EU values

Ladies and gentlemen,

I have been asked to give a presentation about EU values and I'd like briefly to introduce a problem concerning the European Union's future and a possible solution. With increasing cultural tensions in the EU, the problem increasingly touches the everyday lives of its citizens. I presume that it is not only permissible but also desirable to be somewhat philosophical.

There was an interesting article in a recent Kanava magazine about Holland, a country thought to be at a kind of crossroads and a microcosm of Europe. Its foreign policy has been watched with interest, because Holland had long had the reputation of being a model country for tolerance. However, the murder of Theo van Gogh last autumn and its consequences revealed a deep crisis in society. The cultural integration of refugees was not as seamless as had been thought; the famous Dutch tolerance was being tested.

The murder led to a surge of events. It forced passionate feelings to the surface, and within a month there were 174 incidents deemed as racist or extreme rightwing. A large number of the Dutch supported anti- Islamic views. Prime Minister Balkenende tried to allay fears and to initiate dialogue. Since then there have been discussions about what had gone wrong in refugee politics; what was erroneous. There are no easy, clear answers but, presumably, the earlier policies had fostered pressures which now erupted. Clearly, Holland has taken a step towards 'when in Rome' politics, and one example of that is a toughening of language regulations: refugees are expected to learn Dutch in a set time.

I am looking at Holland's situation against Europe's historical background. The minimum requirements that define European liberalism have changed greatly and, at the same time, Europe is ever more multicultural. My question is this: could the crisis have something to do with how the concept of tolerance, demanded by liberalism, has been understood?

Our liberal society, then, is the environment for action. Its strongest concept has been the autonomy and freedom of the individual.

Almost everyone can value the freedom in society which Western culture ensures. Since the beginning of liberalism our societies have been purposefully built on the principle of individual freedom. Politicians have been quite unanimous in their belief that freedom is much more efficient than force in bringing about a society where its people are content.

Liberalism has had an honourable history as a countermeasure to totalitarianism. It has also fought successfully against inequality, intolerance and oppression in society. It is interesting that, with the fall of Soviet socialism and its planned economy, political liberalism has defeated its last real ideological opponent. The problem now is that while doing so it seems to have lost its normative direction. As the ideology of individualism and market forces, liberalism has traditionally been defined in terms of what opposes it. As a societal theory it has never really needed to explain what kind of politics it defends and who benefits. The course of history has given it an opportunity to consolidate its position by defining what it is not.

Therefore we know many slogans of liberalism but they are haphazard. We know that liberalism defends equality but it is not clear what is meant by it. It defends freedom, but what sort of freedom? It promotes autonomy, but how is autonomy to be taken into account in democratic decision-making? Sirkku Hellsten, a philosopher who has done meritorious research on liberalism states that liberalism's normative aspect turns out to be too loose to be able to give direction for correcting societal injustice.

When it is not possible to perceive clearly what is meant by these values and what ends they serve if applied, they could invalidate themselves or have unforeseen consequences. For example, Hellsten holds the view that too strong a demand for the state to have neutral values is a phenomenon that impoverishes discussion about values. At the same time we wonder where political and moral authority has gone in our modern welfare society.

The demand for the state to be value-neutral has led to a situation where we no longer can – or it is not politically correct – to speak publicly about common values and living a good life. Neither dare we collectively seek direction for a liberal welfare society. Juha Sihvola, also a philosopher, has similarly stated that it's time liberalism stopped pretending ideological neutrality. We cannot be neutral about views concerning human well being. Professor Pekka Suvanto made the same point in his article 'From Westphalia to Amsterdam'. He was critical of the American model of liberalism, which is understood to be freedom from something, not to something. Suvanto wrote, "If the people do not follow adequate moral regulations, it is impossible for the state to uphold the morals needed for the state's common good. Quick changes in values or their disappearance has, in history, also turned out to be dangerous. A person has the right to think what he wills about religion, but the disappearance of the protestant ethic, characteristic of our culture, would be alarming for both the functioning of the state and the free market economy.”

Similarly, the critics of liberalism have also noticed that the demand for tolerance and respect for an individual's autonomy seems to lead to its own destruction. For example, the demand for tolerance is usually interpreted as being realised through moral indifference. But this leads in the end to increased intolerance in society. In our modern liberal, pluralistic and multi-cultural society, such anti-liberal ideologies as racism, fascism and nationalism have thus been revived. There is no argument with which to stop them, because everything must be permissible in the name of individual freedom.

For this reason philosophers are asking why the very values which originally gave liberal society its flexibility, even its muscle, seem now to turn society against itself.

