European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

310 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYtune the civic construction of politics in theorizations about society andthe State united as the communicative action theory, or embarkedupon as theories of justice (think of Habermas again, and in Rawls andin the constellation following him: Nozick, Dworkin, Buchanan).To my understanding, Kant´s explicit approximations to the subject 14do not do anything other than make explicit what is beating in thedepth of his interpretation of history and of our historic task. And theylead me to believe that the issue has certain clear profiles in the sociopoliticalhorizon. With those I intend to give life to the Kantian conceptof moralization, understood as the dimension that measures the stagesof culturalization and civilisation in human actions. I think that we cantalk about the dimensions of moralization of human life from variousfronts:Firstly: Moralization in its mediations. With this I refer to a line ofthought that delves into Kantian discourse and has various moments:One: Moralization, on our back. The non-phenomenal moralizationwalks through the perfecting of culture and civilization. This is quiteevident taking into consideration that culture and civilisation are notgoals by themselves. Kant explains this in different ways, especiallywhen he permits himself the audacity of asking those who scepticallyquestion the progress of humanity, for proof to the contrary. Kantreasons that we feel invaded by the greatest of nonconformities beforetheir horrors, because we are looking from an increasingly highbalcony. There is where he puts moral demands, letting our indignationbe oriented to the improvement of the technical practical decisions ofcivilization. The judgement of both rational faith and critical demandtherefore imposes.Two: Moralization, perfecting legality, reigned by criticism. In thissense, the task of perfecting the forms of cohabitation under theprinciple of the civil constitution is a regulating force. And in thatsense, I believe we can describe the reflections by Habermas in Beyondthe Nation-State, the first work contained in the book which appearedin Trotta with this title in 1997, as Kantian-based analyses 15 .14Vid. The little work written in 1793, that is usually briefly cited as Teoria-Praxis.See also the two appendices to Perpetual Peace.15What is interesting about the Habermasian text is that it makes us think about thecitizen-State correlation and about its current manifestation. It would be all aboutfounding the type of political action that sublimates (allow me the expression) theabstraction of the state liberating it from its ‘national’ content, and at the same timeallowing that its subject be the citizen who is integrally whatever he is and wants to bein his determination. See the splendid introductory work by my colleague at theUniversity of Valencia, Professor M. Jiménez Redondo.