10.13125/CH/3440
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2533-1825
3440
1
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-24296
Vinicio Busacchi
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Critical Hermeneutics
Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
2
Articles
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
105-127
1
Vinicio Busacchi
2018/08/10
10.13125/CH/3440
105
Università degli studi di Cagliari
2533-1825
1
en
127
urn:nbn:it:unica-24296
Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/3440/3006
2
Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)                             submitted: 24/7/2018
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy                accepted: 24/7/2018
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index                    published 10/8/2018
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/3440


      Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise
                                    Themselves


                                   Vinicio Busacchi

                                                      … E non sapeva più
                                                     vivere
                                                     nella tenda dei suoi
                                                     dove si ascolta la cantilena
                                                     del Corano
                                                     gustando un caffè

                                                     E non sapeva
                                                     sciogliere
                                                     il canto
                                                     del suo abbandono
                                                          G. Ungaretti, In memoria

                                                     [… And he had forgotten how/ to live/
                                                     in his people’s tent/ where one listens
                                                     to the chant/ of the Koran/ sipping a
                                                     coffee// And he had forgotten/ how to
                                                     release/ the song of his abandon].



Abstract
What we are experiencing today in different ways on social, national
and international levels because of the flow of migrants and the
populistic backlash is not separated from the sense and the task of
our personal existence, from the way we can and must realise
ourselves. Following Paul Ricoeur’s three different discursive axes
within which the dialectic tensional intersection of crisis and conflict
reach a significant speculative level, a careful analysis deepens the
intertwining      of   historical,     cultural    and    anthropological           factors,
demonstrating          that    those      who     disregard      foreigners         despise
themselves.
Keywords: foreigner, personal emancipation, dialectics, recognition
Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




1. Introduction
With the Arab Spring, the generalised destabilisation in the Middle
East and the devastating war in Syria, the flow of migrants has
assumed colossal dimensions, transforming the blue Mediterranean
Sea into a place of biblical, extreme and devastating facts, of
miraculous and cursed events. Philosophical reflective and critical
reasoning does not have speculative discourse as its sole territorium,
above all when it intends to claim and cultivate sensitivity and values
that are declared humanistic with regard to dramatic issues such as
the issue of migrants and refugees. No humanistic bulwark is built up
with words alone, especially if we are dealing with the question as
middle-class Europeans who tend more and more to stay indifferent
to the numerous defensive manifestations of an increasingly populist
and xenophobic Europe1. The fact is not new; European history has
been a history of darkness and division since ancient times, and
extremism is always ready to rise again everywhere, even beyond
the specific discourse concerning Europe. In this, the action of evil
seems increasingly more acute and industrious compared with the
good, which tends to doze off and not notice things until it ‘has the
blade pointed in his throat’, so to speak.
      However,      numerous       positive     resources      exist      and   more
constructive forces can be brought into the field than negative and
destructive ones. What we are experiencing today in different ways
on a social, national and international levels is not separated from
the sense and the task of our personal existence, from the way we


1
  On the theme of migrants, one of the most dramatic memories of my youth goes
back to 27 March 1997. That day, referring to the Albanese migrants coming in Ita-
ly, Irene Pivetti at that time member of the Lega Nord, parliamentarian of the Re-
public and former President of the Chamber of Deputies (from 1994 to 1996) de-
clared in a scandalous public communication: ‘Rebut them at sea!’. The following
day (what an obscure coincidence of words and facts!), the military ship Sibilla
rammed in the Adriatic Sea the Albanian ship Kater I Rades causing the death of
108 migrants.


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can realise ourselves. The determination and willingness to face
challenges and progress generates much more vitality and creativity.
In   this,    I     embrace        a    fairly      Hegelian      conception       of    human
emancipation, that is, a conception of emancipation closely linked to
the struggle for freedom and justice.
     In      this   paper,     I       will   try    to     show     how      anthropological
philosophical        models,       such       as     that    of     contemporary         French
philosopher Paul Ricoeur, point out how one’s challenge towards
oneself is the first and most important field of emancipation. The
struggle      against   the        numerous          forms     of     ‘tyranny’,     servitude,
negative power and destructiveness has a close connection with this
personal inner-self challenge.
     Democracy can be tyrannical and crushing. Democracy goes into
crisis when it stops progressing, when it lacks control and corrective
tension. This point has been significantly underlined by Jürgen
Habermas. In a 2008 editorial (published in Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung) he compares the potential and perhaps actual decline of
capitalist democracies and markets to the decline and collapse of
tyrannies and totalitarianism2.


