As one can infer even by reading only this brief summary and review of Nemo’s book, a particular aspect of the Western history and culture, defined roughly by liberalism, individualism and autonomy, appears to the author of the book and to a current of intellectuals as most characteristic of the Western achievements and worthy enough to be supported and protected even at the cost of others. I won’t say more on this, but only that the West would end up one-dimensional, culturally and spiritually poor, by following such a path. It is doubtful if it will remain even politically and economically strong after having surrendered itself completely to a will for pure autonomy and self-creation.
What is more interesting is the author’s proposal for a formation of a Western Union instead of a European Union. Especially to those of us who understand the European Union as based in a common culture, it would be absurd to focus on the continent instead of on whatever nations globally happen to share the same culture. Following cultural criteria, a Western Union would be a political aim more consistent than the European Union.
B. Enache, What is the West?
Philippe Nemo’s book What Is the West? is an elegant and intriguing combination of a scholarly review of the historical and philosophical foundations of what is usually termed “Western civilization” and a political manifesto for this broad cultural area in the “civilizational geography” of the world today.
The basis of Nemo’s reflections, although never explicitly stated as such, is the perception of an unsettling tension between the cosmopolitanism of Western culture and the apparent self-containment of other historical cultural identities. The West not only differs from other cultural spaces, but differs in a way that they do not differ from one another.