Ahmet Demirhan
Just recently, Elon Musk—who had previously likened the United Kingdom to a “prison island”—made yet another striking remark, this time about Europe: “If internal birth rates do not increase, and if there is no large-scale remigration, Europe will no longer be Europe.” Setting aside the question of birth rates, the “remigration” Musk calls for actually contains a paradox in itself: Europe is not presented as a place to which one can return, but rather as a goal, a telos; Europe stands as a horizon.
Then what could this “return”—advanced by Elon Musk, who, as we shall see below, entertains certain expectations from the European New Right—mean at a time when he is politically, economically, and more crucially, strategically cornered?
How can a Europe—which has never truly been a homeland, but has always carried, transmitted, and conveyed both the so-called homeland it presumes and the ideals it claims as its foundation—how can such a Europe be a homeland? Is that even possible?
Around the same time, Elon’s father, Errol Musk—who still resides in South Africa—remarked in a CNN interview: “We have a small white population in South Africa that carries European culture. We live the culture we learned from Europe.”
If that is the case, does Europe become the Heimat—the ancestral homeland—of the Musks, father and son? Who can claim Europe as their homeland and undertake a return to it?
Around the same time as Musk, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—one of the leading figures of the European New Right—made a statement that implicitly targeted the bureaucrats of the European Union in Brussels, or, to use a term coined specifically for them, the “Eurocrats.” She said: “I believe that Western civilization is based on Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian values.”
Most likely, the “Eurocrats” would not object to the first two elements of Meloni’s formulation, but rather to the last one: the “values” that are continually invoked in the name of integration and assimilation imposed on immigrants arriving from outside of Europe. “Eurocratic” Europe, presumably, would not wish to reduce “values” to a strictly “Catholic” register, as Meloni does.
So, whose Europe—and which Europe—is in question here? Is it the Europe for which the New Right struggles to establish a new value framework? The Europe to be returned to as an ancestral homeland? Or the Europe that is always posited as a telos—as a goal ever deferred?
Over the course of several essays, we will circle around these questions, following a trajectory that attempts to define Europe through certain thematic or schematic terms—what Denis Guénoun names figurative, and what Alain Badiou refers to as categorical designations. The first thinker along this path will be Kant. From there, we will attempt to extend the line through Husserl to Heidegger, from Derrida to Nancy, and in between, we will also try to touch upon others such as Rémi Brague, Denis Guénoun, and Rodolphe Gasché.
Still, another point must be recalled: alongside the remarks by Musk and Meloni, a statement concerning Europe—possibly of strategic significance—was also made by Türkiye’s Minister of National Defense, Yaşar Güler. In that statement, one can detect signs of a perceptible shift.
There is an expression frequently invoked alongside Türkiye’s aspiration to rise to the level of contemporary civilization: Türkiye is a bridge. At times, in place of “bridge,” the concept of berzah is used—an expression that typically implies that Türkiye is a threshold between East and West, a borderland, a country situated between continents, much like the straits it possesses that both divide and connect two continents.
This expression also indicates that Türkiye stands fully on neither side of the border, nor has it entirely reached the other. A bridge signifies being in motion—and that motion implies movement toward a destination.
However, just recently, Türkiye’s Minister of National Defense, Yaşar Güler—almost as if to demonstrate that the borders drawn by Europe, whether through visa regimes like Schengen or maritime demarcations such as the straits around Türkiye, have become ineffective—stated that Europe’s defense expenditures are no longer sufficient to ensure its own security. In doing so, he also spoke of a different Türkiye. Regarding discussions on whether Türkiye would be included in the SAFE (Security Action for Europe) plan, Güler remarked: “We are not paying much attention to whether Türkiye will be included in the plan. Our turn to speak will come at a critical time when they need it most.” This, notably, signals that Türkiye no longer regards itself—even strategically—as a bridge (to Europe). At the very least, from a strategic point of view, Europe is no longer a destination or a foundational point of return for Türkiye.
So then, for whom is Europe a place to return to?
The idea that Kant formulated for a universal history—commonly referred to in English as having a “cosmopolitan purpose,” or more precisely, with a weltbürgerlicher (world-citizenship) aim in direct translation from German—naturally contains no specific design or conception of Europe. In his essay, translated into Turkish as “Dünya Vatandaşlığı Amacı Taşıyan Evrensel Bir Tarih İdesi” (“An Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”), the very notion of history, examined from a cosmopolitan perspective, is designated as “universal”; and thus, however it is defined, the “universal” precedes even Europe.
So much so that in Kant’s cosmopolitanism, it is not the artificial world of individual human beings on our planet—cultivated through science and art, civilized through courtesy and refinement, though not yet fully moral—that is foregrounded, but rather the artificial world of humanity as a species. Indeed, even possible inhabitants of other planets—whose natures, and therefore their relation to nature, remain unknown—are subject to comparison within this framework.
Faced with such a conception of universality, and with a cosmopolitanism that extends beyond the Earth and reaches out toward other planets, Europe appears to be scarcely more than a dot—if that.