2. Around Crises and Conflicts
The matrix of the possible degeneration and collapse of democracy
has been identified since the time of Plato. Plato describes with
precision the structural mechanisms of the decay of democracy and
of its sliding into anarchy. This degradation directly affects the
decline of social customs and moral life. For Ricoeur, democracy is
an ideal in the making. More than reality there is a social and moral

2
  Closing an introductory presentation at the conference with the (former) minister
of foreign affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Berlin, 23 November 2007), he explains
that democracy and the market economy are not immune to self-destruction
exactly as totalitarian systems. And if on the one side it is true that, unlike these,
they have built-in brakes, then on the other side, the brakes also require
continuous overhaul and maintenance (see Habermas, 2009).


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




condition requiring a perpetual battle that those who are living at the
present time have the task of carrying on. When a crisis appears in
democracy, it means that something is interfering or even stopping
this search for perpetual progress. In fact, democracy is an idea in
the making and in combat, and the crisis is a moment in history
whose     momentum         must     be    regained      (Ricoeur,     1947:       300).
Democracy is not an ideology, first and foremost it is ‘une pratique,
c’est-à-dire une action, un combat, un ‘drame’ au sens propre du
mot’ (302). Individualistic, totalitarian, anarchic or reactionist crisis
determines the destruction of the responsible and active citizen who
is the foundation of democracy.
      Today, individualism constitutes the predominant mentality; it is
an    individualism      that    can     generate      ruthless     and        inhuman
indifference. Following the French philosopher, I say that the current
decay of democracy which parallels the spread of populism,
antiestablishmentarianism, xenophobia and the                     like    is    directly
connected to a distorted dialectic conflict/crisis within oneself toward
oneself, as well as between individuals and the social world. Ricoeur
identifies three different discursive axes within which the dialectic
tensional intersection of crisis and conflict reaches a significant
speculative level. They are overlapping and intertwined axes, which
are useful to reconsider in a re-actualising perspective.
      Somehow, we are already pursuing the first axis, as it is placed
between critical conscience, the ‘logic’ of civic conduct and the life of
public institutions. The second axis is thematically placed between
philosophy of history and critique of modernity, and it is essentially
deepened by Ricoeur from the philosophical moral perspective, as
revealed in the 1988 paper ‘La crise: un phénomène spécifiquement
moderne?’. In this work, a generalised use of the notion of crisis
emerges. Ricoeur uses it to make reference to Marcel Mauss, which
provides him with a way to recognise within the phenomenon of the


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crisis the configuration of ideas and values through which a society
understands itself (see Id., 1988: 10). However, every ‘regional’ use
has, to a certain extent, generalisable aspects (which can be
coordinated within the framework of the ‘total social fact’ [Mauss]).
(1) The notion of crisis as a medical determination can be applied in
a generalising manner to social reality, interpreting it as a kind of
‘body’ (social body). (2) The pedagogical sense of crisis has shown
itself to be fertile in generalisation already through the example of
Kant’s criticism. (3) The political sense(s) of crisis connects on the
one hand the crisis of the question of legitimisation, i.e. crisis of
legitimacy, and on the other hand crosses the problematic of ethical
nature (‘insofar as the legitimisation of power refers to the
axiological configuration by which society defines itself’ [11; trans.
V.B.]). Such a critical and practical register of discourse seems to me
not only to characterise this analysis of the historical social decline
into crisis and conflict but to offer a comprehensive view for
developing useful consequences reflecting around our current times.
A third axis is disposed between the pole of an anthropological
philosophical research concerning human identity and the way in
which we develop personal identity and the pole of a theory of
(human, social and political) recognition. No civic conduct or
institutions exist that are not linked to the emancipation of
individuals and peoples, and without emancipation of individuals and
peoples there cannot be civic and institutional progress.
    Let us follow the question of democracy (first axis) for a further
step. The crisis is part of the contemporary history of democracy as
such, because democracy is a living historical fact and an idea in
perpetual action and movement. This formula combines two different
understandings of the notion of crisis and democracy: in fact, if on
the one side it is by embracing the perspective of historical
knowledge and political science that we may make a clear reference


