Europe E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Themes for the 21st Century Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 231

Beschreibung

More than ever before, our conflict-ridden, drifting planet needs the qualities that Europe, unique among the continents, has developed in more than two millennia of history: its self-criticism, its urge to self-transcendence, exploration and experiment, its conviction that alternative and better forms of human togetherness can be achieved, as well as its dedication to the cause of seeking and promoting this improvement in practice. But today Europe is unsure of itself and its place in a fast-changing world; it is devoid of vision, limited in resources and lacking the will to pursue its vocation. It is also struggling with the consequences of a one-sided process of globalization which is divorcing power from politics, inciting the shift from the social state to security-focused governance and piling up the casualties of uncontrolled market expansion and the ethically blind commercialization of human life. Bauman argues that despite the odds Europe still has much to offer in dealing with the great challenges that face us in the twenty-first century. Through sharing its own hard-won historical lessons, Europe can play a vital role in moving from the Hobbesian-like world in which we find ourselves today towards the kind of peaceful unification of humanity that was once envisioned by Kant.

Leseprobe

Europe

An Unfinished Adventure

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

polity

Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman 2004

The right of Zygmunt Bauman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2004 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK.

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 9780-7456-3402-9

ISBN: 0-7456-3403-6 (paperback)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Plantin

by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, IndiaPrinted and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

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THEMES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Titles in this series

Akbar Ahmed, Islam under Siege

Zygmunt Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World

Zygmunt Bauman, Europe: An Unfinished Adventure

Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences

Zygmunt Bauman, Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi

Norberto Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction

Alex Callinicos, Equality

Diane Coyle, Governing the World Economy

David Crystal, The Language Revolution

Andrew Gamble, Politics and Fate

Paul Hirst, War and Power in the 21st Century

Bill Jordan and Franck Du¨vell, Migration: The Boundaries of Equality and Justice

David Lyon, Surveillance after September 11

James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and its Limits

Ray Pahl, On Friendship

Christian Reus-Smith, American Power and World Order

Shaun Riordan, The New Diplomacy

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 An Adventure called ‘Europe’

2 In the Empire’s Shadow

3 From Social State to Security State

4 Towards a World Hospitable to Europe

Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Giuseppe Laterza and John Thompson for prevailing on me to develop a one-off text prepared for a lecture in Leyden into a wider survey of the current prospects of Europe struggling for unity, reason and ethical conscience in the increasingly fragmented world of passions and ethical confusion. It is thanks to them that I dared to take up the task, though flaws in its fulfilment are solely my responsibility.

My thanks go also, once more, to my editor Ann Bone, whose infinite patience proved to be in this case particularly precious due to the subject-matter that mutated faster than the writing managed to proceed …

1

An Adventure called ‘Europe’

When Princess Europa was kidnapped by Zeus in bull’s disguise, her father, Agenor, King of Tyre, sent his sons in search of his lost daughter. One of them, Cadmon, sailed to Rhodes, landed in Thrace, and set out to explore the lands destined to assume later the name of his hapless sister. In Delphi he asked the Oracle about his sister’s whereabouts. On that specific point Pythia, true to her habit, was evasive – but she obliged Cadmon with practical advice: ‘You won’t find her. Better get yourself a cow, follow it and push it forward, don’t allow it to rest; at the spot where it falls from exhaustion, build a town.’ This is, so the story goes, how Thebes was founded (and so – let us, wise after the fact, observe – a chain of events was started that served Euripides and Sophocles as the yarn out of which they wove the European idea of law, enabling Oedipus to practise what was to become the common frame for the character, torments and life dramas of the Europeans). ‘To seek Europe’, comments Denis de Rougemont on Cadmon’s lesson, ‘is to make it!’ ‘Europe exists through its search for the infinite – and this is what I call adventure.’1

Adventure? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in Middle English that word meant anything that happened without design – a chance, hap, luck. It also meant a happening pregnant with danger or a threat of loss: risk, jeopardy; a hazardous enterprise or hapless performance. Later, closer to our own modern times, ‘adventure’ came to mean putting one’s chances to the test: a venture, or experiment – a novel or exciting endeavour as yet untried. At the same time, a derivative was born: the adventurer – a highly ambivalent noun, whispering in one breath of blind fate and cunning, of craftiness and prudence, of aimlessness and determination. We may surmise that the shifts of meaning followed the maturation of the European spirit: its coming to terms with its own ‘essence’.