| dc.description.abstract | Ever since national cultures emerged in Europe, culture has been a major factor in the
continent’s diversification and development of cross-cultural antagonisms. To use culture
as a tool for integration would then necessarily mean either to draw on the universal, prenational
patterns or to create new, post-national ones. The former would be anachronistic in
the modern age, the latter is just a tentative, unprovable projection, assuming the decline of
national cultures. Material culture could potentially contribute to the cultural integration of the
continent but it lacks the specifically European character, being common to the whole world
rather than just Europe. It is possible, however, to counteract the disintegrating influence of
particularistic national cultures by allowing them to develop freely and non-competitively.
This could happen only if appropriate policies creating the framework for such growth are
introduced. Therefore, political integration in the form of pan-European democracy, which
waives the necessity to resort to anachronistic or to create artificial cultural patterns, is
a prerequisite for the cultural integration of Europe. | en |
