The Fiction of a European Secular Modernity: Rationalists, Romantics, and Multiple Modernists

Abstract

Debates concerning the EU democratic deficit presuppose differing approaches to modernity and thereby, in turn, lead to conflicting interpretations of the principle of subsidiarity. Rationalists presume a conception of modernity whereby Europe sets the trend toward a rational secular regionalism for institutionalized progress via a neo-liberal principle of subsidiarity. Romantics are wedded to a view of modernity wherein the EU and/or its nation-states are the unique manifestation of a particular set of cultural narratives steeped in a deep commitment to economic social welfare that subsidiarity must preserve. Multiple modernists argue that there can be something like a common project of modernity without isolating its realization to the express confines of Europe or to rationalist/romantic straitjackets. In reconstructing the Scandinavian heritage of Nordic nation-states undergoing progressive de-confessionalization, I recast subsidiarity as a multiperspectival principle oriented to the common good of deepening networks of trust at mutually reinforcing political, cultural, and economic levels. In order best to treat the EU as the unique polity it has to come to be, including the cultural tensions that comprise its increasingly postsecular trends, I propose a future for the EU based on maximizing degrees of assurance in its democratic legitimacy. The major democratic successes to emulate include the Nordic sacralization of rights discourses and preservation of the unique European-wide commitment to social justice. The relative democratic successes of the Nordic region allow modernity to take multiple forms without strictly relying upon a common European identity, a shared neo-liberal common market, or an impending constitutional closure.