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8 - Gaia and Europa: Religion and Legitimation Crisis in the ‘New Europe’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Richard H. Roberts
Edited by
Ralf Rogowski  and
Charles Turner
Ralf Rogowski
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Charles Turner
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

Convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny. … Convinced that, thus ‘United in its diversity’, Europe offers them the best chance of pursuing, with due regard for the rights of each individual and in awareness of their responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth, the great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope ….

The Preamble to the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe contains the expressions ‘transcend’, ‘common destiny’, ‘rights of each individual’ and ‘responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth’, and these words are framed by a conception of Europe as a ‘great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope’. While this does not quite attain the exalted level of an American belief in a ‘manifest destiny’, the intentions of the Président de la Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and his colleagues are nonetheless apparent. The ‘new Europe’ is not to be understood merely as bureaucracy or as an expanded market, but as a vital entity, the bearer of intellectual, cultural and spiritual continuities. In this chapter, I explore some of the dimensions that such aspirations touch upon, once they are emancipated from high-flown intention and anchored in the matrix of tensions and contradictions that afflict all efforts to define and defend identity in an era of globalisation and religiously inspired terror.

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Chapter
Information
The Shape of the New Europe , pp. 146 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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