Gerard Delanty on Rémi Brague

Gerard Delanty

(Image from University of Sussex)

Yesterday, I linked to Gerard Delanty's article on European identity, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends" (European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003), which reviews nine books presenting views of Europe. The article dates from 2003, which is not so long ago, but given the enormous changes since then, especially Europe's ongoing economic crisis and its surging immigration, the debate over European identity has probably moved on. Delanty's article remains valuable, however, especially for it succinct presentation of various views, including the summary of Rémi Brague's understanding of European identity, so I'll post it here for readers' convenience:

Europe as a Philosophical Idea

Works on Europe as a strictly philosophical idea are rare. A few notable exceptions in recent times are Derrida (1992), Gadamer (1992), Kristeva (2000) and Patočka (2001). The English translation of Rémi Brague's La voie romaine is a major contribution to the constitution of Europe as an object of philosophical reflection. Originally published in 1992 in response to the Maastricht Treaty, this subtle book can be easily misunderstood. This is an essay about the philosophical essence of Europe and it is Brague's argument that this is to be found not in the content of European traditions but in their form: the uniquely European is to be found in the nature of the transmission of culture rather than in any specific cultural content. Europe is based on a particular cultural form that transforms that which it takes over but does not have a culture of its own. The essence of Europe is its capacity to transform culture. For Brague, Europe cannot be defined by geography, by politics or by a disembodied Platonic idea. It is not a place or a particular political order. Europe is a variable notion and defined as a particular kind of cultural belonging, which Brague associates with Rome. 'Europe is not only Greek, nor only Hebrew, nor even Greco-Hebraic. It is decidedly Roman' (p. 26). This may sound extraordinary, but Rome for Brague denotes something more European than Greek, Judaic or Islamic modes of belonging because Rome is not European at all in its fundamental nature -- 'this culture is not Latin, or European, but foreign' (p. 92).

For Brague, Europe has always defined itself through otherness, a condition that he associates with Rome. 'The Romans have done little more than transmit', he argues (p. 32). Roman culture was based on innovation, commencement, a search for the new. To say that we are Romans is the contrary of identifying ourselves with a great ancestor; it is to recognize that fundamentally we have invented nothing, but simply that we learned how to transmit the cultures of others. Thus what distinguishes Europe is its mode of relating to itself, which is one of distance: 'The distance that separates us from the ancient Greeks is not in principle, less than that which separates us from other modern cultures' (p. 142). Europe constantly has to confront a consciousness of having borrowed everything from sources that can never be regained. Brague associates with Rome a form of cultural translation in which something new is always created in the act of interpretation. In contrast, in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign. The ancient world can only be known in its traces. This leads Brague to his thesis that at the heart of the European consciousness is the phenomenon of 'secondarity': Europeanness is based on the act of cultural creation in which all cultural content is never a copy of an origin. This capacity for self-transformation leads to the interesting insight that Europe does not belong to the Europeans, who do not exist as such. 'Europe is a culture' and cannot be inherited but only created (p.149) is the conclusion Brague reaches.

This is a decidedly deconstructive reading of European culture as already decentred, 'eccentric' and containing alterity within it. Moreover, it reflects a processual and transformative conception of Europe -- echoing Renan, 'Europe is a continual plebiscite' (p. 5) -- since the political implication, not fully developed by the author, is that Europe is never tied to its origin but can and must constantly recreate itself. To be sure, Brague seeks to tie the idea of secondarity to some notions in Catholic theology, obscuring some of his fascinating ideas and it is indeed arguable that the condition of cultural secondarity needs to be related exclusively to Rome. In more conventional approaches this is often associated with the idea of modernity, as in the work of Blumenberg, who has clearly influenced Brague. But the central thesis that European culture needs to be defined in terms of its form rather than identified with a particular cultural content solves some of the problems of essentialism. It also gives a different twist to the idea of the uniqueness of Europe, since what is claimed is that this consists of the capacity for secondarity. But there is a philosophical slight [sic. sleight] of hand in the seductive argument that '"Eurocentrism" is a misnomer' on the grounds that 'no culture was never so little centred [sic. centered] on itself and so interested in the others as Europe' (pp. 133–4). Notwithstanding this problem which is not adequately addressed, this book offers one of the most important philosophical theorizations of the meaning of Europe. (Gerard Delanty, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends," European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003, pages 485-486)

This is a rather good summary of Brague's views, but I think that Delanty exaggerates the degree to which European identity is to be found in its form rather than its content. To be European is not just to be characterized in its form of "secondarity" as a transmitter of foreign cultural contents that transform and are transformed. Europe has a more particular cultural debt to Greek and Jewish culture. I think that Delanty also misstates Brague's point about Islam concerning the manner in which foreign cultures are taken over: "in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign." Brague's point about translation in the Islamic world is not that Muslims were more accurate in their translations of foreign materials into Arabic, but that they stuck with those original translations, holding that the Arabic language had perfected the meaning and that there was no reason to return to the foreign sources since the translations were superior. Europeans, by contrast, always sought more accurate translations because they knew that the superior text was to be found in the original. Once they had the originals, of course, they were free to transform these through reinterpretation -- the transformative part of transmission -- but the originals were never considered to be superceded.

I recommend that interested readers go directly to Brague.

Europe's Barbarous 'Other'?

Timothy Garton Ash

(Image from Homepage)

I'm teaching a history course in the Division of International Studies this semester on cultural diversity and the politics of European integration . . . or something like that. I can't quite recall the title that I came up with (which is why I've left the words uncapitalized here). Despite my flawed memory, the course is working out fairly well, I think. This week, we're reading on European identity, and we discussed an article yesterday by Timothy Garton Ash, "Europe's true stories" (Prospect Magazine, February 2007, Nr. 131), in which he attempts to identify six strands being woven together to form the fabric of a new European identity: "The strands are freedom, peace, law, prosperity, diversity and solidarity." By these six, if I might summarize, he means liberal democracy, conflict resolution by negotiation, legal protection of human rights, market economy generating wealth, moderate European multiculturalism, and social welfare. There's more to say in characterizing these, but Ash does it better than I can, so go to his article, linked to above (or if that requires registration, go here).

Ash doesn't just focus on the positive, however, for he proposes something negative as well, an 'other' that must be resisted and against which Europe must define itself, but not in the way that this has been done before:

Nor should our sense of European togetherness be achieved by the negative stereotyping of an enemy or "other" (in the jargon of identity studies), as Britishness, for example, was constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries by contrast with a stereotyped France. After the collapse of the Soviet communist "east," against which western Europe defined itself from the late 1940s until 1989, some politicians and intellectuals now attempt to find Europe's "other" in either the US or Islam. These attempts are foolish and self-defeating. They divide Europeans rather than uniting them. Both the negative stereotyping of others and the mythmaking about our own collective past are typical of what I call Euronationalism -- an attempt to replicate nationalist methods of building political identity at the European level.

In this proposal, Europe's only defining "other" is its own previous self: more specifically, the unhappy, self-destructive, at times downright barbaric chapters in the history of European civilisation. With the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the attempted genocide in Kosovo, that unhappy history stretches into the very last year of the last century. This is no distant past. Historical knowledge and consciousness play a vital role here, but it must be honest history, showing all the wrinkles, and not mythistoire.

This is an interesting concept, an 'other' against whom one defines one's identity can be one's own barbarous past. The idea reminds me, in a sense, of Rémi Brague's remark that the good 'Roman' -- by which, he means the good European -- must remain aware of a barbarism within himself that must be subdued (Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2002, page 39). The difference, though, is that Brague doesn't call this barbarism in oneself an "other." For Brague, the "other" would be the extrinsic, Greek and Jewish cultures that Europe has borrowed for its own eccentric identity, an "other" thus to be identified with rather than against. I'd be curious what Ash makes of Brague, but I don't suppose he'll post any comment here to clarify his views.

