Once I was invited to provide this ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, there was a private purpose why I used to be delighted to just accept. That’s my family’s historical past. My son and spouse had simply obtained their Austrian citizenship, and so they had obtained it as a result of my spouse’s household had escaped Austria, or no less than a few of them escaped, together with my spouse’s grandmother, Malita (Miriam) Schertzer. She was pushed out of Vienna to Palestine in 1938, on the identical Youth Aliyah with which my very own grandmother had escaped Germany. For us, this ‘Speech to Europe’ was additionally deliberate as a non-public go to to Miriam’s metropolis, and to her college, the Brigittenauer Gymnasium, now the Gymnasium am Augarten, the place there’s a acquainted memorial commemorating Miriam’s Jewish classmates who didn’t escape, and had been ultimately deported to Auschwitz. Miriam’s mother and father had been additionally despatched from Vienna to Dachau and Auschwitz, and survived it – ultimately reuniting with their daughter in Israel. I nonetheless keep in mind assembly Miriam, attempting to impress her with my German, and with tales in regards to the Europe to which she by no means returned. How shy, shocked and joyful she was, that aged girl from the small Moshav in Israel, who had began her life as Malita in Vienna.
Lengthy earlier than rumors of an issue about this discuss began, I knew that we had been coming right here not simply with an understanding, however with a really private data, by acquaintance, of the importance of this place – and with a really fast feeling that private, insufferable recollections have immense public significance right here. We all know in addition to anyone the deep roots that this location, Judenplatz, has to this metropolis, to this continent – and we additionally know in addition to anyone can that the roots of this place’s attain into our personal nation, Israel. That can also be why I refuse to dishonor this place – not by something that I’ll say or might have mentioned, and even much less so by reacting to makes an attempt to show a dialogue that ought to be about substance, argument, and respectful disagreement into a man-made scandal.
It is rather important to have Lessing’s statue right here on Judenplatz earlier than me, me, in any respect of us, and immediately on the Holocaust memorial behind me. Lessing. Mendelssohn’s pal, was the one to determine the important connection between enlightenment and friendship. The liberal-democratic pals of Judenplatz and the chums of Europe focus on their disagreements, the qualms and worries they might have, amicably. Purpose goes hand in hand with friendship; populism and nationalism – with eggs and with shouting. Make no mistake: eggs are supposed to humiliate, and for that purpose they’re harmful. Selecting the previous, purpose, over the latter is to place the clamour apart, to stretch the hand to those that have criticized this discuss and tried to disrupt fairly than protest in opposition to it, and to maneuver on.
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‘You might be greater than your myths.’
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder inaugurated the ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, he coined this message as its motto. ‘You might be greater than your myths.’
I wish to be a part of that message however ask once more what it means for Europe to be greater than its fable?
A technique to consider it’s to say that Europe should confront fable with historical past. That was Snyder’s suggestion; he claimed that if Europe was to fulfil its function as an emblem of hope – and it is an emblem of hope – then Europeans should select historical past as the other of fable. There are two methods to recollect, Snyder argued: one is thru the myths that ‘lead you again to the story of the way you had been at all times proper’ – and that’s why myths are at all times nationwide, to not say nationalistic. One other approach to keep in mind is historical past, which lets you ‘take what you keep in mind, add it to different vital views, to acknowledge your duty’ as a crumbling empire.
I agree with Snyder that Europe have to be greater than its myths; agree additionally that historical past is essential, even crucial. However I add that it’s not sufficient. To be greater than its myths, Europe must insist on the truth of beliefs. For in reality, historical past isn’t the other of myths. Purpose is – if it may possibly take the authority of its personal beliefs critically. And the authority of historical past, additionally the kind that makes us acknowledge our duty for the previous, can generally serve to undermine our beliefs.
Right here is one other approach to put it: historical past must be revered due to our dedication to beliefs. But when the beliefs themselves are revered due to our dedication to historical past, then this dedication threatens to render our beliefs into myths – nationwide myths. This menace now confronts Europe. It confronts European politics, and it confronts European mental life, because the populist proper is on the rise, abusing historic duty. This problem ought to now be handled. Not by denying the authority of historical past, however by defending it – defending it by insisting on the truth of beliefs.
That’s what I’m going to speak about, however I must start initially.
When the US severed its ties from Europe and asserted its independence from European sovereignty, it did so by invoking the authority of reality, not historical past: ‘We maintain these truths to be self-evident, that every one males are created equal, that they had been endowed by their creator with sure inalienable rights, that amongst these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Can we stand by the authority of those self-evident truths, asserted by the American Declaration of Independence, in the present day? It appears to me that many individuals, from so-called post-colonial critics to centrist liberal theorists, in reality are likely to reject this proposition.
At one finish of the spectrum, folks complain that the founding fathers had been themselves slave holders. That the assertion ‘all males are created equal’ actually means males, and completely white males. That’s, that Enlightenment universalism as it’s expressed on this well-known sentence is, at greatest, a masks that enables European males to discriminate, whereas congratulating themselves on holding quick to universalist beliefs. At worst: that these beliefs are in reality the ideology that causes Europeans to discriminate, exterminate and enslave.
The argument goes as follows: the cosmopolitan custom, which makes man, or humanity, the measure of all issues – the origin of worth – is indistinguishable from the custom that makes man ‘the grasp and possessor of nature’. And since that is so, the cosmopolitan custom that begins with the speculation of the dignity of humanity, finally ends up, in observe, because the historical past that made Europeans into the colonizers of continents, the abusers of nature (now inflicting nature’s demise), and the homeowners of different human beings as slaves. The Declaration of Independence asserts not self-evident reality, however fable, since it’s the story that sells us the nationwide phantasm that ‘we had been at all times proper’.
On the different finish of the spectrum, amongst liberal thinkers of the political heart, folks typically fake to shake their heads on the denial of European Enlightenment universalism. However in reality, post-war liberal pondering consists in a really related denial. When John Rawls, the daddy of American liberalism, says that justice is ‘political, not metaphysical’, he means simply that: self-evident truths like those asserted within the Declaration of Independence can don’t have any authority in fashionable democratic societies.
