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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
How can we justify a comparative study between one idea that is originally essentially geographical and another that is essentially religious? If, on another hand, we examine the two terms on the basis of their currently accepted meaning, and the two realities on the basis of their present content, such a comparison may not become more comprehensible. But in reality, Europe has expanded beyond its physical boundaries: in this sense it is the matrix and historical point of reference both for America and Australia, and even for Russia. With reference to scientific and technical civilization, its inventions and attainments coincide with the modern strata of activity of all contemporary societies. On the contrary, politically it crouches within its West-European nucleus, trying to construct a new identity, limited and distinct, based on specificities that should distinguish it from everything it has projected outside, and from everything it has subjected and denied. This suggests the multiplicity of levels and perspectives.
1 Anthropologie Structurale, II, Plon, 1973, pp. 365 and ff.
2 It seems that the aging Kant had foreseen that European technology would end up by submerging continents, but he was more reticent with regard to the expansion of humanism. In this connection, see Hannah Arendt, Vies politiques, Gallimard, 1974.
3 Maurice Lombard, Espaces et réseaux du haut Moyen-Age, Paris, 1972.
4 Georges Steiner, La Culture contre l'homme, Seuil.
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