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




to democracy as something of historical and living in progress, on
the other side it is by embracing a specific practical philosophical
perspective that we may say that it has to do with something in
perpetual, civic and moral action. This point of view parallels
Ricoeur’s view that goes even beyond claiming for ‘religious’
explanations. The 1972 paper ‘Le conflit: signe de contradiction ou
d’unité?’ problematises the reflective and experiential aporia of
putting together the interpretation of conflict as a pivotal element of
historical progress and the practical religious prescription of ‘love
each other’. Ricoeur develops two interesting criticisms around this
question. The first attacks the illusory idea that conflict will be
diminished by the extension of the prescience; quite the opposite, in
fact, it is destined to increase as the consequence of the exercise of
control and other ‘staffs’, such as planning and rationalisation, that
are connected to the ideology of prescience. In addition, the nature
of political decision in itself is to be a non-reducible source of
conflict. In fact, ‘the character of decision, which is attached to the
political as such, with its procession of constraint, force and violence,
seems (…) an unsurpassable trait of political action as such’ (Id.,
1972: 191; trans. V.B.). Hence, the inevitability of conflict and its
fertility emerge as structural consequences together with their
counterpart (which follows an identical ‘logic’) that is the reactionary
effect, which proposes a pacified and freed new government for the
people via (again) conflict (that is, via an anti-establishment
populistic approach, for example by mobilisation of resentment).
‘Hegel had already meditated on this abrupt reversal of the
theoretical negation of the conflict to the destructive fury of the
Terror’ (Ib.); and similar consequences emerge analysing the Marxist
theme of the class struggle. At the end, ‘there is an irreducibility of
the socio-political conflict to the situation of dialogue borrowed from
our interpersonal experience’ (192).


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    Reflecting around the theology of love, Ricoeur underlines how
no room exists for ideological use of it in politics. In fact, it must be
relocated within the original context of a global theological preaching
from which it draws a variation more in the sense of the justice of
living than of the politics of living, and with which it reveals its
nature as a specific conflict generator. Obviously, the theology of
love participates in social and political dialectics, but it must be
rediscovered and replaced in a wider and more comprehensive
manner together with the communitarian and cosmic dimension of
living. Conversely, a common ideological translation of the theology
of love is given in its unilateral reduction to a singular model, that of
dialogue, behind which the attitude and strategy of the camouflage is
often at work. If this first criticism attacks the ideology of (false)
dialogue (that is dialogue without effective dialectics, but is formal
and superficial, as it is still widespread today), then the second
criticism aims to unmask the widespread of an ideological approach
to conflict determined by a ‘diffuse Hegelianisation of all our
thoughts and all our behaviours’ (193), that parallels the elevation of
all conflicts to a cultural phenomenon. At the end, ‘son souci
lancinant est de vouloir le conflit pour le conflit, afin de provoquer
par la polarisation une sorte de catharsis sociale’ (Ib.). As the
political discourse, public communication aims to investigate the
logic of events from this perspective. It is a simplified way that
mirrors    a   generalised     limit   in   terms   of   understanding        and
emancipation. And because of that, the migrant becomes a priori a
source    of   difficulty,   an    inevitably   negative   and     problematic
counterpart. The foreigner ‘opposes us’, he/she is ‘against our order’,
‘our culture’ and ‘our values’ etc. Why does a limitation exist in
terms     of   personal      and   social   emancipation      behind      similar
statements? Because, as our discourse becomes more and more
enlightening, the horizontal, interrelational plane of personal or


