Ernest Renan's Liberal Nationalism

I recently had occasion to read Ernest Renan's famous 1882 lecture, "What is a Nation?" I'm told that this is something of a canonical text in the history of liberal nationalism, and reading through it makes sense why. The lecture is beautiful, learned, and forceful. Renan's commitment to some kind of liberalism resonates all the way through, and his warnings of the terror that accompany illiberal nationalism read prophetic at times.

I take it this lecture is most famous for three points: (1) The rejection of any "metaphysical" nationalism founded on race, language, and religion (as well as economic interest, military necessity, and geography); (2) The insistence that nations must forget their origins and construct a new shared memory; and (3) The claim that nations depend on popular consent, and so can easily be redrawn or deconstructed.

Those three central claims make it easy to see a continuity between Renan's liberal nationalism and, for example, Habermas' "constitutional patriotism." Such views contain a clear hostility to tying political citizenship to any pre-political identity (race, religion, language), and hope instead for a national identity built on some other kind of shared beliefs. Liberal nationalism is always a contingent nationalism. The "homeland" only exists insofar as people continue to consciously will it into existence. Why should it be anything more!

We have driven metaphysical and theological abstractions out of politics. What remains after that? Man, his desires, his needs. Secession, you will say to me, and, in the long run, the disintegration of nations will be the consequence of a system that places these old organisms at the mercy of oft scarcely enlightened wills. It is clear that, in such a field, no principle must be taken to extremes. Truths of this order are only applicable as a whole and in a very general fashion. Human wills change; but what does not, here below? Nations are not something eternal. They had their beginnings, they will end. A European confederation will probably replace them. But such is not the law of the century in which we are living. At the present time, the existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity, even. Their existence is the guarantee of liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and one master. 

I think it's notable that Renan begins with the objection from secession (if the nation is just a matter of will, won't you have lots of secession?), he grants that voluntary exit is always a possibility, but he suggests finally that history well tend toward a "European confederation" rather than micro-states.

The question of referenda and national determination is present throughout the lecture. Renan makes it explicit in one famous passage: "A nation's existence is (if you will pardon the metaphor) an everyday plebiscite, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life."

It's tempting to read that line literally, and perhaps that's how it should be read. Perhaps Renan is arguing that provinces should just periodically hold plebiscites to determine to what nation they belong. That's probably what Renan favored in the case of Alsace! But I think that reading misses the second half of the quotation: "a perpetual affirmation of life." This is clearly a consent theory, but not necessarily a crudely majoritarian one. At least, I don't think that my daily decision to continue living just arises from a quick balance of the pros and cons. The will to remain a people emanates from somewhere deeper than can perhaps be captured by a momentary opinion poll or plebiscite.

In rejecting essentialist conceptions of the nation, Renan impressively goes through each candidate (race, religion, language, etc) to argue that none can provide a satisfactory account of what constitutes a nation. Still, if I may be pedantic, I think what he's doing here is introducing a difference between the efficient and formal cause of the nation. The form of the nation is not tied to any of these essential characteristics, but that doesn't mean the efficient cause of a national identity is always unrelated to such essentialism. This is why Renan emphasizes that we must forget the true origins of our national identity!

The act of forgetting, I would even say, historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings back to light the deeds of violence that took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been the most beneficial. Unity is always achieved brutally"

(Recall Burke on this point: "There is a secret veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments. They had their origin, as the beginning of all such things have had, in some matters that had as good be covered by obscurity. Time in the origin of most governments has thrown this mysterious veil over them. Prudence and discretion make it necessary to throw something of that veil over a business in which otherwise the fortune, the genius, the talents and military virtue of this Nation never shone more conspicuously." Hastings impeachment speech 2/16/1788).

So part of what it is to have a national identity is a requirement that we forget the vicious efficient cause of our nation. Yet essential for having a nation is having a new sense of shared historic memory. Here's a famous passage from the lecture:

A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things that, in truth, are but one constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form. 

The reason these two things--historic memory and present consent--are really just one thing is because "A heroic past, great glory ... this is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea."

And what kind of memories in particular are required? Memories of historic sacrifice! Those are the only memories that lead us to will to perform new glorious deeds in the future.

All this is certainly, I think, a kind of liberal nationalism. But what's so interesting about it to me is how much more demanding it is than contemporary liberal nationalisms! What liberal nationalists today would dare suggest that the nation is a "spiritual principle," or that the essence of national identity is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for others?

Sometimes, I think, language not so different from the "spiritual principle" is deployed by some of the more ambitious democratic theorists, who seek to conceive of democratic life as truly a collective venture. I have some sympathies for thinking that way. And some liberal nationalists might also be inclined to write in the language of sacrifice. For David Miller, I believe, the language of sacrifice makes an occasional appearance. But "sacrifice" has been thoroughly sanitized! No longer is it meant to evoke heroic literal death for the nation, but rather a willingness to pay higher taxes to support the poor. When most contemporary liberal philosophers speak of sacrifice, they really just mean reciprocity. But I don't think that fits the language of glory Renan insists on using.

If anything, the closest instantiation of Renanian liberal nationalism I can think of is Lincoln! The political theology of the Gettysburg Address is designed specifically to construct a new shared historic memory to ground the American national identity. The (not so political) theology of the Second Inaugural is doing something a bit different: dwelling on shared sin and divinely ordained punishment, not historic sacrificial glory. The Lyceum Address also seems relevant, as there Lincoln laments the disappearance of a shared historic memory of the founding. But there too, Lincoln thinks it is impossible to hold on to a memory of a founding, for it will be inevitably levelled by the "silent artillery of time." Still, the youthful Lincoln's solution of constitutional reverence (even if lacking in some historical rigor) fits well with Renan's account of common sacrifice creating a shared will to construct a glorious future together.