EUROPE - Beyond the Euro Professor Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella An Ovi Magazine Books Publication 2022 Ovi Project Publication - All material is copyright of the Ovi magazine & the writer C Ovi books are available in Ovi magazine pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: submissions@ovimagazine.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book. EUROPE - Beyond the Euro A collection of articles written for Ovi magazine Prof. Emanuel Paparella EUROPE Beyond the Euro Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella EUROPE - Beyond the Euro 1. More on the EU Cultural Identity p. 9 2. Levinas’ Challenge to the Modern European Identity p. 12 3. Dante’s Vision of a United Europe p. 18 4. Europa as the Return of the Gods p. 20 5. The EU Constitution: the Cart before the Horse p. 24 6. Europa Quo Vadis? p. 31 7. Two Forgotten Communities of the EU Cultural Identity p. 35 8. Christopher Dawson and the Making of Europe p. 39 9. A Hard Look at the European Union’s Cultural Identity p. 43 10. Constitution or Treaty? p. 50 11. New Paradigms for the Idea of Europe vis a vis the Treaty of Lisbon p. 54 12. Impressions of Italy and the EU: Now and Then p. 60 13. Truth, Freedom and Press and the EU Parliament p. 64 14. Toward a Post-Secular Europe: a Revisiting p. 67 15. Some Musings on Religion and Freedom of Speech in the EU p. 71 16. The Tragic Loss of the European Spiritual Identity: a Revisiting p. 75 17. Does the EU still have a Spiritual Identity? A Revisiting p. 83 18. Is Secularism the only Viable Cultural Alternative for the EU? p. 90 19. Alcide De Gasperi’s Humanistic Vision of the European Union p. 97 20. On the Christian Cultural Values of the EU’s Founding Fathers p. 102 21. Global Neoliberal vs. Christian Economic Values and the EU Crisis p. 105 22. We Have Found the Enemy and It’s Us p. 113 23. Is Fascism Returning to Western Civilization? Part 1 p. 118 24. Is Fascism Returning to Western Civilization? Part 2 p. 122 25. Can Western Civilization’s Center Hold? p. 126 26. The Loss of Utopia and the Search for a New Social Paradigm p. 129 27. Greece and Italy: Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again p. 133 28. “The End of Italy” and Dante’s New-Old Social Paradigm p. 137 29. Has the European Union’s Political Experiment Failed? p. 142 30. Europe, from its Foundations to the 21st Century p. 147 Contents Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella An Ovi Magazine Books Publication 2022 Ovi Project Publication - All material is copyright of the Ovi magazine & the writer C Ovi books are available in Ovi magazine pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: submissions@ovimagazine.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book. EUROPE - Beyond the Euro The financial situation and the recession in Europe have led all of us to a mental depres - sion connecting Europe and the dream of the United States of Europe to the nightmare of the common currency the Euro. And it has affected me personally since every single day the first thing I do is check how many more unemployment, how many more homeless and if my friends and family in Greece are still ok. You see we all forgot the dream and the hopes and we focus in the problems – quite natural – but somehow we are becom- ing part of the problem looking for solutions in the problem and not in the hope and the dream. And Professor Emanuel Paparella has often reminded us and me personally with his articles that Europe is far beyond a currency. Europe is Plato and Dante, Europe is Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Alcide De Gasperi. Europe is all of us and the culture we inherited that goes beyond time. Europe is democracy and tolerance, faith and agonistic, Europe is understanding and listening; Europe is art and communica - tion. Europe found the words and the meaning of them. And Professor Emanuel Paparella is writing about all these things even when Europe is facing its darkest moments always reminding us the roots of the union and the things that connect us not the ones that separate us. This is a collection of articles professor Emanuel Paparella wrote for Ovi magazine the last six years, all of them about Europe from her fundamentals to the 21st century. We put them in chronological order including some “revisits” to the same subject. The reason is because the articles somehow evolute with contemporary semantics and events that influ - ence the writer and consequently the reader. Enjoy the reading and share Professor Emanuel Paparella’s faith to the founders of the European Union and the hope for a future in all the things that connect us beyond the common currency Thanos Kalamidas For Ovi magazine Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella 4 EUROPE - Beyond the Euro I n perusing both Franck Biancheri and Francesco Tampoia’s articles on EU cul- tural identity, it struck me that while in some way they complement