The Birth of Europe, the Sinking into Europe – II

In Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept, Rodolphe Gasché proposes an etymology for the word Europe. According to him, Europe is derived from the Greek word erobos. However, erobos is neither of Greek origin nor a word from the Indo-European root family to which Greek itself belongs. On the contrary, it is of Semitic origin and, as Gasché argues, entered Greek via the Phoenicians who once inhabited the coastal regions of Anatolia—what was then called Asia Minor. The original form of the word is ereb, which means darkness or evening. Ereb refers to the darkness that falls as the sun begins to set on the horizon.

According to Gasché, this meaning “refers to the western lands where the sun sets.” In that case, the name Europe—which entered Greek as erobos from the Semitic ereb—in its original sense designates the onset of darkness following the sun’s descent along the western coast of the Aegean Sea. And this, in turn, points to a land not yet fully formed—namely, the evening land (Abendland) or the Occident. (As a parenthetical note, it is worth recalling that the name of the continent Asia—referred to by Herodotus as Ἀσία in reference to Anatolia—is also said to derive from an Akkadian word meaning “to rise” or “to ascend,” itself tracing back to the Semitic Asu, which denotes the rising of the sun.) That is to say, even in its etymological sense, Europe does not designate any fixed geographical place, since the land that emerges in the twilight of sunset can only be seen as a silhouette. If these etymological claims hold true, then even the word Europe does not properly belong to the Europeans themselves; it was transmitted to them via the Greeks.

Nevertheless, there are also those who claim that the word Europe is derived from an Indo-European root. Among them are Robert Beekes, who in his Etymological Dictionary of Greek argues that Erebos originates from the Old Indo-European root hireg and means “darkness, gloom”; and Franco Montanari, who in The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, referring also to its appearances in Homer and Sophocles, claims that the word is derived from the Indo-European root reg, and means a “darkness, gloom” specifically indicating the underworld, or an “infinite depth” referring to the sea. However, Jean-Luc Nancy—whose article titled “Euryopa: le regard au loin” I have unfortunately not been able to examine directly, but have followed through Gasché’s piece “Alongside the Horizon” in the edited volume On Jean-Luc Nancy—develops an interesting etymological interpretation starting from the word Euryopa, and offers some philosophical considerations in connection with it. While Nancy also touches upon the possibility of Erebos, he insists that the word is derived from Greek, and through Euryopa, attempts to add a certain depth of vision to the meaning of a landmass that appears as a silhouette in the twilight of evening, as in erobos. According to this interpretation, Euryopa, which is also a title of Zeus, through that title carries the meaning of “either one whose eyes are wide open, or whose voice reaches the farthest (that is, one who strikes lightning).” In this way, Nancy argues, Euryopa, from which the word Europe is derived, is defined more through vision than anything else, and refers not to the landmass itself that becomes dim in the evening darkness of erobos, but to the gaze or the eye that looks upon it: Euryopa is the gaze that “looks into the dimness, into the depth of its own dimness.”

This means that Europe, as Euryopa, is a gaze that belongs to no one (which is, in fact, the most characteristic feature of a “universal” that has never truly become universal or global); it is a gaze that looks upon the dimness or obscurity of that ambiguous black mass in the twilight of evening as its own obscurity or dimness—Europe as a landmass that has not yet become itself. So much so that, in Nancy’s conception, this dimness of Europe as Euryopa will not only determine itself as Europe, but will also designate the landmass upon which it casts that “universal” gaze as the “world.” In other words, Europe is, in essence, the gaze that enables the world to be seen in this way—as a dimness—and to be apprehended as such.

