Page 412 - Stati inu obstati, revija za vprašanja protestantizma, letnik V (2009), številki 9-10, ISSN 1408-8363
P. 412
SYNOPSES, ZUSAMMENFASSUNGEN
suffering and death will be overcome; he searches for utopianism even in the
world itself, which he understands as a living process. His philosophy, which
resents every ideologization, thus cannot be permanently past. In his Principle
of Hope, Bloch presents not only the social, but also the medical, technical,
architectural and geographical utopias, and utopian perspectives in art and
wisdom, the common feature in them all being the anticipation of happiness
and human dignity. A world which is open and which Bloch understands as a
process suits such dreams about a better life. This openness of thought and of
the world itself he establishes in the first book The Principle of Hope, in the
second part, with the title The Anticipating Consciousness, in which he analyzes
the forms of utopian consciousness and explains the categories of a utopianly
open world.
UDC 27:061.1EU
Nenad H. Vitorović
Should Christianity shake off “Europe”?
In the context of the formation of Europe as a political community we
often hear calls that Europe should return to its Christian roots. Such calls
come from the Roman Catholic church and to a lesser extent from the Protes-
tant churches as also from part of the professional and wider public, with the
aim of ensuring an identity and thus also a boundary for the political commu-
nity of Europeans. Depending on whether with the term “Christianity” they
refer only to its western forms or also include the eastern ones, and whether
they understand it in a confessional or residual sense, these calls differ in de-
ciding what belongs to “Europe”, but in every case they presuppose a Europe
which is not Europe in either the geographical sense or in any more general
social-historical sense, but the Europe of a specific political idea, i.e. the idea of
“Christian Europe”.
This paper provides a critical treatment of this idea on the basis of repre-
sentative examples of its historical variants. The first variant treated is that of
Novalis, which can be considered the “classic” form, then the author looks
back at its genesis and development and finally gives an example of a contem-
porary variant, represented by Larry Siedentop.
The author ascertains that this political idea cannot face up to the tradi-
tion it appeals to, since it always compromises this tradition in one way or
another, and that (regardless of the monopolistic pretensions of hard secular-
ism) as the bearer of the “big story” of the political community, it is not in
itself adequate for contemporary pluralistic society, which began to develop
when the Protestant Reformation removed the monopoly of truth which the
hierarchy of the Latin church had maintained in the West until then. There is
410
suffering and death will be overcome; he searches for utopianism even in the
world itself, which he understands as a living process. His philosophy, which
resents every ideologization, thus cannot be permanently past. In his Principle
of Hope, Bloch presents not only the social, but also the medical, technical,
architectural and geographical utopias, and utopian perspectives in art and
wisdom, the common feature in them all being the anticipation of happiness
and human dignity. A world which is open and which Bloch understands as a
process suits such dreams about a better life. This openness of thought and of
the world itself he establishes in the first book The Principle of Hope, in the
second part, with the title The Anticipating Consciousness, in which he analyzes
the forms of utopian consciousness and explains the categories of a utopianly
open world.
UDC 27:061.1EU
Nenad H. Vitorović
Should Christianity shake off “Europe”?
In the context of the formation of Europe as a political community we
often hear calls that Europe should return to its Christian roots. Such calls
come from the Roman Catholic church and to a lesser extent from the Protes-
tant churches as also from part of the professional and wider public, with the
aim of ensuring an identity and thus also a boundary for the political commu-
nity of Europeans. Depending on whether with the term “Christianity” they
refer only to its western forms or also include the eastern ones, and whether
they understand it in a confessional or residual sense, these calls differ in de-
ciding what belongs to “Europe”, but in every case they presuppose a Europe
which is not Europe in either the geographical sense or in any more general
social-historical sense, but the Europe of a specific political idea, i.e. the idea of
“Christian Europe”.
This paper provides a critical treatment of this idea on the basis of repre-
sentative examples of its historical variants. The first variant treated is that of
Novalis, which can be considered the “classic” form, then the author looks
back at its genesis and development and finally gives an example of a contem-
porary variant, represented by Larry Siedentop.
The author ascertains that this political idea cannot face up to the tradi-
tion it appeals to, since it always compromises this tradition in one way or
another, and that (regardless of the monopolistic pretensions of hard secular-
ism) as the bearer of the “big story” of the political community, it is not in
itself adequate for contemporary pluralistic society, which began to develop
when the Protestant Reformation removed the monopoly of truth which the
hierarchy of the Latin church had maintained in the West until then. There is
410
