Tradition and Identity: Theoretical Reflections and the European Example

Title

Tradition and Identity: Theoretical Reflections and the European Example

Author

Jörn Rüsen

Page

135-158

DOI

Abstract

The paper describes tradition as a specific mode of making sense of the past in order to orient people in the present, thus opening a future perspective for their lives. Different levels of this traditional mode of making sense of the past are distinguished and characterised. The next step in the argument is addressed to the issue of identity. A general explanation of identity is followed by the spe- cific role of tradition in identity building. Against the mainstream of today’s academic discourse identity is not exclusively understood as a construction by the people looking back at the past. Rather, it is emphasised, that this construc- tion itself is conditioned by the results of the past effective in the conditions under which present-day-life historical thinking takes place. Finally, the issue of European identity as discussed in the process of European Unification is pre- sented as an example of a general tendency to overcome ethnocentric elements in identity building today.

Keyword

tradition, identity, historical culture, European unification, ethnocentrism

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