Nevertheless, as a typical European, Nancy cannot help but attribute a positive quality to this gaze—a gaze that dims not only a landmass in the twilight of evening but the entire conception of the “world.” According to him, this dimming gaze is the gaze of the “universal” and, as an idea or concept, possesses its own form. For this reason, “Europe is thus inevitably an idea of an idea—form and vision.” Nancy also assigns to this “idea” of an idea and to this form a “language” that has not yet transformed into any particular language (say, into French, English, German, or even into a Proto-Indo-European language—the oldest reconstructed form of the Indo-European family to which these belong). For (in Gasché’s words), “this is an idea of a gaze, an idea of the ideal form of the gaze in question—an idea of a gaze that presents [opens, interprets] and spreads itself in harmony with a language or a mode of unfolding [or commentary] that is proper to it.”

In short, it requires logos as a language that belongs to no one; that is, logos is the idea of an idea of a gaze. However, logos is not something given—or rather, it has nothing given to it other than being the idea of its own gaze. Therefore, as the gaze into dimness unfolds or is interpreted as a form, it proceeds as logos: “The idea reveals, shapes, and unfolds itself according to logos: that is, according to the law of autonomy, according to the law of that which grounds itself upon itself, according to the law of that which develops and realizes itself through itself, and according to the law of that which returns to itself in and for itself [it reveals, shapes, and unfolds]. Logos is the language of the idea insofar as it is ‘reason.’ The principal ‘reason’ of the idea is to be the fundamental form—fundamental to the extent that it shapes itself; thus, it sees itself in everything that renders it visible and intelligible.”

Of course, these are strange sentences—indeed, highly cryptic in themselves, understandable only when placed in relation to other similar utterances found throughout the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, what can ultimately be said is this: Nancy conceives of such a gaze for Europe as Euryopa that this gaze, in the end, is—according to his own expression—a “seeing-oneself-seeing.” Here, of course, even if the one who sees is also the one who sees themselves, who that is remains unknown; yet this, precisely, is what the “universal” is in Western thought, and Nancy draws upon this kind of “universal” thought to the fullest extent. For the gaze that arises from this kind of dim “seeing-oneself-seeing” recognizes the dimness it perceives at that moment as the “world,” and as it opens itself into that dimness and spreads through logos, it becomes “worldly.” Thus, as Euryopa, Europe begins to spread itself across the entire surface of the Earth precisely as a gaze upon that ambiguous ground at the moment of emergence, and as a gaze that sees itself as a gaze: until it reaches its most perfected state. Of course, perfection here is not for the individual human being, as it is for Kant, nor even for humanity as a species, but rather for the idea and the form of the gaze itself. The gaze that sees itself—whoever it may belong to—will, once its dissemination is complete, also come to its end: “The European moment shapes itself as the figure of the ‘West’; this means that it is the figure of the totalization of the world, which it pursues as an end until totalization is complete.” In fact, in Western thought more broadly, perfection is reaching the end—even if there is no actual end, even if it extends infinitely. Certainly, the traces of Kant, of Hegel, and of others may be found in such thinking; but what seems most striking is how profoundly messianic it is.

However, the idea of Europe as Euryopa—summarized here as briefly as possible—has nothing to do with the Greeks. Although it may seem to face the lands along the Aegean coast of Anatolia, which the Greeks would later lay claim to as their own, the Greeks themselves never conceived of Europe in this way. If anything can be said to remain from the Greeks in such reflections, it is transmission—the continual transmission of the gaze, in the context of Nancy. For the Greeks saw Europe either as mythos, or as a “passage,” or—as in the case of Aristotle—as the other end of Asia, with themselves positioned in the “middle.”