each other, they also reveal some common premises which I believe are worth analyzing briefly. Biancheri’s article points out that there is a progression of identity which historically begins with blood (the family and the tribe) continues with soil (the nation and the Empire) and ends with values (the global nation of nations which is the US or EU or one still to come?). This is slightly reminiscent of Hegel’s rational historical progression: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The final synthesis in turn becomes a thesis and the cycle repeats itself on a larger more comprehensive scale. Therefore nobody knows the future identity of Europe since the process is still ongoing. What is worth noticing in this Hegelian scheme is that it assumes all along that the pro - cess is inevitable and to a certain extent deterministic. History goes forward as Hegel’s philosophy describes it and progress is inevitable and in fact necessary. There is a further assumption: that what comes at the end of an historical synthesis is always the best of all possible worlds. What came before, in the thesis period, may be necessary for the final synthesis but inferior in as much as it still needs to be synthesized. For example, humanism was a synthesis of antiquity which combined with the antithesis of Christianity (Athens and Jerusalem, so to speak) begets Italian Humanism and Renaissance. But there is a further synthesis and it is the one brought about by the Enlightenment. There reason becomes pure reason: it takes the Renaissance but it combines it with the myth of science as giving all the answers to the existential predicament of Man and arrives at another synthesis thought to be by far superior to that of the Renaissance. It would be enough to read Voltaire. To be sure there is also Montesquieu who while privileging reason nonetheless retains the Christian tradition and its humanism as integral part of the cultural identity of Europe but that kind of synthesis is all but ignored nowadays. What obtains is the Enlightenment as the non plus ultra of reason, as the last progress of human reason toward greater and greater synthesis. It all fits neatly: blood, soil and values. Those values of course become more and more universal as greater and greater synthesis are achieved and the further those syntheses More on EU Cultural Identity Ovi magazine 21-05-2007 Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella get from the particulars from which they sprang. Universal values buttressed by democracy (majority opinion, right or wrong) as guaranteed by the State become the ultimate paradigm of a philosophy which, beginning with Des - cartes, paradoxically puts everything in doubt except its own method of putting everything in doubt. But there is another paradigm, and it is that of Giambattista Vico (See his New Science) who speaks of corsi and ricorsi or the cycles of history: the age of gods, of heroes (the poetical) and of men (age or reason) and who while acknowledging an historical progression from the first one to the last cycle never forgets the roots of reason (the poetical, the religious, the mythical) and in fact alerts us that to forget those roots is to end up with what he aptly brands as “the barbarism of the intellect.” That is the kind of barbarism which can in one hour rationally plan an holocaust and then execute it in three short years. That phenomenon is not considered progress by Vico but the sort of regress that makes the physical barbarism of the barbarians look good in comparison. In Vico, “progress” is neither inevitable nor necessary. In fact his philosophy sees the tram- pling of so-called “primitive” cultures in the name of unstoppable progress as nothing but historical regress. Here the poetical, the mythical, is integral part of reason if nothing else in the sense that reason is always aware of its roots in the human mind and can by fantasia retrace those roots. When Francesco Tampoia and Franck Biancheri tell us that there is no such thing as a Eu - ropean cultural identity because such an identity has to be continually deconstructed a la Derrida, I would answer yes and no. Yes, as Vico intimates we need to deconstruct the pure reason of the Enlightenment and constantly search for its root which go back to the pre-So - cratics and indeed to the point at which Man is human. No, it is not true that two thousand years of Christianity can be simply bracketed as synonymous with obscurantism and big- otry, for it was the synthesis of Christianity with antiquity which brought about Jefferson’s concept of “inalienable rights” as enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He did not dream them at night and placed them in the Declaration of Inde - pendence the day after. For indeed Rome in all its splendor and glory never conceived of inalienable human rights. That concept could only have sprung from the Christian tradition in synthesis with antiq- uity. Those