Romania, the ’’mortal’’ Europe and the community of values

Abstract

This article addresses Romania’s location “in-between” East and West through the prism of the problem of values. The starting point is E. Lovinescu’s perspective, who recommended in 1924 interdependence and adaptation to Western civilisation, by cultivating a critical spirit, but also the breaking away from the Eastern “moral life” that, on his account, had bound us to the past and been a hindrance. The second section of the article analyses the April 2024 speech of French President E. Macron, according to which Europe is today “at a crossroads” and appears to us for the first time as “mortal”. His solution arguing for a defense of Enlightenment values and narratives, while pertinent, does not provide sufficient clarification as to what we might understand by them. Moreover, as the third section shows, there was no homogeneous standpoint in this respect in the Enlightenment either, just as there is none in the contemporary period, when this movement is being criticised and revised. This article proposes an axiological approach to Romania’s location between the West and the East through Paul Ricoeur’s concept of “narrative hospitality”, which, we advance, would allow a positive re-interpretation of our double belonging to these two regions and an active reconsideration of the values we wish to endorse.