Whose Values, Which Identity?

Do we need a European virtue?

The vast majority of political speeches delivered about the European Union include at least one reference to one of the values claimed to be common to all its member states. These values don’t merely serve the development of a European identity, rather, they are supposed to be constitutive of it; for what subsists across national borders and both promotes and appreciates cultural differences despite all kinds of economical and legal hindrances must be what unites the citizens of Europe.

But when prompted about what these frequently cited values actually amount to, even the most ardent proponents of the European Union appear to be puzzled. They tend to pile up ubiquitous but vague catchphrases such as “equality” and “tolerance” or appeal to discrete passages of contracts that both documented and advanced the progress of the European project. It is, however, premature to judge on these grounds that there is no distinct set of common values or that, if there is one, it is nothing more than a redundant mixture of perpetuated political stances that have to be stated in increasingly imprecise terms as new member states are joining the EU.

Quite contrary: one would suppose that there are good reasons to place confidence in these alleged European values, especially with hindsight on the rejection of the European constitution in 2005. Hasn’t it been claimed that the rejection could have been avoided if only the worth of our common values had been subject of public debate? Perhaps European citizens would now live under one single constitution if European values had had a chance to reconcile the uneasiness felt in “Old Europe”. Values that have been neglected are now about to be taken seriously. How else could be made sense of the plan set forth by the Heads of State and Government to draft a declaration that strengthens EU’s values on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome?

But regardless of the outcome of this festive summit, a question keeps pressing on all subsequent political agenda following its recommendations: What criteria should be used to determine European values? If a catalogue of values is to be more than a mere pragmatic shortcut justifying future political agitation, then more fundamental issues need to tackled, including philosophical assumptions our normative (and ideological) heritage is based on. Thus, instead of speculating about the exact content of a possible catalogue of shared values that might be constructed out of the EU’s history, it appears to be more promising to dwell on what values are and how they can nowadays be employed within political discourse.

The Good and the Goods

Approaching the kind of values we are envisaging it might be instructive to recall how things started out in the first place. The foremost reason to form a trans-national union has once been the aim to alleviate trade on the European single market and thus to strengthen the economies of its member states. The leading values in this case clearly bear some relation to what was thought to be “good” for the cooperating nations. Wealth, employment and productivity were considered to be of instrumental — or, if you prefer, economic — goodness.

But the EU does not exhaust its role in being an economic enhancer, let alone a monetary union. Besides strategic alliances, there appear to be values other than those exhibiting a direct connection to profitable outcomes of this sort. They manifest, for example, in the frequent discussions about whether Turkey could be an eligible candidate for EU membership. Most will remember which values have been involved in these discussions. They were ranging from gender equality to religious freedom and the secularization of state. Above all, these values are concerned when, at times of crisis, European member states struggle to speak on the world’s stage with one voice. Though this uniformity does not imply living by the same moral standards, it certainly would more easily be achieved if there were some binding ethical guidelines.

But these, it might be conjectured, merely reflect the convictions and values shared by a small percentage of the European population, i.e. elites designing contracts and transforming the face of Europe by adopting local politics. For this reason it remains highly questionable whether the shared values constituting the European identity can possibly be extracted from this rather privileged milieu.

Implementation of Values

Yet, the conception of values sketched above is not entirely misconceived. Let us assume that the values we are searching for are ends for human rather than political interaction. By this premise, light is shed on the citizens of Europe and the ways they contribute to the advancement of the European project. As it has been pointed out recently, when it comes to promoting the values one adheres to, expectations are directed to one’s role as a customer. But what makes this different from a subtle marketing ploy? The answer, I would suggest, is this: deliberately spending money is an easy way to demonstrate responsibility and commitment to what one cares about within our contemporary capitalistic framework.

Even though this picture of the particularly concerned customer provides a confident perspective on how to make room for external values in a setting otherwise regulated by efficiency considerations, it merely depicts a loophole in the global cycle of production and consumption. The purchase of a product is only a tiny span of its life and it alone cannot convey the buyer’s concern. (This being said, isn’t it odd that most of the mechanisms extending the exchange of information between customer and producer beyond the bare minimum are denounced as “big brother” monitoring systems?) Of course, the concerned customer only covers a part of our value-driven actions. He is by definition a reduction of a complex and competent human being capable of more. Through the lenses of an economist, the customer is existent merely as an agent restricted to specific, business related activities.

But does this reduction succeed? Though even our most humanistic concerns about education might fairly be rephrased in terms of costs and utility and are thus covered by the consumer model, any kind of activity foreign to the exchange of goods is not.
This is also why the homo economicus should not be mistaken as a feasible idea of man—not even so by the materialist.

Besides the inadequacy of consumerism to capture the concerns of an individual as a whole, it seems to be limited in still another respect. The citizens of Europe cannot avoid participating in developments of the EU. They do so merely through buying what is on the market. This problem is especially relevant for those with limited choice. One source of such enforcement is the protectionism of local subsidies. Nonetheless, the overall picture of the caring customer puts emphasis on a very important point: the individual and its ability to conform to the values held dear.

