European Constitution: A Move from the Theological Legitimation of Political Regime

The author’s argument is that Europe must renounce Kant’s universalism and adopt political means in resolving its permanently conflictual situations. In that way it is to construct its new identity that stems neither from the divergent past of its members nor from their divergent perceptions of the future, but is being built in the politically active present. The European Union as a community sui generis is founded on a paradox. Namely, it does not grow from its familiar historical identity, but is growing into it by permanently resolving the conflictual situations of the state of nature by political means. That paradoxical political project may be subscribed to only politically: mythologies, religions, ideologies and metaphysics would, as it were, create a state of nature but only at a higher cultural level.