Conservatism, nationalism and modernity

We are the first to live in an entirely new era that no longer wants to have anything to do with the thinking of our ancestors, but is entirely based on a new spirit and new values.

Our time is extraordinary. We are living in a time of upheaval, compared to which even the Reformation was only a small ripple. The view of the world and man that has dominated and shaped Europe since antiquity is dying. We are probably at the end of an era that began about two and a half millennia ago. What is surprising is that hardly anyone realizes how unusual this makes our time. And when this is pointed out to them, most of them just shrug their shoulders.

European Tradition

The view of the world and man that I have in mind is sometimes summarized by the formula “Athens and Jerusalem.” “Athens” refers to Greek literature, especially Greek philosophy, more specifically Plato and Aristotle, who are far superior to all other Greek philosophers. “Jerusalem” refers to the biblical tradition that centers on the words, deeds, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are the most important Christian authors, like Plato and Aristotle, but in Christianity.

What about Rome, the third column of the European Tradition? In terms of their direct influence on European culture, the Romans surpassed even the Greeks, at least until the early nineteenth century. But, with the partial exception of legal thought, the Roman mind and Roman literature were heavily influenced by the Greeks. The influence of Rome on the European Tradition is largely a mediocre-and weakened-transmission of the spirit of Greece.

Athens and Jerusalem are not separate. The later books of the Old Testament, especially the Apocrypha, clearly show the influence of Greek ideas, as does the New Testament. The church fathers and scholastics became even more Hellenized. Augustine was a Platonist to the end, and Thomas Aquinas was a Platonist-aristotelian.

The 16th and 17th centuries were the time when the European Tradition was at its peak. Christianity and antiquity-or rather, Christianity as shaped by antiquity-were everywhere a reference point, almost entirely shaping the European spirit. Among the leading authors of that time were St. John the Baptist and St. John the Baptist. Francis of Sales, Jacob Beme, St. Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suarez, Cornelius Jansen, Blaise Pascal, John Milton, Jeremy Taylor, John Bunyan, Ralph Cudworth, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet and St. Alphonse Liguori. I mention these names only to show how alien that time was to most of us.

Revolution and counter-revolution

The reason for this alienation is the historical attack on the European Tradition. It began in the seventeenth century. This is known as Enlightenment, a name the attackers gave themselves to justify themselves and make their opponents look bad. In their minds, it was they who brought light into the centuries-old darkness. The most important names are René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. The latter is the “greatest Plato” of our time. Descartes and Hobbes paved the way for all later Enlightenment thinkers. In fact, they only repeated and developed what, in fact, could already be found in these two.

In the 17th century, the Enlightenment was only a counterpoint to tradition, but in the 18th century the number of its followers grew rapidly, mainly due to the popularization of Locke, Voltaire, the authors of the Encyclopedia, and many others. Their activities culminated in the French and American revolutions in the late eighteenth century, which were largely based on the new ideas of the Enlightenment.

However, the European Tradition was still very much alive, so new ideas met with considerable resistance. From the very beginning, the French Revolution was rejected by a large part of both the European ruling class and the population. This led to the so-called “Restoration” in 1815, an attempt to return to the status quo ante. However, this attempt was doomed to failure, as the revolutionary ideas did not disappear, even though the revolution was over. A part of the population was and still is in favor of these new ideas. The rest of the 19th century and most of the 20th century was basically a struggle across Europe between the new ideas of the Enlightenment and the European Tradition, between “revolution” and “counter-revolution.”

The upheavals that the French Revolution caused in Europe, however, also gave rise to Romanticism, a view of man and the world that turned not only against the Enlightenment but also against the European Tradition. Thus, between 1815 and the end of the 20th century, not two but three views of man and the world competed for supremacy.

It was a struggle in which the European Tradition slowly but surely lost more and more ground. In the sixties of the twentieth century, the year 1968 was symbolic of the final offensive of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Antiquity and Christianity, Athens and Jerusalem, the European reference system that had existed for centuries, were revolutionized in these years. The next half-century-our time-is marked by the final elimination of the spirit, values, and understanding of man and the world of the European Tradition. Now they have been radically and comprehensively replaced by a new morality and new laws, which are the product of a new understanding of man and the world in the Enlightenment and Romantic eras.