rights are not dispensed and defended by any state but are integral part of hu- man dignity which springs from the fact that we are children of the same Father. To forget that reality is to ultimately misconstrue one’s identity as Westerners (Americans, north and south being part of that Western identity for the most part) and arrive at a false identity, one that has forgotten its roots, albeit a future one. Futurism will not do I am afraid, what is needed is “back to the future.” George Santayana, an avowed atheist used to advice people to read carefully the history of Christianity in Europe if they would ever hope to understand what makes it tick. Which is EUROPE - Beyond the Euro to say, without knowledge of one’s history and one’s cultural roots regression is possible and the present Pope may have a point in reminding us that such regression may be going on as we speak. Let me illustrate the above with some more concrete and personal examples as it relates to myself and my good friend Francesco Tampoia. For to arrive at the universally human and to universal principles we ought not forget the particulars of the human condition or we’ll find ourselves once again within Vico’s barbarism of the intellect. A few days ago while visiting Rome I had my wallet picked in its metro. My dismay was not so much at the loss of money but at the loss of the important documents that it contained. Some relatives con - soled me with the idea that thieves in Rome are” professional” and would eventually return the documents to my address in Florida. It has not happened. Obviously there are amateurs too. What concerned me most was that somebody might assume my identity by ransacking the personal data the wallet contained. It also occurred to me that my identity did not reside in that wallet, that Emanuel Paparella would remain such even if somebody went around with a mask parading as such. But then another terrible consideration occurred to me: that Piran- dello too had a point: if one parades long enough with the mask of somebody else’s identity he may become that mask and lose his/her identity in the process. This brought me back to the most important aspect of Vico’s philosophy which is “self-knowledge” as distinct from knowledge of mathematics, metaphysics and natural science. In some way Francesco Tampoia’s identity too was stolen when an editor of the Ovi on-line magazine, where the article on the identity of Europe appeared, inadvertently placed some - body else’s name on the article he had written. What is intriguing to me is that Francesco, faced with that existential situation, did not say: oh well my identity is under deconstruction and it does not matter who expressed those thoughts, the important thing is that they are being expressed. He protested the mistake, and rightly so I would add, and the next day the right name (his) appeared on the article with an apology from the editor. His identity had been restored. Mine unfortunately has remained in Rome perhaps floating on the Tiber but, as mentioned, my identity, like that of Francesco Tampoia and that of the European Union, and any institu - tion worth its salt goes beyond mere legal documents. I have written a book on the subject titled A New Europe in Search of its Soul (see EUob - server bookstore). One of its proposal is that, passing from the microcosm of one’s personal experience to the macrocosm of political entities, it is a disservice to the European Union as a polity to deprive her of her past identity by whose light she may better forge a genuine future identity; for better or for worse, Christianity is and remains part of that identity and as Tony Judt likes to put it: those cultural phenomena belonging to its past cannot be simply misremembered; by which he means celebrated or monumentalized while ignoring their historical lessons. Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella Levinas’ Challenge to the Modern European Identity Ovi magazine 25-05-2007 “ I am quite sure that the European crisis has its roots in a mistaken rationalism ” (Ed - mund Husserl, University of Prague, 1935) M odern Western Civilization presents us with a Janus-like face: On one side Renaissance Humanism which begins in Italy in the 14th century with Petrarch, on the other side Enlightenment Rationalism which be- gins in France in the 17th century with Descartes. After Descartes, there is a dangerous tendency to separate the two cultural phenomena and consider Humanism either anachronistic, or superseded. The inevitable result has been sheer confusion in the area of cultural identity; consequently, at this critical juncture of the new polity called European Union, there is talk of a “democratic deficit,” that democracy that is integral part of Western Civilization. We are in urgent need of cultural guides to show us how to better harmonize the two above mentioned phenomena. One such guide is Emmanuel Lévinas’ humanistic philosophy. In