Brague, by the way, also discusses Islam in his book. I don't believe that he calls it an "other," but he does see it as a rival civilization and clearly prefers the West. My class will be discussing Brague's views tomorrow, along with eight other conceptions of European identity, borrowed from Gerard Delanty's discussion in "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends" (European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4), 2003, 471-488), a hard article for freshmen, but I have the students preparing in groups, so the discussion will probably turn out okay.

Cultural Diversity and European Integration

Ewha Womans University

(Image from Wikipedia)

The photo above shows pretty much what I see nearly every morning after exiting the subway station and heading for the entrance to Ewha campus, and I'll be seeing this scene later on this early Sunday morning, albeit with fewer students milling about, as I head for my duty as judge in a nationwide speech contest sponsored, if I recall correctly, by the JoongAng Daily.

Because of this early morning responsibility, I have little time for a substantive blog entry today, but I can at least note that Ewha's Division of International Studies has asked me to teach its course on European History this coming spring semester since the regular instructor will be on sabbatical. I intend to rework a course that I designed for Yonsei University's Underwood International College. Some of this will sound familiar to long-time readers of Gypsy Scholar:

In the book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, Robert Kagan proposes that Europeans are "turning away from power . . . [and] moving . . . into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation . . . . a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant's 'perpetual peace'" (page 3). But is this European perception of its role realistic or deluded? European integration has drawn together a collection of distinct nations, each characterized by its own particular culture, forming the EU a truly multicultural organization. These nations, nevertheless, share much the same civilizational identity, as Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) would have agreed and Rémi Brague (Eccentric Civilization) would still attempt to set forth. But as Christopher Caldwell shows in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, the ongoing, extensive immigration from the world to Europe may be introducing a more radical version of multiculturalism, as groups adhering to other than Western identities begin to dominate and to practice, if not explicitly demand, cultural autonomy. Do such groups pose a political threat to the European paradise of peace? Were the Paris riots, for example, a harbinger of cultural -- perhaps even civilizational -- conflict to come? And with the current economic problems reflected in the Euro currency's woes exacerbate these cultural differences and bring the entire process of European integration to a halt, even a collapse? This course will focus upon such questions, broadly conceived.

This is a preliminary draft of the course description, and I intend to rework and reword it as soon as I get beyond finals grading and other editing jobs that have piled up recently.

Meanwhile, wish me energy for today's judging duty. I foresee three grueling hours . . .

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi: "Arabs emerged from the deserts in order to conquer"?

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi

(Image from Memri)

A former member of the Saudi Shura Council, Ibrahim Al-Buleihi was interviewed by Al-Arabiya TV on February 26, 2010 and -- in response to the interviewer's skeptical query about Arab indebtedness to the West -- had some interesting if controversial things to say:

Interviewer: So we should be offshoots of the West as well?

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi: No, but we should benefit from this rich experience. It is the West that produced all this prosperity. To this day, we are a burden on the West. Even Japan admits that without benefiting from the West, it would not have developed.

Interviewer: Prosperity in what?

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi: In everything. In the value, liberties, and dignity of human beings, as well as in the development of science, of technology, and of life. Do you believe that life today is the same as it was ten centuries ago? This tremendous change was produced by the West. Who else produced it?

Al-Buleihi's statement contrasts with much that we read nowadays about the West's debt to the Arab world in science and philosophy. In fact, however, there is a debt, as I know from the study of history, but so far as I understand, Muslims don't charge interest (riba), so only the principal is still owed, and I suppose that it can't be so much. As for Al-Buleihi, he thinks that the Arabs today have nothing to offer the world but delusions:

Interviewer: You have said that during their conquests at the advent of Islam, the Arabs emerged from the deserts in order to conquer, not to learn. What did you mean by that?

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi: In my view, over the centuries, the Arabs believed -- and continue to believe -- that they have sufficient knowledge and wisdom, and that they do not need to learn anything from others, because they appeared, on the stage of history, in order to conquer, not to learn, to teach, not to study . . .

Interviewer: As guiders, not people seeking the guidance of others.

Ibrahim Al-Buleihi: That's right. This delusion of the Arabs persists to this day, even though the entire world has changed. The world has changed, but they still believe that it is their duty to teach others, and it is the duty of others to heed them. The truth is that the Arabs have nothing to offer others, yet they continue . . . This horrible delusion, this belief in one's own perfection, the belief that others must learn from them, makes it impossible for them to benefit from modern culture.

Al-Buleihi's claim that Arabs believe "that they have sufficient knowledge and wisdom" and "do not need to learn anything from others" reminds me of Rémi Brague's remark that the Islamic world saw no need to preserve the original texts of works once they had been translated into Arabic because the mere process of translating such works into Islam's sacred language had perfected them, such that there was nothing remaining to be learned from the original writings and thus no reason to revisit them for re-translation.

But I don't know for certain that Al-Buleihi is making a similar point, especially since I have only these excerpts, and I don't doubt that his polemical statements about Arabs would be hotly debated among Arabs themselves.

"Korean Identity?" in Philosophy and Reality

Korea in Asian Context

(Image from Wikipedia)

At the request of a Korean friend of mine, Yoon Pyung-joong (윤평중), who teaches philosophy at Hanshin University (where I once taught English), I've recently written a somewhat general article on "Korean Identity" ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?") and had it printed in the quarterly journal Philosophy and Reality (철학과 현실), a publication issued by the Research Institute of Philosophy and Culture (철학문화연구소), which has put out three other articles on Korean identity in the same volume, each of these three having been written by Koreans.

Some will note that the article's title in Korean differs: ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?" = "What is a Korean to be?" (rather than "Korean Identity"). That was an editorial choice on the part of the journal. Anyone who might go to the trouble to read both the English and the Korean versions of the article itself might also notice that the former is longer. The shortened Korean version is also an 'editorial' decision -- by my wife. In translating, she shortened the parts that would be obvious to Koreans . . . so as to preclude my appearing like a fool (which might or might not have succeeded). I don't expect anyone to be greatly impressed by my views anyway, for I state what is fairly well known and offer no fine-grained analysis.

At any rate, the article follows below, and regular readers will recognize some passages from blog entries in which I worked through my thoughts.


Korean Identity?

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University


1. Introduction

In his insightful book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (Europe, la voie romaine), a fascinating analysis of European cultural identity, the French philosopher Rémi Brague relates an anecdote about Ortega y Gasset. The latter had recently returned from America and was asked the reason for his return. He answered with a pun of ambiguity:

"Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido."

The Spanish word "continente" means both "continent" and "container," permitting either of two translations for Ortega's reply: "Europe is the only continent that has a content" and "Europe is the only container that has a content." He meant both, and one sees what he meant. Europe has a cultural unity that other continents lack.

Perhaps Europe's cultural unity is less impressive as a unique fact when one reflects that this continent is the artifact of an arbitrary line drawn to separate what is considered 'Europe' from what is considered 'Asia.' Looked down upon from above, Europe seems merely an Asian peninsula.

But the imaginary line exists in everyone's mind. To its west, Europe. To its east, Asia. West of the line, we find a civilization that integrated Athens and Jerusalem. East of the line, however, we find many civilizations. To be identified as "Asian" is therefore only a geographical distinction and implies nothing about one's cultural identity. Whereas a German might casually remark, "I am a European," and thereby make a recognizable statement of cultural identity, a Korean would not formulate a corresponding remark in stating, "I am an Asian."

