Europe is my country

Defining one’s territory is still, in spite of a high-minded kind of idealism that discards that as something barbaric, a legitimate action. And it’s almost hypocritical to, on the basis of your own lofty ideas of a borderless world, not to demarcate borders yourself but to ask that from your neighbor (ie Erdogan).

By the way, demarcation dóes work indeed, despite the skeptical voices who deny that. Just look at the shift in flows of refugees with each new fence that is placed.

If still – as the diehard moralists among us – you keep having problems with drawing borders, I would like in compensation to remind that demarcation now no longer needs to take place in each country but can be done in larger formations, eg, for Europe as a whole. Due to which we learn to think in larger units and possibly to once handle a world government. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But now it’s not like that. It appears that every country now is being thrown back on old boundaries, while we do feel that they are not functional anymore. Here we are hampered by a late awareness of the need of European borders. If we had earlier  recognized the legitimacy of physically guarding European borders, Hungary and Croatia and other countries would not have had to care for themselves and populist noises about closing the Dutch border would not have as much power as they have now. The rhetoric of war might have sounded less shrill than it does now. Anyway, I prefer the rhetoric of defence to the rhetoric of war.

I am convinced that as yet we need to firmly harness the European border surveillance. If this is performed well, the now raised internal barriers are likely to be broken down again, although before that happens a lot of time will be involved in regaining confidence.

Indeed, Dutch border control seems to be absurd to me. But I think European border surveillance is a good idea, because Europe is my country. After all, throughout Europe we love coffee houses, cafes, concerts and football matches. As to me, in that order.

Also see Alcohol and Borders

Information is always good

Few things are as hard as to get insight into processes that take place stealthily. One way to somehow establish that insight is by having good information. Whether it comes to climate change, increasing or decreasing crimerates, or a social-economic split in society.

Or, to developments in Israeli policy regarding the West Bank. The gradual movement in that case is expressed in the terms that have been used in the course of twenty-five years to designate that area. Those designations have evolved from ‘occupied territories’ (around 1990), through ‘territories’, to (now), ‘Israeli regions’.

This – indeed stealthily unfolding – process can easily cause a feeling of impotence. The best weapon against it, also in this case, is detailed, precise (and of course correct) information that restitutes the possibility to choose. Allowing you, for example by whether or not buying certain products, to no longer stand completely powerless on the sidelines.

I therefore welcome the labeling of West Bank products. Not in order to boycott Israel but – on the contrary - the settlements. Because they are no Israel, right?

Also see The Green Line and the Red Line

Borders

For me the most appealing passage of the article The  Exodus and  our Conscience by Paul Scheffer was this one, about Germany, and actually about the whole of Europe: “Why would a highly developed country, which eavesdrops its citizens day and night, no longer be able to guard its boundaries? Open borders, that’s something you may opt for, but if you don’t want to monitor national or European borders any longer, please don’t put this political unwillingness in the guise of police impotence”. Especially when the huge social experiment of integration of perhaps a million refugees is answered with “We make it”.

The passage even had some extra weight because a few days earlier Angela Merkel had visited Erdogan to ask him to better control his borders and to let pass fewer refugees through to the West. In exchange for money and other things.

That did not feel good. Erdogan was just trying, through some of his dirtiest tricks, to manipulate the elections and to bomb the Kurds, and precisely then Merkel will come and beg for his help. Actually I’m not against Realpolitik, and sooner or later you will have to deal with dictators. But you do not have to do so too early, and certainly not because of the strange consideration that self-guarding your borders would be indecent or Europe unworthy. Indeed, with her visit Merkel jeopardized European dignity.

Apparently the concept of dignity no longer suffices. In terms of dignity everything scores badly: it is unworthy to possibly accept Assad as a negotiating partner, and it is unworthy of refugees to let them be dunked in the heat, the rain and the cold of Central Europe. But it is also unworthy to beg Erdogan, who is just doing his dirtiest tricks, to stop the stream. Perhaps the only worthy thing is to let everybody in, but that’s impossible.

In this swamp where Europe lets its policy be defined by everyone and everything from outside, the sheer possibility of dignity threatens to evaporate. At such a moment you have only your own worthiness to hold on to, so that’s what Europe will have to do. If Europe wants to save its own dignity than for a while it must let itself be goverend less by external impulses then is the case now. Whether that be refugees or Erdogan or Putin.

And if there are borders required – I mean very physical barriers such as pontoons on the Aegean Sea or fences on the land – so be it. That’s not too unworthy, is it? Our entire physical and perhaps spiritual existence depends on borders.

Or, as Scheffer puts it in another powerful passage: “If people with liberal attitudes do not want to think about borders, then eventually people with an authoritarian slant draw boundaries. That is at stake and therefore a morality that takes its own crisis of conscience as a starting point, is not a sustainable morality.”