‘Fact about an impartial metaphysical and ethical order’, Rawls argues, can not ‘present the premise for a political conception of justice in a democratic society.’ It is a dramatic rejection of the Declaration of Independence: its self-evident truths must be handled like faith: tolerated, revered as folks’s non-public religion, exactly not acknowledged as the inspiration of legislation. It’s due to this fact not simply the postcolonial or identitarian left that rejects the universalist superb of the European Enlightenment; in reality, there’s a broad consensus about this rejection between the left and the liberal heart. That it’s rejected by the rising identitarian populist proper doesn’t require a lot of an argument.
I intentionally went to questions imported from 1776 America as a result of it’s simpler to fake that they’re distant. However now I’d prefer to deliver them again to the guts of up to date European actuality. Whereas the Individuals by no means gave the self-evident truths asserted within the Declaration of Independence any authorized significance – by no means built-in them into the structure – post-war Europe did take that step, and it took it with this assertion:
‘Human dignity in inviolable.’
![](https://www.eurozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Judenplatz_Holocaust_Memorial_Wien_2014-1024x686.jpg)
Holocaust memorial by Rachel Whiteread, Judenplatz, Vienna. Picture by Diana Ringo by way of Wikimedia Commons
That is in fact the opening sentence of Germany’s Primary Legislation, however it’s extra than simply that. The very same sentence can also be the primary article of the European Union’s Constitution of Elementary Rights. And the best of human dignity can also be the anchor of the UN’s Common Declaration of Human Rights, the mannequin for quite a few post-war European constitutions. (Although not the Austrian! Not for Hans Kelsen. Although for those who ask me, it’s by no means too late.) The assertion that human dignity is ‘inviolable’, because the origin of legislation, posits a perfect of Enlightenment universalism that for our functions is equivalent with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. It affirms that human dignity is inalienable, and that the authority of legislation is relative to it. This locations the universalist or cosmopolitan custom a lot nearer to a radical, abolitionist democracy than is often acknowledged, however I’ll put this truth apart and as an alternative ask two questions:
First, is that this precept, expressing the best of Enlightenment Universalism, in reality an expression of Europe’s racism and colonialism? Ought to we defend and reenact the best of human dignity as the reply to Europe’s previous monumental crimes throughout the interval of Empire – from the crimes of the Holocaust to these of colonialism? Or is such humanism in reality the reason for these crimes? Should the German Grundgesetz, just like the European Constitution of Elementary Rights and the United Nations Common Declaration of Human Rights, be ‘decolonized’?
Second, if we do stand by the precept, do European liberal thinkers genuinely stand by it – and by genuinely I imply: even when that precept challenges their curiosity, their id, their innermost commitments? Or does the want to floor our dedication to human dignity in historic duty additionally mark the bounds of this superb – thereby threatening to render it to fable?
I wish to take care of the query slowly.
Take one other have a look at this sentence: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. At first look, it appears much less like fable than an easy falsity. Human dignity is violable, and it’s being violated as we converse. But when it’s not a false proposition, what would possibly make it look like one can also be what makes it so poetic, even prophetic. One of many nice improvements of the biblical Hebrew prophets was a stylistic one (it feels like I’m drifting, however I’m not): they used to state the counterfactual, even the unattainable, as truly true.
This stylistic innovation had every part to do with their humanistic discovery. A proposition that asserts descriptively one thing that at greatest appears prescriptive (‘human dignity is inviolable’) not as an crucial, however as a reality, is strictly talking both false, or reaching out to explain a better actuality. Once you perceive that, you perceive one thing very deep within the Hebrew Prophets, in Plato and in Kant, which provides the laconic sentence, ‘Human dignity is inviolable’ the aesthetics of the chic. The being that’s able to making that assertion – and expertise the sensation that its poetic gesture creates – has dignity, and instructions respect.
You would possibly suppose that what we generally name actuality – the one by which we purchase milk within the grocery store, by which Jewish households are massacred and burnt on the border of Gaza, by which a complete Palestinian inhabitants is being starved and bombed – that this actuality renders this superb a fable, and its poetics to populist kitsch. The choice which it’s is determined by us.
Now we’d ask ourselves: if the best of human dignity is legitimate, what makes it so? I can’t deal with that right here however as an alternative ask what can not make it legitimate. If the concept human dignity is inviolable is grounded within the determination of Europeans, Germans, Italians, Austrians to dwell by that precept, then that explains exactly why human dignity is definitely violable. An unconditional declare can not rely on anyone’s determination: it’s all very nicely that, say, the German folks have determined to deal with human dignity as inviolable; however we all know that they’ll additionally determine in any other case.
This realization brings us to an essential level: that the precept of inviolable human dignity can not rely on nationwide sovereignty, on the choice or the need of a folks. Quite the opposite: human dignity marks the restrict of nationwide sovereignty. This level is essential as a result of it reveals the continuity between summary discuss of dignity and two very concrete European tendencies.
The primary of those is for states to self-restrict their sovereignty by way of their very own prerogatives – by coming into federative constellations, for instance, or by submitting to worldwide legislation or worldwide and European courts. According to its recognition of human dignity, Europe has moved from nationwide to worldwide to cosmopolitan legislation – that’s, from a type of legislation based on states’ final nationwide sovereignty, to a type of legislation that respects it, to at least one that questions it.
The second tendency is for constitutional patriotism, by which I imply right here a really broad concept: the popularity that belonging to a sovereign nation requires neither the precise blood nor the precise language, historical past or tradition: you belong to the German, Austrian or Italian folks by advantage of getting German or Italian or Austrian citizenship.
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder stood right here and known as on Europe to be greater than its myths, he warned Europeans that ‘your little, implausible nationwide myths’ permit you ‘to not see’ what was so distinctive about Europe, particularly ‘that the European Union is the one profitable reply to an important query within the historical past of the fashionable world.’ That query is: ‘What to do after empire? What to do with empire?’
There are, Snyder mentioned, two unhealthy solutions – make nation states, or have extra empire. ‘The European Union is the one new fruitful, productive reply to that query.’ I repeat that, as a result of to respect human dignity by checking nationwide sovereignty, and to exchange the nation with a powerful idea of citizenship, are the 2 important, modern components of Europe’s reply to that monumental query.