For a Korean to offer a parallel statement of cultural identity, the formulation would have to be, "I am a Korean."

But what does that mean -- what is a Korean?


2. Eccentric Inclusions

Perhaps a contra-Braguean turn can help us approach an answer to this question. Brague begins his analysis of European cultural identity geographically by drawing a pair of cartographical dichotomies, a north-south axis to separate West from East and an east-west axis to separate North from South. These axes have shifted over time -- east or west and north or south -- with the vicissitudes of history, but they are understood as lines of cultural exclusion. Yet, let us initially approach the question of Korean identity in an opposite manner, as a series of inclusions, a procedure that entails surveying some rather familiar territory.

First would perhaps be Buddhism, which arrived on the Korean peninsula as early as the fourth century AD, with the monk Sundo entering the Kingdom of Goguryeo in 372 and the monk Marananta entering the Kingdom of Baekje in 384. Buddhism was slower to enter the Kingdom of Silla, where it was resisted by the upper classes until 527, when the court official Ichadon announced that he had become a Buddhist and was promptly beheaded. Legend says that Ichadon's head flew off into the distance and that milk rather than blood streamed from the body as the earth quaked, the sun grew dark, and glorious flowers rained down from the heavens. Whatever might actually have occurred that day, Ichadon's martyrdom led to acceptance of Buddhism as Silla's official religion. By the sixth century, therefore, Buddhism was well established on the peninsula, and it continued to grow in power and influence during the Unified Silla period (668-918) and the Goryeo period (918-1392). Although Buddhism explicitly encourages its adherents to seek individual enlightenment on a path toward nirvana, which can be characterized as its vertical dimension, it has also an implicitly egalitarian horizontal dimension in which Buddhists are exhorted to identify with all sentient beings, who are suffering in this illusory world of desires, and to instruct all beings in renouncing desire, which is responsible for suffering. As an otherworldly religion with implications for moral action in the temporal world, Buddhism shaped Korean metaphysics and infused Korean ethics with what the writer Lee Gwang-su (이광수) articulates as "the Buddhist philosophy of sacrificial service, treating everyone as likewise benevolent and interconnected" (The Soil). Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Buddhism brought to Korea the ethical-meditative aspect of Indian identity, albeit mediated by its passage through Central Asia and China.

Despite its longstanding power and influence, Buddhism and Buddhist values and ethics were partially eclipsed by a surgent Confucianism pressing its countervailing values and ethics with the rise of a new unified state under the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). This shift may have come suddenly, as Joseon abruptly superceded Goryeo, but Confucianism's presence on the peninsula actually went back several centuries. It seems to have entered by way of Goguryeo, but Baekje more thoroughly integrated Confucianism into its administrative system, thereby ensuring its influence on the culture. As was the case with Buddhism, Silla was last to adopt Confucianism for administrative purposes, and Goryeo inherited its use of Confucianism from Silla, but only in the Joseon period was Confucianism established as an all-encompassing system intended to displace Buddhism. For over 500 years, the Joseon government encouraged Koreans to internalize Confucian teachings on establishing harmonious relationships through the three cardinal principles and the five ethical norms (samgang-oryun). The three cardinal principles (samgang) comprise: 1) loyalty to the ruler, 2) filial piety to parents, and 3) a wife's fidelity to her husband. The five ethical norms (oryun) govern human relationships and may be listed as: 1) love between parents and children, 2) faith between rulers and people, 3) distinction between husband and wife, 4) order between elders and juniors, and 5) trust between friends. Three additional rules informed women on the obedience due to men in their lives (samjongjido): 1) obeying her father before marriage, 2) obeying her husband after marriage, and 3) obeying her sons after her husband's death. All of these principles and rules pertain without exception to relationships. All apply to direct, personal relationships -- except for the limiting case of faith and loyalty to the ruler, which can be distant and abstract. All of these direct, personal relationships are understood in hierarchical terms -- except for the limiting case of close friendships, which can offer the possibility of equality. A society organized by these Confucian duties will thus be strong in vertical obligations but weak in extended horizontal relations. Because strangers in such a society lack personal relationships, they will seek to ascertain their relative status for proper hierarchical interaction, and the at times attendant jostling for position can foster disharmonious relations. Moreover, the explicit emphasis upon maintaining harmony by observing hierarchy does not encourage a culture of open discussion despite Confucianism's admirable emphasis upon education, the latter of which has left its indelible mark upon Korean culture. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, therefore, Confucianism has brought to Korea the hierarchical aspect of Chinese identity, with its emphasis upon learning the Confucian classics and applying them toward governing the state and society.

Both Buddhism and Confucianism have profoundly shaped Korean identity, and despite their obvious differences, both agree upon at least one crucial thing: the intrinsic goodness of the human being. For Buddhism, the goodness is to be uncovered by stripping away desires. For Confucianism, the goodness is to be drawn out by encouraging proper obligations. A third great external influence upon Korean identity has come to Korea with a more negative view of human nature: Christianity. This religion initially entered Korea with the Japanese invasions of the 1590s through the Catholic commander Konishi Yukinaga, but Catholicism had no impact upon Korea at that time because the priests were not allowed to proselytize. In the early 1600s, however, Korean diplomats began returning from China with Jesuit material on Catholic theology that gained the interest of some scholars, and Christian ideas obtained an indigenous foothold without the direct influence of foreign missionaries. By 1784, Catholicism had grown enough for the diplomat Yi Sung-hun, who had been baptized in Beijing, to establish a prayer-house in Pyongyang. But the new religion of Christianity was resisted by most Confucians and even persecuted by the state and thus did not begin to make mass converts until the late nineteenth century when the Korean government began to allow Protestant missionaries into Korea in the hope of gaining Western protection. Christianity in both its Catholic and Protestant forms was associated with Western science and technology, for the early Jesuit treatises also brought the fruits of the scientific revolution and the later Protestant missions brought Western medicine and education. In Korea, therefore, Christianity was perceived as inseparable from Westernization. Not even the 35-year-long period of Japanese colonization diminished this impression despite the fact that the Japanese suppressed Christianity in favor of Shintoism and continued the 'Westernization' of Korea without the attendant Christian ideology. Perhaps Japan's policies even encouraged the opposite result, for in the post-liberation period, Christianity began its truly phenomenal growth and now accounts for roughly one-third or more of the South Korean population. The percentage of Christians in North Korea is not known, but the number is perhaps quite low -- despite the extensive Christian population prior to the Korean War -- because the North's totalitarian government has ruthlessly suppressed Christianity there. The issue of North Korea will have to be returned to later in this discussion, for the Christian influence on Korean identity mostly concerns South Korea. As already noted, Christianity holds to a more negative view of human nature than does Buddhism or Confucianism. But there is nuance here. For Christians, human nature may be fallen, but the individual person is nevertheless formed in God's image and is oriented in a vertical dimension toward God. The horizontal dimension of Christian ethics thus makes high demands but anticipates human failure unless the effort is sustained by God's hand. One particularly steep ethical expectation is that of universal love, what Lee Gwang-su describes in The Soil as the "Christian love for humanity," a love extended even to one's enemies. In social terms, this means that Christianity contributes to a society in which strangers have obligations to one another based upon an ethic of service that treats as equal every person, whether possible enemy or potential friend. The exemplar is Christ, understood as having come to serve others, even his enemies, and draw followers into a community oriented not exclusively upon its members but also outwards toward others, as if they too belonged. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Christianity has brought to Korea an egalitarian aspect of Western identity, with an emphasis upon the responsibility -- both collective and individual -- to treat as equals the others that one encounters, even if they be strangers.


