Planetary coonsciousness and vigilance
30
Nov
Looking at planetary consciousness only from Europe, although it is an 
addictive look, it is the gaze that points paths to the West, the philosopher Petr Sloterdijk in his book “If Europe Awakens” (2002), points the year zero of the current consciousness like the defeat of the possibility of an “Empire of the Center” with Nazism, according to his analysis, in a reflection that already lasts two generations.
It reminds the author of what Nietzsche said about the “compulsion of great politics” to be filled with a new contemporary content, after the end of the vacuum in which the tragic harvest of totalitarianism and world wars was swallowed, in a way similar to what Morin points out in his book “Earth-Motherland”, that is, the search of foundations for a planetary citizenship, but it is necessary to watch because the ghosts of world wars and totalitarianisms still roam the planet.
Chapter 6 begins with a significant epigraph (Sloterdijk, p.65): “Europe must invent a form of unity that is not that of an empire” by Jacques Le Goff, that is, to create a new form of politics that does not is more development based on the exploitation and oppression of other peoples.
It is as the Bible states in the Gospel of Mark: “He is like a man who, when he went abroad, left his house under the responsibility of his servants, distributing to each one his task. And he commanded the porter to keep watch “(Mk 13:34), and if in the past it was said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, it can be said today that the price of overcoming the crisis is to watch over them not to be triggered processes that prevent the growth of a planetary consciousness about world citizenship.
Throughout the book he develops what he calls the “visions” policy, compatible with his ontological-hermeneutical origin (heidegger and critic of Heidegger’s thought and lived with Safranski who is the best biographer of this), which means to promote cultural dialogue between people, allowing the culture and the ‘vision’ of each one.
So if Europe awakens, it will have “achieved the feat of producing, under its own direction and in public debate, the vision by which it must be led and driven – and then acting upon that vision, as if this new self-constituted motive had so much power to release accelerating forces as an old and very incarnate mission. “(SLOTERDIJK, 2002, 72)
In this sense it is also necessary to watch and react to the warmongering that can make the planetary consciousness recede, but not the diversity that implies in the emergence of nations and affirmation of their cultures unreservedly.
SLOTERDIJK, P. Si l’Europe s’éveille. Paris: Mille et une nuit, 2003 .(pages in brazilian edition).