This reply changed the Hobbes-Schmittean attachment to a sovereign Leviathan as the reply to “conflict of all in opposition to all”, and asserted that dignity and never worry have to be the inspiration of human polity. To guard dignity by way of the rule of legislation, sovereignty needs to be questioned, criticized, even deconstructed – not asserted by way of sovereign nationwide Leviathans. When Hobbes spoke of the Leviathan, that image of a mighty legendary monster, he knew why: as a result of sovereignty requires the idolization of fable. An important inheritance of Jewish pondering on this continent, moral monotheism, was at all times tied to the critique of fable and its idolization: it’s value remembering this custom that was residing in Europe earlier than the conflict, earlier than its empire crumbled, and labored in opposition to the parable of soveregnity in Cohen, Cassirer, Buber and Arendt.
However notice: whereas right here lies the important expression of Europe’s profitable reply to its previous – the ‘most essential query of the fashionable world’ – particularly the substitute of nationwide legendary Leviathans – European thinkers truly embraced the precise reverse of those rules insofar as Europe was trying outdoors: to the victims of its empire.
If the crumbling European empire ultimately learnt to query sovereignty, the concept was additionally that for the colonized nations, sovereignty was the car of liberation. By the identical token, after the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of European Jewry, the concept was that Jews needed to defend themselves and restore their dignity, as a nation, by way of nationwide soveregnity – by way of the creation of a Jewish state.
And we have to be clear: At this second in historical past, they weren’t fallacious.
When utilized to Europe’s victims, Europe’s reply can look like the mental baggage of empire, or just like the stays of a colonialist ideology that asks to go on imposing itself even after empire has ended. Does Europe’s profitable reply to the previous of empire apply to empire’s previous victims?
And right here is one other query: can Europe’s reply to its previous survive if we contradict that reply so far as its victims are involved? If we acknowledge that others have the precise to violate human dignity, we additionally acknowledge our responsibility to respect their proper to take action. Human dignity is then essential for us, however not inviolable. That’s the essential level; when you acknowledge that, externally, you additionally acknowledge one thing internally – you merely can not declare human dignity as inviolable inside the continent both. To supply a variation on Snyder’s level: that is an important query in regards to the reply given to an important query in fashionable historical past.
For postcolonial thinkers, limiting liberated nations by way of the cosmopolitan concept of humanity looks like a type of neo-colonialism: imposing the solutions of Europe on its victims, stopping their emancipation. In relation to the Holocaust, the objection is strictly the identical. Attempt suggesting that an Israeli structure ought to start out not with the sovereignty of the Jewish folks however with a dedication to human dignity: you can be accused of antisemitism for suggesting to make use of European cosmopolitan beliefs to query Jewish sovereignty, and the Jewish and democratic state – inviting fees of antisemitism.
For one aspect, then, universalist politics looks like racism, or colonialism; for the opposite, like antisemitism. And since all sides right here view sovereignty because the zero-sum situation of their very existence, these doctrines are actually not simply in battle however on a collision course: it’s not as a result of the perimeters are so totally different from one other that the state of affairs is so violent and the controversy so heated, however as a result of they’re so related.
For a lot of on the left, definitely the postcolonial left, the Palestinian persons are the final word embodiment of the wrestle in opposition to European colonialism. Whoever questions their proper to armed resistance, for instance by condemning Hamas’s assault on civilians, ‘relativizes’ or ‘contextualizes’ colonialism. What proper do Europeans have, so the argument goes, to criticize using power by those that aren’t protected by legislation within the first place?
However, in Germany however not simply in Germany, we see the identical although reverse concept: that Jews, represented by the state of Israel, embody human struggling and the precise to self-defense. Whoever calls for that the nation subscribe to a impartial liberal-democratic structure – asserting a state for all residents – and be accountable to worldwide legislation in reality relativizes the Jews’ proper to self-defense. Whereas Europe’s reply to its crumbling empire was to deconstruct sovereignty by asserting dignity as its restrict, its victims’ reply was to say nationwide sovereignty as inviolable. Either side pretends to embody one thing final, absolute, that relativizes the human dignity of these belonging to the opposite group.
This was clear within the responses amongst left mental circles to Hamas’ systematic, sadistic bloodbath of entire households, rape and burning. There may be no ignoring this: the tendency on campuses ranged from exhilaration at this act to tolerating it – or no less than insisting that the Palestinians had the precise of ‘armed resistance’ vis-à-vis their ‘colonizers’. For those who argued that this was at greatest excusing genocidal antisemitism and at worst supporting it, the frequent response was that Hamas just isn’t an antisemitic group, as a result of the assault focused Israelis, not Jews as such. However Hamas’s constitution of 1988 clearly states: ‘The Day of Judgement is not going to come about till Moslems kill the Jews, and when the Jew will conceal behind stones and bushes, the stones and bushes will say O Moslems, there’s a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’
There was once a bent to disregard this clause or declare that Hamas has given up on it. However it is vitally believable that this actual line in regards to the Day of Judgment was current within the minds of those that performed the bloodbath. On 7 October fairly a number of of them appeared to have thought precisely that: that the Day of Judgment had arrived. Tolerating that is widespread, and it is very important say that this toleration proceeds precisely from the concept of the sovereignty of the colonized. The identical folks – college students, college – who excused the bloodbath now chant ‘from the river to the ocean, Palestine might be free’. Make no mistake: they don’t imply ‘democratic for all’, however ‘free from Jews’ – or, to be exact, they droop judgment, to be able to keep away from the allegedly neo-colonialist assumption that they’ve the precise to determine for the Palestinians.
Nationwide sovereignty is handled because the inviolable car of liberation. As Yanis Varoufakis put it: ‘I used to be requested whether or not I condemn Hamas and mentioned no. However I condemn all violence in opposition to civilians. I additionally don’t condemn the Israeli settlers. Additionally not Benjamin Netanyahu. I condemn us Europeans.’ For those who ask me, this isn’t a approach to take historic duty as European, however to cover behind it, and make a mockery of it.