What is truly at stake, however, is the idea of attaining a universal history of the world, one that unfolds in accordance with nature’s hidden plan—not only encompassing the European human being, but humanity as a species, and even, should they exist, other rational beings on other planets.
Yet this appearance is deceptive. Kant speaks of Europe without ever naming it, and this indirect reference carries some remarkable features. First of all, regardless of how one approaches it, to write history on the basis of the idea of a universal history that unfolds in accordance with nature’s plan, and which presupposes a cosmopolitan (weltbürgerlich) world-citizenship (to bring Kant’s conclusion to the beginning), is ultimately to write a novel. In other words, to compose a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim is tantamount to composing a novel.
Still, Kant argues that if “it can be accepted that nature does not act without a plan and a final purpose, even within the play of human freedom,” then the idea of a universal history from a cosmopolitan standpoint might indeed prove “useful.” Even though “we are far too narrow-minded to fully perceive the secret mechanism underlying nature’s design,” Kant claims that such an idea of history may serve at least as a guide—not to see human actions as a chaotic aggregate, but rather as a system with a certain coherence. In this way, he outlines the broad strokes of such a history.
To outline the contours of a “universal” history, Kant begins—so to speak—from the middle of the book: for such a conception of history, one starts with Greek history, which preserves—or at least accredits—the history that precedes it or is contemporaneous with it. The expression “middle of the book” is necessary in two respects. First, Greek history is not the beginning of history itself; it is the beginning of the idea of history. There may well have been actions, events, or deeds by members of the human species prior to the Greeks that might be considered worthy of becoming historical. However, it was the Greeks who inaugurated a concept of history—one that preserves what came before them or what was contemporary to them, at the very least by endorsing or accrediting those pasts.
In other words, whoever they may have been, those who lived before or alongside the Greeks are included in Kant’s cosmopolitan universal history only to the extent that they were preserved or authorized (akkreditiert) by the Greeks.
But what about those whom the Greeks neither preserved nor accredited? Kant provides a formula for them as well—and this formula relates to the second point: that the beginning of history is not the actual beginning, and that a universal history does not begin with the first act that gives rise to the idea of history, but rather from the “middle” of the book of history. To grasp this point, we must look at a footnote Kant adds on the subject. There, he writes: “Only an educated public that has existed continuously from the beginning down to our own time can authenticate this ancient history.”
This suggests that for ancient history to be included in universal history, there must have existed an “educated public” that has persisted without interruption from the time of the Greeks to Kant’s own era. But how does this educated public preserve or validate ancient history?
Kant’s example is particularly striking—not only because it defines a terra incognita, an unknown or unmapped domain—but also because it establishes how even those peoples who already have their own histories can be incorporated into “universal” history only in a form that has been accredited. “Beyond this [that is, beyond what the Greeks preserved or authorized], all else is terra incognita; the histories of peoples who lived outside this framework can only begin to be traced from the moment they become part of it. This is precisely what happened to the Jewish people under the Ptolemaic dynasty: by translating their Holy Book into Greek, they became part of it. Had it not been for this translation, their isolated revelations would have inspired little belief. But from that point on—provided that this beginning can be properly determined—their history can be followed forward. The same applies to all other peoples. The first page of Thucydides (according to Hume) marks the true beginning of all authentic history.”
In short, according to Kant, even the Old Testament—had it not been translated into Greek, that is, had it not been transferred into Greek—would have remained in its isolated condition, and the subsequent history of the Jewish people could not have been written. From a cosmopolitan perspective, entry into a “universal” history—written like a novel yet situated within a system—is only possible through transference: by being displaced from its original locus and admitted in the form in which it is preserved or accredited within Greek.
In fact, this applies to the Greeks themselves—for they, too, were transferred. The Romans, who form the second major line after the Greeks, transferred the Greeks into their own world. However, this transference occurred through the destruction of the Greeks. Thus, in a “universal” history that begins from the middle and leads toward world-citizenship, the phase following the Greeks centers on “the influence of the Greeks on the form and formlessness of the political body of the Roman people who swallowed the Greek state.” Yet Rome, too, does not remain intact. It is ultimately destroyed by the so-called barbarians (namely, the Germanic peoples), upon whom it had exerted profound influence. Through this succession of mutual destructions—each actor nonetheless impacting the next—“universal” history extends up to Kant’s own time.
The third major line bears an even more intriguing character than the previous two. It is precisely at this point that Kant’s schema of “universal” history—which is, in effect, a European history—invokes Europe without naming it. Here, Kant discusses how a “universal” history that has reached his present moment should be shaped—or, even if it is written as a kind of novel, how it must be grasped within a system. This “universal” history, stretching from the Greeks (who preserved or validated ancient history), to Rome (influenced by the Greeks), and from Rome to the Germanic barbarians (influenced by Rome), may be expanded by appending, in episodic form, the political histories of other peoples—so long as knowledge about them has reached us through these enlightened nations. If this is done, then “a regular progression becomes observable in the improvement of civil constitutions in our part of the world [Weltheile: the part of the world we inhabit], which will probably, when the time comes, determine the laws of the other parts of the world.”
