Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac

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СКАЧАТЬ German writer Goethe (1749–1832) has been described as the last Renaissance man of modernity, spanning reason and passion, science and poetry, government and scholarship, the planetary and the microscopic, and the epic and the lyrical; bridging the past and the future; and defining the scope of his age (Boyle 1991, 2000; Lewes 1908 [1864]; Lukacs 1968 [1947]; Piper 2010). Goethe’s work has offered European culture a vital blood transfusion more than once, whether Europe after the revolutionary and Napoleonic upheavals or the war-ravaged world confronting Lukacs. Goethe’s British translator and champion, the historian Thomas Carlyle saw an artist and a polymath surveying his age and offering his contemporaries guiding purpose. In Carlyle’s words, Goethe was ‘the Uniter, and victorious Reconciler, of the distracted, clashing element of the most distracted and divided age’ (Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 237–8). Goethe’s ‘incommensurable’ narrative explored the contradictions of the European Faustian spirit (Eckermann 1930 [3 January 1830]: 341). His Faust addressed the meaning of Europe and Europe’s humanist heritage in an era of political revolutions, counter-revolutions, and wars of national independence. The narrative poem swept across European history, putting the medieval Christian and ancient classical traditions into dialogue with the new scientific age. In Faust’s conjuring words, ‘Speech to and fro entices, calls it forth’ (Goethe Faust II 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 163). Goethe’s universal aspirations were a compelling reference point to rekindle a humanist European culture from the ashes of total war. He remains a compelling reference point to explore European humanism today.

      We too are at a critical juncture for Europe, a Europe estranged from its humanist tradition and modernity, where the disasters of humanity overshadow possibilities of eradicating more of the disasters of nature. The foundations of the European Community in the 1950s lie in a coal and steel community based on industrial economic cooperation between states over key industries facilitating political cooperation. The post-war functionalist theories of European integration were materialist and linked to state industrial strategies seeing their legitimacy as lying in providing comprehensive material security through supporting industries, full employment, housing, and welfare, and overcoming the shortcomings of the pre-war economy (Haas 2004 [1968]). Conversely the foundations of the European Union (EU) in the 1990s were in non-industrial strategies of monetary union facilitating ‘ever closer union’ (Stiglitz 2016). The post–Cold War constructivist theories of European integration were idealist and linked to post-industrial cosmopolitan social ideals, centring their legitimacy on economic freedom of movement and human rights (Christiansen et al., 2001; Habermas 2001, 2012). Into the new millennium, European governance is fusing neoliberal and ecological thinking on risk and complexity (Hayek 1974, 1988; Beck 2016).

      Changing European disaster and development visions are reflected in attitudes towards Faust the Developer. Goethe’s Faust imagined the cultural fusion of southern and northern Europe, reconciling the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient classical ideas and the Reformation religious differences over faith and works. Collective endeavour allowed people to transform their conditions and carve out more space for human freedom and self-determination. Faust’s vast industrial project hoped his development would provide secure land for people to live on and prosper, free from disaster and want. National independence movements involved projects of national development. Some even invoked Faust and Faust’s child as inspirations.

      Our book traces the rise and fall of European Faustian development from Dutch hydro-engineering and British industrialisation in northern Europe to Yugoslavia and Croatia in southern Europe and their Non-Aligned Movement ties. Leading European institutions and cultural ideas today reject Faust and Faustian development visions. Faust’s name is almost invariably invoked to indict human development as disastrous and rein in individual freedom and collective self-determination. The non-Faustian political-economic pact underpinning EU institutions is straining southern and northern, eastern and western relations in Europe. While some cities and areas may be prospering, swathes of Europe witness decaying national industries and infrastructure and the lack of industrial renewal strategies. Many citizens from southern and eastern Europe have little option but to become cheap migratory labour for the centres of economic activity in northern Europe. Economic contraction and depopulation are hollowing out the life of these countries. This pattern is even starker in what the EU designates its European neighbourhood, namely the former Non-Aligned Movement countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which came under foreign military intervention. Effectively people are losing their modern home in the world carved out by previous generations, and finding themselves more exposed again to external economic and natural forces.

      The Faust legend and the European spirit

      Of course Faust has mythical precursors—Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, and Lucifer, the fallen angel. None, though, are as closely tied to modern European society and its scientific and industrial development. The Faust legend originates in fifteenth-century Europe and accompanied the rise of the modern era. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1932 [1918]) saw the restless Faustian spirit as defining European culture, both in its spiritual strivings towards the divine and the infinite and its material degradation and ruin. Faust is a creature of the Reformation. ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’ are the famous words attributed to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1517. Luther initially sought a reform of the church, re-formation rather than revolution. His claim to the sovereignty of individual conscience had profound ramifications. Modern politics arguably began with Luther, and the European conflicts, national struggles of self-determination, and peasant revolt he unwittingly helped inspire (Luther 1974 [1520–1531]; Mannheim 1952 [1936]: 190–206; Porter 1974; Schiller 1860 [1790], 1990 [1788]; Wedgwood 1938). Luther invoked individual conscience against traditional church authority, but his stance opened up all authority to questioning (Furedi 2013: 161–4). The claims of conscience were not limited to religious matters but were taken up in other areas and engendered social struggles over and among the ruling authorities. Luther, like Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice, could not reverse his spell (Goethe 1948 [1797]: 276–9).

      The Faust legend emerged in the early modern period awakening to a new sense of human agency and greater possibilities for good or ill. Faust personified the new individual pursuing new knowledge, activity, and power outside the bounds of traditional authority and the tensions over the new individualism, its desires and dangers. The alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541), who was known as ‘the Luther of physicians’, was one of these new individuals behind the legend (Krleža 1962b [1955]: 11–90). Paracelsus contended, ‘He who is born in imagination discovers the latent forces of Nature’ (Paracelsus in Hirst 1964: 65). Paracelsus’ ideas broke with the orthodox classical thinking on the cosmos and developed medical understanding of the human body drawing on experimentation (Paracelsus 1990 [1529–1530]: 75–80). His philosophy of knowledge was more audacious than his contemporary the Dutch humanist theologian Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) and the ‘Prince of the Humanities’. His 1511 The Praise of Folly satirising superstitious practices and his 1515 translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into Latin emboldened calls for church reform and independent scholarship, although he remained attached to the Catholic Church. Erasmus cautioned against pursuing knowledge outside of the auspices of the existing authorities: ‘Embrace what you are allowed to perceive; venerate from afar what you are not allowed to perceive, and look in awe and with simple faith on whatever it is that is concealed from you. Keep far away from impia curiostas’ (Erasmus in Rummel 2017). Paracelsus’ philosophy of knowledge violated Erasmus’ docta pietas (learned piety) and tempted impia curiostas (unholy inquisitiveness). ‘Thoughts are free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature … create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy from which new arts flow’ (Paracelsus 1979: 45). Erasmus primarily wrote in Latin for a scholarly community and the educated elite. Paracelsus innovated with some writings and lectures in the vernacular German, opening up his radical thinking to a wider public audience. His writings articulated a new bolder individual outlook: ‘Let no man who can be his own belong to another’ (Paracelsus 1979: xxxviii).

      The Reformation, СКАЧАТЬ