Fatherland Europe? On European and National Identity and Democratic Sovereignty
1998; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/978-3-662-03622-8_11
ISSN2211-2723
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoThe philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder presented a treatise in Riga in the year 1765 under the title “Do we have now still the public and fatherland of the ancients?”.1 Looking at the European Union we have to change the subject into “Do we have now still the national fatherland or do we have the Fatherland Europe?”. Before the French Revolution and the era of nationalism following it, which should shape Europe up to 1945, Herder had answered: “We have not the political religion of the ancients any more, which would retain its value only up to the walls of a city, and which would change with the air of an other area.... Do we have a fatherland whose sweet name is freedom? Yes! But we think differently about the word freedom as the ancients did. For them freedom was an untamed cheekiness, a daring to direct the wheels of the state by themselves. ... The character of our public is not the bold wildness of the ancients any more; it is a finer and more restrained freedom. ...”2
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