Europe will not survive unless it is ready to fight. How to defeat Russian neo -imperialism

In it, they criticized the American invasion of Iraq and called on Europeans "to take a reflexive distance from themselves", in particular, from their imperialism and colonialism. Criticizing American neo -imperialism, Gabermas and Derrida, instead, wanted to imagine Postimperian Europe and realize the "Kantian hope for global domestic policy.

" The criticism of Gabermas and Derrida Bush's imperialism was justified; And their proposal that Europe can lead the world to the Postimper Future was a good idea. However, today, after collision with the genocidal invasion of Russia into Ukraine, the question arises whether it is possible to build such a post -imperial world with the help of the means offered by two philosophers? Europe, which they imagined, was Europe of dialogue, conversation and accepting differences.

This is, of course, a worthy idea. The problem is that it is powerless in the face of evil. Europe's perception of itself after the Second World War was focused on the self -evidence of peace. She asked how to expand the peace territory, but did not ask how peace should be protected. It was attracted by the idea of ​​eliminating borders for the circulation of good (as a moral concept, not just a product as an economic concept), not how to strengthen the borders against evil.

She related the question of evil, believing that all evil could be reintegrated simply by the attractiveness of goodness. This formed a long -lasting relationship between Europe (first of all, Germany and France) with Russia. In this respects, Europe perceived Goethe's "Faust" literally, checking the idea that the devil could conclude an agreement. But she forgot what the story ends.

Postwar Europe and some of its key intellectuals, including Gabermas and Derrida, have also forgotten about some of the most important origins of the European project. It was not about the "free market", "economic integration" or even the removal of borders. Rather, it was about the opposition of the idea of ​​the empire to the idea of ​​the republic.

Post -war philosophers formulated well how imperial (and to some extent post -imperial) countries could overcome their own imperial instincts. But they remained blind to what non -imperial societies should do, faced with neo -imperial aggression. However, the origins of the European idea contain the answer to this question.

Richard von Kudenkhove-Clergy-the author of the prophetic book "Pavrop", published in 1923-praised as a far-sighted "predecessor" of post-war Europe, but his main arguments are largely forgotten.

They raised the big question: how can the republics protect themselves from obsessive empires (at that time - Germany and Russia), especially when these republics are smaller and weaker? The Kudenhove-Clergy's response was clear: only by creating a confederation of republics, the Security Union, not just an economic or political union, which would be much more difficult to attack than on atomized nation-states.

It will be an alliance that will look for a balance between the benefits of peace and the need to protect it. Balance between Agora and Agon. There are two ethical systems on which Europe is constructed: two ways to determine the attitude towards another. One of them is the ethics of the Agora. It involves the ethics of exchange. At Agori we give something to get more than they had. We exchange goods, objects, ideas, stories and experiences.

Agora is a play with a positive amount: everyone benefits, even if some try to win more than others. Another ethical system is an agon. Agon is the battlefield. We enter the agon not for exchange, but for fighting. We dream of victory, but ready to lose - in particular to lose ourselves, even in literally to die for a big deal. This is not a logic of playing with a positive amount; There cannot be "Win-Win", because one of the parties is sure to lose.

Europe built itself as a combination of agor and agon. He carries the image of both the knight and the bourgeois. The cultural heritage of Europe can not be imagined without the ethics of agon: or the medieval novels with their cult of chivalry and loyalty, or the drama of early modern times, whose heroes are ready to die for their principles and passions. But Europe is also unthinkable without the culture of Agora, conversations, compromises, softness, Voltaire Mœurs Doux.

The European Cultural Canon also contains criticism of both agori and agon - when they go too far. It includes attacks on knightly culture and the cult of war (from Cervantes to Remark), as well as the bourgeois culture of "exchange" (from Moliere to Balzac). Both of these ethical systems contain deep human values. But, brought to extremes, they are dangerous and should be balanced. Agon ethics teaches us to see potential opponents in all people and consider any interaction as a hidden struggle.

