European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

EUROPE: MEANING AND MOTIVE 53are relatively independent not only of their context but also of socialclass and instinct 5 .The power of negation, critical reasoning without sacrificing toleranceof other ideasFor the Enlightenment prophets, reason was the liberating force by whichone is able to overcome obstacles inherited from the past —constraintsand prohibitions imposed by habits, earlier laws and authoritarianinstitutions— and by which fear and superstitions may be dispelled.Such beliefs, exploited by the Church, were considered a hindrancesuffered by man on the road to full development. The 18th centuryphilosophers believed that reason originally had an instrumental use, asa support mechanism for raising delicate or embarrassing questions,and also served to expose the empty, orthodox nature of conventionalwisdom. The Enlightenment saw reason being applied critically toauthority, traditions and conventions, whether to do with religion, law,government or habits. Whereas Christianity had postulated salvation,philosophers used the lure of the emancipation resulting from man’smoral autonomy in their use of critical reasoning. Such critical reasoning,whereby everything is called into question, is the principal maxim ofuniversality, which nourishes European culture. Furthermore, these samephilosophers fought to wipe out the Ancient Regime and in its steadestablish a State governed by the rule of law and based on equality,freedom of thought and freedom of expression. This included theconstitution of a secular State, governed by representative institutionsand whose mandate would include keeping legislation and interferencewith personal freedom and private enterprise to a minimum.A thought, a principle or a piece of evidence was for some timeconsidered to be the foundation for absolute truth, but these samethoughts et cetera would then be called into question by the nextgeneration, and European culture would again be dogged by theproblematic nature of knowledge. Highly original on the one hand—the heir to Greek philosophy, offspring of Judeo-Christianity and creatorof modern science and reasoning—, European culture nevertheless derivesits vitality and merit from the fact of having harboured a tremendousamount of tension at its very heart: religion and reason; faith and doubt;mythical and critical thought; rationalism and empiricism; universalityand individuality; philosophy and science; humanistic and scientific5Max Weber, Schriften zur Religionssoziologie.