Also see Levinas as I (can) understand him and Where do universal values bring us?

Wittgenstein as Talmudist

It is not obvious to bring Wittgenstein in connection with Talmudic thinking. He himself would probably have been the first to object because he did not like to be reminded of his Jewish ancestry. And also because in Wittgenstein’s own eyes clear thinking was his trademark while Talmudic reasoning, especially in his time, passed for obscure and incomprehensible. He wanted to have nothing to do with it.

But there is more to say about Wittgenstein. His initial striving for pure, linear logic and unequivocal truth at some point gave way to the belief that multiple contextual logics could coexist in plurality. ‘The’ truth was no longer his goal, rather clarity in the practical use of words and language. This change in Wittgenstein’s thinking is the cause of a fairly common distinction made between an early and a later Wittgenstein.

The said change of direction in his philosophy does not please everyone and some are even inclined to describe Wittgenstein’s late philosophy as obscure and incomprehensible. For example, Bertrand Russell – a big fan of the early Wittgenstein – believed the later Wittgenstein simply gave up the philosophical quest for true knowledge and thus betrayed  the duty of a philosopher. According to Ernest Gellner, the late Wittgenstein leads to relativism or conservatism.

Others, such as John Austin and Gilbert Ryle, enthusiastically follow in Wittgenstein’s footsteps. In the Netherlands, Bert Keizer praises him for the revolutionary break with Plato that Wittgenstein performs.

I belong to the second group. Although I have some reservations when it comes to a possible conservative effect of Wittgenstein’s work, on the whole I find it refreshing and relaxing. The remarkable thing is that my appreciation relates to a number of elements which I also find and appreciate in the style of the Talmud. Therefore for me Wittgenstein’s thinking is closer to Talmudic thought than is recognized in general, and than he himself would have liked.

What do I have in mind when I say that? What are those possibly parallel elements? I think of two things: a pragmatic interest in finding passable paths and  his abandon of the notion of ‘the’ truth.

For the later Wittgenstein the criterion for determining the ‘correct view’ is whether we have something to go on with again. He wonders what it takes to achieve that, and how to act according to what the situation asks from us. So, Wittgenstein quite deliberately does not invoke universal truth as a criterion for action, his criterion is pragmatic in nature.

Do not ask what a thing is, so is his motto, but look how we speak about them and act with them. In doing so he arrives at contextual meanings of language, the meaning of a word is its use. “To know how to go on” is what it’s all about. What is right depends on the game you are playing.

Take for example the public debate about smoking. Thinkers in the line of the later Wittgenstein don’t care much about the scientific truth in this area, ie about the question whether there is conclusive evidence that smoking produces health damage, and if so how exactly.

What these thinkers dó wonder about is what is socially accepted as a fact, on the basis of which we actually (can) act. Such as: that we have seen enough to assume a link between smoking and lung cancer, and are inclined to put some responsibility on tobacco manufacturers. And that in the course of time other accents can be laid. Thus the conversation about smoking becomes more of a practical-normative question than a truth issue.

In the Talmud discussions can proceed in the same way. Also for Talmudic statements a central criterion is the question of whether a passable path emerges. Not for nothing the word ‘halacha’ (the whole of rabbinic regulations) is derived from the verb ‘to go’. And if a collectively passable path is at stake, then a set of guiding rules and etiquette may be more convenient than the availability of a solid truth.

An example of Talmudic reasoning is the treatment of the question whether a given furnace is kosher or not. Rabbi Eliezer, for his answer to that question, relies on divine truth, and emphasizing that, he manages to move God to all kinds of supernatural signs: “If I’m right”,  Rabbi Eliezer says, “this tree will now be uprooted and that river will flow in the opposite direction”, and indeed they do. But the other rabbis in the meeting appear not to be impressed by that truth. “We pay no attention to a heavenly voice, for long ago You, Eternal One, at Mount Sinai have written in the Torah: Follow the majority”. So, just decide democratically, without divine intervention.

It is remarkable that such a way of reasoning, both in the case of the Talmud and in the case of the Philosophical Investigations (from the later Wittgenstein) has an effect on the style in which the books have been written. Both have a capricious character in which reasonings take place through associations rather than through a strictly logical, linear structure. Furthermore, both works pay a lot of attention to individual, specific situations and cases. In Wittgenstein this is a deliberately chosen style: he speaks judgmental about the ‘contempt for the individual case’ and he fights the human tendency to generalize. “I'll teach you differences”, Wittgenstein says, an endeavor that can be also attributed to the Talmud.

An indelible difference is that in the Talmud the possibility of reduction of sentences to a Biblical verse is required. It presses the associative way of thinking of the rabbis to great heights, but the extent of associated squirming and wriggling would undoubtedly greatly go against the grain with Wittgenstein.