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




social relation with the foreigner(s) perpetually crosses the vertical
plane of oneself with himself/herself, that is of oneself with the one’s
inner foreigner, with the alterity within us (hic sunt leones). The
phenomenon of challenges, conflicts and changes touches the knot of
individual responsibility, according to an idea of progress or
emancipation, which somehow pushes back to Hegel. At the end,
‘only the one who keeps in the deepest part of his conviction the
demand for a synthesis of freedom and meaning, of arbitrariness and
of institution can live sensibly the central conflict of modern society’
(201).
      On the one side, we have the fact of a perpetual sequence of
conflict and crisis that parallels the many challenges of lives at a
personal and social level and that has potential for progress and
emancipation.       On    the    other       side,    an   improper,          ideologised
understanding exists of this dialectic between conflict and crisis that
must be thematised and recognised. In some ways, it has even more
distorting effects in Europe, because movements, encounters and
clashes    of   peoples     across     its    lands    have   been        a    European
phenomenon since the beginning of its history. Actually, it is Europe’s
ethos (see Id., 1992). Somehow, crisis is always potentially a
‘carrier’ of something positive and productive, and not necessarily via
violent conflicts and rivers of blood. Europe is a land of disastrous
things, as well as a land of invention, beauties and values. It is a
generous land, even, with about 40 million foreigners who are
residents.
      Following Ricoeur’s line of reasoning as developed in the papers
we are referring to, I underline how crisis is modernity itself.
      Philosophical analysis is helping us to understand that to say
‘crisis’ is not the same as saying ‘ruin’ or ‘destruction’. It is not the
catastrophe and it is not the end, exactly as a crisis of migration
does not constitute a problem or something negative a priori. History


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clearly shows that the European ethos has been characterised since
its rise for the movement of peoples through its lands 3. Thus, in
Europe (or elsewhere), there are neither pure races, nor pure ethnic
groups, nor pure nationalities, if by ‘pure’ we mean something ‘not
contaminated’ by the foreign presence, by the passage of the
foreigner. Each one of us has foreign ancestors in his/her lineage and
(then), historically genealogically speaking, is a foreigner in his/her
proper homeland. The essence of Europe is not just cultural
arrogance and colonialism. Europe is also flowering with new
knowledge, new possibilities and new hopes. Today, Europe has the
double face of Janus: on the one side, it has the look of wisdom, and
on the other side, it has the look of deconstruction.
     Europe is a cultural paradise populated by devils, festive lambs
and silent, well-mannered persons. And a new unstoppable stream of
migrants is entering it to shake things up.


3. The Crisis is the Possibility
As mentioned, Ricoeur identifies different uses of the notion of crisis.
Among these, the gives us medical clinical use, in which ‘crisis’


3
  This is a universal and international fact, beyond the specific case of Europe. In
2015, the broadcast datum for international migrants was up from 247 million of
people, with 65.3 million forced migrants. As the International Migration Report
2017 writes, ‘The number of international migrants worldwide has continued to
grow rapidly in recent years, reaching 258 million in 2017, up from 220 million in
2010 and 173 million in 2000’ (International Migration Report, 2017: 5). In
addition, it underlines the following: ‘The global level of forced displacement across
international borders continues to rise. By the end of 2016, the total number of
refugees and asylum seekers in the world was estimated at 25.9 million,
representing 10.1 percent of all international migrants. The developing regions
hosted 82.5 percent of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. In 2016, Turkey
recorded the largest refugee population, hosting some approximately 3.1 million
refugees and asylum seekers. The country experienced the most significant
increase in the refugee population since 2000 when it hosted just over 3,000
refugees. In 2016, the second largest country of asylum was Jordan, hosting
around 2.9 million refugees, followed by the State of Palestine (2.2 million),
Lebanon (1.6 million) and Pakistan (1.4 million). Germany (1.3 million) and Uganda
(1.2 million) also hosted more than one million refugees and asylum seekers in
2016’ (7–8).


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




indicates a critical moment in the course of a certain disease, and
the   psycho-physiological        and     pedagogical      use    related   to   the
evolutionary age, where the crisis is the growth that marks the
transition from one age of life to another, emerging as particularly
significant and fertile. By following the meaning mirrored through the
second use, we may say in general that to live a moment of crisis is
to leave a moment of change, and the acceptance of such a
challenge is not accepting the crisis as such or suffering from it.
Accepting the challenge of the crisis means, in fact, to live the
change that creates a way of challenging the possibilities of change
and contributing to its realisation. Thus, under this perspective,
‘challenging the possibilities’ becomes per se to change. ‘To change’
is ‘to live’. In fact, the struggle against the present resistances, the
commitment to overcome the limits of present circumstances and
the effects of past actions give no other possibility than the opening
of the doors of the future. Challenging moments of crisis generate
and regenerate new strength and hope. As a Europeanist in a similar
mould to Habermas, Ricoeur is aware of the many difficulties that
Europe faces because of its strong nationalistic identities and
specificities nourishing hope for the Europe of tomorrow. Habermas
is a rationalist thinker and a philosopher of communication and
institutions. I take the liberty of expressing my opinion by arguing
that although I understand his conception and embrace a large
number of his considerations and proposals, I do not share his basic
approach, which seems to me to be both positively pragmatic and
excessively formalising. The challenges of today and tomorrow’s
Europe are not only challenges for rationality. They would not be
won by the rationalised order of bureaucratic systems nor via the
rationalisation of the relationships.