Sirkku Hellsten researched this question in her book. She claims that in liberal society two totally different models of thought are confused: on the one hand, ethical pluralism and on the other, cultural relativism that could also be called secular relativism.

The issue is how a frequently used word that is part of liberalism's standard equipment, is interpreted. Can we accept all courses of action in the name of allowing individuals to fulfil their own goals? We will bump into this as we see an increase in immigration, the flow of refugees and other international interaction. In a society based on the liberal tradition, the fear of paternalism has increasingly caused more people to imagine that the tolerance demanded by pluralism means an uncritical acceptance of different value systems. Those who do not want to be labelled as intolerant feel under pressure to think that criticising behaviour based on community customs and cultural differences is inappropriate. Hellsten claims that this model of thinking belongs to ethical relativism, not to the demands of liberal pluralism. According to the thinking of ethical relativism there would be no grounds to forbid, for example, human sacrifice, slavery, racism, Nazism etc.

I'll now briefly present how Hellsten distinguishes these concepts.

See transparencies:

Where secularist relativism's starting point is that religious truth doesn't exist, the pluralistic approach merely states that we cannot achieve a common understanding by intellectual means. The consequences of these two approaches are very different: relativism sees that it is best to keep quiet about values, and that value and belief systems should be kept outside political decision-making. Pluralism, though, tries to achieve dialogue about values and sees that we should try to understand different value and belief systems in decision-making, for the simple reason that they are a significant part of people's lives. When relativism doesn't choose any one viewpoint in a value discussion, pluralism is eager to allow the presentation of anybody's standpoint.

How the different approaches differ is shown by how the word tolerance is understood. If for the relativist tolerance means accepting anything in the name of self-actualisation, for the pluralist tolerance means empathy, curiosity and even criticism. That is for the simple reason that dialogue enables not only understanding and interaction, but also criticism. For the pluralist, society's morality is thus a dialogical process.

Hellsten sees that the differences are clear. What follows from relativism, she says, is actually an increase of tension because it avoids difficult areas and bypasses them. Pluralism, though, can lead to the easing of tension because right from the start it takes into account people's set of values and their differences.

The central issue turns out to be the role adopted by the state and how it is interpreted. According to Hellsten, emphasising the complete neutrality of the state has led, for example in the USA and also in other western countries, even to an increase of societal intolerance in the name of tolerance and the state's neutrality. Hellsten writes: "Although all 'secular' ways of life are permissible as such, displaying, for example, uncompromising religious convictions in the media, is held to be inappropriate.” This narrows the area of ethical discussion in society in general and, in a way, eats away at the ideology of liberalism from within. Tolerance can thus become discriminating tolerant fascism.

Hellsten continues: "Although a religion and a religious community can also be totalitarian and bind the individual's will very tightly, tolerance taking place in the name of the state's extreme neutrality can be an equally dangerous trend."

Hellsten's solution to the crisis of liberalism and ethical impoverishment is to pursue deliberate public discussion about values, whereby attitudes also towards people's religious commitments are respected as a principle, instead of keeping silent and avoiding the whole subject area. When, right from the start, the approach is respectful, with a dialogue-seeking convergence, it also enables criticism.

This is also connected with the "overlapping consensus" called for by John Rawls. We no longer have a homogeneous culture as a moral support. So, to reach a consensus about public values and to be able to draw up the basic structure of society, we need dialogue about values.

I offer a practical example to illustrate how pluralism could be worth fostering.

Let's imagine a children's day care centre in a multicultural environment. I understand that we in Finland have had quite a lot of pressure to prune religious and cultural elements from schools and day care centres so as not to hurt the feelings of those of different faiths. Surprisingly often, this has prompted a voluntary self-censorship which no-one has demanded. I am a member of the Euro Parliament's Christian Faith and Islam Working Group, and my view has only been strengthened. There are other ways of solving the issue than just keeping quiet about it.

Instead of giving up, for example, all religious festivities we could think that the children could share with each other the richest elements of their culture and background. Where a culturally relativistic day care centre would bypass seasonal religious festivals, a pluralistic alternative would give the children a chance to celebrate, say, Ramadan, Christmas or Hanukkah one after the other. Knowing the roots of one's own identity provides a good starting point to authentic tolerance and respect for others. Rather than being silent about one's cultural inheritance, recognising it leads to the best cultural dialogue. Abandoning our own, valuable inheritance, be it summer hymns or Christmas plays, does not necessarily further tolerance and mutual understanding.

Puoluehallituksen kokous