The water we swim in

If you think about it, this is really an incredible process: in our time, an era of about 2,500 years seems to be coming to an end. We are the first to live in an entirely new era that no longer wants to have anything to do with the thinking of our ancestors, but is entirely based on a new spirit and new values. In addition, the spirit and values are largely opposed to the spirit and values that have defined human existence in Europe – and not only there – for centuries and millennia.

The crucial question is whether this new era is a progression compared to the old one or whether it means decline. For most people, the answer to this question is unequivocal: the new is better than the old. Where we are is better than where we came from. It used to be worse. People were poor and dying young. Ordinary people were oppressed by the nobility or the clergy, or, in another version, by the capitalists, women by men, children by adults, the individual by the community, and all by the white man. The world was marked by prejudice, ignorance and prejudice. The new era has freed us from all this and more. Long live the modern world!

Now, with a few exceptions, we are quite modern. The overwhelming majority of Europeans no longer have any idea what antiquity and Christianity mean, let alone that they are in any way relevant. Many people no longer even suspect that antiquity and Christianity have been the measure of things for many centuries. The fact that the dominant views of man and the world now come from the Enlightenment and Romanticism is realized by few, as they have become so axiomatic. Like the water for the younger fish in the David Foster Wallace joke: two young fish swimming in the water and meeting an older fish who greets them with words: “Good morning, boys. What’s the water like today?” One fish looks at the other and says: “What is water?” The Enlightenment and Romanticism have become taken for granted for the vast majority, just as Christianity and antiquity once were.

The two modern worldviews are fundamentally linked. Both are based on the principles of freedom and equality, but they contradict each other because they interpret these principles in completely different ways. Political and social, as well as academic debates largely take place within these two worldviews, with the modern “right” often relying on arguments that originate in the Enlightenment, while the “left” likes to resort to those of Romantic origin. But there is also a variant of romantic thought that is usually considered “right-wing,” namely nationalism. More on that later.

Conservatism

And conservatism? There is endless debate about what conservatism is. This is partly due to the fact that “conservative” is used as a self-description by people who think quite differently. There are even those who consider conservatism to be synonymous with romantic nationalism. In my opinion, it would be best described as a conservative worldview that defends the great European Tradition from the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Conservatism in this sense emerged during the revolutionary period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It arose from the belief that the Enlightenment and Romanticism offered ideologically distorted images of reality. She considers their spread to be a tragedy, as the implementation of these ideas seriously threatens human well-being and happiness in both personal and social life.

The point, not the story

These are weighty accusations, and those who make them must provide evidence. Below, I will attempt to do so by means of an analytical sketch of the essence of both Enlightenment and Romantic philosophies, including their problematic features. I will then turn to the question of nationalism and its relationship to conservatism.

What is the essence of enlightenment thinking and romanticism? Is this the greatest common denominator of all the opinions expressed by the leaders of the two parties? Of course not. A statistical average is something completely different from the essence of a thing. The essence of Enlightenment and Romanticism thinking lies in the ideas they advocate, thought through to their logical conclusion. Many Enlightenment thinkers were unwilling or unable to consistently think through their ideas to the end. They are divided and flicker between Enlightenment and Tradition, Enlightenment and Romanticism, or between all three. The same goes for many romantics.

So, this is not a historical analysis, but an analysis of the essence. I am not interested here in the Enlightenment and Romanticism as historical episodes or movements. I’m also not interested in what this or that Enlightenment thinker or romantic wrote and how it differs from what others might have written. Rather, I’m interested in what, in fact, underlies their respective ways of thinking. If you look into this, it immediately becomes clear that the Enlightenment and Romanticism are not just great historical movements, but they also remain our modern ways of thinking par excellence. They even substantiate the dominant ideologies of our time. This is true despite the fact that they were created up to three hundred years ago, as they emerged between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Education

First, a sketch of the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant is often considered its greatest representative. However, he is actually one of its first critics. The ideas of Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Claude-Adrian Helvetius, and Paul Henri Tiry d’Holbach: they constitute the Enlightenment. All the authors whom Kant disapproved of as representatives of the “doctrine of happiness” (Glückseligkeitslehre). This doctrine of happiness was and is the main stream of Enlightenment thinking.