The opposite finish of the spectrum operates by the very same logic. It’s most seen within the false tendency amongst a sure European liberal heart to deal with the Holocaust as a ‘common’ signifier. As one creator has put it, Holocaust commemoration has change into ‘common’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ reminiscence. On this view, the occasion is an emblem, not of a selected previous horror, however of any systematic violation of human rights. By the identical token, the Holocaust is now not the unique property of the nationwide teams immediately concerned within the historic occasion – Jews on the one hand, Germans, and Europeans extra broadly on the opposite; fairly, Holocaust commemoration performs a vital function reinforcing worldwide legislation and human rights, turning into ‘a possible image of world solidarity’.
At first look, this will likely look like a pleasant thesis about reminiscence or historical past as calling for common commitments. On nearer inspection, it ought to change into clear that it has given universalism a foul identify, by presenting universalism or reminiscence as a colonial venture. The way in which the Holocaust is commemorated is within the service of specific nationwide initiatives. This ‘common’ image due to this fact excludes from ‘world solidarity’ these for whom this image is something however accessible. Since Holocaust commemoration has been interpreted because the argument for Jews’ nationwide sovereignty, it doesn’t promote worldwide human rights, particularly not for these whose human rights might appear to face in the best way.
Some of the important examples of this tendency is the angle of the German authorities to the Worldwide Legal Court docket within the Hague (ICC). The establishment of worldwide legislation and worldwide tribunals licensed to prosecute conflict crimes developed within the fast context of Nazi crimes. It is a robust purpose for Germany, taking historic duty, to be one of many ICC’s most important sponsors. The German Overseas Workplace has gone out of its method up to now to defend the ICC in opposition to meddling by the Trump administration, stating that ‘any try and undermine the independence of the courtroom shouldn’t be tolerated’. However when the prosecutor in The Hague began an preliminary investigation into conflict crimes allegedly dedicated by Israel within the Occupied Territories, Germany contended that the courtroom had no jurisdiction. Israel, it argued, just isn’t a celebration to the Rome Statute, which regulates the courtroom’s mandate, and Palestine just isn’t acknowledged as a state. When the ICC’s justices rejected that opinion – and with good purpose: Palestine, they determined, had been acknowledged as a ‘State Occasion’ to the Rome Statute no matter whether or not it’s a state or not, which means that the courtroom has jurisdiction – a spokesperson for the German Overseas Workplace acknowledged that ‘our place on this case is unchanged. In line with our authorized place, the Worldwide Legal Court docket and its Workplace of the Prosecutor would not have jurisdiction.’ The German Overseas Minister repeated the identical assertion.
To grasp how grave these statements are, it’s crucial to place apart the query of the courtroom’s jurisdiction. That is in regards to the courtroom’s authority, which to acknowledge means to take the Court docket’s determination as adequate to alter Germany’s authorized place – thus limiting its sovereignty. The German authorities’s declare that the courtroom has no jurisdiction in Palestinian territories, regardless of the Justices’ determination that it does, denied not simply the jurisdiction of the Court docket over Palestinian territories. It additionally denied its autonomy and authority.
It is a good instance of the highly effective affect of the acquainted although unofficial Staatsräson doctrine – which might solely be unofficial, since had been it not, it could battle with the structure. That is what it appears like when the dedication to Europe’s reply to its previous, if grounded in historical past, meets its restrict and turns into not simply not common however anti-universal. With its discuss of Staatsräson Germany asserts its personal sovereignty to oppose the autonomy of the courtroom, to be able to defend Jewish sovereignty from the courtroom’s authority. Since Germany is a chief sponsor of the Court docket, this constitutes a critical menace to this establishment.
That was 4 years in the past. We are able to now see the consequences of this questioning of the ability of worldwide legislation. Does the ICC have authority within the territory, as Gaza is flattened and starved, and Israeli cupboard ministers talk about coming into Rafah, since ‘we is not going to do half a job, however require full annihilation’? For those who ask me, it’s too unhealthy that Varoufakis, as a European, doesn’t condemn such a press release.
This, then, is the query: Is Europe to think about the reply that it has given to an important query of recent historical past as its personal reply solely? As one that could be good right here, however that elsewhere isn’t simply fallacious but additionally illegitimate? Or is that already to betray Europe’s reply – writing the primary sentence within the historical past of this reply’s decay, additionally inside Europe, and handing over the argument to Europe’s enemies?
Think about the opposition to this discuss, right here on Judenplatz. Is the concept illegitimate that saving Israel and Palestine from falling right into a yet-worse dystopia requires us to think about a transition of the area within the course of a European constellation, following the identical patterns of that nice European reply, with sub-sovereign nations becoming a member of a (con)federative frequent structure for the entire area? Is that this federative concept, which requires taking critically Immanuel Kant’s warning that peace talks and peace agreements ought not change into lies – lies that result in zero-sum wars that undermine the very chance of peace – is this concept illegitimate?
If the European reply is delegitimized on this method, how does that replicate on Europe? How does permitting the dehumanizing logic of complete conflict in Israel and Palestine have an effect on Europe’s personal Jewish and Muslim residents? Does this not hand over the argument to the populist nationalist proper, which is on the rise throughout us, asserting nationwide sovereignty, questioning worldwide legislation, and claiming a citizenship based mostly on ethnic affiliation?
This, then, can be my name to Europe: insist on the truth of your beliefs. They’re all of the extra essential due to historic duty, however in the end, as cosmopolitan beliefs, they can’t be understood as being depending on or restricted by historic duty. At this darkish, troublesome juncture at which politics and pondering have now arrived, we should reject the tendency on all sides to undermine Europe’s beliefs by a really irresponsible method of understanding historic duty. That’s the solely approach to keep Europe’s historic commitments, and to forestall these commitments themselves from turning into nationwide types of legendary pondering.
This speech was hosted by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, and Vienna Festwochen. It was delivered on 7 Might 2024 regardless of makes an attempt by Vienna’s Israelitische Kultusgemeinde to cancel the occasion: a pacesetter of the Kultusgemeinde claimed that, had he been ‘30 years youthful’, he would have come to the discuss to ‘throw eggs on Boehm’, which might have plausibly been interpreted as an invite for others to behave. The discuss, which required police and Verfassungsschutz safety, was performed amid protester disruption.