as much as it challenges the Western rationalistic philosophical tradition, it is extremely im - portant for the emergence of a renewed European cultural identity. It explores in depth the threats to the authentic cultural identity of Europe, how modalities of thinking powerfully affect other ideas and shape a whole cultural milieu, sometimes with less than desirable consequences. A few background biographical details may be useful to better understand Lévinas. He was born in Lithuania in 1902. In 1923 he moves to Strasbourg to study under Husserl and writes a doctoral dissertation on his philosophy. There, he also comes in contact with Heidegger’s philosophy. The dissertation on Husserl’s phenomenology gets published in France in 1930 and reveals that, even at this early stage, Lévinas is beginning to take his distance from Heidegger. He enlisted in the French army, was captured in 1940 and spent the remaining five years of the war in two prisoner-of-war camps. Upon being liberated he returns to Lithuania and finds-out that his parents and siblings had been killed by the Nazis, while his wife, whom he had left behind in Paris, had survived thanks to the help of French nuns who hid her. He became a teacher and administrator in an EUROPE - Beyond the Euro institute for Jewish education in Paris (l’alliance Uneversel Juif); there he begins to study traditional Jewish texts under the directorship of the Talmudic sage Mordechai Shoshani to whom Elie Wiesel (who also studied with him) devotes a chapter in Legends of Our Time In 1961 Lévinas defends the first of his two major philosophical works ( Totality and Infin - ity ) before the philosophy faculty of the Sorbonne becoming a professor of philosophy. His second major work bears the title of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Those are the basic events that dramatically change Lèvinas’ thinking. Prior to World War II he had merely criticized elements of 20th century Western thought; afterward he begins to attack the whole European philosophical tradition, especially its culmination in Heidegger’s thought, for what he considers its indifference to the ethical and its “totalizing of the other.” He begins to indict western philosophers in general for an uncritical reliance on vast con - cepts, such as Hegel’s “Spirit,” or Heidegger’s “Being,” which assimilate countless indi - viduals to rational processes, thus negating their individuality. To be sure Kierkegaard had also criticized this Hegelian tendency, countering it with his existentialist philosophy. Those who understood his critique only too well, promptly pro- ceeded to relegate his thought to the theological within a false dichotomy (shown absurd by Thomas Aquinas way back in the 13th century) of philosophy/theology, thus insuring that Kierkegaard would never be as influential as a Hegel or a Heidegger. In any case, Lévinas too argues that this taken-for-granted totalizing mode of doing philoso - phy in the West denies the face-to-face reality in which we—philosophers included—inter - act with persons different from ourselves. He argues that this “face-to-face” realm is not the same thing as the realm of abstract concepts. It possesses its own texture which is primarily an ethical one. In this domain we are challenged by “the otherness of the other person.” It is this “other- ness,” which is an integral characteristic of human life, but the Western philosophical tradi - tion has overlooked and even negated it, thus contributing to the dehumanization of Man. Lévinas’ life and thinking were deeply affected by the trauma of the Nazi genocide, better known as the Holocaust. But what is unique about his thinking is that it refuses to make those monstrous events its core subject matter. As Derrida, who admired Lévinas’ philoso - phy, aptly expressed it once: the danger of naming our monstrosities is that they become our pets. Lévinas’ writings provide no extensive discussion of the Holocaust itself; therefore, the assumption, on the part of those who were thinking and writing on it, has often been that Lévinas could not be considered a valid source of philosophical insight into this dark period of human history. But that is an erroneous assumption, just as invalid as the assumption that he unreservedly admired Heidegger’s philosophy because he happened to have translated it into French. As a matter of fact, Lévinas’ thinking is a reaction to the Holocaust by the mere fact that it asks the crucial question: What does it mean to be a human being? Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella Were one to encapsulate the whole of Lévinas’ philosophy in two succinct words, they would be “being human.” This philosophy insists throughout that an extreme, unbalanced rationality devoid of imagination, feelings, senses and spirit, unconcerned with the ethical dimensions of life, is the equivalent to a refusal to be human, to allowing oneself to become a monster. A little personal anecdote may be illustrative here: many years ago I took a course on Heidegger with a professor who was a staunch admirer of Heidegger’s philosophy. The students were made to read Being and Time on which the professor in question would offer in class brilliant comments and interpretations. Not once during the entire duration of the course was it ever mentioned that Heidegger, for a short while, had joined the Nazi party and had heard echoes of “the voice of Being” in the speeches of Hitler; somehow that par - ticular existential detail was not considered essential by the professor for any valid appraisal of the ponderous rational scheme of Being and Time I wrote a paper where this existential fact was mentioned and reflected upon. I received a C- for it. The comments of the professor chided me for straying from the concerns of Heidegger’s philosophy which had nothing to do with his private life and beliefs. In hind - sight, that academic event of my life proved to be my first serious existential encounter with modern Western rationalism and its dichotomy intellect/life. It eventually led me to discover Vico and Lévinas. Lévinas’ attack on what he considers negative elements of the Western philosophical tradi - tion begins with analyses of the philosophical roots from which sprout the extreme indi- vidualism of modern times, and the reaction to it, extreme nationalism. Not unlike Vico in the 18th century, he individuates such a root in the Cartesian ego, an autonomous center of consciousness which in modern philosophy has assumed the function of a paradigm for thinking about human beings. Lévinas does not deny this world-constituting ego, rather he leads it to the discovery of an ethical core within itself; which is to say, he uncovers another root growing within the first root which he calls the “self.” The conundrum seems to be this: if it is true that the ego does the conceptual work of philos- ophy by announcing what there really is in the world, how can this ego then acknowledge the essentially ethical “self” which lives within itself? Somehow a bridge has to be found between this limitless power and freedom of the independent intellect, and the particular concrete ethical obligations to another person. For, this ethical self, unlike the ego, finds itself caught up with the welfare of the other prior to a conscious, rational decision, in a recognition, even when unwilled, of his/her humanity. Indeed this ethical capacity seems to come from another place than our rational powers of analysis evidenced within the Cartesian ego. Even if we grant that such an ego is adequate in identifying the truths of philosophy, it somehow remains unable to acknowledge a do- main where there is no choosing of the connection with the other; in fact the other way around may apply: the other chooses me, one is “already responsible” for the other prior to any rational analysis. EUROPE - Beyond the Euro And here is the philosophical paradox: Lévinas’ task becomes that of using rationality to take the Cartesian ego beyond rationality, somewhat similar to what Vico does with his concepts of fantasia, which for him precedes rational reason, and the concept of Providence who guides human events and is both immanent within history but also transcendent. Which is to say, the rational ego has to be brought to recognize a sort of enigmatic “ethical” truth which Lévinas calls “pre-originary,” i.e., arising outside, prior to the usual time-line of the reflective ego. In attempting this operation, Lévinas will proffer statements such as: ethics is “older” than philosophy, it is “first philosophy,” on the scene before the arrival of rational philosophical thinking; something ingrained in being human. Within purely classical categories, that may be equivalent to the Socratic preoccupation with dying well by living a life of integrity and devotion to truth, as exemplified in Plato’s Apology . It is this ancient voice of goodness, which even Vico’s pre-historical “bestioni” possess to a degree, a voice often overlooked by rationalist philosophers, but powerfully present in Talmudic texts, that Lévinas finds strangely silent in the modern Western philosophical tradition. In mytho-poetic language, it’s as if Lévinas were to come face-to-face with the goddess Eu - ropa, as she is being abducted by a black bull (Zeus in disguise), to journey to another shore, there to assume a different persona, and he were to ask her, “Europa quo vadis?” after warn - ing her to remember her original identity: “nosce te ipsum”; which is to say, go back to the future and know yourself holistically: know your Greco-Roman origins, yes, but also the Biblical tradition (the foundation for Christianity), the Christian heritage, the Humanistic synthesis of Graeco-Roman and Christian civilizations, Celtic and Germanic cultures with their ideas of freedom, the universalizing Enlightenment rooted in the democratic-scientific tradition