BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

humanism, he did not fully consider the potentially radical implications of incommensurable
culture and ethical relativism in the case of aggressive political nationalism or in troubled
relations between states. 29 Of course, political state and cultural nation have not stayed separate
in the real world, at least since the rise of the modern state with nationalism as a surrogate
religion. Nevertheless, Herder did vigorously condemn three great myths, later sins, of political
nationalism: the notion of cultural superiority or a dominant model; the escapist vogue of
historical myth, such as those entertained in the supposed ancient heritage of French classicism
or the pedigree of German purity and heroism against Rome; and lastly, any uniformitarian idea
of progress. 30
While the Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment dialectic remained unresolved with the
onset of nationalism, the civic/organic dichotomy has left its imprint in nationality laws founded
respectively on jus soli (right of soil), emphasizing place of birth, and jus sanguinus (right of
blood), based on parental citizenship by descent. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
the former became a hallmark of French citizenship, made even more inclusive with the addition
of jus sanguinus; the latter became the sole determinant of a more exclusionary German
citizenship at birth. Rogers Brubaker attributed this divergence to “particular cultural idioms”
expressed through state policy within specific historical and institutional contexts. 31 Brubaker
argued that existing nationality laws remained unchanged, even amidst what became virtually
29 Berlin, 184-5, 209-11.
30 Ibid., 186-90.
31 Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA; London:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 15-16.
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