A Post-nationalist Conception Of Europe: Habermas And His Critics

Since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of European reconstruction, European integration has always been seen as one of the most innovative and fruitful political practices in the world. However, studies on European integration have been long constrained in the field of positive sciences, such as international relation, economy and political science. On the contrary, political philosophy has contributed little—this situation is even worse in China's European studies. This intellectual situation has been changed in the last ten years. More and more political philosophers show academic interests on the issue of European integration, most of who, of course, are come from western countries. As experts of theoretical discussion, political philosophers have also engaged themselves in debates on regional political integration and multiple-level governance of the world. Among these scholars, Jürgen Habermas is definitely the most important one.The influences of Habermas' theory on European integration are enormous both on academic literatures and political practice in last ten years. Since the release of his post-nationalist theory, Habermas' key conceptions on European integration appear frequently on concerning literatures. After 1990s, based on his early theory of "post-conventional society", Habermas develops his theory of "post-nationalism". In his collection of political essays The Postnational Constellation, Habermas deeply discussed some closely related problems, such as nation-states, nationalism, and the normative connotation of collective identity in modern society. In his post-nationalist theory, Habermas claims that the collective identity or social solidarity in modern political communities should be based on a series of abstract and universal legal norms, but not on the pre-political ties, such as blood, language, ethnicity, culture or traditional way of life. We can find two reasons as for why Habermas develops such a theory. First, from the perspective of practice and reality, because of the migrations of nations and the accelerated free movement of people, the modern societies are characterized by the high degree of culture-multiplicity. In today's world, nearly all the countries are composed of different nation, in addition with the aborigines and immigrants. The composition of a country's social culture and the value system are extremely complex. Therefore, if we do not want to pay the bloody price of genocide or racial segregation, then the tie that connects the whole political community can never be specific national identity or traditional way of life. On the other hand, from the normative perspective, the modern society is post-conventional society, a disenchanted society, which means the autonomy of individuals should be fully realized. Any traditional or ascriptive identities from outside of individuals have lost their character of taking-for-granted, and only those reflected and agreed by the entire members can become the basis of collective identity and social solidarity in modern societies.On the basis of his post-nationalist theory of collective identity, Habermas advanced his post-nationalist conception of European unification. He strongly supports the political integration of Europe. He claims that the integrated Europe should cultivate a new type of abstract collective identity based on "constitutional patriotism", other than the concrete and uncritical affect to one's nation. Facing the critiques from nationalism and communitarianism, he develops the conception of "political culture" in order to accommodate their reasonable concerns. Habermas is so passionate about this issue of European integration, this is not only because he hopes to apply his theory of post-nationalism and modernity in the practice of European integration, but also because he strongly believes that only a European stepping on the post-nationalist way can she resist the revival of nationalism, and at the same time effectively resolve the challenges now facing herself. Certainly, Habermas' post-nationalist conception of Europe arouses a lot of worries and criticism. Among all the comments, we can list three sorts: criticism from nationalism and communitarianism, criticism from civic republicanism and criticism from within post-nationalism.Although serious critiques come from all directions, although there exist obvious misunderstandings about Habermas' theory of European integration, Habermas has not changed his viewpoints, and he has not directly respond to these critiques either. Therefore, it really makes sense to synthesize these comments and try to give a comprehensive response.Habermas' post-nationalist conception of Europe is not an isolated theory. It closely connected with the practical issues, with the current debates in academic sphere, with the development of his own theoretical system, and even with the European tradition of political thoughts. In some degree, these background knowleges form a necessary and maybe more important part of his theory on European integration. However, most of Habermas' critics mainly concentrate on his currently published papers, while pay little attention to the background theory of his post-nationalism: the development of his theory on collective identity before 1990s. We will see that Habermas' post-nationalist conception of Europe depends much on his early theory, and meanwhile, there exist great adjustments.Therefore, my objects of this thesis are to reconstruct Habermas' post-nationalist conception of Europe, and try to make a defense for Habermas' theory against the various critiques. Habermas' theory is developed among various requirements in tension, and even in contradiction. Habermas keeps balance carefully among all these demands in order to pay attention to each of them without falling into extreme. Therefore, it seems that we can find the answers to all the critiques in his own theory. The meaning of this research is, on the one hand we can get a better and clearer understanding of Habermas' post-nationalist conception of Europe, and discuss some important political questions that dominated the theoretic debated in political philosophy in 70s and 80s of last century on the other.Of course, this thesis will not concentrate only on the reconstruction of the history of political thoughts of Habermas. The theoretic reconstruction is for the purpose of getting a better and comprehensive understanding of his theory and its development. Only by this can we make proper defense for his theory. In fact, as we have said above, the criticism of Habermas' theory mainly comes from two sides: the nationalism from the right side and the radical post-nationalism from the left side. After close analysis, we could find the corresponding answers against these critiques within Habermas' own theory. Further, the alternative plans that these critics proposed are either not too different with Habermas' as imagined, or they are based on some misunderstanding of Habermas' theory.