Identity and values in the European Union: towards a new form of obscurantism in European societies?
The process of rationalisation that has characterised the modern West for centuries culminated in the Enlightenment. The universalist values it proposed were the reference point for the development of Western civilisation and a series of achievements in civil, political and social rights that still...
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| Wydane w: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/qds, |
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| 1. autor: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Język: | Anglais |
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Quaderni di Sociologia
2025
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| Dostęp online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Streszczenie: | The process of rationalisation that has characterised the modern West for centuries culminated in the Enlightenment. The universalist values it proposed were the reference point for the development of Western civilisation and a series of achievements in civil, political and social rights that still form the basis of modern democracies today.At the same time, the universalist nature of these values has come into conflict with other models of society, leading to the emergence of a widening gap between the West and the rest of the world. Recently, this gap has widened even within the cradle of the Enlightenment: Europe.Indeed, if from a global perspective, «Western values are steadily diverging from the rest of the world’s» («The Economist», 2023), as highlighted by the latest World Values Survey, the Western world and Europe in particular are witnessing a “cultural backlash” (Norris, Inglehart, 2018) that underlies the rise of various forms of populism, sovereignism, and nationalism. In the European context, the gap with Western values has become an internal opposition between the European Union and Europe as a whole. |
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