work of reason’s “internal life”.Moralization is spiritual exercise and/or work towards “conversion.” 16Kant always talks in a secularised code, and in that code, this task is anexercise of critical reflection, since it does not have more support thancivilised life itself. A work that can be inscribed within the limits oflegality construction, as beginning of the always necessary educationalprogramme of individuals and society.In this front or from this limit, is it not clear that morality wasalready always there and that culture and civilization are always in thatbeginning? With this I want to say that the task of moralization hasthem always in question.Therefore, I think Kant has the floor in our European culture so thatEurope may be recognised in its history as humanity’s task, appealingto the conscience (critical lucidity) that the task of humanity issubstantially a task of moralization.I conclude: the Kantian look at history is ambitious, but I understandthat at the same time it is modest and instructing. He tells us that thereare no absolute beginnings neither of truth nor of good, even thoughtruth and good are absolute values. Neither are there reasons, eithersubjective or collective, isolated or isolatable. We are always on the16This concept shows up in the same context as evil, in Religion Within theBoundaries of Mere Reason.