Cosmic Europe

What can Europe learn from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s recommendations for the Holy Roman Empire? Leibniz’s perspective on the polity he served as an advisor derived from his philosophy of universal harmony, writes philosopher Moritz Rudolph in Merkur.

This harmony, believed the 17^th-century polymath, emerged from the spontaneous synergy between the units – or ‘monads’ – that made up the fabric of reality. The monads sought their own expression rather than any sort of overarching coherence, but it was by this commitment to their own beings that a ‘cosmic concert of all things’ was composed.

For Leibniz, this was the partial reality and promise of the Holy Roman Empire, with its multitude of principalities enjoying relative autonomy but also protection under an emperor, who was hands-off internally while robustly defensive externally. Indeed, writes Rudolph, it was forced centralisation and the concentration of power that, after Leibniz’s death, led to the dissolution of the Empire.

Rudolph draws the following lessons for today’s Europe: more local self-government – particularly in culture, education and science – guaranteed and institutionally supported by a unified regime in Brussels. This could lead to a beautiful future for the continent: ‘Dismantling power in order to use it judiciously, so that energy flows together at a higher level, creating something truly great – this is … harmonious, Leibnizian, super-monadic. It’s genius.’

Culture of compromise

In the system of parliamentary democracy, is the majority right because it is more numerous than the minority? And is the minority therefore wrong? Clearly not, writes jurist Oliver Lepsius: to equate greater numbers with being right is tyranny. The heart of democracy is freedom, not majoritarianism; the opinions of the minority are no less valid than those of the majority.

The majority principle allows for a conversion of multiple opinions into practicable decisions. The minority must not agree with the substance of any given decision, but only with the formal structure of majority rule. It does so in exchange for the possibility of becoming the majority itself. Majority rule is therefore always relative, always temporary and constantly being renegotiated.

Indeed, in proportional representation, there is no actual majority, but only coalitions formed through compromise. Parties cede certain objectives in order to generate enough backing to implement others; the fact that no party can ever implement its entire platform does not imply a lack of integrity, but is rather the condition of pluralism.

Social chromatics

Sociologist Timon Beyes’s survey of the social meaning of colour begins with Brazilian photographer Angélica Dass, who photographs people from around the world and assigns their skin tone a number derived from the Pantone colour naming system. According to Dass, the Humanae project is meant to celebrate diversity and counter racism; but she also wonders about the normative assumption underlying her undertaking: the notion that there is a universal palette of colours that can be objectively identified.

This notion informs the World Color Survey, which uses colour classification technology belonging to X-Rite, of which Pantone is a subsidiary. In the survey, people from around the world are asked to identify colours and rated according to their ability to distinguish between shades. Westerners score higher than people from developing countries, who are assumed to have not yet achieved the same level of discernment.

Beyes traces such pretences to universality to 18^th-century theories of a hierarchy among human beings based on physiological markers, the most important of which was skin colour. But colourism in countries such as Brazil, or the non-discriminatory distinctions based on skin colour made by the Ancients, upset simple dichotomies. So do people’s varying perceptions of colour – not only of skin – across cultures. The instability of colours and shades invites a critical skin theory that does not adopt supposedly universal categories.

Travels in post-capitalism

Novelist Susanne Neuffer sets out on the trail of an unnamed, deceased author. Traveling by regional train to the ‘Blue Mountains’, a range on the border between Bavaria and Tyrol, she weaves the author’s observations of contemporary travel and the region into her own.

Where in the past there was bustle and noise, there is now quiet and emptiness: empty train stations, deserted bank lobbies, shuttered restaurants. Where ‘moustachioed officials’ (Neuffer quotes her author) once sold printed tickets or employees handed out cash, video terminals now provide digital assistance and the ATM is out of order. Where train cars and hotel breakfast rooms once resounded with the voices of travellers, now there is silence as everyone bends over their devices.

Neuffer describes a man who complains that his bus doesn’t show up on his app. When the bus pulls up and the driver confirms that it will take him to where he wants to go, the man refuses to believe it. Neuffer muses about a ‘post-capitalist slave society’, in which production and consumption have become obsolete and all that’s left is people searching for things on their mobiles. ‘Sometimes they find something that tells them to keep looking.’ If it was greed that drove the capitalists, what, she wonders, drives the algorithms?

Review by Millay Hyatt