How to be Defined?

But how is this supposed to take place? Mere rational appeal obviously may suffice to organize ones values; it does not, however, enable an agent to set himself to act accordingly. Aristotle circumvented this problem by claiming that the virtuous man possessed several habits which allow him to mediate between conflicting desires and affections so his actions are — in the literal sense — valuable. Thus there are traits of character due to which behavioral adjustments can be made relative to contingencies such as natural talents or other dispositions. Nonetheless, this classic approach proves to be inapplicable to present problems since the virtue Aristotle referred to is embedded into a political and social structure completely different from our own. Imagine, for instance, the sheer impossibility to organize modern, individualistic societies by mutual social control.

Furthermore, Aristotle’s concept of virtue is integrated into a conceptual framework that can hardly be employed anymore. It presupposes a strict teleological view on human nature and a public good that provides a normative standard by means of which individual actions have to be evaluated. Thus ambitions to borrow single concepts from the classical tradition of moral thought must result in a incoherent patchwork of concepts, or to use MacIntyre’s term, in a “conceptual melange”.

This is why early republican endeavours to accomplish these exact tasks, namely to bridge the epistemic and factual gap between ancient societies and modern world affairs remain otiose. One probably has to travel a long and twisted road before people are in a position to make sense of the required ancient concepts and actually begin to restore their faith in virtue. I would hold that it is impossible and not even desirable to forget about the historical progress that gave color to our contemporary concepts. After all, I would like to maintain that values characteristic for a European identity crucially depend on the existence and social acknowledgement of virtues. Therefore it is required that the concept of a virtue is reconsidered and qualified appropriately.

Exemplary for such a modification is the definition of virtues that has been suggested by John Rawls and which is drawn upon in his liberal accounts on political philosophy. Deprived from the normative weight virtues used to carry on Aristotle’s view, Rawls merely conceives them as “sentiments, that is, related families of dispositions and propensities regulated by a higher-order desire, in this case a desire to act from the corresponding moral principles”. Virtues are intended to produce obedience to law-like generalizations being morally significant.

Consequently, virtues are differentiated not by the values they espouse but the rules they demand compliance for. Values shared by the members of a society can, in turn, be determined by a fair agreement on principles governing their social institutions. These values might, of course, not be all an individual cares about, but they certainly are what is important to them in the context of society. I consider this to be a first, essential qualification.

The consensus attained in such a situation brings together people with identical and conflicting interest who are regarding themselves as free and equal. The question that still remains is: what relation pertains between the principles consented to and the values we presume to be silently at work? Or to put it another way: how can we benefit from the above qualification when we talk about virtues?

An analogy to model theory may help. If we try to understand a principle as particular statement people can assent to or not, then it can be regarded as valid for a society if and only if there is an agreement among all members of this society up to this point. Under this premise a principle — or more precisely — its adoption, presupposes certain circumstances prevailing on the initial bargaining situation. The imposed conditions do not only formally characterize the principles under consideration; they also ensure the reasonableness of possible outcomes. Thus if somebody is willing to argue under certain precepts, he can likewise be said to subscribe to a specific set of values. And this is where virtues reenter the picture. If a principle is valid in two models consisting of identical conditional constraints but different group of citizens, there must be a virtue common to the members of the latter.

In a similar vein values can be detected by the choice of methods with which principles formerly agreed upon are applied to concrete political or social problems. They center around questions like “what is to count as evidence for that principle X is satisfied?”.
Hence, in a loose sense, we can state that values are expressed by the principles valid in a given group or society. Needless to hint at the European Constitution, the purpose of its introduction and the objections that have been raised after its rejection.

Reentering the Political Sphere

It has been maintained that we should look out for European virtues before compiling a catalogue of values. What I purport is related to virtues rather than to principles not because I take the former to be more fundamental than the latter. My reason is that, given Rawls’ definition, virtues are the last treshold a principle must pass in order to be acknowledged. This is, of course, to assume that to act from principle is roughly the same as consenting to it, knowing that one will be immediately affected by it.

Finally, it might be stated that the preceding arguments lend themselves to the idea that persons embodying the key virtues of a European citizen are no longer needed if all there is to these virtues can be reduced to a lip service paid for a quick consensus. While this might be true, idols remain important and are better not dispensed with.
Those actively engaging in the European dialogue and carving out why the EU is more than a collaboration for mutual benefit are the avant-garde of something that might adequately be called public reason. It is especially alongside matters of justice that public debates can flourish by putting forward and steadily reminding of the values uniting the citizens of Europe. Only when nativism and historical neuroses are set aside, values as presented above can contribute to a more thorough analysis of upcoming questions like: does the building of a gas pipeline stretching from Russia to Germany on the bottom of the Baltic Sea really amount to a injustice done to the states it bypasses?

The EU does not need more drama in order to receive wider public attention, nor further advertising campaigns detailing its structures and methods, but a comprehensive discussion and critical reflection on the values its enacted principles permit of. Otherwise it is difficult to see how we can cogently talk about an European identity and derive political legitimation from our common values.