Discussions of European identity, and the history mostly revolve round two points of reference. One goes back to the origin of modern usage of Europe and European in the eight century around the struggle between Christian Franks and Muslim Moors, and then round the Frankish king Charlemagne who received the title of Emperor of the Romans, an event which questions the claim of the eastern and Greek Roman Empire, Byzantium, to continue the legacy of Rome there is an obvious religious focus here, which is Catholic Roman Christians as against Orthodox Greek Christians, and a Christian struggle against Islam. In Charlemagne's reign the struggle to Christianise pagans is still very much an issue in northern Europe. So this is the Europe which is Catholic Christian, Frankish, and western Roman.
The other point of reference, one thousand years later, is the Enlightenment, so an origin in cosmopolitanism, rationalism, ethical universalism, secularism, and science is suggested. The Enlightenment does have a historical and geographical location in Europe, and particular concentrations within Europe. The most important focus for the cosmopolitan rationalist understanding of Europe is Königsberg, though purely Königsberg as the city of Kant. Kant is generally understood through his links to the west, to Scottish Enlightenment, the Enlightened despotism of Frederick the Great in Berlin, the Swiss-French Rousseau, and so on. Frederick II, King of Prussia was ruing over Kant's location in East Prussia, but from Brandenburg and within the boundaries of the new Rome (in practice the German Empire) of Charlemagne.
This Enlightened Kantian Europe is however largely anti-Catholic in that most of the major thinkers are at least anti-clerical in a way which applies more to the Catholic church than Protestantism, and as with Hume when sceptical aboıt religion as such direct their scepticism most on the Romish faith. Vico provides an interesting exception amongst great Enlightenment thinkers, but anyway, the Enlightened Europe identity at some level, explicitly or implicitly, rests on the Protestant break with Rome, and various ways of breaking with a Catholic Medieval past, often treated in a very reductive way, but with deep philosophical roots, as in th refran of abuse of 'Scholasticism' from Descartes and Bacon to the Enlightenment. This is a European identity which is northern, Protestant, anti-clerical, and anti-Catholic. Even in France Enlightenment thinkers may associate liberty with ancient Germans more than southern republics, as we see in Montesquieu.
The prime proponent of the first European idenity is the French medievalist and historian Jacques Le Goff, while the prime proponent of the second European identity is the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. There is no absolute divide between these two views, and of course we can take the idea of Europe back to the Greek origins of the word, along with the antique Greek and Roman republics, which have been such a constant source of reference even for an apparent enthusiast of the Gothic like Montesquieu. Max Weber marks one link between Enlightened German Protestant Europe and Habermas, while Alexis de Tocqueville marks one link between Frankish Catholic Roman Europe and Le Goff. Of course many other links can be found and many complications, but the overall picture is familiar and still with us in widely accepted distinctions between parts of Europe.
These assumptions about what Europe is ought to be are not to be dismissed, they both build on a reality, and both express ideas which have some merits. There's nothing wrong at all with being conscious of the eight and arly ninth century gestation of modern Europe, and nothing wrong with cosmopolitan impulses. However, we can surely expand on these ways of thinking. The lines of expansion can be seen in ways of trying to define Europe in an open way. When I say Europe defined in an open way, I don't mean that Europe has no boundaries and that questions of identity should be left aside as chauvinistic. There are some good intentions in such attitudes, but Europe had some boundaries and some character, even if the identity involved is a single essence permeating everything.
It's good have an open Europe, open in at least three ways. 1. Open to immigrants, refugees and newcomers. 2 Open to change, self-criticism, and reform. 3 Open to those parts it has tended to exclude though they are part of Europe in very obvious way. Geographically 3 largely refers to Russia and Turkey. Turkey came out of the Ottoman Empire, which was a takeover of Byzantium, and no one wants to deny that Byzantium was European, though often the bad Europe in some way. Rus, then Russia and Ukraine emerged under the heavy influence of vikings and Byzantium, and was always influenced by western and central European incomers, even when as under Ivan the Terrible, it may have seemed like some remote despotism on the edge of civilisation, though that is as much the retrospective the Enlightenment attitude as the contemporary attitude Even in the eighteenth century, Vico and Montesquieu were slow to catch onto the existence of a Europe engaged Russian Empire that had emerged from Muscovy.
The full acceptance of Russia into Europe seemed closer in the time of Gorbachev and the beginning of Yeltsin's presidency than now. Turkey seemed closer to integration at the time just before and just after AKP and Erdoğan came to power, and everyone in Turkey apart from the most hardcore nationalists thought it necessary to seem very European Union oriented. Putinism and Erdoğan's rule once he was secure in power have pushed all that back and even led to an upturn in ways of thinking according to which Russia and Turkey are innately 'oriental' despotisms, while Orthodox Christianity and Islam are outside 'Europe'. The economic crisis in Greece and the continuing lack of honest and efficient government in Romania and Bulgaria have contributed to that. At another level the impact of the Euro crisis in southern and Catholic Europe has also reinforced a northern Protestant Enlightenment European identity. The break oıt of radical anti-EU and anti-immigrant politics in Britain feeds into a Catholic Roman southern way of understanding Europe.
Leaving aside a dwindling number of rigid cultural conservatives, no one seriously denies that Orthodox Christianity, Russia, Islam, and Turkey (including its predecessor states) have been part of European history The exclusionary ways of thinking from 800 and 1800 themselves acknowledged their presence in Europe. There is still a political, intellectual, and cultural task of acknowledging a Europe of Islam and Orthodox Christianity, Muscovy-Russia and Istanbul-Turkey. The references for that understanding can include Averroes and Frederick Barbarossa, Justinian and Dostoevsky.
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