Civilisational Schizophrenia

For decades, the word ‘civilisation’ rarely passed Europeans’ lips, as their colonial hangover had made the term highly suspect. 

It was an embarrassing word, a relic from a time where people dreamed up maps of an ever expanding empire and held fast to their delusions of doing good through their missionary work. But now ‘civilisation,’ somewhat awkwardly, is very much back in vogue. 

Indeed, Emmanuel Macron invokes the term when he warns of ‘a France without culture.’ Viktor Orbán and Andrzej Duda do as well when accusing Brussels of waging war on Christian Europe. German policymakers talk of ‘defending democratic values,’ while Italy's Giorgia Meloni calls her nation the cradle of Western identity. 

So, the term, once unpalatable for ‘decent’ Europeans’, is now trending again, especially among populists parties. Yet, what does that signify?

The Return of a Forbidden Word

In 2023, Macron launched the ‘Rearmament of Culture’ initiative, pledging €1 billion to improve upon French museums’ attraction and reassert France’s national narrative. Macron, having initially sparked controversy with the assertion ‘France has no culture,’ now appears to prioritise its cultural heritage. 

This shift seems to be linked to the growing identitarian movement and its renewed emphasis on the concept of civilisation, largely driven by populist ideologies. For example, Hungary's National Core Curriculum, reformed in 2020, mandates civilisational literacy rooted in Christian and classical traditions. Even the EU's Digital Services Act refers to a ‘shared European information space’ grounded in cultural values (though which values are being referred to remains frustratingly unknown). 

A 2023 Pew Research Center study reveals 57% of Europeans feel their way of life needs protection from outside influence; of those queried, it is a sentiment shared by over 70% in Hungary and 66% in Greece. Concurrently, Eurostat indicates a 12% increase in EU government cultural expenditure from €60.8 billion in 2019 to €68.3 billion in 2022, with France, Italy, and Hungary leading in per capita cultural investment. 

The European Commission notes that between 2020 and 2023, over 18 member states, including Poland and Austria, reformed curricula to incorporate cultural identity or civic values. But amid the slogans, something is missing: coherence.What values does the word ‘civilisation’ truly embody? This is a profoundly complex question in Europe. Is civilisation democratic, multicultural, atheist, Christian, perhaps even pagan? 

The Unworkability of Plurality

The Polish historian and philosopher Feliks Koneczny, now largely forgotten, may offer more clarity than today's ministers of culture. Writing in the 1930s, Koneczny proposed that civilisations are not ethnic or geographic constructs, but ethical systems; value matrices that shape law, governance, and everyday life. He identified distinct civilisations operating in Europe: Latin (Western Europe), Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox), and Turanian (a militarised, autocratic ethos rooted in empires hailing from the steppes).

Koneczny warned that civilisations could coexist geographically but never harmoniously within a single political body. They are not races, he insisted, but mutually incompatible codes of moral logic. When forced upon each other, chaos ensues.

Modern Europe, Koneczny would likely admit, is a petri dish of civilisations disguised as multiculturalism. The Latin civilisation, once rooted in Roman law, Catholic ethics, and subsidiarity, now finds itself diluted by postmodern liberalism, challenged by ‘Turanian’ instincts in the East, and is further complicated by the presence of Islam.

This then reveals a civilisational schizophrenia: European nations harbour various incompatible ethics, whose adherents are however ‘united’ under a single flag. 

Brussels advocates tolerance; Budapest, Christian tradition. Paris, committed to secularism, panics over its identity, which it perceives to be losing. Berlin, still haunted by the horrors of the Holocaust, universalises guilt. 

Needless to say, this clash of values fractures civilisation. Policymakers then face an impossible task: crafting policies for a civilisation lacking a unified moral framework. Europe is being rudely reminded of the fact that civilisation means moral unity.

Secular Liberalism’s Limits

Europe once brought civilisation to all the corners of the world; today it is ashamed of the fact. The continent behaves like a museum would: it curates and protects its treasures, yet underneath, paranoia grows. Armed guards protect not only synagogues, but also schools, churches, and theaters. Whether religious symbols should be allowed to be worn in public spaces is debated more often in courtrooms than in theological debates. The Council of Europe funds ‘intercultural integration’ while national governments push emergency migration laws.

Data confirms the divide. According to Eurobarometer (2024), 54% of Europeans believe their cultural identity is ‘under threat’. 37% support returning illegal migrants by force. Over 65% of Hungarians view Brussels as ‘culturally alien.’ In France, youth support for secularism has dropped 20 percentage points in a decade. And in Germany, 49% of citizens now see Islam as ‘incompatible with Western values,’ up from 33% in 2015.

As a moral system, secular liberalism then seems to no longer be working. Enormous investments in culture are not a coincidence, driven as they are by Europe's search for a renewed sense of unity. Europe’s moral operating system, first written for one civilisation, then updated to accommodate others, is now crashing with no new patch to fix it. The liberal state, once built to mediate disagreement, now tries to keep a lid on what had always been an unavoidable clash of values while pretending no such conflict exists.

The result is balkanisation: pockets of incompatible norms coexisting under a banner of artificial unity, such as Sharia arbitration councils in London, gender-neutral parenting laws in Stockholm, or traditionalist zones in rural Poland. The EU then resembles not a melting pot but a collection of reservations for various tribes.

Statement

Europe is falling back in love with the word ‘civilisation’—but nobody agrees what it means. Once taboo, the term now graces speeches from Paris to Warsaw, invoked by liberals and populists alike. Yet behind the rhetorical revival lies a deeper disorder: a continent torn between incompatible moral codes. From post-Christian secularism to revived traditionalism and imported religious frameworks, Europe has become a patchwork of value systems masquerading as unity. Cultural rearmament won’t fix it. All a civilisation without shared ethics will produce is a cacophony of noise.