ATTITUDES TO OTHERNESS

The article is devoted to the cultural and moral aspects of alienation. European culture is formed as a conglomerate of communities and states the members of which build their identity basing it on the awareness of distinction (spatial, anthropological, religious, normative). Therefore, there is no Europe without 'her foreigners'. Still the relations with them were most often destructive. Until now, the problem of cultural diversity within Europe and of our relation to the immigrants is ambiguous and complex. At the same time it was within European culture that the code of universal values based on the demand for universal equality came into being. From the beginning, the formal (religious, Enlightenment) equality started to be put into practice being influenced by the ideas of the Greek philoxenia, philanthropy and cosmopolitism, Christian caritas, Enlightenment tolerance, Hegelian 'recognition' and human solidarity.