from conceiving human beings in narrow utilitarian terms I suggest a new approach combining “thick” individuality with “thin” community. Culture is choice – but, it must be added, choice is also culture.
1 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
2 See Jerrold Seigel, op.cit. p. 171ff.
3 See the discussion in Bruce A. Buchan, “Situated consciousness or consciousness of situation? Autonomy and antagonism in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness”. History of European Ideas, Vol. 22, no. 3. 1996.
4 Edgar Morin, Penser L’Europe. Paris: Gallimard, 1987.
5 See Jonathan Webber, “Sartre’s Theory of character”. European Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 14/1. 2006. As is well known Sartre was later in life to embrace radical left-wing views. However, his early writings are perfectly compatible with more moderate, political views.
6 Sartre’s understanding of life-projects does not quite correspond to our ordinary notion of the word, but clarifying Sartre’s concept of projects would require a long discussion that cannot be – and need not be – undertaken here.
7 Ibid. p. 102.
8 Seigel. Op.cit. p.518.
9 Ibid. p. 531.
10 Ibid. p.523.
11 Buchan, op.cit. p. 207.
12 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, 1973, p. 35 and 45.
13 Ibid. p. 37.
14 Ibid. p. 316.
15 Ernest Renan, “What is a nation?”. In: Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny (eds.), Becoming Nation: A Reader. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
16 Ibid.
17 Merje Kuus, “Ubiquitous identities and elusive subjects: puzzles from Central Europe”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, 2007.
18 Occasionally Kuus’s argument borders on the obscure, as when he writes that “approached as a performative practice, the consistency of what is described as a ‘core’ of identity is not the source but the effect of identity discourses”, ibid. p. 93. This begs the question of how the outlook of individuals can be moulded into consistency by discourses?
19 Ibid. p. 97.
20 Kuus quotes Nietzsche as saying famously that “the deed is everything”.
21 Gerard Delanty & Rumford., Rethinking Europe. Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization. London: Routledge, 2005.
22 Ibid. p. 15.
23 Ibid, p. 17.
24 Michael Herzfeld, “The European Self: Re-thinking an attitude”. In: Anthony Pagden (ed.), The idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union. Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 140.
25 Cécile Laborde, op.cit. points out that both Anglo-American liberalism and French Republicanism have in recent years been challenged by a quite powerful “culturalist turn” in political theory and that both lines of thinking are currently on the defensive. Culturalism has so far failed, however, to develop a new, coherent view of Political Man based on individualist assumptions.
26 Delanty & Rumford, op.cit. p. 52.
27 Op.cit. p. 54.
28 Ibid.
29 See Emmanuel Mounier, Ecrits sur le Personalisme. Paris: Editions de Seuil, 2000.; and Emmanuel Mounier, Comunismo, Anarquismo, personalismo. Madrid: Movimiento cultural Cristiano, 1999; and Emmanuel Mounier, Personalismen. Köbenhavn, 1952.
30 See in particular Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self. The making of modern identity. Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 506ff.
31 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1952, p.14.
32 Ibid. p. 59.
33 Ibid. p. 69.
34 Ibid. p. 76.
35 Gabriel Almond & Sydney Verba, The civic culture. Princeton University Press, 1963.
36 Roberto Garcia Jurado, “Critica de la teoria de la cultura politica”. Politica y cultura, otono 2006, no. 26.
37 Ibid. p. 142.
38 Martine Abdallah-Pretceille, “Interculturalism as a paradigm for thinking about diversity”. Intercultural education. Vol. 17, no. 5. December 2006, p. 479.
39 Ibid. p. 478.
40 See