ABSTRACT
In his various publications related to the challenges facing the European Union, most recently the challenges that have resulted from the financial crises infecting member states’ economies and threatening the long-term viability of the euro itself, Jürgen Habermas repeatedly has emphasized the need for a robust European public sphere as a forum for the legitimation of the political structures needed to stabilize the EU project. In “Why Europe Needs a Constitution,” published in New Left Review, Habermas argues that European political identity needs “symbolic crystallization” through an act of foundation such as the adoption of a constitution (Habermas 2011). Such “crystallization” is needed, he argues, because as a “political collectivity, Europe cannot take hold in the consciousness of its citizens simply in the shape of a common currency” (ibid.). In Zur Verfassung Europas: Ein Essay, published in English as The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, Habermas makes clear his allegiance to a model of worldly cosmopolitanism articulated by Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, suggesting what Habermas hopes is “a convincing new narrative from the perspective of a constitutionalization of international law which follows Kant in pointing far beyond the status quo to a future cosmopolitan rule of law” (Habermas 2012: 1–2). Habermas notes, in particular, that “the enduring political fragmentation of the world and in Europe is at variance with the system integration of a multicultural world society and is blocking progress towards civilizing relations of violence within societies and between states through constitutional law” (ibid.: 7). For Habermas, taking a cue from his earlier work on the public sphere, the legitimation of the EU and key to its—and the euro's—long-term stability is the recognition and development of a European public sphere devoted to “the persuasive power of good arguments” as the true means for democratic consensus-formation and governmental stability (ibid.: 6). Integral to both of the above texts, and to Habermas’ philosophical debt to Kant, is the idea of education as a mechanism to ensure individual self-determination, to demonstrate, as Kant claimed, that individuals are free from “self-incurred tutelage” to another (Kant 1784). 2