born in ancient Greece, the Islamic influences. Voltaire and Descartes yes, but Vico and Novalis too are part of your identity. Your unity will be a chimera if it is only a unity of a bank and neglects its spiritual elements. Undoubtedly this hermeneutics, or re-interpretation of the Cartesian ego, placing at its core an non-refusable responsibility for the other without granting the ego any time to think it over and choose, so to speak, challenges some of the most basic assumptions of modern, and in some way classical, rationalistic philosophy. Not since the times of Mamonides in the 13th century had a Jew dared such a fundamental challenge from within the Western philosophical tradition. It is the challenge of Paul to Greek culture revisited. For indeed Lévinas is saying nothing short of this: the knowing ego does not exhaust what it means to be human. Some have called his philosophy one of “ethical subjectivity,” as a way of dis - missing it as the raving of a lunatic, just as the ancient Greeks dismissed Paul in the agora. For the serious reader, however, it is rather a re-definition of subjectivity face to face with a totalizing kind of Cartesian reflection. While Lévinas does not write directly about the Holocaust, other thinkers, who influenced Lévinas, were nevertheless reflecting upon the philosophical implications of this dark event of human history. One such was Berel Lang who wrote an essay titled “Genocide and Kant’s Enlightenment,” which appeared in his Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide . In this Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella essay Lang uncovers certain lines of affinity between some classical aspects of Enlighten - ment thought, and the Nazi genocide. His conclusion is that there are two important aspects of the Enlightenment that formed the intellectual heritage, which needed to be in place, for genocide to occur in the heart of civilized Europe: namely, the universalization of rational ideals, and the redefinition of the individual human being in terms of its possessing or not such a universal rationality. The genocide, Lang argues, was aimed at those groups who stuck to their own ancient pre-Enlightenment sources of particularistic identity, considered “irrational.” Hence the racial laws and racial exclusion were expression of ingrained En - lightenment prejudices. Which is to say, the Enlightenment sheds light on everything except itself; it remains to be enlightened. This powerful essay leads many cultural anthropologists comparing civilizations, to begin to wonder: which, in the final analysis, is more obscurantist: religious fanaticism and fun - damentalism, or a so called “enlightened” era throwing out the window the baby with the bathwater and arrogantly refusing any suggestion that it ought to enlighten itself, and not with its own light? This conjures up that terrible face to face encounter of Dante with the poet Bertrand Del Bornio in a cave in hell doing “light to himself” with its own decapitated head. There we have reason eating its own tail; internal logical thinking and assuming the grammar of lunacy. I dare say that such a question has not been satisfactorily answered yet. In that ques- tion lies the challenge of Lévinas’ philosophy: in its displacing of the centrality of Cartesian thinking within modernity, in order to re-center it around ethics: the face-to-face encounter with another human being which is always hopeful unless it occurs in hell. Everything we have discussed above begs this particular question: is Lévinas’ challenge to the Western philosophical tradition philosophically tenable? To answer the question ad - equately we need to be first aware that Emmanuel Lévinas, as well as Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenweig (the author of Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections in a Dark Time , 1988), are representative of learned European Jews with great familiarity with the texts of both the Jewish and the Western philosophical tradition. They challenge the latter exactly because they are so knowledgeable in both. Lévinas is fully capable of confronting the intellectual traps of those rationalists who would relegate him to the sphere of theology. To the contrary, he insisted on writing in both spheres and claimed that Jewish religious textuality contains hitherto unexplored philosophical insights. For this is a tradition which puts great emphasis on interpersonal, social and familial relationships; phenomena not con - templated in traditional Western philosophy. Which is to say, the challenge is to Western philosophy’s totalizing pretense, beginning with Plato’s times, that it can gather everything up in one synchronic whole. It is that challenge that irritates control freaks, thought policemen, rationalists and mysologists galore. It goes a long way in explaining their attempt to relegate Lévinas’ philosophy to the sphere of the merely mystical. EUROPE - Beyond the Euro Finally, let us briefly examine how Lévinas develops this fundamental challenge to Western rationalism. He names both the texts of Jewish tradition and philosophical discourse “the said,” while calling the living activity of interpretative struggle (its hermeneutics) with the texts, and the self which suffers for the other, “the saying.” The said always tries to capture the saying, which may partly explain the ancient grudge of Plato towards poets (see Plato’s Republic, book X, on Homer). In any case, it is the saying which launches the said and puts it into circulation. The saying echoes outside of space and time destabilizing the comfortable, rationally secure positions rationalists take up in the said, in conceptual truths (thought to be universal and eternal), in a secure totalizing kind of knowledge. Yet it is this very destabilizing process that injects the ethical outward-directness into the said. Lévinas will often contrasts the saying’s vulnerable openness to the other (which he calls “being ex-posed) with the said’s relative security (which he calls “exposition”). He asserts moreover, that there is a rich unexplored relationship between the way we are “ex- posed” in ethics, and the life “exposition” we use to analyze and order the world. Indeed, this is a new, essentially Jewish, philosophical reflection which places into question the claim to totalizing completeness, by an appeal to the priority of ethics. It insists that any person that confronts me, needs to be placed outside the totalizing categories seeking to re- duce her/him to an aspect of a rational system. Basically, what Lévinas is doing is relocating our dangerous ability to deny others their legitimate sphere of difference; an ability which is capable of destroying our own humanity. This is nothing short than the core struggle for the achievement of moral humanity which was also the root ethical aim of Vico’s New Science . Like Vico, Lévinas shows us the way to keep the benefits of universal Enlightenment ethics while avoiding its perils. For, his ethics is not based on a totalizing sort of universalism, but on the particular concrete needs and demands of each unique individual, every “other’ that I meet within time and space. Every time I meet the other, she/he constitutes an ethical challenge to my self, a challenge as to who I am as a human being. This kind of philosophy is a challenge to each one of us to go beyond nostalgic returns to Greek classicism, as important at that may be, in the understanding of Western Civiliza - tion; to establish intellectual-background-assumptions which are different from those of the Enlightenment; to search for urgently needed new cultural paradigms, new ways of think - ing appealing to the priority of ethics and the importance of the particular as a category of thought, a place in thought wherein genocide and hatred of the other becomes inconceiv- able; in short to prepare new wineskins for the new wine which is a “Novantiqua Europa.” Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella Dante’s Vision of a United Europe Ovi magazine 05-07-2007 There is a rather naïve notion that the vision of a politically United Europe was born ex nichilo in 1950. The notion is naïve because it loses sight of the fact that there is no such thing in history as creations ex nichilo. We stand on the shoulders of giants. It is therefore both proper and fitting to remember and celebrate those European cultural giants who, after the fall of the Roman Empire, began envisioning a United Europe. As a Christian humanist Dante exemplifies the synthesis of Antiquity (i.e., Greco-Roman civilization) with Christianity. The mere fact that he chose Virgil, the poet of Latinity, as his guide in the Commedia, hints at it. With that synthesis Dante becomes the poet of the Ital - ians just as Virgil had been the poet of the Romans. By giving them a written literature ( The Divine Comedy ) he gives them a national language and a cultural identity. There is a passage in The Divine Comedy where Dante is transported in spirit above the vi - cissitudes of men and flies higher and higher in the blue sky till he sees the earth just as 20th century astronauts saw it from the moon. I suppose that makes Dante the first global space walker, albeit via imagination. Two intriguing characteristics in this passage are worthy of notice: in the first place Dante does not discern any geographical or political borders on the earth: he sees the whole earth, holistically, so to speak, just as the astronauts saw it from the moon in 1969. Thereafter Dante comments that “vidi quell’aiuola che ci fa tanto selvaggi” which translates loosely as “I saw that puny garden that makes us so vicious.” He is address - ing not just the Florentines or the Italians, or the Europeans but the whole of human-kind. In effect Dante with this contrast of good/bad, ugly/beautiful, true/false, puny/precious, is saying that this unique