3. Ethnocentric Exclusions

In the longer run, Christianity tends to reshape society from a shame culture to a guilt culture, for the real value of an individual is found not in what others think but in what God knows. Christian influence in Korea, however, has been of significance for only a very brief time, and Confucian values continue to predominate, maintaining a society where that which matters most of all is one's hierarchical status, undergirded by honor and threatened by shame. Confucianism would thus seem to be the dominate quality in Korean identity, though the long Buddhist presence on the peninsula has left an underlying substratum, and Christianity is growing in its significance. Korean identity would therefore appear to be what Brague calls "eccentric," centered on places that -- to its own geo-cultural sphere -- are external, namely China, India, and the West. But not all is as it appears. Koreans experienced thirty-five years of Japanese colonialism, and the post-liberation period has seen an exponential rise in Korean nationalism, a surge of feeling that pervades society and infuses the political right, left, and middle. Especially North Korea has emphasized Korean nationalism of an extreme form, for what is the North's ideology of juche other than a radically nationalistic elaboration of exclusively Korean identity? Hostility to the US and Japan, and distrust toward Russia and even China characterize the North's ethnically based ideology. The North Korean case is extreme, of course, but South Korea shares some degree of the North's ethnic nationalism and still claims Korean purity of blood as the basis for this nationalism. Koreans therefore appeal to an indigenous Korean identity that would predate Western Christianity, Chinese Confucianism, and Indian Buddhism, thereby centering Korean identity in nativist ethnocentrism.

From a thirteenth-century history book by the Buddhist monk Iryeon, Samgukyusa (삼국유사), comes a story that supposedly pushes the date of Korean origins back to 2333 BC. According to this story, the Emperor of Heaven had a son, Hwanung, who requested the right to rule what would eventually be called the Korean peninsula. The request was granted, and coincident with this request, a tiger and a bear were fasting in a cave not far from where Hwanung had descended from heaven to earth and were praying to become human beings. The tiger gave up too soon, but after 100 days patiently enduring weariness and hunger, the bear became a beautiful woman whom Hwanung made his queen. This royal couple produced the child Dangun, who engendered the Korean 'race' and became the first King of Korea, ruling from his throne in what is now Pyongyang, North Korea. Probably very few modern-day Koreans accept this story literally, but most perhaps take it as figurative of actual events. Anthropologically considered, the story might plausibly be interpreted as relating the invasion of the Korean peninsula by an advanced tribe that made an alliance with a tribe whose totem animal was a bear against a tribe whose totem animal was a tiger. Even if the story is entirely invented and purely mythological, it serves as a foundational myth for the Korean people and has been interpreted by Koreans as justifying an ethnic nationalism based on purity of blood. Understood in this manner, the myth offers a vertical dimension in the descent of all Koreans from Dangun and a horizontal dimension oriented toward exclusive inclusion of all Koreans in a tightly bound society of kin.


4. Excursus: The Guest

This use of the Dangun myth might at times be extended from purity of blood to purity of thought and thereby serve as ideological counter to outside influence. As such, only a pure Korean shamanism would be truly and entirely Korean, all other ideological systems being rejected as foreign. Koreans seldom go quite so far, but an interesting case of radical exclusiveness can be found in Hwang Sok-yong's recent novel The Guest. In this novel, the character Big Grandma holds to Korea's traditional shamanistic beliefs despite her own son's conversion to Christianity, and she demands that her great-grandson accept shamanism along with other indigenous Korean beliefs, explaining:

Our ancestor, the founding father of our race, was Tan'gun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. (page 40)

Concerning her son's conversion to Christianity, Big Grandma angrily explains that smallpox -- which was called "the Guest" by Koreans and was believed to have its home to the west, in the southern part of China -- is a spirit identical with the Holy Spirit of Christianity:

Ever since we were children we have known that the Guest is a western disease. A barbarian disease, they call it, from a country to the west, so it's certain that it came from the land where they believe in the Western Spirit, you see? I had to send away two sons, your grandpa's two older brothers, with the Guest. So would I be overjoyed, would I be ready to believe in the Western Spirit like my one surviving son -- or would I be angry at it -- angry forever? (page 44, changes in translation mine)

Big Grandma refers to the Holy Spirit as the Western Spirit and identifies it as the same spirit from the direction west of Korea that has always been known to bring smallpox. Let us look closely at Big Grandma's reasoning. Note that she calls smallpox a "western disease" (서쪽 병: seojok byeong), indicating the direction west, because it comes from a "country to the west" (서쪽 나라: seojok nara). However, when she refers to the "Western Spirit," she uses the Korean expression yanggushin (양구신 [양 (洋) + 구신]), where yang (양 [洋]) is an abbreviation of seoyang, "The West" (서양) -- and gushin (구신) is dialect for guishin (귀신), meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Thus does Big Grandma succeed in identifying the direction "west" (서쪽) with the place "The West" (서양). In giving such voice to the character Big Grandma, Hwang Sok-yong would seem to be presenting views with which he strongly identifies, for the intense ideological fervor of the Christian characters in this novel expresses itself in cruel massacres during the Korean War, as though the old smallpox spirit had returned with vengeance in a new form to infect the very minds of Koreans.

But Hwang's critique may go even deeper by playing further on the direction "west" (서쪽) and the place "The West" (서양). Anything that had come from a western direction might be understood as suspect because not indigenously Korean. Hence, Catholicism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which like smallpox all arrived in Korea by way of China, the country to the west, would implicitly count as western diseases (서쪽 병: seojok byeong). And Protestantism, which arrived in Korea from the West (서양: seoyang), would therefore be a Western disease. By extension, Westernization itself would amount to a Western disease, whether in the guise of Japan's colonization of Korea, which accelerated Korea's pre-colonial Westernization, or even in the guise of Marxism, another Westernizing ideology. Rather than accepting all these things western (서쪽) and Western (서양), Koreans should "Believe in the God of Chosŏn," as Hwang's non-Christian character Pak Illang exhorts the Christians who are leading him off to his execution (page 195). To believe in the God of Chosŏn (조선으 하나님: chosŏn u hananim, dialect for chosŏn ui hananim) -- the God of Korea -- would apparently mean to believe in Korea's traditional God. The term hananim (하나님) for "God" in Pak's exhortation is also the term used by Protestants, but in Pak's usage, it would seem to mean the same as Big Grandma's reference to hanunim (하느님) in her insistence on remaining faithful to Korean religion:

"Here in our Chosŏn, we say the son of God is Tan'gun." (page 42)

For "son of God," she uses hanunim adeol (하느님 아덜). Both terms, hananim and hanunim, appear to be longstanding Korean expressions for God and have been explained as dialectical variants. At any rate, Hwang seems to have identified them for the purpose of his central theme, the call for a return to what is traditionally, exclusively, and authentically Korean.


5. Mixed-Up Koreans

Most Koreans do not go so far as Pak Illang urges or Big Grandma demands in terms of Korean exclusiveness, though many, perhaps a majority, do still appear to hold to the purity of blood ascribed to the Dangun myth. But does this myth in fact teach 'racial' purity? The assumption seems to be that Koreans have all descended through Dangun from that original pair, Hwanung and his queen, and never mixed with other groups. Yet even if one were to grant that Koreans have not mixed with Chinese, Japanese, Mongolians, or any other non-Korean tribes over Korea's putative 5000-year history, the Dangun story is itself a tale of mixing, as Korean anthropologists have recently begun to acknowledge. Whether one takes it literally or symbolically, mixing is presupposed, for Hwanung and his queen have radically different origins -- either from a divine being and a bear-woman or from the son of an invading tribe and the daughter of an indigenous tribe. As such, Koreans are from the outset implicitly understood as a mixed people.

