close-up
not just about the spread

WAKE UP,
EUROPE
Megasummits and budget cuts, the deficit and the recession, ratings, bonds, and default risk are in the news daily. But these unsolved problems bring to light the main question: Is it possible to restore growth without an idea of the common good? And what source can be tapped for recovering this idea? We have asked philosopher RÉMI BRAGUE and sociologist JOHN MILBANK to address these increasingly pressing concerns.

by Luca Fiore

Let’s be clear about it: with this “Close Up” section, we are taking a risk, because Europe has always seemed a far-off entity, something abstract. Bringing up again the theme of its roots, the common project that birthed it and then was lost, can feel like déjà vu: it comes and goes with no lasting effect and invites us to turn the pages more quickly.
This is a legitimate impression, but a mistaken one, for just one very simple reason: the facts, the crisis that has gripped the Continent for months, and the bewilderment with which the European Union has been facing it, with a plethora of summits and counter-summits that fail to find a true direction.
At the moment of choice, from Maastricht onwards, there has been the decision to travel a road linked only to the economy, with a common currency and bonds between nations based only on the level of numbers. It has its logic. One can think that everything can be kept in order if the accounts are in order. One can think this is possible to achieve with cuts and bureaucratic budgets. But now that those same numbers are languishing, a deeper crisis is making itself known; now that the difficulties of a few (from Greece northwards) risk dragging everyone down; now that Europe has reached the concrete realm of all European pockets, making it evident that jobs depend on the choices made in Brussels; now that the problem is not only “stability” but growth, not finance, but the real economy, not numbers, but facts, a question returns to the surface: How can Europeans grow without truly deciding moves and strategies together? How can they decide together without a strong common project, valid reasons for making sacrifices, giving up elements of our personal interests to safeguard the good of the other, which is so closely bound to mine?
While people begin–very slowly–to talk about “an existential crisis” (Anthony Giddens, English sociologist), there is the realization that perhaps the idea of the common good, of roots and ideals to rediscover, is not a fixation of a nostalgic minority engaged in rear-guard battles, or of a Pope who never misses an opportunity to remind Europe that “the conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person [...] Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness” (Benedict XVI, Speech to the Bundestag). The spread between sovereign bonds is only a small part of the picture. Broadening reason to come to grips with the situation, as we have asked two exceptional observers from two nations to do, is the only way to look ahead and truly face the crisis.

In the European Union, the crisis is structural, obviously from the economic point of view, but not only: a common cultural foundation is missing. This is the conviction of Rémi Brague, one of the European intellectuals who has most extensively reflected and written on this theme. Professor of History of Medieval Philosophy at the Sorbonne and the holder of the “Romano Guardini” endowed Chair of Religious Sciences in Munich, Brague published (in 1992) The Future of the West. In the Roman Model the Salvation of Europe, a book of decisive importance in understanding the source of the crisis of the European continent.
Professor Brague, Europe is in crisis. Is it just an economic and financial crisis, or is there something deeper?
At least two levels need to be distinguished. The financial crisis, thus economic, is clearly visible, and everyone talks about it. I have nothing to add, because I am not competent in the field. Deeper, there is perhaps another crisis, an intellectual, moral, and spiritual one. It lasts much longer in time, does not make too much noise, but manifests itself in a very concrete way. The most obvious is the crisis of the family. It seems that it is increasingly difficult first to form a couple that lasts longer than the caprice of the moment, then that wants to bring children into the world, and finally, that is committed to ensuring them a stable environment by staying united. In absence of this, as Raymond Aron says, there is a “demographic suicide.” The few children that are born risk living in terrifying psychological conditions that produce adults who are unhappy and often mentally ill.

The difficulties of these months seem to present the bill for a question that had been collectively decided the EU would not face: the cultural foundation upon which the common European project rests. This is not just a question for the erudite...
A cultural foundation, exactly. We have conserved from Marxism the tendency to relegate that which is cultural to the “superstructure.” The talk of the intellectuals is tolerated, because it is their trade, but only on the condition that it remains among them. It is high time we got rid of this atavistic inheritance. Certainly, it is not a matter of innocently imagining that “ideas govern the world.” They are incarnated in social groups. But it is necessary to take seriously the fact that people act because things are represented in a certain way, because they know or believe they know how things are, because they think that certain actions are good and others bad, and also because they think that their very existence is a good or not. All this concerns ideas that are viewed as the most abstract, that of Being and the Good, as in the subtitle I chose for my most recent book: “The Metaphysical Infrastructure.” In the house of Europe, culture is the foundation, not the roof, much less the smoke from the chimney...

