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The Enlarged Moral Self



Author(s)

Melis Menent

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2177/2016.09.001

University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

Constitutional Patriotism is a new form of identity. It addresses the national component of identity formations in order to transform them in light of universal human rights principles. In this article, I seek to strengthen this theory left underdeveloped by Habermas. To do so, I use the idea of moral development which Habermas borrowed from Kohlberg. I argue that Constitutional Patriotism is the missing link in Habermas’s reading of Kohlberg. I complement Kohlberg’s reading of moral consciousness with the psychoanalytic idea of individuation. Communication, language, and autonomy all fall into their places in this interdisciplinary puzzle of Constitutional Patriotism spanning over the cultural terrain. This article takes part of the broader project of Constitutional Patriotism here only focusing on the notion of the selfhood.

identity, Habermas, constitutional patriotism, communication, human rights, Kohlberg, cosmopolitanism, autonomy, Piaget