Broader recognition of this mixed Korean identity implicit in the Dangun story might well be needed these days because of the precipitous rise in the percentage of international marriages or gukjaegyulhon (국제결혼). Already by 2005, international couples accounted for 10 percent of all marriages for that year in South Korea, according to official government statistics, and the numbers have been rising every year due to more foreigners settling in Korea and to many Korean men seeking foreign wives, especially from such countries as China and Vietnam, but also from Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, the United States, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Russia, among others. Foreign men residing in South Korea and marrying Korean women come from such countries as Japan, China, the United States, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, but also from other places. As these mixed marriages bear fruit, a new, undeniably mixed population will begin to emerge, generally differing in appearance from previous generations of Koreans. This process of mixing is often called "multiculturalism" by Koreans. Multiculturalism, however, exists in Korea only as a term, not as a clear and distinct concept, for it is commonly conflated with multiethnicity, as though the two terms meant the same thing. Admittedly, an ethnic group usually does carry its own culture, but no necessary connection binds ethnicity to a particular culture. This is not especially difficult to grasp, and the Korean language does have different terms for multiculturalism, damunhwajui (다문화주의), and multiethnicity, dainjong (다인종), but the latter term rarely gets used in Korea because it sounds pejorative among a people long accustomed to the assumption of Korea's blood-based ethnic superiority. Multiethnicity can hardly be a positive thing in a country that still celebrates the purity of its Korean blood. Koreans therefore prefer to use the term "multiculturalism" even when they are talking about "multiethnicity." The children of international marriages are thus referred to as multicultural children even when these children are growing up in Korea, attending Korean schools, and becoming culturally and linguistically Korean. Such children are not multicultural, but could more accurately be called multiethnic, in the limiting sense of mixed ethnicity. Korea may therefore be developing into a multiethnic society if we mean by this the ethnically mixed children who are becoming ever more numerous, but such a process will not invariably lead to multiculturalism in Korea. For a multicultural Korea to develop, large-scale immigration of entire communities settling into self-isolating enclaves and maintaining their own cultural values would have to take place, and that does not yet seem to be happening. Nor would that be a good thing for Korea if it were to happen, for the result would likely be an unworkable radical multiculturalism of the sort that currently looms in Europe.


6. Conclusion

Perhaps we should now finally return to the question with which we began our inquiry: "What is a Korean?" One is tempted to respond with platitudes. For example: a true Korean combines the universal sympathy of the Buddha and the all-encompassing love of Christ with the solemn dignity of Confucius, the teachings of all three having been grafted onto the ancient trunk of the sandalwood tree under which Dangun sat and taught. Such a nation of eccentrically centered individuals would be an imagined community indeed! Granted, these four great teachers have had profound pedagogical influence in Korea, and Korea is a land that respects teachers, but their teachings do not mutually cohere. Conflict is therefore inescapable, even in a nation that highly extols harmony. Moreover, the teachings of a particular tradition are not always well-learned. We thus too often meet with the indifferent Buddhist, the hateful Christian, the arrogant Confucian, and the exclusivist 'Dangunian'. But whether we encounter the good or the bad, we begin to recognize that for better or for worse, Korea itself is rapidly changing into an even more complex, increasingly multiethnic society that contains the world.

The question is therefore not so much "What is a Korean?" as "What is a Korean to be?"

José Ortega y Gasset: "Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido."

José Ortega y Gasset

(Image from Wikipedia)

In his book Eccentric Culture, a fascinating analysis of European cultural identity, the French philosopher Rémi Brague relates an anecdote about Ortega y Gasset. The latter had recently returned from America and was asked the reason for his return. He answered with a pun of ambiguity:

"Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido."

The Spanish word "continente" means both "continent" and "container," permitting either of two translations for Ortega's reply: "Europe is the only continent that has a content" and "Europe is the only container that has a content." He meant both, and one sees what he meant. Europe has a cultural unity that other continents lack.

Perhaps Europe's cultural unity is less impressive as a unique fact when one reflects that this continent is the artifact of an arbitrary line drawn to separate what is considered 'Europe' from what is considered 'Asia.' Looked down upon from above, Europe seems merely an Asian peninsula.

But the imaginary line exists in everyone's mind. To its west, Europe. To its east, Asia. West of the line, we find a civilization that integrated Athens and Jerusalem. East of the line, however, we find many civilizations. To be identified as "Asian" is therefore only a geographical distinction and implies nothing about one's cultural identity. Whereas a German might casually remark, "I am a European," and thereby make a recognizable statement of cultural identity, a Korean would not formulate a corresponding remark in stating, "I am an Asian."

For a Korean to offer a parallel statement of cultural identity, the formulation would have to be, "I am a Korean."

But what does that mean -- what is a Korean?

I've been 'officially' asked this question concerning Korean identity and now have to reflect upon it. Perhaps my recent encounter with Hwang Sok-yong's novel The Guest will provide some grist for this cultural mill, and I'll certainly be grinding away, but others with more knowledge than I are invited to comment here.

Rémi Brague's Longer Reply on "Cosmology as a Postulate"

Rémi Brague

(Image from Nexus Instituut)

Some readers might recall a previous post on a fascinating interview that the two medievalists Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego conducted with Rémi Brague as a sort of introduction to his book of essays, The Legend of the Middle Ages. In that post, I called into question the heading that I thought that an editor had provided. The heading, followed by the passage, came upon the heels of Brague's remark that for modern people, "Nothing in the physical world responds to man's ethical demands":

Cosmology as a Postulate

"To be sure, for premodern man, the presence of the world, which he felt as a kosmos, was not a model to be imitated in any literal sense. Pretending to believe this to be the case is unfair, as it might be amusing to explain by the use of Kant's concepts. The role of the cosmic order is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason. Those postulates -- liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul -- are of no use as a basis for moral law, which is sufficient unto itself and draws its obligation from an intrinsic authority that it has no need to borrow from elsewhere. Such postulates serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world. One might say that the kosmos was less a model demanding conformity than an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible. The major difference between the premodern vision of the world and Kant's morality is that realization of the good is for Kant only postulated. It remains, so to speak, in the domain of faith and hope. For men of ancient and medieval times, on the other hand, the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony. One only need acknowledge it."

At the time that I blogged on this, I stated that a cursory reading of the passage seemed to allow for the heading supplied, namely, "Cosmology as a Postulate," but that a closer reading led me to think that Brague would reject the heading as utterly counter to his point. I commented as follows:

True . . . [Brague] says that "The role of the cosmic order [for premodern men] is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason [for Kant]," but this is not the same as calling cosmology a "postulate." Kant's postulates of "liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul" all "serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world." The similarity is thus that "the kosmos was . . . an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible." But cosmology was not a postulate because "For men of ancient and medieval times, . . . the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony." Since it was already given, it had no need to be postulated.