As mythos, Europe (Europe) is based on a tale that ultimately ends in Crete. As Denis Guénon summarizes it in About Europe, drawing from the Alexandrian poet Moschus of the second century BCE, the tale goes as follows: Once upon a time, there was a princess named Europē. One day, while lying in her bed and dozing off in the palace of her father, King Agenor, she had a dream. In her dream, two landmasses in the form of women were quarreling over her. One, named “Asia,” wanted to protect and watch over her, while the other, called “the farthest shore,” wanted to seize her and carry her off across the sea. The princess woke up in confusion and went to gather flowers by the seashore with other princesses. Suddenly, a large and gentle bull appeared before them and persuaded her to climb onto its back. Though the princess hesitated for a moment, she eventually mounted the bull. The bull rose and dashed toward the sea. As they crossed the water, the bull revealed to her that he was Zeus, and that he had taken the form of a bull to abduct her out of love. Zeus, in the form of the bull, thus brought Europē to Crete, where she coupled with the bull and gave birth to “magnificent sons.” According to this tale, Europē is the name of a princess who, due to the desire felt for her, was seized and carried away from Asia to Crete by means of abduction.

However, the earliest Greek historians—for instance, Herodotus in his Histories—while dividing the world into three parts, Asia, Libya, and Europe, at least as far as he knows, seem to have little awareness of Europe as a continent in the modern sense: “As for Europe, whether its northern and eastern sides are bounded by sea—no one knows. Its length is known; it is equal to that of the world’s other two parts [Asia and Libya].” He then offers an intriguing personal observation: “I have never been able to understand on what basis a single landmass has been given three names, all with feminine suffixes, and why the Nile in Egypt and the Phasis in Colchis (according to others, the Tanais in the Palus-Maiotis and the Cimmerian Strait) were chosen as boundaries between these regions. Moreover, who made these distinctions, who gave these names?”

Indeed, who gave these names—so that Libya, as the Greeks knew it, was named after “Libye, a woman native to that land”; Asia, after “Prometheus’s wife,” or, according to the Lydians, after “Asias, the son of Kotys, son of Manes”? As for Europe, Herodotus writes, “Is she also surrounded by water? No one knows; where does her name come from? Who invented this name? These things are also unknown.” But recalling the Tyrian princess from the mythos, he adds, “perhaps… the Tyrian Europe gave her own name.” Then again, where does the name of that Tyrian princess—Europe—come from? “It is accepted that Europē, who was originally Asian, never came to the land the Greeks today call Europe. She only traveled from Phoenicia to Crete, and from Crete to Lycia.” In other words, according to Herodotus, Europē never set foot in Europe; and Europe, which takes its name from Europē, is—as befits its name—a place entirely dim and dark.

Aristotle, however, is even more ruthless than Herodotus. In his Politics, after reaching a decision—or a limitation—that the size of a city with good governance and the amount of diversity within it must be suited to a “self-sufficient life,” he then inquires where such a city might best be found. To understand this, he says, one must compare Greek cities with the lands where non-Greeks—ethnos—live. Thus, he makes a threefold distinction: “The peoples (ethnos) of the cold regions, especially those around Europe, are full of life, but they are deficient in thought and craftsmanship; therefore, even though they manage to remain free, they have no political institutions and are incapable of ruling over their neighbors.” In contrast, “those in the regions of Asia are intelligent and skilled, but they lack spirit, and thus they become subjects and slaves.” Of course, one cannot speak of Orientalism in Aristotle’s case, but how he arrived at such an “Orientalist” conclusion is perhaps something that should be examined, especially within a framework grounded in concepts of kingship (for, according to the distinction within the Indo-European language family, Eastern kings have traditionally not been conceived as sovereigns bearing scepters or crowns like Western kings, but rather as rulers possessing subjects).

Finally, we come to the Greeks—or, more precisely, the Greek genos. Aristotle situates the Greeks in a “middle” position between Asia and Europe: “The Greek genos, just as it lies in the middle of these two regions, likewise partakes of both.” In other words, to express it in a way that resonates with the present day: the Greeks are a bridge between Asia and Europe, partaking of both. Therefore, the Greeks are “full of life and free” like the Europeans, but they make up for what the Europeans lack by being good rulers; likewise, they are “intelligent and skilled” like the Asians, but unlike them, they are not slaves or subjects—they are free. Still, Aristotle notes that even among the Greeks, there are those who possess either an Asiatic or a European nature. (In the quotations from Politics, I have used Gurur Sev’s Turkish translation, although in some cases I have made slight modifications based on C. D. C. Reeve’s English translation.)