It must be admitted that one cannot but appreciate the Enlightenment, especially for its concern for the common man. Freedom, in the ancient sense of not being a slave, and equality, in the sense of being equal before the law, are noble ideals. This also applies to the ideal of a society in which everyone lives in a certain amount of prosperity and the eternal plague of poverty is overcome. The Enlightenment also understood the role that technology, based on modern natural sciences, and the market, based on free exchange, played in creating all this. Only on this basis is material bien-être possible for everyone. These are not trifles.

But by putting natural science and the free market on the table, the Enlightenment quickly degenerated into crude hedonism. Initially, a modest belief in the possibility of achieving a general level of comfort soon gave rise to the idea of virtually unlimited technical and material progress. Its goal was to make it possible to satisfy more and more desires, whatever they may be. From then on, this growing hope was to be equivalent to happiness and meaning in life.

Since then, everything has started to revolve around consumption. To consume, we have to work (at least, perhaps, until the invention of technology that makes labor redundant). Money earned once should be spent on the desires of our heart. In this light, a person is first and foremost a producer and consumer in a market that is increasingly overwhelmed by technology. Production and consumption in the context of competition and technological progress are the poles around which life revolves. Everything should be perceived in their terms, including education, politics, and the state. The goal of the training is to acquire the competencies necessary for the role of a manufacturer in the market. The goal of the state is to legally regulate production and consumption in the market, constantly stimulating technological progress and economic growth.

Note that this ideology has no place for outdated realities such as communities or borders. The natural workings of the market and technological innovations work only when they are not hindered by “artificial” borders. Therefore, educated people are individualists and globalists. Social problems, even if they are caused by the global market and technology, can and will be solved by the same global market and technology – that is, through the mechanism of prices, on the one hand, and technological progress stimulated by the market, on the other.

What are the consequences of Enlightenment thinking? If life is all about satisfying as many desires as possible, then it ultimately leads to a world completely dominated by the desires of the great mass of humanity: a world of amusement parks, shopping malls and outlets, ubiquitous highways and parking lots, playgrounds, health centers, hypermarkets, porn centers and online stores, prefabricated homes and housing estates, a universal tourism industry, and a plethora of sweets, alcohol, fatty foods, drugs, and screens, screens, and more screens. Because for the vast majority of humanity, the meaning of life is to do what you want. What you want to do is eat, drink, shop, have sex, and have fun. “Have a good time,” depending on the occasion. This is a world in which all human relationships are becoming fluid and impermanent. Stable families and communities are a thing of the past. A person and their fleeting desires are the only things that matter. This is where the originally noble idea of the emancipation of the common man has led us.

Romanticism

And romanticism? In fact, it is a critique of the Enlightenment project, the counter-Enlightenment, the second, alternative design of modernity. From the point of view of Romanticism, the Enlightenment alienated the world from its natural state. Romanticism is essentially a call to leave this alienated, enlightened world and return to nature, to natural life, to authenticity, to Eigentlichkeit: true being. It viewed the Enlightenment as a kind of apostasy that made man a slave in a new sense, distorted the world and made it ugly, unfit for sincere souls or natural man. So, “Back to Nature!”

The world, our natural environment, is much more than raw materials for satisfying our desires, says Romantic. In addition, life is something completely different than the satisfaction of desires. Enlightenment thinking, if carried to its conclusion, will lead humanity down a disastrous path and may even destroy the world. Putting desires on the throne leads to the exploitation of the weak, both here and elsewhere, for example, by paying wages below the subsistence level; to the unfair and profit-driven cruelty to animals in the meat industry; to the equally unfair poisoning of consumers with sweet, fatty and unhealthy foods; to the creation of a medical and pharmaceutical complex that is interested in maintaining and, if possible, increasing the number of patients. The increasingly sophisticated information technology used by profit-oriented producers is causing human privacy and human dignity to disappear. The ever-increasing cycle of production and consumption threatens to destroy the climate, endanger plant and animal species, and so on.

