Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T17:59:11.743Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Western European Dilemmas: Man, State, and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Pierre Hassner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The European community holds a range of contradictory, changing, and evolving views of the United States and the Soviet Union. Hassner notes that the United States is seen both as an individualistic agent with a guilty conscience that intervenes irresponsibly and hypocritically, and as a model for resistance to oppression. The Soviet Union is also viewed antithetically, both condemned for totalitarianism and praised as more humanistic than the United States. Hassner sees these oppositions as reflecting the profound differences between the superpowers and indicating the challenge the United States and the Soviet Union face in establishing a common ethics.

Type
Special Section: Superpower Ethics
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 1 , March 1987 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Morgenthau, Hans J., Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946) chap. 7Google Scholar.

2 de Toqueville, Alexis, De la democracie en Amérique (Paris: Gallimard, 1951) vol. 1, 355Google Scholar.

3 Both Raymond Aron and Arnold Wolfers have often stressed this point. See, for example, Aron, Raymond, “Macht, power, puissance: Prose democratique ou poésie démonique?” in Etudes politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) 171–95Google Scholar; Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952) chap. 15Google Scholar.

4 See Harries, Owen, “European Sophistication vs. American Naïveté,” Commentary 76:6 (December 6, 1983) 46–51Google Scholar.

5 Arnold Wolfers and Carl Schmitt have both pointed out the role of the insular versus the continental tradition; the former, being less dominated by necessity, leaves more room for ethical choice. See Wolfers, Arnold and Martin, Laurence, The Anglo-American Tradition in World Affairs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Schmitt, Carl, Der Nomos der Erde (Cologne: Greven, 1950)Google Scholar.

6 Paz, Octavio, Tempo Nulisado, French, ed. (Une Planète et quatre ou cinq mondes) (Paris: Plon, 1985) 63Google Scholar.

7 This is the message of the so-called new philosophers, André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy. See, for example, Glucksmann, André, La cuisinière et le mangeur ďhommes (Paris: Seuil, 1975)Google Scholar; Levy, Bernard-Henri, La barbarie à visage (Paris: Grasset, 1977)Google Scholar.

8 See the poll in Newsweek (April 28, 1980). Another poll in Le Point (April 21–27, 1980) shows approval and disapproval evenly balanced. However, French public opinion, while not hostile to the American raid, approved of the decision of the French government to deny aerial passage on grounds of sovereigntyGoogle Scholar.

9 See Dreier, Richard, “Theorien der Gerechtigkeit. Das Naturrecht erlebt eine neue Renaissance,” Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (September 3, 1986)Google Scholar.

10 See Glucksmann, André, “Devant le bien et le mal,” in Fidelius, Pyotr, ed., L'Esprit post-totalitaire (Paris: Grasset, 1986),Google Scholar preface; Strauss, Xavier, L'Esprit de résistance (Paris: Fayard, 1986)Google Scholar.

11 Dyson, Freeman, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1984)Google Scholar.

12 See the excellent article by Garton-Ash, Timothy, “Superpowers as Gog and Magog,” The Spectator (July 19, 1986) 16–17Google Scholar.

13 See Aron, Raymond, Peace and War, abr. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1973) 259Google Scholar.

14 Poll taken by Sofres for Le Figaro Magazine (July 9, 1983)Google Scholar.

15 Poll taken by IFOP (Institut Francais ďOpinion Publique) in 1952; taken from “Evolution in Attitudes Towards the USA since the Second World War in Four European Countries: France, Britain, Germany, Italy,” unpublished paper, 1973Google Scholar.

16 See Rupnik, Jacques and Humbertjean, Muriel, “Image(s) des Etats-Unis dans ľopinion publique,” in L'Amérique dans les têtes, Lacorne, Denis, Rupnik, Jacques and Toinet, Marie-France, eds. (Paris: Hachette, 1986) 101–24Google Scholar.

17 Rupnik, Jacques and Humbertjean, Muriel, “Image(s) des Etats-Unis.,” op. cit., 111Google Scholar.

18 Le Monde (November 6, 1984, and November 19, 1985)Google Scholar.

19 According to a poll published in Paris-MatchGoogle Scholar.

20 See “L'image de l'Union soviétique vue par les Français,” Chronique Alain Duhamel (Sofres, June 1986) 3Google Scholar.

21 See Hassner, Pierre, “Western European Perceptions of the Soviet Union,” Daedalus 108:1 (Winter 1979) 113–51Google Scholar See also Lacorne, Denis et al., eds., L'Amérique dans nos têtes, op. cit.Google Scholar

22 See Hassner, Pierre, “Nationalisme et relations internationales,” Revue Française de Science Politique 15:3 (Fall 1986) 499–529CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Thucydides, , The Peloponnesian War, Modern Library ed. (New York: Random House, 1982) book II, chap. 7, p. 118Google Scholar.