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4. Communicative Distortions About Migrants: A Factual
Survey Around the Italian Case
Today, pessimism seems to be hailed as expressive of a ‘more
realistic’   attitude    compared    with   optimism.    The    disenchanted
pessimist seems more realistic, where looking for the positive seems
to be of no use. The negative act attracts and substantiates more
breaking news. Even the media operate systematically in accordance
with these sorts of criteria of obscure emotionality.
     I do agree with what Habermas underlines in this regard,
starting from the consideration of the role of the great media in the
formation of public opinion and democratic will. An effective and
professional public communication deploys an essential force of
stimulus and orientation for the formation of public opinion and the
will of the citizens, which at the same time forces the political system
to transparency and correct alignment. Without the impulses of a
press    capable    of   making     an   opinion   and   providing      reliable
information and accurate analyses, the public sphere can no longer
produce these energies (see Habermas, 2008).
     Today, the issue of migrants is an emblematic case in this
regard. On the one side, we have been listening for years to many
authentic news items reporting on true cases of suffering and
desperation, of tragedies, from Lampedusa and the like. On the
other side, such news also features torrents of rhetoric filled with
populism.
     The Italian case is emblematic in many ways because of the
populistic momentum we are living now, because the different
sensitivity people experience is within the public debate at a general
communicative level (new media included) as well as political and
politico-religious levels. However, the Vatican and the many different
humanitarian and social organisations directly or indirectly related to
the Catholic Church played and are still playing a positive role.


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




      National research by the Faculty of Communication Science,
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (2009) concerns immigration,
refugees and the Italian media (Ricerca nazionale su immigrazione e
asilo nei media italiani). Among other things, we learn that
‘foreigners appear more frequently than Italians when they are
responsible for, or victims of brutal events such as sexual violence
(more than triple: 24.1% against 7.2%), personal injuries (more
than double: 24.1% against 10.9%), assault (17.0% vs. 4.4%) or
finally   theft       (11.3%       vs.   8.7%)’.   The   portrait    of    foreigners
immortalised by the media can then be subsumed as follows: It is
often of a criminal, it is of a male (nearly 80%) and his personality is
covered from the detail of his nationality or ethnic origin (which is
often present in the titles of the news)’ (Morcellini, 2009: 2–3; trans.
V.B.). Out of a sample of 5,684 news reports examined during the
survey, only 26 spoke of immigration without linking it to security
(see Id.: 3). Former UNHCR regional representative for Southern
Europe (1998-2012) and former president of the Chamber of
Deputies (2013-2018) Laura Boldrini underlined that ‘the study
shows,     in     a   scientific     way,   how    Italian   medias       have   been
reproducing, for years, the same stereotype on immigration, without
reflecting that it is a phenomenon in constant and rapid evolution.
Italian medias have not updated their way of talking about it, neither
the terms of language, which is poor, reductive and diminishing,
least of all in the contents. One speaks of immigration almost always
in relation to the facts of crime, judicial facts and landings’ (quoted
in Sciortino, 2011: 21; trans. V.B.). This research was undertaken
about ten years ago, but I suspect that things are worsening. This
rejection of foreigners must be a visceral response of the Italians,
amplified by the media, because it is impossible to imagine that
Italians have forgotten that just few decades ago they were a people
of migrants (across the United States of America, Belgium, Germany,