The Enlightenment view of man as essentially a producer and consumer is seen by the Romantics as philistine. From the very beginning, Romanticism argued that life is something completely different from the satisfaction of desires. Life is not about earning and spending money, wealth and entertainment. Life is about authenticity, Eigentlichkeit. It means “being who you are” as a person and allowing other people and the world to be who they are. Not wanting to change, update, and improve everything, as progressive, “educated” people want, but actually worsening or destroying many of the greatest things. Not to pass by yourself in the name of purchasing power and prosperity, but to be yourself and actualize yourself, even if it means that your purchasing power is much lower than it would otherwise be. And in the same vein, not to see nature as a raw material for possible production, but as something that has value in itself and should be left alone to exist and actualize. Not to look at man as the ruler of the world, who arranges the world in the way that is most useful to him and most serves his desires, but as a guest who respects the natural environment in its Eigentlichkeit. Not highways, but rural lanes. Not industrially baked bread, but artisanal spelt bread. Not constant economic growth, but a stable, stationary economy. It’s not an amusement park, but a “path inside”. And so on.

How to achieve all this? Ultimately, through a “change of consciousness.” Man must realize his alienation from the surrounding nature and from his own nature and radically change his life and his society. The most important tool for this is the state. Its task is to curb or ban the market and allegedly evil cases of technological innovation at the national, international and supranational levels. This could be achieved not only through legislation, but also through education to raise the “consciousness” of citizens to create a better society.

This sounds like the opposite of the Enlightenment mission. But note that the Romantic mission is ultimately as individualistic and globalist as the Enlightenment message, although it is based on very different arguments and leads to a different kind of individualism and globalism. The market and technology do not stop at the border. Thus, the policies needed to curb them cannot stop there either. Exploitation and oppression are global phenomena, as are environmental pollution, climate destruction, and mass tourism. That’s why we need a global policy. In addition, authenticity and Eigentlichkeit are also truly universalist ideals. Everyone and everything in the world should be able to actualize, be and remain themselves. This implies a global missionary task for the romantic politician: the same “change of consciousness” is needed everywhere in the world. Once again, individualism and globalism go hand in hand here, but both mean something completely different than in the Enlightenment.

Radical individualism

What to do with all this? It is impossible to completely reject romanticism. This is a necessary correction of the Enlightenment optimism about the market and technology. Only those who are completely blind can ignore the criticism of romanticism today and mindlessly cling to the idea that the market and technology offer solutions to all problems. But what about a romantic alternative to the Enlightenment? What about his ideal of authenticity, Eigentlichkeit? About “back to nature”? This ideal is at least as problematic as the ideals of the Enlightenment.

I don’t mean healthy eating and lifestyle. Of course, this is highly recommended. They are often called “natural,” although they are only partially so. Even the most organic “natural yogurt” is not very natural. Nature is useless and even dangerous for people if it is not cultivated by human hands and ingenuity. What is also not a problem is more green spaces and parks, more fresh air, a somewhat simpler and healthier lifestyle, and an equally healthy diet. All of this is highly recommended.

However, we cannot go much further. Even if, in fact, life would be better without machines and computers, you can hardly ban them and drive everyone back to the countryside, a la Pol Pot, to become a self-sufficient farmer again. Thanks to the market and technology, the world’s population now stands at eight billion people. A real return to nature would mean a quick death for most of them. It goes without saying that the explosive growth of the world’s population cannot continue in this way. But “returning to nature” is not a solution to the problem of potential overpopulation.