Well, as things turn out, I was utterly wrong in my construal of Brague's words -- though I take comfort in the fact that I am accustomed by now to being wrong -- for I wrote to Brague last summer, inquiring as to his meaning, and he replied with a cordial email letting me know that he was currently on vacation in the hinterlands of France but that he would reply upon returning to Paris. Here is that more recent reply:

I am back in Paris, and not really twiddling my thumbs, for I'll have to resume teaching in three weeks. Nevertheless, I keep my promise: not being a gentleman, I must pretend to act as one. The title "Cosmology as a Postulate" is not to be laid at the door of some editor. I am responsible for it. What I meant is, more or less adequately, what follows: For ancient man, moral life did not require properly speaking the well-ordered character of the world, its deserving the name of a kosmos. There are ethical theories that draw the parallel between morality and cosmological phenomena, like Plato's Timaeus or the Stoics; but others do not even mention them, which does not prevent them from building a highly respectable moral teaching: the Atomists are a good example, although Aristotle deserves pride of place among those people. The orderliness and beauty of the physical universe was a not a reason for the Ancient man to do good and avoid evil; conversely, the hypothesis (a nightmare for the ancient world-view) of a total lack of order would not be an excuse for an unlawful behaviour. See Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Wisdom . . . , p. 76-77. In the same way, moral law, according to Kant, does not need a divine Legislator. What is needed is to postulate that morality and the happiness that morality makes us worthy of, but can't guarantee us, somehow meet. Nevertheless, the beautiful order of the world shows us that Being and Goodness coincide. Perhaps I should have compared the part played by the ancient kosmos with another Kantian doctrine, i.e. his christology. For Kant, Christ is not so much a model to be imitated (President Wilson's "What would Jesus do if he were at my place?"), but rather an example that shows us that absolute conformity to the Moral Law, i.e. holiness, is possible.

Appended to this passage was Brague's "hope that this will be helpful." Certainly, it helps me to understand his point -- namely, to understand that I had seriously misunderstood and that Brague's point was almost entirely the opposite from my understanding . . . a rather humbling experience, to be sure, but I often run up against my limitations. Fortunately, like a proper Clint Eastwood character, I do know my limitations. Or at least, I'm willing to recognize them for what they are: my limitations.

Anyway, if I do now understand Brague's point, it is this: the moral law would hold for the ancient philosophers even if the cosmos were to display no such order, much as the moral law would hold for Kant even if there had been no incarnation of the Son, but both the cosmos and the Son display an excellence that is not so much to be imitated as to serve as a demonstration that an exact conformity to God's law is possible. Allow me to apply this understanding to a passage from the Brague interview that I had previously quoted only in part:

In my Wisdom of the World, I began with four ideal-typical models: the "Timaeus" model (broadly speaking, the main current of ancient philosophy from Plato to Proclus, including the Stoics), Epicurus, "Abraham," and Gnosticism. Building on generally similar descriptions of the world, each of these proposes a different response to the question "What we are doing on this earth?" Are we imitating the beautiful order of the heavenly bodies; comfortably settling in on an island of humanity within an indifferent universe; drawing ourselves closer to the creator of a good world, but obeying his law or following his Son; or, finally, fleeing, not, as Mallarmé invites us, là-bas, but to on high, toward an alien God, escaping an imperfect or prison-like world? The ancient and medieval model, which held firm for a good millennium and a half, emerged out of a compromise between "Timaeus" and "Abraham." What interests me is not so much its description (even if I have had to pursue a description in some detail), but rather the problem posed by its disappearance with the modern age. It left us alone. Nothing in the physical world responds to man's ethical demands.

The medieval "worldview" -- a term designating a perspective broader than merely a 'view of the world' -- was an unstable compromise between Plato's description of a more-or-less perfectly ordered world and the Christian one of fallen-but-still-good world. That 'compromised' world served not as a model to be imitated but as an illustration that conformity with God's law was possible. With the modern age, this understanding of the cosmic order has collapsed, for the world does not seem to correspond, even as illustration, to our ethical needs.

I might need to obtain a copy of Brague's Wisdom of the World and read it carefully, comparing his views on the emergence of modernity with those of Hans Blumenberg in Legitimacy of the Modern Age.

Rémi Brague on Medieval Philosophy's Broad Influence

Rémi Brague Explains

(Image from Universidad de Navarra)

As some will recall, I recently re-read Rémi Brague's masterful Eccentric Culture, which motivated me to blog about it again. In doing so, I discovered a couple of interviews that Brague gave, and I blogged on a question raised in my mind by a passage in the longer interview, the one on The Legend of the Middle Ages.

I went so far as to email Professor Brague and inquire:

Pardon me for contacting you, for you do not know me, but I have a query -- I think a simple one.

I am currently re-reading your book Eccentric Culture and have blogged on it recently (as well as earlier), and I happened to read -- and then blog about -- the interview conducted by Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego for the collection of articles in The Legend of the Middle Ages.

In that interview, an editor (I suppose) has introduced the heading "Cosmology as a Postulate." Following this heading is a passage that suggests to me that the editor has misunderstood your point, for you seem to me to be saying that for premodern man, cosmic order was not a postulate but a given.

Have I read you correctly?

Of course, you may have no time for this query, and I will understand and accept if I do not hear from you.

But I did hear from him:

This was a real joy to receive your message. I must be brief: I am in a small community in la France profonde, i.e. in the sticks. Internet is available only in the town-house.

Thank you for your close reading of my stuff. I will have to postpone a real answer till September: I haven't my own books there, let alone their English translations.

Have a nice summer.

From the evidence provided by this email, I'd say that he must be a really nice man, and I now have something to look forward to. But I won't leave you with the merely autobiographical blog entry today (after all, this isn't really my vacation), for I want to share another passage from the longer interview on The Legend of the Middle Ages that left a vivid impression on me because of its implications as to why the West developed as it did:

In medieval Europe, philosophy became a university course of studies and a pursuit that could provide a living. It also supported a mass of untenured, garden-variety "philosophy profs," few of whom have left their names in the manuals, even though we can exhume their courses, which we discover to be full of surprises. But these were the men who made it possible for philosophy to make a profound impact on the minds of the jurists, physicians, and others they taught, hence for it to become a factor in society.

This is significant because philosophy's emphasis upon reason surely played some role in preparing the rational European mind for the scientific revolution but also because it held theologians to rational standard. Christian theology had always required philosophical grounding, but the middle ages institutionalized philosophical study and therefore, as Brague remarks, ensured that philosophy might have a broader influence on society, something that did not occur in Islamic civilization because philosophy was never institutionalized there.

Brague goes on to make the point that "'theology' as a rational exploration of the divine . . . exists only in Christianity," which stands as a considerably strong claim to make, but I'll leave you to read the interview if you want to know precisely why he holds this view. I will add that his point is similar to the point made by Pope Benedict XVI in his Regensburg lecture, namely, that the central significance of the "Logos" in Christianity was crucial to Christian theology's openness to reason.

I agree with the Pope and Brague on their point about the significance of the "Logos," but I also think that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation raised profound philosophical questions -- concerning, e.g., matter and spirit, temporality and nontemporality, spatiality and nonspatiality, etc. -- that needed to receive answers if Christians were to respond to questions posed by the non-Christian culture in which Christianity grew, especially since Christianity did not begin as a successful political and military power, could not force non-Christians to submit, and thus had to rely solely on persuasion.

Until Constantine, anyway.

Rémi Brague on "Cosmology as a Postulate"?

Rémi Brague

The Legend of the Middle Ages:

Philosophical Explorations

of

Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

(Image from University of Chicago Press)

I'm still taking a vacation from posting on my family's vacation, but I've at least succeeded in accessing the internet from my apartment. My children's computer hasn't lost its internet connection, fortunately, and I've managed to rig up a table raising the keyboard to my adult height.

