{"id":8117,"date":"2015-03-25T12:29:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T11:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euroalter.local\/?p=8117"},"modified":"2020-03-03T12:11:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T11:11:37","slug":"heretical-europe-jan-patocka-as-symbol-of-dissident-contingency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euroalter.com\/fr\/heretical-europe-jan-patocka-as-symbol-of-dissident-contingency\/","title":{"rendered":"Heretical Europe: Jan Pato\u010dka as symbol of dissident contingency"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published on openDemocracy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Post-Europe, for Pato\u010dka, must be acutely aware of its own contingency even when it proclaims (above all when it proclaims) the\u00a0sanctity<\/em>\u00a0of universal principles.<\/b><\/p>\n

The term \u2018euro-skepticism\u2019, as it is usually deployed, creates a kind of idiocy in public debate by assimilating many diverse positions. We can sketch at least three possible positions (all of which would require further clarification).<\/p>\n

One thing would be to be opposed to the European Union in principle \u2013 opposed to the very possibility of a Union between European peoples or countries. Nationalists we can assume would fall into this category, although there are nuances here (one could be nationalist and in favour of the United\u00a0Nations<\/i>, but not the European Union, for example, or opposed to all kinds of internationalism).<\/p>\n

Another thing would be criticism of the current European Union and its policies, which we can assume is a very widely held view at the moment, but does not equate to denying the possibility of the EU as such \u2013 indeed, criticism of this kind could be taken to be an affirmation of the possibility and desirability of an alternative European Union.<\/p>\n

A third thing again would be to adopt a skeptical approach in general to all politics, following diverse philosophical, religious and scientific traditions which all assert the importance of doubt and questioning in our search for truth or justice.<\/p>\n

What is more, there is a further distinction between\u00a0Europe<\/i>\u00a0and the\u00a0European Union<\/i>\u00a0which gets lost both in public debate and in the European Union\u2019s own narrative for ideological reasons. The European Union is a unique and difficult to define political institution (an \u2018unidentified political object\u2019 as former President Jose Barroso described it). Europe, on the other hand, is a mythical figure, a geographical signifier with no clear boundaries, perhaps a \u2018civilisation\u2019, a subject of history and an object of political, philosophical, ethical and poetic reflection and imagination for thousands of years.<\/p>\n

The European Union often talks about itself as \u2018Europe\u2019 (something highly frustrating to all those people who consider themselves European but not yet part of the European Union, but also for all those who want to maintain some autonomy for the rich intellectual European tradition).<\/p>\n

But it is one thing to be critical or skeptical of the European Union as a political institution; quite another thing to be critical of Europe as a civilization, historical figure or even literary motif. As is often the case in confused public debate, which smacks of ideological mystification, the distinction is currently exploited best by right-wing populists. The UKIP MEP Roger Helmer is very proud of his car-bumper sticker reading \u2018Love Europe, hate the EU\u2019 (no doubt benefiting from the lack of border controls in mainland Europe as he drives around showing it off).<\/p>\n

Pato\u010dka shines a light<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amidst all this confusion and obfuscation, the person and symbol of Jan Pato\u010dka stands for me as a lightening rod. Heretical and skeptical in the best theological, philosophical and political senses, dying under political repression, Socrates-like for challenging the state\u2019s claims to absolute truth and organizing resistance against it, Pato\u010dka\u2019s thought and biography are sufficiently charged and grounded in European history and reflection to light up the insufficiency of our current European debate, and to provide some terms which can help us.<\/p>\n

Pato\u010dka\u2019s historiography of Europe-after-Europe, or Post-Europe, allows us to take a stance that is at once highly critical of Europe\u2019s bloody and murderous history, and acknowledges that the consequences of history bestow upon us a particular responsibility as Europeans who inherit this past. This is all the more so when we have in many ways benefited from the violence that was inflicted on others. We can think that the European Union or some version of it is the most responsible political mechanism for addressing this conflicted and contradictory history, a history which goes well beyond questions of war and peace to include colonialism, the destructiveness of European technological and economic progress, and deep anti-human components of European thought.<\/p>\n

Pato\u010dka\u2019s thought helps us to see the European Union as a potential consequence of European history, without identifying Europe and the European Union, nor seeing the EU as the ultimate point in a historical teleology of progress or reconciliation. The EU \u2013 like any political construct \u2013 is fully open for political critique and contestation in Pato\u010dka\u2019s thought, and it is justified not in terms of political progress, but rather in terms of ethical responsibility.<\/p>\n

During these hard times for pro-Europeans, when the inadequacies of the Union and indeed the disastrous consequences of its current policies both outside and inside its borders seem all too apparent, Pato\u010dka\u2019s position is sufficiently complex to acknowledge the ethical and moral contradictions of politics, whilst also asserting that it is our duty to keep on travelling towards a European ideal we know we can never totally reach.<\/p>\n

Even more important, Pato\u010dka\u2019s anti-totalitarianism, expressed politically in his insistence on human rights and democracy through the Charter 77 movement, and profoundly in his philosophical writing, belies all those who claim to have, or call for, \u2018final\u2019 answers to political problems. Pato\u010dka\u2019s insistence on human rights \u2013 often seen to be in some kind of tension with his \u2018asubjective\u2019 phenomenological approach –\u00a0 is at once an insistence on human contingency and radical liberty. The Charter states \u201cThe idea of human rights is nothing other than the conviction that even states, even society as a whole, are subject to the sovereignty of moral sentiment: that they recognize something unconditional that is higher than they are, something that is binding even on them, sacred, inviolable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pato\u010dka relates this absolute character of human rights to the Greek idea of \u2018care for the soul\u2019, and his point seems to be that human rights are prior to our existence in the world and protect the humanity of human kind: they are the guarantee of the very possibility of our caring for our souls, because they guarantee the possibility of self-expression, the right to assembly, the right to a free press. These human rights protect the possibilities we have to pursue our self-care individually and collectively, which is something never totally achieved.<\/p>\n

Here there is an important break with what Pato\u010dka takes to be the Platonic ideal of care-for-the-soul, in which it is possible for humans to become god-like in knowing what the ideal human life is. Pato\u010dka\u2019s heretical Christianity, his analysis of the\u00a0mysterium tremendum<\/i>, that the truth of God cannot totally be revealed, means that no one, and no state, can have a definitive answer to moral, ethical or political questions, and thus must leave space for contestation, experimentation and alternatives to appear.<\/p>\n

If we relate this to the current European Union, and its policies in many areas but most noticeably the \u2018moralising\u2019 that has gone on around the debt-crisis and austerity, we could draw many lessons about the risks of totalitarian tendencies in Europe and the\u00a0vital<\/i>\u00a0importance of maintaining democratic and human rights. Post-Europe, for Pato\u010dka, must be acutely aware of its own contingency even when it proclaims (above all when it proclaims) the\u00a0sanctity<\/i>of universal principles.<\/p>\n

The deeply Christian commitment of Pato\u010dka\u2019s thought is its most problematic aspect for those of us who want to use his terms in a secular or atheistic way in the pursuit of Europe, something that seems ever more important in an age of renewed religious wars. But Pato\u010dka\u2019s\u00a0heretical<\/i>\u00a0approach to Christianity, as well as his engagement with other religions of the book, are also perhaps a reminder that in insisting on secularity in the public sphere, there is a risk that we become more dogmatic than ever before, each in our silos: heresy relies on the possibility of dissidence, and Pato\u010dka\u2019s vision of solidarity is one where vibrant public debate–also on spiritual life–is the most authentic way of living together<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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