The Clash of Cosmopolitanisms: The European Union from Cosmopolitization to Neo-Liberalization

It is clear that the European Union (EU) is currently in the worst crisis situation it has ever been in. The forms of social solidarity, inter-national cooperation, and trans-national structures and processes that many commentators have seen as the basis of 'cosmopolitan' Europe' are under severe strain. Dec-ades of apparent cosmopolitization - of political bodies, economic networks, social connections and the patterns of everyday life - seem to be rapidly going into reverse, being pulled apart or self-destructing. If the last several decades could be understood as involving the increasing appearance and strength (albeit unevenly and in contested ways) of cosmopolitan features both within the EU as an entity and 'inside' its external borders, then today the tearing fabric of 'European' life seems to point in the opposite direction. This paper poses the question: how 'cosmopolitan' really was the EU before the current set of crises, and how have the latter undermined what cosmopolitan features there were? The argument proposed is that the EU was from the very beginning ambivalently cosmopolitan, for it was structured around a liberal-economic, market-based cosmopolitanism, as well as a rights-based conception of citizenship and democ-racy, a kind of legal-political cosmopolitanism. Both forms of cosmopolitanism existed up until recently in a highly ambivalent relationship with each other. But as over time, and especially from the late 1970s, liber-al-economic cosmopolitanism mutated into neo-liberal cosmopolitanism, then the tensions between the two cosmopolitanisms now stand out very starkly, and have reached breaking point. The nature and con-sequences of this situation are diagnosed.

显而易见，欧盟（European Union，EU）当前正处于其有史以来最严峻的危机之中。诸多评论人士曾将社会团结、国际合作以及跨国结构与进程视为‘世界主义（cosmopolitan）欧洲’的根基，而如今这些要素均承受着巨大压力。数十年来，欧盟在政治机构、经济网络、社会联结乃至日常生活模式层面所呈现的明显世界主义化趋势，似乎正快速逆转，陷入解体或自我毁灭的境地。若将过去数十年视为欧盟作为一个实体及其内部边界范围内世界主义特征不断显现与强化（尽管发展不均衡且饱受争议）的阶段，那么当下‘欧洲式’生活的分崩离析似乎正朝着相反的方向发展。本文提出了这样一个问题：在当前这一系列危机爆发之前，欧盟究竟在多大程度上称得上‘世界主义’？而这些危机又是如何破坏了欧盟既有的世界主义特征的？本文提出的核心论点为：欧盟从诞生之初便兼具矛盾的世界主义双重属性——其既围绕着基于自由经济的市场型世界主义构建，也依托着以权利为核心的公民身份与民主理念，即一种法律政治层面的世界主义。这两种世界主义形态在相当长的时期内始终处于高度对立的关系之中。而随着时间推移，尤其是自20世纪70年代末以来，自由经济型世界主义演变为新自由主义世界主义，二者之间的张力自此变得格外尖锐，并已达到临界点。本文还对这一局势的本质与后果进行了剖析。