But I still will post merely a brief comment, like yesterday's, but this one on a passage in a fascinating interview that the two medievalists Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego conducted with Rémi Brague as a sort of introduction to his book The Legend of the Middle Ages. I wish to call into question the heading that an editor apparently provided, so I paste both the heading and the passage below, which follow immediately from Brague's remark that for modern people, "Nothing in the physical world responds to man's ethical demands":

Cosmology as a Postulate

To be sure, for premodern man, the presence of the world, which he felt as a kosmos, was not a model to be imitated in any literal sense. Pretending to believe this to be the case is unfair, as it might be amusing to explain by the use of Kant’s concepts. The role of the cosmic order is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason. Those postulates -- liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul -- are of no use as a basis for moral law, which is sufficient unto itself and draws its obligation from an intrinsic authority that it has no need to borrow from elsewhere. Such postulates serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world. One might say that the kosmos was less a model demanding conformity than an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible. The major difference between the premodern vision of the world and Kant's morality is that realization of the good is for Kant only postulated. It remains, so to speak, in the domain of faith and hope. For men of ancient and medieval times, on the other hand, the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony. One only need acknowledge it.

A cursory reading of the passage seems to allow for the heading supplied, namely, "Cosmology as a Postulate," but a closer reading leads me to think that Brague would reject the heading as utterly counter to his point.

True, he says that "The role of the cosmic order [for premodern men] is analogous to that of the postulates of practical reason [for Kant]," but this is not the same as calling cosmology a "postulate." Kant's postulates of "liberty, the existence of a just God, and the immortality of the soul" all "serve to guarantee the possibility of the supreme Good -- that is, the agreement between what the Law demands and the order of the real world." The similarity is thus that "the kosmos was . . . an example that shows, from the simple fact that it exists, that ethical conduct is possible." But cosmology was not a postulate because "For men of ancient and medieval times, . . . the sovereignty of the good was already given in the cosmic harmony." Since it was already given, it had no need to be postulated.

Or so I read the passage, but perhaps Brague, or some other expert, could clarify this point.

Rémi Brague

Rémi Brague

(Image from victa placet mihi causa)

I apologize for posting late this Sunday, but I'm having diffculties with my internet connection. A brief electrical storm yesterday seems to have broken the link. I've had to come down to my office this Sunday afternoon to get access, so my blog entry today will be short.

I'm re-reading Rémi Brague's Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, and I was struck by Brague's quote from Ortega y Gasset, which he uses to express his own concept of European culture's "secondarity." Brague tells us that concerning "secondarity":

One can formulate it by reusing, even if it must be nuanced, a famous pun of Ortega y Gasset. Recently returned from America, he had answered someone who asked him the reasons for his return: "Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido." "Europe is a continent / container [Castilian doesn't distinguish the two words] that has a content, and it is the only one to have one." The formula seems overly proud. It was perhaps for Ortega. For me, if one understands it well, it is completely the contrary. For one must equally realize that "to have a content" supposes, rightly, that one can "have" a content, and therefore that one "is" not this content, that one is not completely identified with it. One can thus reverse the formula: the content of Europe, it is just to be a container, to be open to the universal. (Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, pages 145-146)

Brague's point is that European culture (and hence Western Civilization) has inherited the attitude that Rome held toward its 'own' culture, namely, that it looks outside of itself for its culture, specifically to Greece. When Rome became Christian, it looked outside of itself for its religion. This is Rome's sense of "secondarity," and Europe took over this Roman secondarity and its intrinsic eccentricity, for neither Athens nor Jerusalem were located in Western Europe.

However, Brague is overstating his point when he says, "the content of Europe, it is just to be a container," for Europe is not simply a container of some cultural goods or other that were borrowed from outside of itself. Rather, it contains cultural goods borrowed from Athens and Jerusalem.

If the container that is Europe were to 'borrow' Islam to replace its Greek and Jewish goods, for example, Europe would no longer be European.

"Europe is a geographical concept . . ."?

Free Europe?

Or no real Europe at all?

(Image from FEC)

In yesterday's post, I delved into matters that I don't fully understand, namely, the so-called 'democratic deficit' of the European Union, but such delving is necessary these days because of my seminar on multiculturalism and the future of Europe.

Anyway, an anonymous visitor left this message:

Don't make the EU too complicated. Don't diminish freedom in Europe.Vote YES to Free Europe Constitution at [Free Europe].

I'm a curious man, so I visited the FEC link. Among its points is the following (number 8):

Decisions in the EU should be made by agreements between governments. Delegation of national legislative power to EU institutions is possible; withdrawal of such powers, both in specific cases and generally is equally possible.

This reminds me of the famous liberum veto that kept the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth weak because any member of the assembly could stop legislation by stating "I freely forbid" -- in Latin, "liberum veto." If any national government can withdraw the legislative power that it has delegated to EU, then the EU Parliament will be effectively powerless. Some might think this desirable, but that kind of vacuum at the center didn't do Poland much good in the 18th century, when it was repeatedly divided and partitioned until lost from the map.

I realize that I've offered only a superficial analogy here, but I would like to see more European unity, so long as it is truly democratic, than more European disunity. In the long run, I would like to see a Europe with a real foreign policy and a strong military to add hard power to its soft power. Europe should not be incapable of effective action -- the Bosnian crisis was an early indicator of what can happen even on the EU's borders if it lacks an ability to act.

But let's not get into that. Instead, I'd like to note a puzzling statement enunciated in the FEC's point number 1:

Europe is a geographical concept, and European is as such not necessarily good or bad.

I disagree with the apparent premise. Europe is not merely a geographical concept. The French philosopher Rémi Brague has devoted an entire book, Europe, la voie romaine, to the concept of European identity. His book has been translated as Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, and I've previously blogged favorably about Brague's views.

My point is that Europeans have a transnational identity that might not be as strongly felt as their various national identities, but that common identity is no less real for being rooted in things other than 'blood'.

For more on Brague, see the links or search Gypsy Scholar blog.

Rémi Brague: Roman 'Secondarity' as Civilizing Process

Rémi Brague: The Eccentric European?

(Image from Amazon Books)

A good review often brings forth the meaning of a book more clearly than our own reading did and expresses it better than we can.

I've been looking again at a book that I first read about two years ago and quoted from yesterday, Rémi Brague's Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization. I'm drawing upon it for a course on war, religion, and civilization that I'm teaching this semester for Yonsei University's Underwood International College. I don't require my students to read Brague's book itself, however, but merely to read a couple of reviews that bring out the book's basic thesis.

One of the two reviews selected, Mark Shiffman's best summarizes and explains Brague's argument, beginning with his review's title: "Neither Greek nor Jew" (Modern Age: A Quarterly Review, Volume 47, Number 2, Spring 2005, pp. 160-163).

Let me quote from Schiffman:

It has been said that the core of the spiritual vitality of the West is the fundamental tension between Athens and Jerusalem. True as it may be, this claim leaves in complete obscurity the character of the West that enables it to harbor and sustain such conflicting sources, a character which cannot be explained by recourse to one of the two poles without rendering the tension between them something less than fundamental. According to Remi Brague's Eccentric Culture, this omission finds its remedy in reflection upon a third city: Rome. (Shiffman, 160B)

I should perhaps here note that the original French title to Brague's book is Europe: La Voie Romaine, which would translate literally as Europe: The Roman Way. The English title, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, is thus a bit misleading, for Brague is not writing of Western civilization but about the identity of "Europe."

Europe, argues Brague, is Roman. But what does that mean?

"Romanity" is the name Brague gives to a salutary inferiority complex at the heart of European culture. In the original case, the Romans recognized the Greeks as their superiors in attainment of the true and the beautiful and in suppleness and vigor of language. "To be 'Roman,'" Brague remarks, "is to have above one a classicism to imitate and below one a barbarity to subdue." (Shiffman, 161A)

Shiffman is quoting from page 39 of Brague's book, and the expression "a barbarity to subdue" sounds rather crass -- a casual justification of Roman imperialism -- until one recalls that Brague was speaking of a being "stretched between a classicism to assimilate and an inner barbarity" (Brague, 39). The barbarity is one's own, and the remedy is a liberal education that will act as a civilizing process. Shiffman means to suggest precisely this, of course, for he goes on to emphasize that the aim of a liberal education has "is always a soul-forming education in the language and literature of peoples other than one's own" (Shiffman, 161A), an inner struggle against one's own barbarity.

