Goethe’s Challenge

The European Union is the glittering theater of many initiatives seeking to unify or harmonize various sectors of law across the civil law/common law historic divide. Along the way, many European lawyers have reached the conclusion that no claim can now usefully be made against the idea of evermore uniformization of laws. Yet, a primordial question remains largely unaddressed. Supposing transnational legal motions to be desirable on account of diverse political and economic considerations, do these endeavours require a re-arrangement of laws that would eliminate legal pluralism – as appears to be reflexively assumed? I answer in the negative. For the purposes of my argument, I draw extensively on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s idea of ‘Weltliteratur’, which he developed in 1827 in a context where leading German intellectuals wanted to displace the cultural agenda beyond the narrow confines of parochial interests. In my opinion, Goethe presents a compelling thesis for the view that a globalized discourse need not be achieved through the sacrifice of local knowledges. In the process, he affords the critic of Europeanization of laws the opportunity to challenge postulates to the effect that the only valid transnational paradigm ought to manifest itself in the form of ‘one-law-fits-all’. Signalling the virtues of an indisciplined approach to uniformization of laws on the European stage – of a perspective that literally takes one beyond the discipline of law –, Goethe’s strong message to European lawyers is that one ought to embrace cosmopolitanism while simultaneously valuing and seeking to preserve local knowledges.