This can lead to the war against everyone. The fact that Hobbes describes in "Leviathan" as a "natural state" is in fact a very difficult stage of social development that absolutized the ethics of the warrior and viewed any other ethics as a threat. The radical ethics of Agory, on the contrary, absolutizes exchange and compromise. Here, exchange and dialogue are the final answer to all questions.

Wars and conflicts are considered the consequences of human madness, and the only reason why people fight is that they were unable to talk to each other enough. If Agora's logic was used universally and endlessly, we would have lost an idea of ​​where to stay in our passion for exchange. We cannot and should not talk to the killer at the moment he is about to kill us; And we cannot and should not "exchange" the life of our loved ones or fellow citizens for something else.

Thus, truth and justice arise as a balance between our willingness to exchange and our understanding that some things are not subject to exchange and indispensable. For example, human lives. Despite their philosophical differences, Gabermas and Derrida shared something important. It was the idea that Agora should replace agon and give it to forget. Gabermas believes in an endless communication space, in which everyone should be ready to adapt their position in the face of new rational arguments.

Derrida built his philosophy on the idea that Western metaphysics is a dictatorship of presence, an indispensable voice of a metaphysical father, and that the only way to counter it is the idea of ​​endless substitutions and reinterpretations. This is done by what he called écriture - writing. Thus, truth and justice arise as a balance between our willingness to exchange and our understanding that some things are not subject to exchange and indispensable. For example, human lives.

While Gabermas tries to ensure the expansion of the mind, Derrida was interested in preserving what slips from the control of the mind. However, both believed that the eternal process of exchange and substitution was a response to religious and metaphysical dogmatism of previous eras. They both tried to undermine indispensable. The problem they could not see is that Agor is impossible without an agon.

You cannot conduct an endless dialogue within the city-state unless you build a fortress that protects your city from potential destroyers. Europe Habermas and Derrida were built on a naive belief that all the enemies have gone and should not worry about security. They preferred to ignore the possibility that our enemies would go only after killing our children.

The hypocrisy inherent in Europe as the continent of "eternal peace" and "endless agora" is that it became possible only under the auspices of NATO security. Gabermas and Derrida were right, condemning the inhuman embodiment of American imperialism, but they were not right, rejecting America as a key partner of Europe and its alter-ego.

While Europe built general welfare states, America created a security system, guaranteeing the conditions under which Europe could continue to remain a social paradise. America was not from Mars, but Europe from Venus, as Robert Kagan believed; America simply filled the gap of the agon (that is, the walls of defense) that Europe left, too believing in the self -evidence of peace and self -reproduction of Agor.

If our goal is to construct a fair post -imperialist world, it is important to point out the parallels between the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the invasion of Russia into Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, Syria 2015 and Ukraine again in 2022. However, there is a fundamental difference. The 2003 war was the result that democracy deceived itself, hiding its imperialism by attractive democratic rhetoric.

In part, it was caused by the fact that the "Western" world was still strong, so strong that he thought it could risk doing everything he wanted - a direct path to tyranny. 2003 was the result of anachronic self -confidence generated by the idea of ​​"the end of history" - ignorance of how to respond to the 2001 shock. Twenty years later, we live in a different reality. Democracy no longer becomes an empire; It attaches an empire.

This empire and its authoritarian allies see that democracy is weak and unprotected. That they lost the spirit of agon. That they mock the knightly culture of the past. And so they can be attacked and eventually destroyed. The Russian war against Ukraine is an attack on Europe. Russia is at war with Europe. It is time to fully accept this fact and draw all the necessary conclusions. Agori is not enough. There are times when you need to defend themselves.

When you need to revive agon as an element of your personality. It's not because you want war. This is because sometimes war comes to you. To protect your world, you have to become a warrior - or at least join the warrior as much as you can. Sometimes it is not enough to avoid evil. Sometimes you need to resist this face-to-face. The author expresses a personal opinion that may not coincide with the editorial position. The author is responsible for published data in the "Thought" section.