The Cultural Foundations of Mutual Recognition

Abstract

The three forms — ghettoization, assimilation (either closed or open) and mutual recognition — discussed in the Preface of this volume have emerged in the course of time and have also been present in the twentieth century. Indeed, there not only exist oscillations in history or returns to the past, but, as it hopefully will become clear in what follows, there is also a continuum for example between philosophies advocating assimilation, those favourable to tolerance, and the principle of mutual recognition. Perhaps only the extremes — represented by mutual recognition and ghettoization — are truly disconnected.

From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony.

Heraclitus (V b.c.), Fragments

From wherever the glance looks up at the sky, the distance between human and divine is always the same … the most beautiful things shall follow us everywhere: universal nature and one’s own virtue.

Seneca (V a.c.), Consolatio ad Helviam Matrem

From everywhere it is the same distance to Heaven.

Thomas Moore (1515), Utopia

This text is the English translation of an updated version of a paper published in Italian partly in Padoa Schioppa, F. Kostoris (2001b), ‘Riconoscere il diverso: una sfida per l’Europa’, Lettera Internazionale, no.70, 2001, and partly in Padoa Schioppa, F. Kostoris (2001c), ‘Il principio del mutuo riconoscimento e il mercato del lavoro europeo’, Il Mulino, no.6, December 2001. A French and a Chinese version are also available in Padoa Schioppa, E Kostoris, ‘Reconnaissance Mutuelle’. Transcultura, Special Edition, 2002, and Padoa Schioppa, F. Kostoris, ‘Reconnaissance Mutuelle’, Tractatus, 2002 respectively. I am grateful to Eloi Laurent, Sascia Lubicz, Nicola Salerno, Grazia Sgarra and particularly to Paolo Reboani for the collaboration given in the writing of chapter 2 of Padoa Schioppa, F. Kostoris (ed.), ISAE Rapporto sullo stato dell’Unione Europea, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001, which includes an old version of this chapter and of the first two sections of Chapter 5 of this volume.