The problematic nature of romantic thinking becomes even more apparent when we consider its view of man and his purpose in life. For the Enlightenment, man is homo economicus, driven by his desires – his will to consume – and in this he is unchanging. Romanticism recognizes that man is indeed often a slave to his desires, but it believes that man does not have to be so and should not be so. Romanticism asserts that life is about knowing yourself and becoming your true self, “actualizing” yourself. Only those who are truly themselves are free. In other words, the highest commandment for every person is to be authentic. There is nothing more necessary than (being able to) be yourself. Everyone can feel how influential this ideal is in modern Europe. Almost every child grows up with the idea that their true, deep self is the most valuable thing they have. Most of all, we need to take care of the inner God. (Today’s (trans)gender madness is based on these ideas.)

These ideas constitute the most radical, uncompromising individualism of all time. This individualism does not say, like the individualism of the Enlightenment, that each person should choose as much as possible for himself, but that each person should choose only what he likes. That is, I must say, shocking. This leads to a hopeless search for an intangible being: one’s unique, true, deepest self. This leads to endless staring at the navel, constant internal doubts, indecision, and paralysis. Focusing on one’s own authentic self also means that the long-held belief that everyone must learn to live in others, and especially in elders, becomes unthinkable. After all, imitation is incompatible with authenticity. The result: endless experiments, many unnecessary mistakes, and, ultimately, a failed life.

But above all, the ideal of authenticity leads to boundless egoism. When the highest commandment is to be yourself, adaptation to others and attentiveness to them are out of the question. Hence the often mentioned: “Everyone should accept me for who I am!” and “I must, above all, remain true to myself!” – both of which serve primarily to justify unsocial and selfish decisions. The ego becomes the final authority; it is done by God.

This is where our brief description of the two dominant views of man and the world, Enlightenment and Romanticism, should end. Contemporary public, political, and academic debates in Europe-and the rest of the West-are now taking place almost exclusively within this intellectual system. Together they make up the so-called mainstream.

Nationalism

As a conservative, one stands in the center of all this, watching and listening to all the res novae in amazement and asking oneself how the world could have slipped so far and how man managed to stray so far from the path of tradition. The way forward is the way back, we conservatives know this. But is it possible to go back to somehow preserve and revive the great European Tradition? Or is there no hope?

For about twenty years now, we have seen the rise of views and parties that are called “national” or “nationalist.” The mainstream is increasingly criticized in the name of the people, the nation, and the borders. The reaction of the mainstream has been terrible so far. In his discourse, the only relevant variables are the individual and the universal (global), the ego and the globe as a whole, and the EU is a prelude to the latter. This is the discourse with which the mainstream is familiar and which it considers true, rational, decent, and correct.

However, more and more people are now turning to the intermediate category of people or nation and demanding that political sovereignty remain at the national level, and that their own people should come first in politics. This is not at all consistent with the dominant mindset and for many people evokes associations with the aggressive and expansionary nationalism of the first half of the twentieth century.

Such associations are, of course, absurd. The current form of nationalism is neither aggressive nor expansive, but defensive. In addition, for the previous form of nationalism, the race to which a person belonged was decisive; for today’s nationalism, it is culture: language, values, morals, and customs. These are significant intellectual differences that need to be taken into account.

The question arises: Is this nationalism an encouraging sign for conservatives? Are national or nationalist views and parties similar to conservatism? Do they also want to return to the European tradition? Or are they rather a type of modern thought, and as such, they are as opposed to tradition as the main currents of the Enlightenment and Romanticism? I would say that the picture is ambiguous. Today’s nationalism is partly romantic and partly of traditional origin.

Romantic nationalism

Let’s start with romantic nationalism. This nationalism, like the mainstream, individualistic variety of romanticism, takes the idea of authenticity as its starting point. Only here, this idea refers not to an individual but to a people, a nation. Rousseau, the father of romanticism, speaks of moi commun, the common, great self. The nation is seen as a big “I”, of which an individual is only a part. The big “I” is important. The little self matters only to the extent that it is useful to the big self. The highest value is the Eigentlichkeit of the capital I. It must be kept pure. It needs to be protected and, if necessary, reclaimed. Just as mainstream individualistic romanticism is idolatry, idolatry of the small self, so romantic nationalism is idolatry of the big self: the people, the nation.

