European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

52 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYauthor of Religio, Virtus, Fatum et Fortuna, Intercenales (1437), believedthat man was able to rise above both adversity and chance. Themovement made for a self-assured society, hungry for success andeager to achieve glory and immortality. Such progressive secularity ofvalues was reflected in a sharp awareness of history, which nowdisregarded the effects of Providence and attributed all achievementsand failures to the results of human effort. With the passage of time,the recently perceived immanence would reveal the double-edgednature of cultural secularisation, namely anomic and amoral behaviourcorrelating to disbelief alongside the equally present impulse forhuman creation and the characteristics which I shall now discuss.Man’s moral autonomyThe human being has his own value, with human dignity (Pico dellaMirandola, Horatio, 1486) being the ultimate source of all other valuesand of human rights. Dignity is the root of man’s latent powers: theability to create and communicate —via language, the arts, sciencesand institutions—, to contemplate oneself, to speculate, to imagine, toreason. In contrast to man’s technological vision —whereby man isseen as part of the divine order— or his scientific vision —in which heis part of the natural order, and never central to it—, Humanismsituates man squarely at the centre of human experience, which manhimself also occasions. Neither religious faith as part of a divine ordernor scientific research as part of a natural order are excluded from thisvision; it is nevertheless supposed that, as is the case for any othersystem of belief, religious faith and scientific research are authenticatedby experience.With dignity established as a concept during the Renaissance, Kant(1724-1804) made it the basis of moral autonomy, a characteristic ofEnlightenment Man. Man’s duties and obligations were now selfimposed:they arose from his own sense of duty, and were no longerimposed by an external religious faith, neither was pressure exerted byman’s material or social surroundings. As a consequence of enlightenedthought, man’s moral behaviour led him to believe that he was themaster of his own actions, and therefore free. Free perhaps, but notwithout a regulatory framework: Kant went on to determine moralityby a categorical imperative: behave in such a way that at any momentyour conduct may be a principle of universal legislation.Inspired by Kant, and in a vision which bears a close resemblanceto that of the Renaissance, Max Weber (1864-1920) postulated thatthe origins of capitalism were to be found in spiritual autonomy: ideas