next article in this issue  |
Preview first page |
Document Details : Title: Gemeenschapszin Subtitle: Over het supplement van de politiek Author(s): BRAECKMAN, Antoon Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 85 Issue: 4 Date: 2023 Pages: 457-482 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.85.4.3293174 Abstract : No political community is possible without public spirit, i.e., without its citizens’ commitment. Therefore, public spirit is the ‘supplement of politics’: it conditions the possibility of politics, without itself being political. In the first section, the essay explores the historical origins and contours of the idea of public spirit. It points out that the demand for public spirit is a modern, i.e., secular phenomenon. In addition, it describes public spirit as an ethos of ‘political solidarity’. In the second section, the essay discusses three paradoxes that characterize the relationship between public spirit and the liberal state. Building on Böckenförde’s paradox that 'the liberal, secularized state lives by presuppositions which it cannot itself guarantee', the essay first presents major solutions that have been suggested to counter this paradox (civil religion, education, civil society, conflict, etc.). The second paradox, it is argued, is that the liberal state not only cannot guarantee the public spirit it presupposes but actually undermines it. But then, in contrast, the third paradox states that all this notwithstanding, political solidarity remarkably renews itself after all. This leaves the essay to conclude that the liberal state parasitizes on its supplement: a public spirit that comes from elsewhere. |
|
