Herder on Aesthetic Imagination as a Source of Post-National Democratic Solidarity: A Contribution to Habermas’ Constitutional Patriotism

Abstract

Constitutional patriotism has been criticized for providing too thin of an identity as the ground for common citizenship. Answering to this criticism, Habermas recently stressed the role of affective attachments in creating constitutional patriotic bonds. Still, an account of the type of imagination that could foster such post-national affective attachments is lacking. Drawing on Herder’s conception of culture, I argue that this requires a modern form of mythology. This would engage the interactive and communicative potential of poetic images in inclusionary ways that shape a common feeling of humanity. I also argue that Herder makes a case for a form of cosmopolitanism that finds the right balance between unity and diversity, universality and particularity. Thus, it shapes good dispositions that are conducive to tolerance and peace, avoiding, at the same time, the danger of imperialism or supranationalism. Thus enriched, Habermas’ constitutional patriotism requires supplementing the power of law to create bonds between people with the horizontal production of a cosmopolitan culture. This would include narratives that shape people’s imaginative capacity to see their own culture/nation both as a fallible part in the larger whole of mankind and as a free and equal contributor to the global advancement toward humanity.