Summer School Reflection: an Observation on the Concept of Europe

Europe unveiled manifold meanings throughout my summer school experiences in 2024. The deeper I explore the concept of Europe, the more I am dazzled by its complexity. This article is my traveling note on a continent entangled with both hopes and fears: from Enlightenment to enlargement, it depicts my journey to find direction in the dialogue between my and Europe’s intellectual landscapes.

Wei-Chung Chen (Chris)

Europe in Enlightenment and political philosophy

I am always seeking ways in which philosophy can contribute to my studies in EPS. It is the subject that brought me where I am today. After a year in Europe, I wondered how I would look back at Western philosophy again. So, in September I attended the Passau Summer School of Applied Ethics, an interdisciplinary program that applied Kant’s philosophy to contemporary topics like digitalization, sustainability, and the future of Europe. Understanding Europe has been a central task for many philosophers. This task is not constrained to scholars who live within it, but also to those whose lives and surroundings were utterly changed by it. 

Kant’s works on pure reason and moral philosophy have redefined the intellectual landscape on this continent and beyond. His project puts autonomy and human reason at the center of his metaphysical theory. The “Copernican turn” as scholars put it, placed human subjectivity at the core of philosophical debates. “Use your reason!” was the maxim that Kant addressed to the public. What remains powerful today is his inquiry: what can I do? What should I do as a thinking being? These questions marked the core of the Enlightenment movement, breaking the fog of superstition and fantasy. The light of knowledge will pave the way to truth for humans.

His intellectual works had a profound impact on the future of Europe, the subject of the seminar that I selected. From migration to the peace project, Kant’s moral philosophy demands definitive duty of humans toward each other. On migration, Kant’s principle of treating humans as subjects laid the ground for European visions of human rights and hospitality.

Similar notions are found in his work on political philosophy. Perpetual peace, as utopian as it may seem, suggests a project between nation-states to pursue negotiations and non-hostile principles in the event of conflicts. Written in 1795, this article offered a vision that exceeded his time. In the length of approximately 100 pages, Kant dealt with issues such as disarmament, constitution, international law, and democracy. His cosmopolitan ideas were so powerful that they became the foundation of EU integration, which transformed a region of conflicts into alliances. 

As the seminar proceeded, the room was enchanted by the triumph of European civilization. However, as the only non-European participant, I couldn’t share the same optimism that some of my colleagues had. The critique comes within the concept of Enlightenment itself, as Kant’s confidence in human capacities has also been the strongest weapon against the Enlightenment. For instance, critical theorists Horkheimer and Adorno noted that the root of “mythical irrationality” was already embedded in the concept of Enlightenment. The stream of European intellectual history is a story of self-destruction that reached its peak with the rise of fascism in the late 19th to 20th century.

While the Enlightenment movement was aimed at expelling myths and overthrowing superstition with knowledge, Horkheimer and Adorno noticed that the movement had become the new myth itself. The enlightened minds embraced science and progress as the only answer to civilization. This mindset instrumentalized every tangible object as disposable for human use. Nature  turned into resources that were calculable in terms of capital. Moreover, political ideologies were wrapped in the name of science and advertised themselves as the path toward truth. The phenomenon of ‘mystified science,’ according to them, reached its peak with facism, which legitimized ethnic cleansing with (pseudo)scientism. 

Another untold story of Enlightenment is its profound impact on the expansion of imperialism, justifying itself in the name of emancipation. For centuries, Enlightenment nurtured a new self-confidence in European civilization whose far-reaching impact clouded over other knowledge systems in the world and raised itself as the universal solution – the roots of imperialism and domination. In my bachelor’s studies in Chinese philosophy I learned that, for decades, scholars spent their time trying to justify Chinese philosophy’s compatibility with Western philosophy in order to give it the value deserving of serious study. Under the dominance of Enlightenment ideas and its successors, it became an existential problem for other traditions to sustain themselves by following the West.

As a Taiwanese student of Western philosophy, I found myself in the complex position of consuming these ideas while being a permanent critic of them. For every work and comment that we make, we are actively reshaping or enhancing the structure of this intellectual landscape. Am I, while diving into the subject that I deeply love, enhancing academic injustice and ignoring other traditions? I realize the dilemma of taking a side in this issue, since my passion is incompatible with my understanding of a just intellectual society. The struggle brings me to the ultimate question: can we still embrace the values of these ideas while challenging their dominance in the intellectual arena?

Europe as a project of integration: The clash of values in enlargement 

Another controversy lies in my discussion of EU enlargement with colleagues from the Balkans. The project of enlargement is seen by many as the hope for this region for prosperity, but obstacles stand at the path toward integration for West Balkan states. 

In the Romanian Summer School of EU enlargement, we explored the path toward the EU for West Balkan states as well as Ukraine and Georgia. In Cluj-Napoca, a city at the heart of Transylvania where various ethnic communities met, we explored the profound history of the region and the contemporary challenges it invokes. This program provided an overview on the eastern border of the EU that examined the situation at the candidate states of the EU today. What remains powerful for me was the cultural complexity of integration that I learned during the session. 

In Imagining Balkans, Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova asserted that, similar to Edward Said’s Orientalism, Balkan is stigmatized in Europe as the “others within”. It is namely a region constructed by Western European perspective as geographically Europe but culturally detached from it. While it shares somewhat intertwined relations with other parts of Europe, the Balkans were deemed a region of political turmoil and violence throughout history. This image makes Balkan become a region that is incompatible with European values. 

The question of “Balkanism” – the mystified ideas of Balkan – is still present in the process of EU enlargement. Does integration mean cultural subordination or historical progression? EU enlargement seems to be a matter beyond institutional change, but also a matter of narration and imagination. As the EU broadened its borders to the post-socialist space, the divergence of identity grew within the union, as these states found themselves subject to a new system imposed by Western Europe, a process of both give and take. By consenting to the adaption, states are also accepting the introduction of a new culture.

Conclusion (kind of)

What intrigued me, among all discussions above, was the primordial idea of Europe. We’ve seen various aspects of Europe so far, but where exactly is Europe? When speaking about the history of ideas, where are the borders of “European civilization”? When we talk about Eurocentrism, who do we blame? Does it stem from the Brussels administration? Or does it refer to colonial powers in Western Europe? If these questions help to clarify anything, it is the absurdity of viewing Europe as a homogenous entity.

Unfortunately, my summer voyage only made the concept of Europe seem more obscure. While some suggest Europe as an intellectual ground for Enlightenment and civilization, some others point out totally the opposite and reveal its hypocrisy. These questions might as well accentuate the ambiguity of Europe, either as an institution, civilization, or simply a region without identity.

This article has to end in an aporetic tone, as my summer journey creates more puzzles than clarity about what Europe is. I don’t know if the answer will ever be found. The inquiry into Europe seems to be a mirror that reflects not the essence but rather the multitude of our life stories and entanglement with it.