West and East – Europe's Dual Experience

Abstract

West and East – Europe’s Dual Experience1 Tomáš Halík The spirit of the West When we speak of East and West in relation to Europe the terms usually have a cultural and political, rather than a geographical sense. The cultural differences between Christianity in the two areas stem from the difference between Greek and Latin thinking. The mutual alienation of the two branches of European Christianity resulted from the schism between the Byzantine and Latin patriarchates. It was particularly after that schism that the initial cultural diversity of western Christianity gave way to ‘Romanisation’and the dominance of papal Rome. The western cultural mentality was then formed fundamentally by a series of historical events and spiritual currents: conflicts between the papacy and the empire, the mediaeval ‘papal revolution’, the separation of secular and spiritual spheres, the emergence and gradual emancipation of secular culture, the humanism of the Renaissance, the Reformation, Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the ideals of democracy, human rights and civil liberties. Those major cultural transformations had a minimal effect on Eastern Europe (particularly after the centre of orthodox Christianity moved to Russia after the fall of Constantinople). Nationalism and the nation states came into existence on the ruins of mediaeval Christianitas. Europe’s West is also the cradle of scientific and technical progress, capitalism and the industrial revolution. Marxism and the socialist movement were a reaction to the social consequences of the industrial revolution. As a reaction to the major crisis of capitalism in the 1930s there was an upsurge of three revolutionary counter-cultural movements, which represented three forms of radical rejection of the western culture of Christianity, humanism and liberal democracy: German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Russian Communism. All three drew sustenance from mythological sources: Nazism from Germanic cults of land and blood, Fascism from Ancient Rome, and Bolshevism from Russian Messianism. The two world wars that started in western Europe weakened Europe’s standing in the world. In the subsequent Cold War, Europe was divided politically into the East (which now denoted the countries under the Soviet Studies • volume 109 • number 433 11 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 11 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 11 27/02/2020 13:59 27/02/2020 13:59 diktat) and the West, under the influence of the United States. Thus the terms West and East acquired a new meaning. Does this division into West and East still hold good today? The integration of Europe after the fall of Communism After the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War, marked by the entry of several post-Communist countries into the EU and NATO, the process of European integration accelerated. Politicians spoke about ‘a common European home’and John Paul II about ‘Europe breathing with both its lungs’. It would now seem that those visions were a reflection of overoptimism . After 1989 the process of European integration relied excessively on economic and administrative aspects and neglected the cultural, moral and spiritual component: nurturing European awareness. The difficulty of defining a European identity became evident particularly during the attempts to frame a basic constitutional document for the EU. It is very difficult to find a compromise between two concepts: a conservative one based on nostalgia for ‘a Christian Europe’, and a secular liberal one that avoids linking the European idea with Christianity. Clearly on both sides there are prejudices, ‘enemy images’ and fears of the possible destructive consequences if the other side were to totally dominate public space. The continuation of the European integration process is encountering major difficulties. The West underestimates the dangers from Putin’s Russia, which is waging intensive hybrid warfare helped by a propaganda campaign of disinformation, aimed chiefly at the post-Communist countries.The European Union is weakened by the departure of Great Britain. The integration process is torpedoed by nationalists and populists – often financed by Russia– who are enjoying success on both side of the former ‘Iron Curtain’, particularly in the post-Communist countries such as Hungary and Poland, where they are gradually destroying liberal democracy, which did not manage to put down deep roots in the previous decades. The crisis of European integration is related, of course, to the crisis of a broader process...