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Joe Friggieri explains why he decided to contest and calls for an intellectual and moral commitment to assist those living on the margins of society
My decision to stand for the European Parliament election took many by surprise. Weeks after the PN officially announced the names of its selected candidates, I still meet people who express their mixed feelings by saying they had never expected me to enter the political fray but were pleased I did.
A friend of mine actually suggested I should never refer to myself as an ‘intellectual’ during the campaign. ‘Academic,’ he said, is less offensive. ‘Philosopher’ raises a smile. ‘University professor’ won't do either. ‘Poet’ or ‘playwright’ generates incredulity, puzzlement even.
Actually I prefer ‘writer.’ In the end I might have to settle for ‘television presenter.’ ‘Entertainer,’ I know, sounds even better. But there are limits.
Seriously though, what use can people like myself be in an institution like the European Parliament? (I say ‘like myself’ to avoid the pitfalls of definite descriptions.) What can we contribute?
The short, one-word answer is ‘vision.’
The bleak realities of our divided world require visions of solidarity, peace and stability, the same ideals that inspired the founding fathers of the European Union after the devastating wars that reduced European cities to rubble. As Albert Einstein once put it, “in moments of crisis, only imagination is stronger than knowledge.” Inertia and inaction now will lead to greater fear and insecurity in the future.
What we need is a re-invention of culture as a critical, political discourse, focusing on the creation of ‘utopias,’ a word used in contemporary cultural debate to refer/not/to detached, imaginary cities, but to projects grounded in reality.
Such utopias can only be the result of a cultural policy understood as a certain type of cultural politics, where culture is related to an authentic social movement with national, regional and global dimensions, seeking to bring about change through dialogue and the search for new ways of dealing with old problems in the hope of finding just solutions.
There is an immediate need for artists, writers and thinkers to assume an organic role, to review their responsibilities towards their respective societies and ensure that cultural action emanates from an engagement with real-life situations. Such action involves moral commitment. It is lived as a vision of a different and better future.
In a divided world, artists and intellectuals should not relinquish their creative powers, but should move into the community, stimulating innovative thought and action, challenging Max Weber's ‘iron cage.’ They should re-invent the spiritual and the poetical, giving them political currency and significance.
The bridging of cultures and the concept of Euro-Mediterranean partnership, based on scientific research and collaboration, forms an integral part of Malta’s foreign cultural policy. Within the dimension of a wider Europe, Malta is in an ideal position to contribute culturally and intellectually towards a deeper understanding of the nature of the factors dividing North and South, but above all those that are at the root of the Middle East conflict. Malta's state of political neutrality should be perceived as a valuable asset in this respect.
Let me mention just one example where a lot of imaginative re-thinking is necessary if we are to pull ourselves out of the present impasse.
Malta has had its fair share of the problem related to displaced immigrants, pouring in from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
We can all understand the plight of asylum seekers, running for their lives and looking for a safer place to live in. We can empathise morally, politically and culturally with these people. But we do not seem capable of finding a just and equitable solution to the problem.
What is lacking is not the political will to break the stalemate, but the intellectual and moral commitment to engage in new ways of looking at the situation, to be prepared to take imaginative and calculated risks for dealing with it.
The same kind of intellectual and moral commitment is required to create empowering schemes for drug addicts undergoing rehabilitation programmes, victims of domestic violence and other groups living on the margins of society.
The European Parliament and its committees can serve as a forum for the discussion of these problems, and an MEP with vision and a sense of moral commitment can do a lot to re-route the debate and explore new ways of dealing with them.
My decision to contest the forthcoming EP elections was based on such considerations.
Professor Joe Friggieri is head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Malta and Chairman of the Malta Council for Culture and Arts. He is a PN candidate for the forthcoming European Parliament elections
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