This can be seen, in particular, in three phenomena. First, language that acquires religious characteristics: expressions, rituals, and views traditionally reserved for God or the church are here applied to the nation. Think of qualifications such as “holy,” as in “holy Germany”; or the quasi-religious veneration of everything that represents a nation, from the flag and national anthem to the leader and the state. It is no accident that Eric Voegelin and others have called this type of nationalism a substitute religion.

The second characteristic of this idolatry is its exclusive focus on the nation. They hear little or nothing about the importance and value of other communities. This applies both to communities smaller than a nation or a nation-state (family and relatives, villages, neighborhoods, civic and political associations, etc.) and to a community that encompasses all European countries, in fact, all of humanity. For romantic nationalism, the nation is the unum necessarium: the only thing necessary.

Third, and lastly, romantic nationalism, like mainstream individualistic romanticism, is associated with widespread moral relativism. What is good for a particular nation is good, what is bad for it is bad. There is no lex naturalis that is eternal and valid for all people and all people, no moral precepts that would exceed the salvation of the nation.

This romantic type of nationalism clearly contradicts the European tradition. If we define conservatism as the defender of this tradition-as I believe we must-then romantic nationalism is also at odds with conservatism. To the extent that such romantic ideas play a role in today’s national or nationalist parties, I don’t think we can see these parties as a hopeful sign.

Communitarianism

But nationalism is not necessarily romantic nationalism. And today’s nationalism, in my opinion, is mostly not romantic, but based on traditional ideas.

Today’s nationalism is based on a concept that has traditionally underpinned every analysis of politics and society, but which has almost completely disappeared from contemporary consciousness: the concept of community. For modern individualists and globalists, this concept means little or nothing. If it does evoke any associations, it is mainly about suppressed authenticity (Romanticism) or restrictions on competition (Enlightenment).

As we said earlier, for modern people from left to right, society consists only of the market and the state. The right wants to leave most things to the market, while the left believes that the state should regulate most things through the state. The fact that there is also a third entity, the community, is hardly noticed anymore, and when it is, it is perceived as something unpleasant.

In fact, society has always been primarily a community, or a community of communities. A community is a natural habitat for humans. The market and the state have emerged as auxiliary systems at the service of communities. However, gradually and at an accelerated pace after World War II, the market and the state took the place of the community, thereby largely dissolving it. In Europe and the rest of the West, it now exists only in rudimentary forms, for example, in villages where people are still rooted and know each other well. Cities and urbanized areas are almost exclusively populated by individualized people whose lives are largely organized by the market and the state. They are not part of any significant community. Even families, the most primordial and biologically rooted of all communities, are weaker than ever and have lost much of their original cohesion.

Geborgenheit

Is the disappearance of a community problematic? To answer this question, we need to understand the difference between the community, the market, and the state. Analytically, the difference is obvious. In a community, the values that (should) prevail in family, kinship, and friendship are about gratuitous mutual assistance and support from one member to another, with brotherly and maternal love as the par excellence. The market is dominated by self-interest and money; the state has rules that are imposed from the position of power and enforced under the threat of violence. In everyday reality, of course, there are all kinds of intermediate forms, but the differences are also clearly recognizable.

Both the market and the state are indispensable in every developed society, but this does not mean that they are the alpha and omega of society. Man is a social being who can only feel comfortable in Geborgenheit: he needs to be protected from the storm. Closely related is the notion of “belonging” as opposed to being an outsider or stranger.

This is something that modern people don’t think much about. This does not fit into his worldview, which is centered on the market and the state. But Geborgenheit, the sense of belonging, cannot be provided by the state and the market. But this is something that every person, even a modern one, deeply longs for. The German word “Heimat” has just such a connotation, the security that comes from belonging to a community. “Heimat is related to Heim, which means “home”. All of the concepts that are central to today’s nationalist discourse emerged from a feeling shared by more and more people of losing their “home.” The nationalist misses the Geborgenheit¸ the sense of belonging that his community once gave him.