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Argentina and other countries). The waves of migration have always
aroused fears and overreactive behaviours. All countries tend to
‘defend’ their lands and close the gates. However, experience shows
that, if well managed, the arrival of migrants is not a danger. On the
contrary, it enriches social, economic and cultural exchanges (see
Id.: 15–16). Together with its ‘security package’ (Law 94 of 15 July
2009), Italy has a strong need of an ‘integration package’, which
should come first (see Id.: 25). Behind this reasoning are multiple
arguments of historical, cultural, humanistic and civic order. In
addition,   we   may   consider   even   pragmatic   aspects,      as   the
Fondazione Leone Moressa’s annual reports concerning the economy
of immigration. The reports show highly significant data. In the 2014
report, we read, for example, that ‘despite the [2008’s] economic
crisis, foreigners continue to be an important component of our
economic system. (...) During the five-year period 2008 2012, the
importance of foreign presence increased both among workers and
taxpayers. In 2008, foreigners made up the 7.5% of the total
number of employed persons, while those born abroad represented
7.8 % of the total number of registrants. In 2012, the incidence of
the immigrant presence rose to 10.2% among workers and to 8.5%
among taxpayers’ (Fondazione Leone Moressa, 2014: 74; trans.
V.B.). In addition, ‘Overall, the revenue from taxpayers born abroad
is € 6.74 billion, that is 4.4% of the total revenue, a value higher
than that recorded in 2011 (€ 6.56 billion)’. In the 2017 report, the
Fondazione indicates that in 2015, the revenue is € 11.5 billion or
5,2% of the total revenue (see Id., 2017: 6). ‘Despite the 2008
crisis, between 2009 and 2012 the percentage of immigrants on the
total taxpayers who pay a positive net tax has grown steadily, albeit
slowly, from 6.8% in 2009 to 7.2% in 2012’ (Id., 2014: 86). Finally,
‘In Italy, the 497,000 companies led by foreigners contribute, with
85 billion euros, to the creation of 6,1% of the national added value’


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




(141). The 2017 report shows that the national gross added value
increased up to 8.9%, recording that in 2016, more than 571,000
companies were led by foreigners (with 94.2% of exclusive foreigner
conduction) (see Id., 2017: 7).
      I rehearse here some data on economic income so that the most
markedly pragmatic minds can start pondering. The counter-
argument that foreigners can earn and contribute because they ‘steal
work’ from the Italians is an unfounded argument. A 2008 Banca
d’Italia (Italy’s Central Bank) report highlights that a considerable
part of the work done by foreigners is not work that many would like
to do at equal wages and environmental conditions. In addition, the
work of many foreigners allows many Italians, especially women, to
work outside their home (see Sciortino, 2011: 25–26). In addition,
as Italians, we have become less flexible in relation to issues such as
working hours, mobility and displacement.
      I believe that the real knot of the current challenge ‘launched’
by the migratory movement is a challenge both to our democracy
and to our civic, moral and personal emancipation. We have the right
to correct and complete information, as much as we have the duty to
conduct prompt action and an open, argumentative communication.
It is not fair that through an ideologised concept of ‘freedom of
speech’, we can make legitimate and acceptable any communicative
distortion. Everyone has personal challenges to carry forward of
him/her toward himself/herself, first, because everyone has the
‘foreigner’, the alterity inside.


5. The Foreigner inside
It is time to come back to the discursive axes of intertwining of crisis
and conflict through which Ricoeur identifies a significant series of
speculative aspects that we are applying to the current phenomenon
of migration and the acceptance/refusal of foreigners across Europe.


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Together with the previously considered historical and cultural
arguments, we must move now towards the main discourse, which is
placed between theory of recognition and anthropological philosophy.
As a restarting point, we may consider Ricoeur’s 1998 paper ‘La crise
de la conscience historique et l’Europe’, which focuses on the theme
of human consciousness, starting from a perspective that directly
connects it between historical knowledge and future, and between
experience and project. Ricoeur uses Koselleck’s two poles of ‘space
of experience’ and ‘horizon of expectation’ as the elements of a
perpetual dialectics that determines historical consciousness. This is
human    consciousness,    something    connected       to    the    historical
dimension of the human being and to its creative openness towards
the new. The specific characterisation of the European historical
consciousness can emerge from the typical way in which Europeans
experience their present and live their horizon of expectation. As
Ricoeur explicitly asserts in this paper, ‘The crisis is not a contingent
accident, much less a modern disease. It is constitutive of the
European consciousness’ (Ricoeur, 1998: 30; trans. V.B.). This is
determined from the significant and strong fragility generated by its
jagged cultural and identitarian composition which makes up this
consciousness, and fragility and pathology share a certain degree of
proximity   and   interconnection.     The     crisis   of   the    European
consciousness is shown to be pathological in two aspects at least,
according to Ricoeur: first from the aspect of memory, for the
paradox of the abuses of memory and forgetting (see also Id., 2004:
443ff) and second from the aspect of the future or horizon of
expectation, for the fact that Europe is experimenting with a poverty
of substance. Such a double pathology is not without impact and
consequences on our present time, because the present is the place
of   dynamic   and   dialectic   conjugation    between      the    space     of
experience and the horizon of action, i.e. between reflection and