Remains that both Wittgenstein and the Talmud with their organizing work aim at clarifying lived human practices. Who knows, if Wittgenstein had not been bothered by time-bound prejudices against the Talmud, he would perhaps have recognized the parallels.

Also see The portable homeland and I-lit

I-lit

Recently Naema Tahir called Die Welt von Gestern by Stefan Zweig one of the finest books she had read. For me actually the same holds true. It is 35 years since I read it, but its instructiveness and penetrating enjoyment are still standing sharp in my mind.

However, I completely disagree with the thoughts that she then connects to her appreciation of the book. She believes that Zweig reached that grand effect because he stays on the outside: he observes his surroundings and styles his findings in a masterly way. He does not speak about himself and this controlled distance creates depth and art.

She opposes that to the tendency of modern literature to expand extensively on the inner life of the author himself or herself, including physical and sexual aspects of private life. She calls that ‘I-lit’, with Karl Ove Knausgård and Jonathan Littell as its contemporary exponents, and she abhors it. Firstly because she finds the many sexual details repulsive. But in the second place, as she says, because someone else’s inner life is not relevant to a reader. And, as I suspect based on the tone of the piece, in the third place because of the old moralistic reason that attention to one’s own inner life is selfish.

Tahirs first argument is imaginable for me: I think too it’s often not really pleasant to, for example, get served the details of other people’s sex lives. But with her second argument, namely that it would not be relevant, I do not agree. For that reason, I also heartily disagree with her normative, condemning rejection of I-centredness.

I’m afraid that Tahirs considerations are derived a bit too much from the world of yesterday where she let herself be carried away by Zweig. That world of external control, elegant but compelling objectivity, distance and styling is completely outdated, so is my conviction. It relies too heavily on elements that are irretrievably gone, such as order thinking and the assumption of a cosmic harmony that we can bring near through control and, if necessary, by use of a little violence. In short, on an essentially Platonic conception of the world.

This underlying worldview over the past century lost its credibility. For the West, from a societal perspective, to this day the now eighty-year-old corruption of our political order by Nazism and Stalinism revealed a grim turning point. According to many experts the desire for objective order and control, deeply rooted in Western thinking, made possible those totalitarian regimes.

At the same time psychoanalysis and other humanities have increased our understanding of ourselves and our often murky motives so overwhelmingly, that Zweig’s polished gentleman existence has become unattainable for us for good. Indeed, we not even consider it to be desirable because of its unrealistic character. There is for us no choice but to descend into our troubled lives, so our literature does so as well.

And yes, that can bring up all sorts of revelations that Tahir abhors such as the conclusion  by a recent biographer that Zweig which was an exhibitionist. “I do not want to hear that”,  she exclaims, “It's a kind of defilement.” It obscures beauty and it is irrelevant.

I would say on the contrary: the very fact that Tahir’s lofty image can be brought down by the disclosure makes the disclosure relevant. Frankly, I think the focus on the inner life in all its aspects, not just the sublime, is progress. Not that I’m going to read Knausgård, but I appreciate the tendency that modern people try as best as possible to deal with their not so lofty but every-day physical, sexual and spiritual needs. And I tend to see recognition of the dark diversity of human strivings as a gain. Eventually it is a better means of averting social chaos than the controlling action of an outward ideal of civilization.

After all, how else do we ever get out of that often sterile, objectifying, communicatively poor atmosphere at our offices, schools and universities, than by systematically scrutinizing ourselves and expressing ourselves as subjects? To dismiss that as self-centered I would call old-fashionedly normative. I would like to cite Wittgenstein in this regard, in conversation with Friedrich Waismann: “At the end of my lecture on ethics I spoke in the first person: I think that this is something very essential. Here there is nothing to be stated any more; all I can do is to step forth as an individual and speak in the first person.”

La Belle Epoque is definitely in the past. But that loss can be very livable, and indeed the more so as our inner life is more involved. That much faith in a certain order I still have.

Also see Escape

Levinas and calculation

There is a lot of emotion in the air in recent weeks. It's all about compassion, fear, disgust, enthusiasm, all triggered by the influx of refugees. The commotion is accompanied by sensible commentaries calling for restraint of the emotions using our reason.

Such as that of Nelleke Noordervliet: “The emotion reigns. The ratio has a tough job to tame that monster. Essentially the sick tweets about drowned refugees do not differ much from a consignment of cuddly toys.”

And Kim Putters, director of the Dutch Social Cultural Planning Department, believes that, “whether  you want to close the borders or to show abundant mercy”, we may need to develop new democratic methods to deal with these problems.

My reaction to such statements is: let the different emotions struggle, also within each individual. The outcome of that fight will probably yield many intermediate positions, which can be stepping stones to more reasoned outcomes.

Meanwhile, we should not pretend that there is nothing to choose or that choices are not made. The Red Cross suggests that in its advertisements in newspapers and on the radio, with the slogan “Don’t let us choose”, ie between refugees to be helped.

