Pablo Jiménez will be delivering a presentation on 'Exploring analogical citizenship for Europe' at 10am on Thursday 10 June 2010 at the Arts Meeting Room  at the Centre for Applied Philosophy & Public Ethics.

 

The strong cultural crisis affecting Europeans today seems to reflect, among other effects, the lack of enthusiasm with the European Union (EU) - a new polity of sorts - and the lack of cohesion among its members. One of the efforts to foster a European identity was the creation of European citizenship. But citizenship implies a people and the EU citizens already are national peoples. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship as a way to overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on the body of laws that members of the post-national polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy think that EU citizens should form a mixed-commonwealth, with political belonging based on their nations. I will argue that the second option is more desirable and submit the analogical character of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity while still maintaining a certain unity to form a mixed polity. At the end I consider possible objections and challenges.