What has come to lack since the times when one could imagine a common journey even if the disunity was greater, as at the end of the world wars?
We have perhaps lost the feeling of danger. The pan-European projects are ancient. But after two world wars, peace in Europe was the most urgent necessity. It was necessary to avoid starting to fight again. It was also necessary to defend ourselves from the Soviet menace. Today these threats, that of wars between European countries and that of a Leninist power coming into control through invasion or internal subversion, have both lost their dangerousness. We have before us more discreet and subtle dangers that, in the final analysis, as I have just mentioned, are of a metaphysical nature.

Each country seems turned in on itself, engaged on the international level in emphasizing its own interests. The dimension of the common good seems lost. What would this “common good” mean today as a real European project?
The nations are turned in on themselves. The economies remain open. Goods are circulating. The Good is another issue. Goods are in a limited quantity and must be divided in the most equitable way possible. He, who is the Good, can be shared without loss.

The European institutions are trying to return to greater rigor in national budgets. The problem of how to stimulate growth remains open. Is it possible to think of growth without having a clear idea of what “the common good” is?
According to certain economists, one could stimulate growth by stimulating consumption. But the ultimate goal of this growth is the increase of consumption, which thus becomes at the same time the cause and effect of growth. It is very good to want to feed those who are hungry; it is an essential duty. But if growth serves exclusively to create new artificial needs, I wonder if this can truly continue to suffice for Europeans.

In Europe, there is also a problem of trust, in institutions, but not just in them. What does trust in a project to revive the growth of Europe depend on?
In effect, we find many examples of a crisis in everything, for which Latin used a single term: fides. Religious faith, but also faith in the institutions, respect for one’s word, marital fidelity. So-called “secularization,” the decline of religious practice, is only one aspect of a more general crisis of commitment. It is increasingly difficult to find people willing to commit themselves, even if just to a religious movement, a labor union, or a political group.

Was it a mistake to seek the unity of Europe starting from the economic aspect? Looking back, it seems that the birth of the common currency inaugurated the crisis of the ambitions of a broader unity.
It was not a mistake, because it is easier to agree upon economic realities–they can be counted. They are also easier to manage; sometimes it suffices to modify the discount rate, or import duties, to obtain tangible results. The rest, that which cannot be reduced to the economy, is more difficult to influence and almost impossible to measure. On the other hand, one cannot promote a union that is only an economy or a policy. That which is cultural is the sphere of freedom, of creativity. Culture can be encouraged, but not disciplined or channeled. If you do so, you end up with propaganda or kitsch that within ten years is out of fashion.

In an interview ten years ago, you said that “the civilization of Christian Europe was not built by people whose goal was to build ‘a Christian civilization.’ We owe it to people who believed in Christ, not to people who believed in Christianity.” Could you tell us more about this? What chance is there that this could be achieved today?
This was a central idea of my book on European culture. In it I gave an example of one of the key figures of European history, Pope Gregory the Great, without whom the Middle Ages would not have been the same. He created things that still endure today, such as the chant we call “Gregorian,” in a moment when he was convinced that the next day would be the end of the world and a “Christian civilization” would never exist. I even invented a word that had a certain success: “Christianist.” It designates people who do not believe in Christ the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, who died and rose for us, but who deem that Christianity had good effects on civilization and hence deserves to be defended, even encouraged. I do not criticize these people, because what they say seems right to me. I would simply like to propose that they push further, and ask themselves if Christianity, which was and is good for civilization, would not be good for them, too, if they adhered in a personal way. I would like to point out to them that they risk mistaking as “Christian civilization” things that on the one hand are much more recent and on the other hand are not always inspired by Christianity.
The authentically Christian–and not “Christianist”–stance is possible in every time, today more than ever. It is what could not so much save the human person (this has already been done) but give modern civilization, in Europe and elsewhere, the foundation without which one would build, or rebuild, in vain.