All existing communities, large or small, are based on and provide a sense of belonging. This feeling can only exist when members of a community have things in common that create an emotional bond: whether it is the bond of blood, faith, language, or virtues and customs, values and traditions. Only this encourages people to judge: “We belong together!” Only this leads to a sense of camaraderie, mutual loyalty, and an obligation to help and support. Therefore, such feelings are important in a person’s life. Those who have to do without them have only a cool, businesslike market mechanism and an equally cool and businesslike state to rely on. “Woe to him who has no home!” Nietzsche wrote somewhere. He is right.

This longing for Geborgenheit is certainly not an inappropriate feeling. The desire to be sheltered in the community, to have a home, the need to belong is deeply human and reflects an important truth: a good life outside the community is almost impossible for people.

Types of communities

The most important communities in a person’s life are family, relatives, and friends. Thus, they are what people eventually turn to when they are in need. Those who have no family, relatives or friends inevitably have an unreliable foundation on which to build their lives. In the end, they are often left alone.

In addition to family and friends, there are other communities that give a person Geborgenheit. First of all, the traditional village and its surroundings. But also traditional church communities and other traditional associations. I mean associations whose membership is stable and whose members have known each other and their families for a long time.

From the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, the national community loomed over all other communities. It establishes the unity of the people and the homeland, in which the members of the people are no longer individuals or communities, but, in a sense, all become part of one family, obliged to help and support each other gratuitously, since they belong together and are part of the same tribe.

Inclusiveness

Life without community is not worth living. But each community is exclusive, that is, not “inclusive.” A community is unthinkable without the dichotomy of internal and external, “us” and “them.” For romantic individualists, this is a reason to oppose communities, forgetting that the market and the state also exclude in their own way: namely, those who cannot pay the price and those who do not comply with the rules.

Alienation is necessarily a part of human existence and cannot be canceled. “Inclusiveness” is a utopian concept that in practice only destroys communities without abolishing exclusion. Families are also communities. In fact, these are the most important communities. And they necessarily exclude like no other community. Is this a reason to ban them under the banner of “inclusivity”?

The other side of any community is limiting market efficiency and restraining competition. This is why supporters of Enlightenment are opposed to communities. If a community discourages competition to the point that the result is utter poverty, there is much to criticize about the Enlightenment. But until that is the case, you should keep in mind that the Geborgenheit of a community is a much greater good than the additional purchasing power you get if you trade the community for a larger market.

Subsidiarity

To summarize: a good society is a community of communities, not fragmented individuals. This includes the community of the nation. The mainstream lacks a full understanding of this basic fact. He believes that the market and the state are the only possible social institutions. This is a fundamental mistake that causes political, social and psychological disruption and chaos. The great merit of contemporary nationalists is that they have brought the concept of community back into public, political, and academic discourse.

But does this mean that nationalists and conservatives are natural allies? It depends. Let’s ask ourselves what kind of notion of nation and nationalism follows from the traditional concept of community outlined above.

First, as we have already noted, the communities identified are ubiquitous communities: family, village community, church, etc. Then there are broader communities, such as the region and province. Then the nation. Then the continent from which he came. Finally, there is the community of all people.

The more inclusive a community is, the less its existential significance is. What does this mean for nationalism? That it should know its place. It is better to be part of a nation than a continental or global empire. But on the other hand, family, village, church, club, and so on are important in everyday life. A nation, a people, is existentially only a thin community. A nation can never replace a concrete and stable social structure that exists at lower levels. A world in which only fragmented individuals are lower-level nations is a nightmare in the making. Nationalism that disregards or even destroys the social fabric in the name of the nation is as undesirable as imperial, continentalist, or globalist ideologies.

Therefore, the nation should never become the most important, let alone the only one. The principle should be a community, as small or as large as necessary. Tradition speaks of decentralization or “subsidiarity”. We start with the smallest circle, which is the base. The bigger ones win only where the smaller ones fail. Vibrant small communities are, first and foremost, what a good society consists of.

