Should a European project be universalistic? The case of Jürgen Habermas' conception of European identity
Abstract
The emergence of the European Union as an autonomous actor, to some degree independent of its member states, raises the issue of a common European identity. Nowadays, this identity is predominantly understood in universalistic terms.
This is evident in Jürgen Habermas' constitutional patriotism, which represents an attempt to integrate the EU on the basis of universal legal-political norms. This universalism is, however, problematic because identity is a relational notion and requires the constitution of a particular boundary.
Although Habermas admits the necessity of drawing a distinction between the inside and the outside, his universalistic approach, which ignores cultural aspects, prevents the marking out of a substantive boundary. By contrast, the article asserts the view that European identity can be delineated only in virtue of its being distinct from some concrete out-groups and that, in addition to the normative dimension, redefined as particular, such an identity must also include a value one.