Once I was invited to provide this ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, there was a private purpose why I used to be delighted to just accept. That’s my family’s historical past. My son and spouse had simply obtained their Austrian citizenship, and so they had obtained it as a result of my spouse’s household had escaped Austria, or no less than a few of them escaped, together with my spouse’s grandmother, Malita (Miriam) Schertzer. She was pushed out of Vienna to Palestine in 1938, on the identical Youth Aliyah with which my very own grandmother had escaped Germany. For us, this ‘Speech to Europe’ was additionally deliberate as a non-public go to to Miriam’s metropolis, and to her college, the Brigittenauer Gymnasium, now the Gymnasium am Augarten, the place there’s a acquainted memorial commemorating Miriam’s Jewish classmates who didn’t escape, and had been ultimately deported to Auschwitz. Miriam’s mother and father had been additionally despatched from Vienna to Dachau and Auschwitz, and survived it – ultimately reuniting with their daughter in Israel. I nonetheless keep in mind assembly Miriam, attempting to impress her with my German, and with tales in regards to the Europe to which she by no means returned. How shy, shocked and joyful she was, that aged girl from the small Moshav in Israel, who had began her life as Malita in Vienna.
Lengthy earlier than rumors of an issue about this discuss began, I knew that we had been coming right here not simply with an understanding, however with a really private data, by acquaintance, of the importance of this place – and with a really fast feeling that private, insufferable recollections have immense public significance right here. We all know in addition to anyone the deep roots that this location, Judenplatz, has to this metropolis, to this continent – and we additionally know in addition to anyone can that the roots of this place’s attain into our personal nation, Israel. That can also be why I refuse to dishonor this place – not by something that I’ll say or might have mentioned, and even much less so by reacting to makes an attempt to show a dialogue that ought to be about substance, argument, and respectful disagreement into a man-made scandal.
It is rather important to have Lessing’s statue right here on Judenplatz earlier than me, me, in any respect of us, and immediately on the Holocaust memorial behind me. Lessing. Mendelssohn’s pal, was the one to determine the important connection between enlightenment and friendship. The liberal-democratic pals of Judenplatz and the chums of Europe focus on their disagreements, the qualms and worries they might have, amicably. Purpose goes hand in hand with friendship; populism and nationalism – with eggs and with shouting. Make no mistake: eggs are supposed to humiliate, and for that purpose they’re harmful. Selecting the previous, purpose, over the latter is to place the clamour apart, to stretch the hand to those that have criticized this discuss and tried to disrupt fairly than protest in opposition to it, and to maneuver on.
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‘You might be greater than your myths.’
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder inaugurated the ‘Speech to Europe’ on Judenplatz, he coined this message as its motto. ‘You might be greater than your myths.’
I wish to be a part of that message however ask once more what it means for Europe to be greater than its fable?
A technique to consider it’s to say that Europe should confront fable with historical past. That was Snyder’s suggestion; he claimed that if Europe was to fulfil its function as an emblem of hope – and it is an emblem of hope – then Europeans should select historical past as the other of fable. There are two methods to recollect, Snyder argued: one is thru the myths that ‘lead you again to the story of the way you had been at all times proper’ – and that’s why myths are at all times nationwide, to not say nationalistic. One other approach to keep in mind is historical past, which lets you ‘take what you keep in mind, add it to different vital views, to acknowledge your duty’ as a crumbling empire.
I agree with Snyder that Europe have to be greater than its myths; agree additionally that historical past is essential, even crucial. However I add that it’s not sufficient. To be greater than its myths, Europe must insist on the truth of beliefs. For in reality, historical past isn’t the other of myths. Purpose is – if it may possibly take the authority of its personal beliefs critically. And the authority of historical past, additionally the kind that makes us acknowledge our duty for the previous, can generally serve to undermine our beliefs.
Right here is one other approach to put it: historical past must be revered due to our dedication to beliefs. But when the beliefs themselves are revered due to our dedication to historical past, then this dedication threatens to render our beliefs into myths – nationwide myths. This menace now confronts Europe. It confronts European politics, and it confronts European mental life, because the populist proper is on the rise, abusing historic duty. This problem ought to now be handled. Not by denying the authority of historical past, however by defending it – defending it by insisting on the truth of beliefs.
That’s what I’m going to speak about, however I must start initially.
When the US severed its ties from Europe and asserted its independence from European sovereignty, it did so by invoking the authority of reality, not historical past: ‘We maintain these truths to be self-evident, that every one males are created equal, that they had been endowed by their creator with sure inalienable rights, that amongst these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’
Can we stand by the authority of those self-evident truths, asserted by the American Declaration of Independence, in the present day? It appears to me that many individuals, from so-called post-colonial critics to centrist liberal theorists, in reality are likely to reject this proposition.
At one finish of the spectrum, folks complain that the founding fathers had been themselves slave holders. That the assertion ‘all males are created equal’ actually means males, and completely white males. That’s, that Enlightenment universalism as it’s expressed on this well-known sentence is, at greatest, a masks that enables European males to discriminate, whereas congratulating themselves on holding quick to universalist beliefs. At worst: that these beliefs are in reality the ideology that causes Europeans to discriminate, exterminate and enslave.
The argument goes as follows: the cosmopolitan custom, which makes man, or humanity, the measure of all issues – the origin of worth – is indistinguishable from the custom that makes man ‘the grasp and possessor of nature’. And since that is so, the cosmopolitan custom that begins with the speculation of the dignity of humanity, finally ends up, in observe, because the historical past that made Europeans into the colonizers of continents, the abusers of nature (now inflicting nature’s demise), and the homeowners of different human beings as slaves. The Declaration of Independence asserts not self-evident reality, however fable, since it’s the story that sells us the nationwide phantasm that ‘we had been at all times proper’.
On the different finish of the spectrum, amongst liberal thinkers of the political heart, folks typically fake to shake their heads on the denial of European Enlightenment universalism. However in reality, post-war liberal pondering consists in a really related denial. When John Rawls, the daddy of American liberalism, says that justice is ‘political, not metaphysical’, he means simply that: self-evident truths like those asserted within the Declaration of Independence can don’t have any authority in fashionable democratic societies.
