Civil society or constitutional patriotism?

Abstract

The question posed in this essay is why Ernest Gellner should in his last work have provided a theory of civil society with so little to say about intermediate associations or social welfare or social movements. Instead he displayed an economistic vision that reads like a triumphalist apologia for capitalism. Also, why did Jürgen Habermas provide a theory of constitutional patriotism in which formal legal principles of constitutionality prevail over politics, economics and culture? The answers look to problems of temporality (time‐gaining and time‐binding) and of political demobilization as explanations for the spartan character of both visions. It is argued that the human decency which both theorists crave for their respective societies (Czech Republic and Germany) cannot avoid the problems of democracy which these theorists wish to channel either into economic energy or into fidelity to constitutional norms.