LIBERTY THROUGH UNIFORMITY (THE EMERGENCE OF THE NATION-STATE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION)
LIBERTY THROUGH UNIFORMITY (THE EMERGENCE OF THE NATION-STATE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION)

Summary/Abstract: The fundamental hypothesis of the study is that the specific form of European statehood, which we still refer to today as the nation-state, emerged during the French Revolution. One of the earliest and most accurate descriptions of this form of statehood comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s younger compatriot, Benjamin Constant, a relentless critic of Jacobin terror: “the same code of law, the same measures, the same rules, and, if possible, gradually the same language: behold, this is called a perfectly organised society”. Constant was probably right in saying that the essence of this form of statehood was uniformity, but his position needs to be supplemented insofar as it originally meant more than the legal, administrative, or even linguistic homogenization of contemporary French society: it also presupposed the introduction of a unified civil (or civic) religion. The study aims to investigate the ideological considerations behind these homogenization efforts, with particular emphasis on the ideological reasons behind the introduction of a civil religion. The basic assumption here is that the revolutionary effort to introduce a civil religion, and in connection with this, the organization of the feast of the Supreme Being during the revolution, reveals something not only about the nation-state, but also about the sentiment and way of thinking that legitimizes it, namely nationalism.

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