‘Fact about an impartial metaphysical and ethical order’, Rawls argues, can not ‘present the premise for a political conception of justice in a democratic society.’ It is a dramatic rejection of the Declaration of Independence: its self-evident truths must be handled like faith: tolerated, revered as folks’s non-public religion, exactly not acknowledged as the inspiration of legislation. It’s due to this fact not simply the postcolonial or identitarian left that rejects the universalist superb of the European Enlightenment; in reality, there’s a broad consensus about this rejection between the left and the liberal heart. That it’s rejected by the rising identitarian populist proper doesn’t require a lot of an argument.
I intentionally went to questions imported from 1776 America as a result of it’s simpler to fake that they’re distant. However now I’d prefer to deliver them again to the guts of up to date European actuality. Whereas the Individuals by no means gave the self-evident truths asserted within the Declaration of Independence any authorized significance – by no means built-in them into the structure – post-war Europe did take that step, and it took it with this assertion:
‘Human dignity in inviolable.’
![](https://www.eurozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Judenplatz_Holocaust_Memorial_Wien_2014-1024x686.jpg)
Holocaust memorial by Rachel Whiteread, Judenplatz, Vienna. Picture by Diana Ringo by way of Wikimedia Commons
That is in fact the opening sentence of Germany’s Primary Legislation, however it’s extra than simply that. The very same sentence can also be the primary article of the European Union’s Constitution of Elementary Rights. And the best of human dignity can also be the anchor of the UN’s Common Declaration of Human Rights, the mannequin for quite a few post-war European constitutions. (Although not the Austrian! Not for Hans Kelsen. Although for those who ask me, it’s by no means too late.) The assertion that human dignity is ‘inviolable’, because the origin of legislation, posits a perfect of Enlightenment universalism that for our functions is equivalent with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. It affirms that human dignity is inalienable, and that the authority of legislation is relative to it. This locations the universalist or cosmopolitan custom a lot nearer to a radical, abolitionist democracy than is often acknowledged, however I’ll put this truth apart and as an alternative ask two questions:
First, is that this precept, expressing the best of Enlightenment Universalism, in reality an expression of Europe’s racism and colonialism? Ought to we defend and reenact the best of human dignity as the reply to Europe’s previous monumental crimes throughout the interval of Empire – from the crimes of the Holocaust to these of colonialism? Or is such humanism in reality the reason for these crimes? Should the German Grundgesetz, just like the European Constitution of Elementary Rights and the United Nations Common Declaration of Human Rights, be ‘decolonized’?
Second, if we do stand by the precept, do European liberal thinkers genuinely stand by it – and by genuinely I imply: even when that precept challenges their curiosity, their id, their innermost commitments? Or does the want to floor our dedication to human dignity in historic duty additionally mark the bounds of this superb – thereby threatening to render it to fable?
I wish to take care of the query slowly.
Take one other have a look at this sentence: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. At first look, it appears much less like fable than an easy falsity. Human dignity is violable, and it’s being violated as we converse. But when it’s not a false proposition, what would possibly make it look like one can also be what makes it so poetic, even prophetic. One of many nice improvements of the biblical Hebrew prophets was a stylistic one (it feels like I’m drifting, however I’m not): they used to state the counterfactual, even the unattainable, as truly true.
This stylistic innovation had every part to do with their humanistic discovery. A proposition that asserts descriptively one thing that at greatest appears prescriptive (‘human dignity is inviolable’) not as an crucial, however as a reality, is strictly talking both false, or reaching out to explain a better actuality. Once you perceive that, you perceive one thing very deep within the Hebrew Prophets, in Plato and in Kant, which provides the laconic sentence, ‘Human dignity is inviolable’ the aesthetics of the chic. The being that’s able to making that assertion – and expertise the sensation that its poetic gesture creates – has dignity, and instructions respect.
You would possibly suppose that what we generally name actuality – the one by which we purchase milk within the grocery store, by which Jewish households are massacred and burnt on the border of Gaza, by which a complete Palestinian inhabitants is being starved and bombed – that this actuality renders this superb a fable, and its poetics to populist kitsch. The choice which it’s is determined by us.
Now we’d ask ourselves: if the best of human dignity is legitimate, what makes it so? I can’t deal with that right here however as an alternative ask what can not make it legitimate. If the concept human dignity is inviolable is grounded within the determination of Europeans, Germans, Italians, Austrians to dwell by that precept, then that explains exactly why human dignity is definitely violable. An unconditional declare can not rely on anyone’s determination: it’s all very nicely that, say, the German folks have determined to deal with human dignity as inviolable; however we all know that they’ll additionally determine in any other case.
This realization brings us to an essential level: that the precept of inviolable human dignity can not rely on nationwide sovereignty, on the choice or the need of a folks. Quite the opposite: human dignity marks the restrict of nationwide sovereignty. This level is essential as a result of it reveals the continuity between summary discuss of dignity and two very concrete European tendencies.
The primary of those is for states to self-restrict their sovereignty by way of their very own prerogatives – by coming into federative constellations, for instance, or by submitting to worldwide legislation or worldwide and European courts. According to its recognition of human dignity, Europe has moved from nationwide to worldwide to cosmopolitan legislation – that’s, from a type of legislation based on states’ final nationwide sovereignty, to a type of legislation that respects it, to at least one that questions it.
The second tendency is for constitutional patriotism, by which I imply right here a really broad concept: the popularity that belonging to a sovereign nation requires neither the precise blood nor the precise language, historical past or tradition: you belong to the German, Austrian or Italian folks by advantage of getting German or Italian or Austrian citizenship.
When, in 2019, Timothy Snyder stood right here and known as on Europe to be greater than its myths, he warned Europeans that ‘your little, implausible nationwide myths’ permit you ‘to not see’ what was so distinctive about Europe, particularly ‘that the European Union is the one profitable reply to an important query within the historical past of the fashionable world.’ That query is: ‘What to do after empire? What to do with empire?’
There are, Snyder mentioned, two unhealthy solutions – make nation states, or have extra empire. ‘The European Union is the one new fruitful, productive reply to that query.’ I repeat that, as a result of to respect human dignity by checking nationwide sovereignty, and to exchange the nation with a powerful idea of citizenship, are the 2 important, modern components of Europe’s reply to that monumental query.