In this case, for the Greeks, there is no such thing as the “universal”—whether as a horizon or as the form of the idea of a gaze that sees itself. After all, the Greeks—setting aside Ionia, at least those in Attica and its surroundings—inhabited a land which, from the perspective of Asia, became increasingly dim and shrouded in twilight on the opposite shore as the sun set. And yet, as we have seen, they did not regard themselves as Europeans. So then, what is Europe for the Greeks—and furthermore, what is the “universal,” as the form of the idea of a gaze that opens up as a horizon or sees itself as such?

To be sure, although the Greeks did possess a mythos associated with the name Europe, and although they positioned themselves in the “middle” in relation to it, they had neither an idea called Europe nor a conception of the “universal” that, through Europe as its medium, opens as a horizon yet never becomes truly universal. Even though the idea of Europe may contain—as a kind of inheritance—the field of activity we call philosophy and a literary culture that would only much later be deemed classical, the Greeks are not at the place where Europe is born. For the Greeks, Europe—received in a form transmitted to them—is the dim and obscure silhouette that the opposite shore assumes in the twilight where the sun sets. Europe is something distant, appealing even, but dim; a cold land beyond. Europe is not born with the Greeks; indeed, Europe is not born at all.

Still, Nancy’s remark—this time cited from a passage in his essay “La nuisance continuée de l’Europe,” as quoted by Gasche in Europe, or the Infinite Task—that “Europe, or if it is still possible to speak in this way, the ‘essence’ of Europe, is first and foremost a birth order rather than a project,” is itself an indication that Europe is not born. Europe does not give birth—it is only birth; but it is a birth that recurs constantly and perpetually in the place where it sinks. For Nancy, writing in 1992—at a time when Europe had taken shape as a project of unity and was being discussed through institutions such as the European constitution (even though its greatest concern now was perhaps self-preservation, and the constitution would eventually be rejected)—perhaps with the intention of issuing a warning, he says: “Undoubtedly, European projects, which have been underway for more than forty years, have played decisive roles and will continue to do so. But Europe is born.” Here, he refers to the continual renewal of a horizon that sees itself. This is a birth that is open to the unexpected, to what arrives suddenly: Europe “arrives with everything unexpected, unforeseen, not careless perhaps, but incomplete, undeveloped, and unfinishable.” These strange definitions do in fact have a counterpart: “No one should expect too much from a newborn.” Europe, along with—and in fact, despite—the projects it has designed or implemented to create unity, is a newborn infant. Or rather, it is an infant that is perpetually being born anew.

Of course, we know that this is not the case. In Nancy’s self-reflexive gaze—whatever horizon Europe occupies, and however it expands and becomes the “world”—there is no place for colonialisms, genocides, enslavements, oppressions, or the destruction of cultures. Nancy behaves as if none of these ever happened. In fact, neither he nor anyone else who holds such a “universal” ideology that fails to be truly universal (let alone cosmopolitan) carries any such concern. Even if Europe burns and devastates the entire world, it remains innocent—because it is a newborn infant that is always born again.

So then, what can be said of the Greeks within the outlines that Kant envisaged for a “universal” concept of history—written like a “novel” but nonetheless possessing a “system”—from a cosmopolitan perspective? It seems there is little else to say but that they were destroyed by the Romans, who were influenced by them and thus became their transmitters. Yet every transmission also has a form for the self-seeing gaze, a form which is almost impossible to imagine. In the transition from Greece to Rome and beyond, that form has been philosophy. Indeed, did Rome, like Zeus who abducted and carried off Europē from Phoenicia to Crete by force and seizure, likewise snatch and carry off philosophy from the Greeks? As we will see in the next essay, for instance, Heidegger does not quite think so—and this brings us back to yet another European problem: the problem of Europe’s dividedness.