Personal care requires small units: small schools, small classrooms, small shops, small hospitals, etc. In large numbers, people inevitably become just numbers. True citizenship can really only exist in small units, such as city-states, small towns and villages. Everywhere, people are primarily subjects, regardless of the political rhetoric.

If we use size as a yardstick for assessing nationalism, we can only conclude that a nation-state is better in scale than an empire. But nation-states are generally too large in themselves to provide a meaningful sense of community. Therefore, the focus should not only be on the nation-state, but primarily on preserving and restoring smaller units.

Secondly, nationalism tends to lose sight of not only the importance of smaller communities, but also of larger ones. I mean, in particular, the European community. And I hasten to say right away that I am not talking here about the European Union (EU) and the “community of values” it represents. These are the values of the Enlightenment and (individualistic) romanticism. Instead, I am talking about a Europe that shares the centuries-old heritage of antiquity and Christianity, a Europe of the great European tradition.

Incidentally, it was also the Europe of three Catholics, Robert Schumann, Alci de Gasperi, and Konrad Adenauer, the founding fathers of the European Community. Their Europe was definitely not the “community of values” that today’s EU supporters consider Europe to be. For these founding fathers, the European Community stood for a return to the great European tradition that united all European nations and nationalities in all areas, regardless of their religious and cultural differences. It was shortly after the Second World War. The idea was that the war was possible only because we neglected this great tradition too much and pursued nationalism too much. Which I think is true and important to recognize. Therefore, it would be appropriate for today’s nationalist parties not only to think about their own nation, but also to strive for an alternative Europe, a confederation of European nations united by the common spirit of the great European tradition.

Whether this will happen is, of course, in question. But if not, there are only two alternatives. Or we will be ruled by a remote Brussels bureaucracy that will impose an enlightened and individualistic-romantic perspective everywhere under the bull of the market and the whip of European central regulation. Or thirty or so sovereign states will do the same thing themselves: namely, impose an enlightened and individualistic-romantic perspective everywhere with the carrot of the market and the stick of (national) central regulation. Neither is an attractive prospect.

The house of being

Finally, two more comments on nationalism that help put it in its proper place. First of all, a nation is distinguished by a common language. This is what conveys the feeling of “we” more than anything else. Those who speak the language flawlessly belong to us. All the rest are foreigners. Thus, the boundaries of language and nation tend to coincide. Therefore, for supporters of the European empire, multilingualism in Europe is a problem. They should prefer monolingualism. Europe will only become united when all Europeans speak the same language as Americans.

But monolingualism also has disadvantages, very big disadvantages, in fact. Because language is much more than a means of communication between people. It is a way of being in the world. This is the home of the mind. A statement cannot simply be translated into another language. Each language has its own peculiarity that is lost in translation. Different languages also mean different ways of seeing the world and being in the world. They all reveal the mystery of reality in different ways. Therefore, it is important that each nation continues to speak its own language.

This understanding carries great weight and is a powerful argument for the preservation of nations. At the same time, it also shows the limits and dangers inherent in nationalism. Those who speak only their native language, those who speak one language, fall into a mental trap, even if they do not realize it. Learning other languages is a huge enrichment and deepening of the mind. To slightly modify Goethe’s words, we can say: “Whoever does not speak a foreign language does not know his own soul.” After all, any knowledge is comparative. Self-knowledge begins with looking at oneself through the eyes of others. This is only possible if one speaks the language of the other. Nationalism can easily lead to a person speaking only their own language and losing sight of everything else. And this applies to any monolingualism, including the pan-European one.

Human body

Finally, there is something else that is most important for a correct assessment of nationalism. When a person dies and stands before the judgment seat of God, he does not save himself by saying that he was a good German, or Dutch, or French. God is not interested in this at all. It asks only one thing: “Have you been a good person?” The only thing that matters in the end is to strive to be a good person. And when we left the human body in the ground, we certainly left the nation and nationalism – as well as inter- and supranationalism – far behind.