This reply changed the Hobbes-Schmittean attachment to a sovereign Leviathan as the reply to “conflict of all in opposition to all”, and asserted that dignity and never worry have to be the inspiration of human polity. To guard dignity by way of the rule of legislation, sovereignty needs to be questioned, criticized, even deconstructed – not asserted by way of sovereign nationwide Leviathans. When Hobbes spoke of the Leviathan, that image of a mighty legendary monster, he knew why: as a result of sovereignty requires the idolization of fable. An important inheritance of Jewish pondering on this continent, moral monotheism, was at all times tied to the critique of fable and its idolization: it’s value remembering this custom that was residing in Europe earlier than the conflict, earlier than its empire crumbled, and labored in opposition to the parable of soveregnity in Cohen, Cassirer, Buber and Arendt.
However notice: whereas right here lies the important expression of Europe’s profitable reply to its previous – the ‘most essential query of the fashionable world’ – particularly the substitute of nationwide legendary Leviathans – European thinkers truly embraced the precise reverse of those rules insofar as Europe was trying outdoors: to the victims of its empire.
If the crumbling European empire ultimately learnt to query sovereignty, the concept was additionally that for the colonized nations, sovereignty was the car of liberation. By the identical token, after the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of European Jewry, the concept was that Jews needed to defend themselves and restore their dignity, as a nation, by way of nationwide soveregnity – by way of the creation of a Jewish state.
And we have to be clear: At this second in historical past, they weren’t fallacious.
When utilized to Europe’s victims, Europe’s reply can look like the mental baggage of empire, or just like the stays of a colonialist ideology that asks to go on imposing itself even after empire has ended. Does Europe’s profitable reply to the previous of empire apply to empire’s previous victims?
And right here is one other query: can Europe’s reply to its previous survive if we contradict that reply so far as its victims are involved? If we acknowledge that others have the precise to violate human dignity, we additionally acknowledge our responsibility to respect their proper to take action. Human dignity is then essential for us, however not inviolable. That’s the essential level; when you acknowledge that, externally, you additionally acknowledge one thing internally – you merely can not declare human dignity as inviolable inside the continent both. To supply a variation on Snyder’s level: that is an important query in regards to the reply given to an important query in fashionable historical past.
For postcolonial thinkers, limiting liberated nations by way of the cosmopolitan concept of humanity looks like a type of neo-colonialism: imposing the solutions of Europe on its victims, stopping their emancipation. In relation to the Holocaust, the objection is strictly the identical. Attempt suggesting that an Israeli structure ought to start out not with the sovereignty of the Jewish folks however with a dedication to human dignity: you can be accused of antisemitism for suggesting to make use of European cosmopolitan beliefs to query Jewish sovereignty, and the Jewish and democratic state – inviting fees of antisemitism.
For one aspect, then, universalist politics looks like racism, or colonialism; for the opposite, like antisemitism. And since all sides right here view sovereignty because the zero-sum situation of their very existence, these doctrines are actually not simply in battle however on a collision course: it’s not as a result of the perimeters are so totally different from one other that the state of affairs is so violent and the controversy so heated, however as a result of they’re so related.
For a lot of on the left, definitely the postcolonial left, the Palestinian persons are the final word embodiment of the wrestle in opposition to European colonialism. Whoever questions their proper to armed resistance, for instance by condemning Hamas’s assault on civilians, ‘relativizes’ or ‘contextualizes’ colonialism. What proper do Europeans have, so the argument goes, to criticize using power by those that aren’t protected by legislation within the first place?
However, in Germany however not simply in Germany, we see the identical although reverse concept: that Jews, represented by the state of Israel, embody human struggling and the precise to self-defense. Whoever calls for that the nation subscribe to a impartial liberal-democratic structure – asserting a state for all residents – and be accountable to worldwide legislation in reality relativizes the Jews’ proper to self-defense. Whereas Europe’s reply to its crumbling empire was to deconstruct sovereignty by asserting dignity as its restrict, its victims’ reply was to say nationwide sovereignty as inviolable. Either side pretends to embody one thing final, absolute, that relativizes the human dignity of these belonging to the opposite group.
This was clear within the responses amongst left mental circles to Hamas’ systematic, sadistic bloodbath of entire households, rape and burning. There may be no ignoring this: the tendency on campuses ranged from exhilaration at this act to tolerating it – or no less than insisting that the Palestinians had the precise of ‘armed resistance’ vis-à-vis their ‘colonizers’. For those who argued that this was at greatest excusing genocidal antisemitism and at worst supporting it, the frequent response was that Hamas just isn’t an antisemitic group, as a result of the assault focused Israelis, not Jews as such. However Hamas’s constitution of 1988 clearly states: ‘The Day of Judgement is not going to come about till Moslems kill the Jews, and when the Jew will conceal behind stones and bushes, the stones and bushes will say O Moslems, there’s a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’
There was once a bent to disregard this clause or declare that Hamas has given up on it. However it is vitally believable that this actual line in regards to the Day of Judgment was current within the minds of those that performed the bloodbath. On 7 October fairly a number of of them appeared to have thought precisely that: that the Day of Judgment had arrived. Tolerating that is widespread, and it is very important say that this toleration proceeds precisely from the concept of the sovereignty of the colonized. The identical folks – college students, college – who excused the bloodbath now chant ‘from the river to the ocean, Palestine might be free’. Make no mistake: they don’t imply ‘democratic for all’, however ‘free from Jews’ – or, to be exact, they droop judgment, to be able to keep away from the allegedly neo-colonialist assumption that they’ve the precise to determine for the Palestinians.
Nationwide sovereignty is handled because the inviolable car of liberation. As Yanis Varoufakis put it: ‘I used to be requested whether or not I condemn Hamas and mentioned no. However I condemn all violence in opposition to civilians. I additionally don’t condemn the Israeli settlers. Additionally not Benjamin Netanyahu. I condemn us Europeans.’ For those who ask me, this isn’t a approach to take historic duty as European, however to cover behind it, and make a mockery of it.
