Enlightened Nationalism? Schleiermacher’s Concept of the Nation

• In Event: Origins of Nationalism

Abstract

The “accusations [are] that the patriotic love of one’s country makes one short-sighted, biased, feeds prejudices against other peoples and causes one to meet those belonging to other peoples with contempt. But is this not an imperfection of man rather than an error of the thing itself?” asked Schleiermacher in a political sermon held in 1806, shortly before the defeat of the Prussian army by Napoleon’s forces. The rise of the political valence of the “Volk” and the nation in Prussia and other German states at the beginning of the 19th century is well documented. Unlike his contemporary Fichte, however, Schleiermacher’s defense of the nation as an ethical commitment and politically valuable category should not be read as simple reaction to the military defeat against France and thus as part of the nascent patriotic fervor in Germany. Instead, it plays a pivotal role in his concept of individuality and his vision of a liberal-communitarian, proto-democratic state. For Schleiermacher, the juxtaposition of cosmopolitanism and patriotism, love of one’s community and Volk and love of humanity was a false opposition.
In the present paper, I will examine Schleiermacher’s concept of the nation and its role in the development of a “political ethos” among the citizenry, which for him allows individuals to develop autonomy while, and because of, being committed to a common political identity. Not contenting himself with curbing the ‘imperfection of man’ through defensive liberal institutions, he proposes a political model that resembles a communitarian project of national self-realization. This project however is concomitantly tied to a deep ethical commitment to cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and to the achievement of unique individual identities on the other hand. Explicating this nexus between political ethos and nation, and national self-consciousness and commitment to cosmopolitanism, the paper will discuss how Schleiermacher differed from his contemporaries in his concept of the nation (especially from Hegel’s notion of the nation and the state) and thus shed light on an interesting variant of early liberal nationalism.

Author

• Luise Papcke, Columbia University