What is most striking here is that the phrase “our part of the world” is rendered as “our continent” in certain English and Turkish translations. Yet, as we have seen, the term “continent”—and the geographical sense of Europe that it implies—is not employed by Kant, who envisions a cosmopolitanism potentially extending to other planets. In Kant’s conception of terrestrial life—which he constructs also in relation to the prospect of extraterrestrial life—the Earth is divided in two: “our part of the world” and “the other parts”—a schema of division we will later encounter again in different forms of world-partition enacted on behalf of Europe.
Of course, the life that exists in “the other parts of the world” is not a form of intra-terrestrial existence—such as microbial organisms dwelling deep beneath the Earth’s crust. Yet this life is recognized by a single criterion that might—when the time comes—allow its inclusion in “universal” history: that its laws will be determined in accordance with the laws of the part of the world in which Kant himself lived. Indeed, this is how the “world”—that is, terra—and terrestrial life come into being. This criterion, though unnamed, is unmistakably European. In short, Europe becomes the subject of a “universal” and cosmopolitan history that, beyond legislating for itself, also lays claim to legislating for the other parts of the world.
Now, Kant’s “universal” history—which considers the possibility of extraterrestrial life and comprises nine theses that merit separate examination—is constructed within a cosmopolitan horizon. Yet Kant himself explicitly warns against a possible misreading when he writes: “To assume that I intended to discard the essentially empirical conception of history with this idea of world history—which seems to contain an a priori guide—would be a mistaken interpretation of my intention.” Whatever Kant’s true intention may have been, there are elements of his essay—aside from those already indicated in his a priori guide—that also warrant closer scrutiny.
First and foremost, the concept of the “universal” in Kant—and more broadly in the Western philosophical tradition—is laid bare here: the “universal” is a point of return that lacks a point of origin. It remains ever suspended, like a horizon. One returns to it, yet what is returned to is never actually there—it is always ahead, always deferred. One reason for this is that, although history begins with the Greeks, Greek history itself is not the beginning of history. As Heidegger—whom we will return to later—puts it: “In fundamental history, the beginning comes at the end.” Yet still, the departure point for such a history is the Greeks. The Greeks act as a tribunal of validation. But what they validate is not their own possession—it is not something that properly belongs to them. Rather, it is something that has merely been transferred to them.
Thus, the “universal,” ever suspended like a horizon, is constantly transferred, displaced, and transmitted. This very process of transference—of carrying and transmission—also involves dissemination, as seen in the case of the Jewish people, whose isolated revelation would have remained unheard had it not been validated in Greek.
Indeed, Kant’s concept of a cosmopolitan universal history—which he insists was not devised empirically but according to an a priori guide, and which he traces from the Greeks to his own era—suggests that the law constituted in this transferred form might, in time, spread to other regions. The “universal” is not global, not all-encompassing, at its point of origin or emergence; it becomes so only through dissemination—first across the Earth (in what will later be called “globalization”) and, if possible, into outer space. Yet this dissemination unfolds, in a way, in the name of Europe—though Kant never explicitly names it—or at the very least, in the company of the idea of Europe conceived as a subject, as a self.
Thus, the “universal” precedes Europe, but it is Europe that redirects the “universal” toward itself. In this sense, the “universal” and Europe belong to the same horizon. Europe itself has no origin either. To invoke Heidegger’s language once more: Europe is like the “abyss” (Abgrund)—something that cannot be explained, defined, determined, placed into relation, or fully comprehended, yet which nonetheless constitutes the very ground of Being. It is “open,” but only within its own concealment. And if this abyss is not referred back to the Being that lies beyond it, but instead is grounded in emptiness, then what emerges—under the banner of certain “values” (precisely what Meloni implicitly appeals to)—is nihilism.
This peculiar, ever-originless relation between the “universal” and Europe—continually transferred, displaced, transmitted, and thereby disseminated—is curiously inscribed within the very name “Europe.” The name “Europe” itself was later transferred onto the landmass to which it now refers. Just as Christianity, originating in Jerusalem, was later centered in Rome as if that were its beginning, so too was the name “Europe” displaced onto a certain geography—or, as Kant puts it, onto “our part of the world.” The name “Europe” was installed there through continual transference, transmission, and dissemination—even if only in a form the Greeks themselves might have validated. This, too, is the result of the Greeks having transferred to themselves the idea of Europe—before even knowing what territory it would eventually come to encompass.
So, what kind of relation did the Greeks have with “Europe”? What did “Europe” mean to them? These questions will form the focus of the next essay, where we will explore the etymology of the word “Europe” and how the Greeks conceived it—whether as an abduction to Crete, as in the mythos, or as a notion of passage or threshold in the earliest Greek historians. Within this framework, we will also examine how, in Aristotle’s Politics, the Greeks understood themselves as already located in an “intermediate” space between Europe and Asia.