The opposite finish of the spectrum operates by the very same logic. It’s most seen within the false tendency amongst a sure European liberal heart to deal with the Holocaust as a ‘common’ signifier. As one creator has put it, Holocaust commemoration has change into ‘common’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ reminiscence. On this view, the occasion is an emblem, not of a selected previous horror, however of any systematic violation of human rights. By the identical token, the Holocaust is now not the unique property of the nationwide teams immediately concerned within the historic occasion – Jews on the one hand, Germans, and Europeans extra broadly on the opposite; fairly, Holocaust commemoration performs a vital function reinforcing worldwide legislation and human rights, turning into ‘a possible image of world solidarity’.
At first look, this will likely look like a pleasant thesis about reminiscence or historical past as calling for common commitments. On nearer inspection, it ought to change into clear that it has given universalism a foul identify, by presenting universalism or reminiscence as a colonial venture. The way in which the Holocaust is commemorated is within the service of specific nationwide initiatives. This ‘common’ image due to this fact excludes from ‘world solidarity’ these for whom this image is something however accessible. Since Holocaust commemoration has been interpreted because the argument for Jews’ nationwide sovereignty, it doesn’t promote worldwide human rights, particularly not for these whose human rights might appear to face in the best way.
Some of the important examples of this tendency is the angle of the German authorities to the Worldwide Legal Court docket within the Hague (ICC). The establishment of worldwide legislation and worldwide tribunals licensed to prosecute conflict crimes developed within the fast context of Nazi crimes. It is a robust purpose for Germany, taking historic duty, to be one of many ICC’s most important sponsors. The German Overseas Workplace has gone out of its method up to now to defend the ICC in opposition to meddling by the Trump administration, stating that ‘any try and undermine the independence of the courtroom shouldn’t be tolerated’. However when the prosecutor in The Hague began an preliminary investigation into conflict crimes allegedly dedicated by Israel within the Occupied Territories, Germany contended that the courtroom had no jurisdiction. Israel, it argued, just isn’t a celebration to the Rome Statute, which regulates the courtroom’s mandate, and Palestine just isn’t acknowledged as a state. When the ICC’s justices rejected that opinion – and with good purpose: Palestine, they determined, had been acknowledged as a ‘State Occasion’ to the Rome Statute no matter whether or not it’s a state or not, which means that the courtroom has jurisdiction – a spokesperson for the German Overseas Workplace acknowledged that ‘our place on this case is unchanged. In line with our authorized place, the Worldwide Legal Court docket and its Workplace of the Prosecutor would not have jurisdiction.’ The German Overseas Minister repeated the identical assertion.
To grasp how grave these statements are, it’s crucial to place apart the query of the courtroom’s jurisdiction. That is in regards to the courtroom’s authority, which to acknowledge means to take the Court docket’s determination as adequate to alter Germany’s authorized place – thus limiting its sovereignty. The German authorities’s declare that the courtroom has no jurisdiction in Palestinian territories, regardless of the Justices’ determination that it does, denied not simply the jurisdiction of the Court docket over Palestinian territories. It additionally denied its autonomy and authority.
It is a good instance of the highly effective affect of the acquainted although unofficial Staatsräson doctrine – which might solely be unofficial, since had been it not, it could battle with the structure. That is what it appears like when the dedication to Europe’s reply to its previous, if grounded in historical past, meets its restrict and turns into not simply not common however anti-universal. With its discuss of Staatsräson Germany asserts its personal sovereignty to oppose the autonomy of the courtroom, to be able to defend Jewish sovereignty from the courtroom’s authority. Since Germany is a chief sponsor of the Court docket, this constitutes a critical menace to this establishment.
That was 4 years in the past. We are able to now see the consequences of this questioning of the ability of worldwide legislation. Does the ICC have authority within the territory, as Gaza is flattened and starved, and Israeli cupboard ministers talk about coming into Rafah, since ‘we is not going to do half a job, however require full annihilation’? For those who ask me, it’s too unhealthy that Varoufakis, as a European, doesn’t condemn such a press release.
This, then, is the query: Is Europe to think about the reply that it has given to an important query of recent historical past as its personal reply solely? As one that could be good right here, however that elsewhere isn’t simply fallacious but additionally illegitimate? Or is that already to betray Europe’s reply – writing the primary sentence within the historical past of this reply’s decay, additionally inside Europe, and handing over the argument to Europe’s enemies?
Think about the opposition to this discuss, right here on Judenplatz. Is the concept illegitimate that saving Israel and Palestine from falling right into a yet-worse dystopia requires us to think about a transition of the area within the course of a European constellation, following the identical patterns of that nice European reply, with sub-sovereign nations becoming a member of a (con)federative frequent structure for the entire area? Is that this federative concept, which requires taking critically Immanuel Kant’s warning that peace talks and peace agreements ought not change into lies – lies that result in zero-sum wars that undermine the very chance of peace – is this concept illegitimate?
If the European reply is delegitimized on this method, how does that replicate on Europe? How does permitting the dehumanizing logic of complete conflict in Israel and Palestine have an effect on Europe’s personal Jewish and Muslim residents? Does this not hand over the argument to the populist nationalist proper, which is on the rise throughout us, asserting nationwide sovereignty, questioning worldwide legislation, and claiming a citizenship based mostly on ethnic affiliation?
This, then, can be my name to Europe: insist on the truth of your beliefs. They’re all of the extra essential due to historic duty, however in the end, as cosmopolitan beliefs, they can’t be understood as being depending on or restricted by historic duty. At this darkish, troublesome juncture at which politics and pondering have now arrived, we should reject the tendency on all sides to undermine Europe’s beliefs by a really irresponsible method of understanding historic duty. That’s the solely approach to keep Europe’s historic commitments, and to forestall these commitments themselves from turning into nationwide types of legendary pondering.
This speech was hosted by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna, and Vienna Festwochen. It was delivered on 7 Might 2024 regardless of makes an attempt by Vienna’s Israelitische Kultusgemeinde to cancel the occasion: a pacesetter of the Kultusgemeinde claimed that, had he been ‘30 years youthful’, he would have come to the discuss to ‘throw eggs on Boehm’, which might have plausibly been interpreted as an invite for others to behave. The discuss, which required police and Verfassungsschutz safety, was performed amid protester disruption.