Thus Rome, for Brague, is not another cultural content to be compared to Athens and Jerusalem. Rather, it is the form of cultural appropriation that allows Athens and Jerusalem to be the content of an education. (Shiffman, 161A)

Now, we generally think that "cultural appropriation" means 'stealing' someone else's culture and appropriating it as one's own, but this is not what the expression means here:

What most characterizes Romanity is the consciousness of "secondarity," the consciousness that one's cultural origins and points of reference do and ought to have their source in another culture. As Brague puts it: "To say that we are Roman is entirely the contrary of identifying ourselves with a prestigious ancestor. It is rather a divestiture, not a claim. It is to recognize that fundamentally we have invented nothing, but simply that we learned how to transmit a current come from higher up, without interrupting it, and all the while placing ourselves back in it." (Shiffman, 161A, quoting Brague, 91)

In this sense, "cultural appropriation" means that one acknowledges having borrowed from another. This is the peculiar identity of Europe -- and I would extend it to Western identity more generally -- the sense of itself as secondary, for the sources of its identity, both cultural (Greece) and religious (Jerusalem), come from outside itself.

"'Eurocentrism' is a misnomer," Brague argues, for "no culture was ever so little centered on itself and so interested in the other ones as Europe" (Brague, 133-4).

Hence the nicely ambiguous English title: Eccentric Culture.

More Political Theology: Rebecca Goldstein on Mark Lilla

Mark Lilla

(Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Yesterday, in Seoul's weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune, I read a delightful article, a review by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein of Mark Lilla's recent book The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West.

Goldstein, herself the author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, has an intellectual's grasp of the issues and a literary stylist's turn of a phrase.

Hence my delight.

Goldstein's article bears the title "The Enlightenment and its limitations," a topic dear to my innermost, twisted heart of hearts not because I am against the Enlightenment but because I am for the Enlightenment project in the manner advocated by Jürgen Habermas.

But that's peculiar to my biography and is merely the flip side of a coin that usually lands with its ad hominem side up.

The intellectual territory mapped by Lilla and Goldstein has over the years had various landsurveyors measuring its dimensions, and I'm simply a chainman on a surveying crew that sometimes works with Habermas, sometimes with Hans Blumenberg, and sometimes with Pope Benedict XVI, but I pick up a few artifacts now and then from that labor, which therefore goes beyond autobiography.

Goldstein has noticed something about our postmodern circumstances, or at least our current, late modernist conditions:

Some of us have been taking the European Enlightenment a little bit for granted. We've assumed that, just as natural philosophers like Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler ultimately prevailed in overturning the geocentric model of Ptolemaic cosmology, so, too, moral philosophers like Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke ultimately prevailed in removing ideas of divine revelation and redemption from politics. Progress in both spheres, the scientific and the political, was not only analogous and linked, but also, in some sense, inevitable, at least once rigorous standards of clear thinking were adopted.

This Enlightenment assumption -- that scientific and political secularization go forth hand in hand like Adam and Eve from the Medieval garden into "The World ... all before them, ... and Providence thir guide" no longer (cf. PL 12.646-7) -- has come into question:

We've assumed the matter has been thankfully settled, at least in the Western intellectual tradition. No wonder, then, that recent years have brought a spate of incredulous "neo-Enlightenment" books -- along the lines of Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great" -- all of them barely able to contain their dismay that they even have to be arguing what it is they are arguing.

I've noticed that, too. And to some degree, I've shared the dismay, siding with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others when they're arguing for the separation of church and state. My sense is that most Westerners, even most Western Christians, recoil from theocratic visions when they take the form prescribed by Islamists like Osama bin Laden, for the visions remind us of what is at stake, of what we learned from our Western experience in Jean Calvin's Geneva and in our 16th- and 17th-century wars of religion.

Well ... how did we get here?

In Lilla's telling there was, first of all, nothing inevitable about the Great Separation. In fact, it is political theology that comes most naturally to us: "When looking to explain the conditions of political life and political judgment, the unconstrained mind seems compelled to travel up and out: up toward those things that transcend human existence, and outward to encompass the whole of that existence. . . . The urge to connect is not an atavism."

This is where the tale becomes interesting:

Indeed, this urge is so irresistible, Lilla argues, that only highly unusual circumstances can compel us to give it up. Those unusual circumstances were provided by Christian theology, but not, as some recent religious apologists have argued, because the Judeo-Christian framework itself promotes rationality and tolerance. Rather, it is Christianity's own fundamental ambiguities -- torn between a picture of God as both present and absent from the temporal realm, an ambivalence powerfully represented by the paradoxes of the Trinity -- that made it "uniquely unstable," subject to a plurality of interpretations that became institutionalized in sectarianism, and hence to several centuries' worth of devastating upheaval.

I'm not quite yet ready to give up the Pope's argument for Christianity as a rational faith that married Jewish religion to Hellenistic philosophy, thereby joining the two houses of Jerusalem and Athens, but I recognize the plausibility of Lilla's argument as set out by Goldstein.

Goldstein demurs when Lilla "cautions against drawing up universal prescriptions":

"Time and again we must remind ourselves that we are living an experiment, that we are the exceptions. We have little reason to expect other civilizations to follow our unusual path, which was opened up by a unique theological-political crisis within Christendom."

To this, Goldstein responds:

Some readers may want to challenge Lilla's inference regarding Christian specificity and the limits of the lessons of the Enlightenment. Contemporary Japan and India, among other non-Christian countries, have also embraced the Great Separation. It's not so clear that the Christian West is exceptional in anything except for first proposing the answer that has gradually gained momentum almost everywhere except in the Islamic Middle East.

Goldstein does acknowledge that:

Lilla offers a cogent explanation for why Christian Europe got to the Enlightenment first.

However, Goldstein insists that a solution that arose in the West's peculiar circumstances can have universal application:

It doesn't follow that the Enlightenment's solution to the political problems religion universally poses is not a thing to be universally recommended. Nor does it follow that particular historical contingencies are a necessary feature of the solution. One can read Lilla's story and draw precisely the opposite normative conclusions from the ones he asks us to draw: that the West's experimental testing and retesting of political theology, trying to see if there is any safe way of mixing politics and religion, has delivered an answer from which all may learn. Separating church and state works; mixing them tends toward disaster.

This is, implicitly, an argument against radical multiculturalism that reminds me of a similar conclustion reached by Rémi Brague in his fascinating reflection on our Western, Eccentric Culture:

What would be serious would be if Europe considered the universal it carries (the "Greek" of which we are "Romans") as a local particularity valid only for Europe, one which has no extension to other cultures. Now, one sometimes hears it said, for example, that liberty, the rule of law, the right to bodily integrity, would not be good for certain peoples whose tradition, supposed to merit an infinite respect, is for despotism, for official lying, or mutilation -- as if liberty and truth were local idiosyncrasies, to be considered on the same level as the wearing of a kilt or the eating of snails. (Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, pages 185-186)

Brague, of course, argues for Christianity's rationality in the sense intended by Pope Benedict XVI, but one can take some comfort in perceiving that regardless of whether Christianity is rationally clear or fundamentally ambiguous, it has led us to a particular solution with universal application, namely, the separation of church and state.

Now, we just have to persuade the Muslim world...