earth which is Man’s only home within time and space is meant to be beautiful as a garden at the outset, but the sad ugly present reality is that in this garden brother kills brother; it is one of general viciousness and incessant warfare. Dante is point - ing out that this garden is a garden of exile and humankind’s journey is a journey back to the future, a journey of a return toward that utopist garden it originally left behind. Later in his imaginary journey Dante will enter the earthly garden of Eden on top of the mountain of Purgatory, but his journey transcends even that beautiful earthly garden. It is crucial to remember here that Dante, as he writes the Commedia, is himself in exile. He EUROPE - Beyond the Euro has been expelled from his beloved Florence because there too brother is fighting brother; Ghibellines are fighting Guelfs. Dante used to be a Guelf; they were divided in the Blacks who saw in the Pope an ally against the Emperor (Henry VII of Germany at the time), and the Whites who were determined to remain fiercely independent of both Pope and Emperor. When the Blacks, supported by Pope Boniface VIII (later placed in hell by Dante for politi - cizing his spiritual mission) seize power, Dante, as a White, is sent into exile. It is this condition of exile, of constant frustration of having “to eat the hard bread of others’ homes,” of constant hardship and uneasiness and dissatisfaction, that propels Dante into a spiritual quest aptly depicted in the Commedia and ending with his famous “tua volontà, nostra pace” (your will, our peace). Had he stayed in Florence he would have remained just another self-complacent mediocre politician. The experience of exile transform Dante’s political views; he ends up embracing the cause of the Ghibellines and begins to champion the unification of Europe under an enlightened Emperor. He writes a Latin political tract titled “De Monarchia” where this vision is set forth. Dante has now come full circle, from the particularity of his city of Florence he is now envisioning a Europe unified by universal ideals such as justice, peace, the common good, the True, the Good, the Beautiful; ideals to be privileged above and beyond mere Machiavellian power considerations. His is a Human - istic political ethic founded on universal Christian principles. The Europe that Dante envisions in De Monarchia is one that keeps a strict separation be - tween Church and State (what Italians now call “lo Stato laico”) so that which is Caesar’s will be given to Caesar and that which is God’s will be given to God. That means religious freedom and tolerance for other faiths and traditions such as the Moslem, fully welcomed at the Court of Frederick II in Palermo and which greatly influenced Italian culture. Italy will be just another country among European countries and its preeminence will consist less on its militaristic Roman heritage, and more on its Humanistic foundations. Dante is therefore one of the grandfathers of this vision of a United Europe. As the con - summate poet he is, he reminds all Europeans that, in the words of the Dante scholar, the British-American poet T.S. Eliot, “...The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started from and know the place for the first time.” At that place we shall rediscover “l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” [The love that moves the sun and the other stars]—Paradiso XXXIII, 145. Prof. Emanuel L. Paparella Europa as the Return of the Gods Ovi magazine 07-08-2007 K arl G. Jung pointed out in his Modern Man in Search of a Soul that Man is naturally religious and when he throws religion out the window, it will promptly return via the back door in the form of a fanatical cult or a to- talitarian ideology. Giambattista Vico, the 18th century philosopher of history and civilizations who fully un - derstood and explained the connection between myth and religion, points out in his New Science (1730) that the burial of the dead, hinting at belief in an after life by primitive man, is concrete proof of some archaic form of religion, what he considers a sine qua non (together with language and the institution of marriage) for the beginning of any kind of primordial civilized society. Indeed, religion and atheism (see Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura) have been around from time immemorial, but it is only with the arrival of nihilism in the 20th century that we witness the political installation and practice of the religion-less State, to wit Nazi Germany; a State which descends into the cult of self-worship or race worship, not too dissimilar from that of the ancient Romans worshipping goddess Rome, or the Soviet Union worshipping an ideology called Marxism and conceiving any religion as poisonous to the body politic, a rival ideology of sort. We know quite well the nefarious fruits of those social experiments. Indeed, it is by their fruits that the wolves in sheep’s c