Raluca Pop reviews Dag Nikolaus Hasse’s What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought (Amsterdam University Press, 2025)
The word Europe has countless definitions. More often than not, most of them refer only to Western Europe. The book What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought, published by Amsterdam University Press in 2025, analyzes how this conception became the canonical and accepted one, despite being far from the truth. The author, Dag Nikolaus Hasse, is a Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Würzburg and specializes in Arabic sciences and philosophy and their influence in Latin Europe. His research on this subject was awarded with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2016, the highest distinction for a scientist in Germany. Having this background, Hasse offers a fresh perspective which demonstrates how the concept of the enlightened Europe selectively ignored some of the most important non-Roman or Greek influences especially in science, but also in politics, philosophy and culture more broadly.
The central question that this book seeks to answer is: what can Europe become? To address this question, Hasse structures his book into four main chapters. The first two, Decolonisation and Deromanticisation expose how the concept of Europe received its current understanding. The last two chapters: What is typically European? and Multiethnic Cities, deal with more modern discourses that pose a problem in understanding the European cultural identity. Here, Hasse also proposes possible directions for rethinking and redeeming that identity. The main claim is that decolonization and deromanticization can overcome older modes of thinking and thereby provide a more open definition of Europe.
Hasse’s first step is to demonstrate that the concept of Europe is a construct. Already in the introduction, he argues that, during the Middle Ages, the concept of Europe did not carry a positive or negative weight aside from its strict geographical meaning (9). His next move is to sum up some geographical perceptions of Europe as a continent and show how, even though the geographical aspect remained mainly unchanged throughout history, the cultural and concepts expand and shape the identity of a space.
The first chapter begins by analyzing how the Enlightenment period laid the foundation for a cultural concept of Europe. Taking a historical approach, Hasse clarifies the earliest contexts in which the concept was used. Starting with the sixteenth century, the term Christendom was occasionally replaced by Europe, especially in connection with the conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Christian rules. In the seventeenth century, power struggles, such as those between France and the Habsburg Austria-Spain, prompted more in-depth reflections on Europe’s political status. In this context, authors such as Maximilien de Béthune -Duke of Sully, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and William Penn drafted the first outlines of European organizations. Finally, the colonial conquests influenced how Europe was described and perceived. This feeling of superiority gradually engulfed many other aspects of Europe: „The same superiority, as Pastor Purchas argued, applied to the inventions of mechanics and music, culinary taste, military technology, printing technology, and the art of navigation.”(17) The author goes on to show how, despite the fact that Europe used to be considered inferior from a Christian point of view,
The colonial experience had turned the image of Europe upside down.(18)
In particular, Hasse argues that the Enlightenment reduced all-non-European spaces to the status of second-class cultures through Orientalisation. This implied superiority led to an exclusionary way of thinking. Building on Edward Said’s argument, Hasse advocates the decolonisation of the concept of Europe.
The second chapter explores how, during the Romantic period, an essentialized image of Europe coagulated on three main pillars: Ancient Greece, Rome and Christianity. By assuming these influences as the European essence, all the other aspects that were before considered non-European were deliberately sidelined. Thus, Europe claimed all the merits of the ancient civilizations. In this context, Hasse uses his extended knowledge of the Arabic history to show how Greece and Rome never belonged only to Europe, but were greatly influenced by cultures from the eastern and southern Mediterranean worlds:
(…) the tradition of scientific rationality, which many consider the foundation of European culture, did not begin with the Greeks, but with their predecessor cultures in Egypt and Mesopotamia, i.e., in North Africa and West Asia. The claim that “everything began with the Greeks” is the intellectual counterpart to the colonial arrogance of the Enlightenment era.(36)
By using such examples, Hasse reveals that the European heritage is based on a much broader accumulated shared knowledge. The symbolic triad of Jerusalem-Athens-Rome reduces Europe’s foundations and excludes the contribution of Celts, Vikings, Slavs, Byzantines, Jews, Muslims and Tatars, (58).
The third chapter, entitled What is typically European?, focuses on three essays on the meaning of European culture. Hasse’s choice is Milan Kundera’s A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe, Rémi Brague’s Europe, the Roman Way, and George Steiner’s The Idea of Europe. According to Hasse, each of these essays (re-)attributes to Europe’s cultural identity the same excusatory characteristics that were circulated starting as early as the sixteenth century and later became even more pronounced. These include, for instance, the exclusion from the European cultural space of countries under totalitarian regimes (Kundera), the treatment of Roman and Latin culture as the essential core of Europe (Brague), and the aestheticization and stereotypization of the European continent (Steiner).
In response to these essentialized conceptions of Europe, Hasse argues that there are at least three ways to describe Europe without falling into such conceptual traps. First, we need to recognize that Europe does not need to have a single essence and should be viewed as a „network of cultural forms and practices of a particular time.” (78). Second, by focusing only on the continental space within a specific historical period, without constantly comparing it with other continents, we avoid the complexity of interconnectedness. Third, the author proposes the concepts of home and homeland as alternative frameworks for understanding Europe. Here, Hasse refers to a 2017 speech by Emanuel Macron, in which the French President stated that he „feels at home with the ancient Greeks” (81). According to Hasse, such a generalized statement indicates the dangers of generalization, since not every European might share the same affinities. Therefore, one could talk about multiple cultural homes within Europe. Instead of generalizations and essentializations, Hasse advocates a more dialectical approach, one that does not strictly refer to culture:
The sentence “What holds Europe together is its culture” is wishful thinking but lacks reality (…). The idea that a community is held together by a particular culture is a left-over of nationalism, i.e., the opinion that a state should be based on a nation that is in some way uniform. (85)
If culture might not be the best reference point, what alternatives remain? The final chapter, Multiethnic cities: the Europe of the future, attempts to provide one. Ancient and contemporary multiethnic cities serve as examples from which Europe could learn. First, by acknowledging that multiethnic cities existed for many centuries, Europe can realize such situations are not exceptions. Second, multiethnic cities do not need a single dominant culture considered to be superior to others or a form of multiculturalism that focuses on blending cultures instead of preserving them. As Hasse acknowledges, the present debates rely on one of these two alternatives. However, the examples of the ancient multiethnic cities show that they could function without either of them. In the end, the author elaborates on loyalty and political obligations, highly relevant in today’s world. He claims that the European states do not need loyalty to operate. Instead, what is needed is a sense of political obligation that can be motivated by explicit laws and institutions that create a feeling of security and peace. Loyalty is a term widely used in political discourses in the present, but, as Hasse states: „Most ties that generate loyalty are decided at birth, not by choice. If group loyalty, especially ethnic loyalty, is made the basis of a state, this would inevitably lead to suffering for those excluded.” (94)
This book manages to include a substantial amount of historical information and to draw clear conclusions. It also provides solid directions for improving today’s society. However, one may argue that these solutions are not very easy to put in practice and may seem idealistic at times. However, it is important to note that Hesse explicitly acknowledges that the purpose of the book is not to provide immediate political programs, but rather to put forward ideas that can change the perspective through which Europe is understood.
Ultimately, What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought by Dag Nikolaus Hasse is a deeply informed work, and it does offer fresh perspectives that are worth considering. It rises awareness about the construct of the concept of Europe. The timing for this book is also advantageous because its analysis is applicable to some increasingly polarized political discourses. At the same time, the subject matter and language used remain highly accessible for anyone interested in the concept of Europe or in expanding their understanding of the historical influences that shaped the present society.
Raluca Pop is an Assistant Editor in the Democracy and Culture Section.