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




creation. There is empty initiative when future perspective has no
substance, and no fertile ideas are present if consciousness is lacking
in historical sensitiveness, knowledge and awareness. ‘This is the
reason why we see here and there a privatisation of desires and
projects, a cult of short-sighted consumerism. At the origin of this
movement of retreat one discerns without difficulty a disengagement
with respect to any civic responsibility. (...) Individualism, which is
often regretted without analysing it, is probably only the effect of the
withdrawal movement out of wanting to live together and out of the
civic contract that ratifies the latter. Here again, the pathology of the
social bond only makes visible the extreme fragility of such a bond’
(Id., 1998: 31).
      Somehow, Ricoeur’s solution comes from the same pathological
factors or aspects. First, the fragility of cultural variations and
fragmentations suggests a productive reference to migration as a
reunifying and creative movement of people across lands. Secondly,
the present effect of rampant individualism suggests renewing the
reference     to   communities       of   life   (just   making     the   effort   to
reexperience something similar to). And thirdly, the emptiness in
projects and perspectives invites a deep critical reflection around the
human condition and its meaning, overcoming the pathologies of
memory via a collective narration and the exchange of testimonies.
The solution of historical narration among migrants in the European
space collects these elements in a first productive and significant
solution.
      Ricoeur also indicates a practical cure more specifically aimed at
the sense of the future, which is the cure of innovation via renewing
the dialectic of innovation and tradition, that is, to ‘release the
broken promises of the past’ (34). This cure must go in parallel with
the ‘integration into the same horizon of waiting of heterogeneous
modalities of anticipation’ (Ib.), which means to accept and


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recognise the other, the foreigner and the bearer of alternative
values or vision and the foreigner. This is the most difficult
challenge. It is not an impossible task, but a utopia at least.
However,


          ‘l’important est que nos utopies soient des utopies
     responsables, qui tiennent compte du faisable autant que du
     souhaitable,   qui   composent     non   seulement       avec     les
     résistances regrettables du réel, mais avec les voies
     praticables tenues ouvertes par l'expérience historique’
     (35).


As Weber explains, the morality of conviction must go hand in hand
with the morality of responsibility. I stress the validity of this point of
view by following a line of speculative reasoning and construction
that puts in constrictive connection the question of migrants and
foreigners with the process of personal emancipation. This discursive
line finds corroboration in Ricoeur’s anthropological philosophy as
developed in his book Oneself as Another (1990) via a hermeneutical
phenomenology of the self through which he not only incorporates
his previous research on the unconscious and Cogito’s internal
alterities but also profiles imputability as one of the constitutive
components of the capable human being. This represents a clear
reference to the social sphere and a clear recognition of how the
social and moral dimensions are within inner human life.
     Multicultural humanism must nurture the life of our diversified
communities, especially as the presence of foreigners tends to
nourish the curiosity and beauty of the encounter, experience and
exchange. Why? Because the struggle for personal emancipation is
one with the struggle for the emancipation of public communication,
community life, democracy and society. To overcome prejudice


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




against foreigners is to overcome prejudice against one’s ‘inner
stranger’, the ‘extraneousness to oneself’. To consider a foreigner a
‘stranger’ with the same mixed sense of interrogation and rejection
that predominantly parallels almost all uses of the word ‘stranger’,
mirrors    a    generalised      and    short-sighted      refusal        to   embrace
strangeness, difference and alternativeness, to recognise its value,
reality and dignity. Ricoeur grasps this point magnificently in his
2004 book, The Course of Recognition: ‘We do not mistake ourselves
without also being mistaken about others and our relations with
them’ (Id., 2005: 257). He is able to grasp and project this concept
in a profound way thanks to a psychoanalytic lesson, which he
studied and mediated extensively. The conquest and recognition of
the inner human alterity is the first step in personal emancipation.
This otherness is the regressive, instinctual or repressed alterity. The
otherness is what we really are. The otherness is our uniqueness. To
a certain extent, the search for personal (identity) emancipation is
the search for the expression of our otherness uniqueness, and blind
adherence to a due social form, to a due role, to a due national
identity, to a due ‘normality’ (i.e. to follow the norm) and is exactly
what denies the expression of our otherness and uniqueness. Those
who do not wish to meet and welcome the stranger or foreigner do
not wish to meet and welcome themselves. The thematic passage for
mutual recognition is not the passage of secondary relevance, but
rather is strictly linked, first, to the philosophy of the capable human
being, secondly, to the idea of the dialectic of recognition as an
emancipatory process and, thirdly, to emancipation as a process of
recognition. It is thanks to The Course of Recognition that the
dialectics between power and capacity, which constitutes the core of
Ricoeur’s philosophy of the capable human being, is connected with
the emancipatory dialectics of recognition: that is, personal identity




