150 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Habermas argued that orientation to the West was not at issue
in the Historikerstreit. The difference between the two camps was
that “... one thinks of this in terms of military alliance and for-
eign policy, the other in terms of Aufklärungskultur [the political
culture of the Enlightenment].”^60 Habermas’s distinction is not
entirely convincing because Geissler, Genscher, and Kohl also tried
to defend We s t bi n d u ng on the grounds of shared democratic values.
Nonetheless, Habermas insisted that the neoconservatives’ ver-
sion of We s t bi n d u ng would revive German nationalism. Influenced
in the 1970s by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s writings on
postconventional morality, Habermas insisted that a “postconven-
tional identity” was the only appropriate identity for Germany.^61
In response to “the conservatives [who] would like to place a revi-
sionist history” at the service of a “national-historical refurbishment
of a conventional identity,” Habermas proposed “constitutional
patriotism” as the “only reliable basis for our link to the West.”^62
Constitutional patriotism emerged therefore as a critique of Kohl’s
reduction of We s t bi n d u ng to “NATO philosophy colored by German
n at ion a l ism”:
The only patriotism which does not alienate us from the West is a
constitutional patriotism. A commitment to the universalistic con-
stitutional principles which is anchored by conviction has unfor-
tunately only been able to develop in the German Kulturnation
since – and because of – Auschwitz. Whoever wishes to exorcise
the shame surrounding this fact with such phrases as the obses-
sion with guilt [Stürmer and Oppenheimer], whoever wishes to pull
Germans back to a conventional form of national identification, is
destroying the only reliable basis for our link to the West.^63
The “majority of the historians’ guild,” wrote Habermas, fol-
lowing Wehler, had “always thought and argued in terms of
Reich nationalism, statist consciousness and power politics.”^64
Historiography should aim at enlightenment, not social integration.
Habermas characterized Stürmer’s vision of historiography in terms(^60) Habermas, “Westorientierung der Bundesrepublik,” in EAS, 162.
(^61) See, for example, Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981 ).
(^62) Habermas, “Apologetische Tendenzen,” in EAS, 133.
(^63) Ibid., 135 (emphasis added).
(^64) Ibid.