A nation is therefore a vast solidarity, constituted by the sentiment of the sacrifices one has made and of those one is yet prepared to make. It presupposes a past; it is, however, summarized in the present by a tangible fact: consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation’s existence is (if you will pardon the metaphor) an everyday plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life. Oh! I know this is less metaphysical than divine right, less brutal than alleged historical right. In the frame of ideas I put to you, a nation has no more right than a king does to say to a province: “You belong to me, I am seizing you.” A province, for us, is its inhabitants; if anyone has the right to be consulted in such an office, it is the inhabitant. A nation never has any real interest in annexing or holding on to a country against its will. What the nation wants is, ultimately, the only legitimate criterion, the one to which one must always return.[1]
Ernest Renan, What is a Nation? (1882)
[1][1]
Ernest Renan, What is a Nation? and Other Political Writings, tr. and ed.
M.F.N. Giglioli (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), pp. 261-262.
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