JU ̈RGEN HABERMASparticipation in elections would, in a democratic constitutional state [Rechtsstaat], be as
out of place as to prescribe solidarity. The readiness, if need be, to vouch for one’s fellow
citizens, although they are and remain unknown to oneself, as well as the willingness to
sacrifice one’s own concerns for the general interest may only be suggested to the citizens
[Bu ̈rger] of a liberal community. This is why political virtues, even when ‘‘levied’’ in small
doses, are essential for the continued existence of a democracy. Political virtues are a
matter of socialization and of acclimating oneself to the practices and modes of thinking
within a liberal political culture. The status of citizen is, in a certain sense, embedded in
civil society, which derives sustenance from spontaneous and, if you like, ‘‘prepolitical’’
sources.
From this it does not yet follow that the liberal state is incapable of reproducing its
motivational preconditions out of its own secular resources. Of course, the motives for
citizens’ participation in political opinion- and will-formation draw upon ethical concep-
tions of life as well as cultural forms of life. But democratic practices develop their own
political dynamic. Only aRechtsstaatwithout democracy—and in Germany we have long
enough been accustomed to just such a state—would suggest a negative answer to Bo ̈ck-
enfo ̈rde’s question: ‘‘To what extent can peoples united in a state live solely on the guaran-
tee of individual freedom, without a ‘common bond’ which precedes that very freedom?’’^6
The democratically constitutedRechtsstaatnot only safeguards negative freedoms for citi-
zens of society [Gesellschaftsbu ̈rger] concerned with their own welfare; by relaxing controls
on communicative freedoms, the state also mobilizes its citizens to participate in the
public debate on issues that pertain to all of them. The missed ‘‘common bond’’ is a
democratic process in which the correct understanding of the constitution is ultimately
under discussion.
In current discussions concerning, for instance, the reform of the welfare state—as
well as immigration policies, the war in Iraq, and the abolition of compulsory military
service—what is at issue is not just individual policies, but always also the contentious
interpretation of constitutional principles. And implicitly, what is at issue is the question
of how—in light of the diversity of our cultural ways of life, of the pluralism of our
worldviews and religious convictions—we want to understand ourselves as citizens of the
Federal Republic [Bundesrepublik] as well as Europeans. Certainly, looking back histori-
cally, a common religious background, a common language, and, most of all, a newly
awakened national consciousness were conducive to the emergence of a highly abstract
civic solidarity. But republican sentiments have, in the meantime, largely broken away
from these prepolitical anchorings—that we are not prepared to die ‘‘for Nice’’ is simply
no longer an objection to a European constitution. Think of the political-ethical dis-
courses about the Holocaust and widespread criminality: they have made the citizens of
the Federal Republic aware that the constitution is an achievement. The example of a self-
critical ‘‘politics of memory [Geda ̈chtnispolitik]’’—by now no longer an exception, since
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