I think that’s a seriously misleading slogan, because of course choices are constantly being made. Politicians, like Merkel and Orban, do so on a daily basis by opening and closing boundaries a little more or less. UNHCR selects refugees in the region for resettlement in Europe, and thereby uses ‘objective criteria’, not the ‘subjective desire’ of the refugee. And chance selects because some people are precisely at the right time in the right place while others are not. I would not know how this could be avoided. Not everyone can come here, that is precisely the tragedy behind the whole thing.

The Red Cross’s utopia assumes the same malleability as the journalist Ron Frese who recently with a penetrating look asked our prime minister “Mr. Rutte, you are surely in control?”. This malleability is far removed from the necessarily always utilitarian colored political acting. Decisive in that arena is what is feasible for the greatest number of people, citizens and migrants, and then always a certain degree of collateral damage is acceptable. It is a form of calculation.

Shouldn’t something like that offend my favorite philosopher Levinas, and therewith myself, squarely? Indeed, isn’t this at odds with the attention that Levinas calls for the other person? Yes, it definitely is. Especially when you explain Levinas in such a way that you have always to stand ready for everybody everywhere. Actually this is not my standpoint, but yet a complication in his philosophy remains that the Other whom I meet may compete with  another Other, even several Others. To them, I also have the absolute obligations which Levinas is talking about, but because of that the various obligations get relativized to some extent.

Levinas recognizes this socio-political complication, and does not run away from it. But in fact he offers no new perspective and at this point simply joins the Western political-philosophical tradition. Which already for centuries is engaged in reflection on balancing all  competing obligations that people have towards each other. Levinas embraces with enthusiasm the political and legal institutions of our society where that weighing of interests  occurs. He considers their existence of very great importance.

As Levinas’s added value may indeed be considered that he shows that this somewhat bleak socio-political weighing of interests is never just right. Due to the balancing and the corresponding calculation, the original moral obligation will always be betrayed to a certain extent. However blessed the work of our legislators, judges and academics, the institutions in which they work at times exhibit a complacency that in the eyes of Levinas is by definition misplaced. And the stability and quality of their products have a high illusionary content, measured by whether perhaps too much violence is done to the original moral obligation. Levinas never tires to ask attention for that.

Also see How naïve is Levinas really? and Totalitarianism is with us

Humiliation is never good

Last week I thought: this goes all wrong. I do not mean that we - the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France – accept too many refugees, because I do not know. Maybe we can handle it.

Nor do not mean that other countries - Hungary, Czech Republic, Israel - wrongly hold off the boat, because they may have their reasons.

I refer specifically to the reproaches made by the rich and developed West within the EU to the poorer and less developed East. Thus it is said that Hungary is “antisocial” and “inhumane”, and that the Eastern European countries in their opposition to mandatory quotas don’t represent “21st century Europe”.

Aren’t here the most deadly ingredients that can play in the interaction between people and states fully active again? The moral and cultural superiority of the West and the ‘primitiveness’ of the unruly countries are recurring themes. And therewith humiliation is the order of the day.

This is so bad because with a bit more historical look at our own cultural and social developments it may become well understandable that the East European countries do what they do. Don’t we ourselves wrestle with the integration of newcomers, while working on that already for fifty years. A couple of years ago Chancellor Merkel still considered integration to have “failed”. I did not agree with her, I think it goes well in many areas, but let’s not forget  that we needed fifty years for it. That experience Eastern European countries do not have. And Israel certainly not, because for such a development peace is a prerequisite for, including with Syria.

Furthermore, the seventy-year post-war peace and prosperity helped the indigenous Western European population to for the first time in world history think in completely different ways about faith, tradition, sexuality and identity. Remember the many shocks accompanied the process, at least in Holland, from the rebellion of the first prosperity-generation of in the sixties, through massive secularization, the revolt of Fortuyn and Wilders to the current debate about Blackface.

A suchlike cultural and social development apparently can only start to develop after a period of 20 to 25 years of peace and stability, the point where Eastern Europe is only now. Moreover, Hungary and Romania have had bad experiences with the difficult embeddable Roma. How ethical – or simply: wise – is it to demand of others something after twenty-five years that took us seventy years te reach?

Europe will have to deal with its member states in the way in which a state deals with its subjects. No state will oblige citizens to just take refugees into their homes. Those who can and want to do so may be encouraged. But those who are not ready to do so for whatever reasons – trouble in organizing their own life, trauma, poverty – can not be forced. And certainly not with an appeal to 21st century moral standards which originate in Western peace and prosperity and are suddenly thought to be universal.

The latter pretension can only have a humiliating effect. And does the pedantic West still not know what that means?

Also see Reluctance against the West, Half-grown and Plato disproved?