Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

507Citizenship and National Identitynew parliamentary bodies of regions that are now in the process ofmerging and for a European Parliament furnished with greaterauthority.To date, in the member states the policy of the EuropeanCommunity is not yet an object of a legitimating public debate. Byand large, national public spheres are still culturally isolated fromone another. That is, they are rooted in contexts in which politicalquestions become significant only against the background of eachnation's own history. In the future, however, a common politicalculture could differentiate itself from the various national cultures.A differentiation could appear between a Europe-wide politicalculture and the various national traditions in art and literature,historiography, philosophy, and so on, which have been branchingout since early modernity. Cultural elites and the mass media wouldhave an important role to play in this process. Unlike the Americanvariant, a European constitutional patriotism would have to growtogether from various nationally specific interpretations of thesame universalist principles of law. Switzerland provides an examplefor how a common politicocultural self-understanding canemerge by differentiation from the cultural orientations of differentnationalities.In this context, our task is less to reassure ourselves of ourcommon origins in the European Middle Ages than to develop anew political self-consciousness commensurate with the role ofEurope in the world of the twenty-first century. Hitherto, historyhas granted the empires that have come and gone but one appearanceon the world stage. This is just as true of the modern states­Portugal, Spain, England, France, and Russia-as it was for the·empires of antiquity. By way of exception, Europe as a whole is nowbeing given a second chance. But it will be able to make use of thisopportunity not on the terms of its old-style power politics but onlyunder the changed premises of a nonimperialist process of reachingunderstanding with, and learning from, other cultures.3 Immigration and the Chauvinism of Affluence: A DebateHannah Arendt's diagnosis-that stateless persons, refugees, andthose deprived of rights would come to symbolize this century-has