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comes from and depends on a process of emancipation through the
dialectics of recognition.
     The   theme    of    recognition    enters   Ricoeur’s     philosophical
discourse with the discovery of the ‘conflict of interpretations’ (in the
1960s).    It   emerges      through    the   philosophical    dialectics     of
Hegelianism and Freudianism as discussed in Freud and Philosophy:
An Essay on Interpretation (1965). From the comparison between
Hegel’s phenomenology and Freud’s psychoanalysis, Ricoeur derives
the idea of subjectivity as a dialectical hermeneutic process that is
continually stretched between the opposites of archê and telos, of
the unconscious and the spirit, of necessity and freedom, and of
destiny and history (Id., 1970: 459; see Busacchi, 2011 and 2015).
In some way he tries to make a synthesis between Hegelianism and
Freudianism, and this is how, for Ricoeur, the relationship between
the Id and the ego becomes a sort of dialectic between domination
and servitude. And it is precisely in it that the theme of recognition
finds a way of speculative access, as revealed in book III, chapter III
as well as in The Conflict of Interpretations (around the question of
the subject). The grafting of the theme of recognition is favoured by
the lesson of Alexander Kojève, with his interpretation of Hegel’s
struggle for recognition as expressed in his master-slave dialectical
relationship, where Kojève focused on the element of desire. This is
the essential field in which we find those theoretical and speculative
elements that become central in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the capable
human being, that is, the relationship of oneself with his/her own
otherness, the     relationship of oneself with the           other(s), the
development of the self and the interpretation of personal identity as
a dialectical process of recognition.


     Conflict and crisis must be faced and challenged, in whatever
form and whenever they arise. They are to be understood as


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Vinicio Busacchi, Why Those Who Disregard Foreigners Despise Themselves




characteristic and progressive inevitable phenomena of both the
human condition and the real world. Winning the challenge of conflict
and crisis is the path of human emancipation in all senses: personal,
cultural, civic, moral and social.
      It is true that sometimes, this challenge has to do with a
concrete menace of disharmony, evil and destruction which may
come from the internal and the external life. But the logic of our
discourse does not change. What changes is the sense that we are
considering and experiencing each specific case, the object of fact
that requires our emancipatory response and the emancipatory
response of a society of principles, institutions and laws. Under a
certain perspective even evil and violence are in part progressive
forces in themselves. As Ricoeur underlines in his short essay on
Evil, a challenge to Philosophy and Theology (1986), the problem of
evil is not just a speculative problem; it demands convergence
between thought, action (in a moral and political sense) and a
spiritual transformation of feelings. On the level of thought, the
problem of evil deserves to be defined as a challenge, and a
challenge is always a check for always premature syntheses, and a
provocation to think more and differently. Evil is first of all what
should not be, but it must be fought and it is an integral part of each
of us: if we reject evil as unrelated to our human condition, we reject
an integral part of ourselves. By emphasising the practical and active
struggle against evil, we are not losing the fact of suffering. In
reverse, not only is every evil committed by someone badly suffered
by another, but actively accepting all challenges connected to evil, as
well as to conflict and crisis, means to suffer. Suffering is a
quintessential part of the human condition4.


4
  As Ricoeur writes: ‘The road to recognition is long, for the “acting and suffering”
human being, that leads to the recognition that he or she is in truth a person
“capable” of different accomplishments. What is more, this self-recognition


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                                                     Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




     As a result of this combined reasoning, we can say that every
personal or collective action which decreases the amount of conflict
and violence exercised by persons against each other decreases the
rate of suffering in the world and increases the level of personal and
social emancipation.




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