Böckenförde dilemma

The Böckenförde - dictum (also Böckenförde theorem, Böckenförde doctrine or Böckenförde dilemma) describes the problem of secular states to create social capital, with a formulation of Ernst- Wolfgang Böckenförde.

Content

The problem was raised by the later judge at the Federal Constitutional Court:

" The liberal secular state lives on conditions that he can not itself guarantee. This is the great venture which is he, received the sake of freedom. As a free state he can on the one hand only exist if the freedom it grants its citizens from within, from the moral substance of the individual and the homogeneity of society, regulated. On the other hand, he can not search by itself, that is, by the means of legal compulsion and authoritative bid guarantee these internal regulatory forces without abandoning his liberality and - to fall back into those claim to totality, from which he has brought out in the religious civil wars - on a secular level. "

Under feudalism, the king ruled as sovereign of " grace of God", the legitimacy of his rule was established so transcendent. In the Republic, there is no generally accepted definition of the sovereign, in theory, the people is the holder of sovereignty (→ popular sovereignty ). However, depending on the constitution the people delegated more or less large parts of sovereignty and state authority to the heads of state and parliaments. In the election coverage can be found, for example, words such as " the sovereign has decided ." The Böckenförde - dictum is an indication that the legitimacy of the rule as opposed to absolutism "from below" happens in a democracy. During the absolutist state can force its citizens to loyalty and thus create the conditions of his rule itself, the democratic state is dependent on the democratic spirit of its citizens, it can not enforce.

This leads to difficulties in solving the question of how a democratically constituted society can ensure their survival and to protect themselves against risk. Böckenförde makes the paradox attention that the state in attempting to defend democracy " the means of legal compulsion and authoritative commandment ," even to the dictatorship is because he would be serving over the " people as sovereign ."

Gerhard Czermak thinks Böckenförde would " thoroughly misunderstood, if not exploited " when will derived from his dictum that " the state must promote the churches and religious communities as values ​​maker in a special way, because otherwise the destruction promotes [ ... ] He ( Böckenförde ) speaks of risk and refers back to the acting in society very different forces. He is concerned that all groups with their own ever, even moral, self-image contribute to the integration of a part of society. "

Böckenförde answers 2009 and 2010 in two interviews to the criticism, he would emphasize the ethical power of religion: " This criticism overlooks the context in which I have formulated this theorem in 1964. I tried back then, especially the Catholics to explain the emergence of a secularized, that is secular, not more religious state and reduce their skepticism towards him. That was even before 1965, when at the end of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church, religious freedom fully recognized for the first time. In this skepticism into it I called on Catholics to accept this state and get involved in it, among other things, with the argument that the state has to rely on their ethical embossing force. "

2010 clarified Böckenförde it as follows: "her thought by the State, needs the liberal order a unifying ethos, a kind of" common sense " among those who live in this state. The question then is: What is nourished this ethos, which can not be enforced by the State nor enforced sovereign? You can say: first of the lived culture. But what are the factors and elements of this culture? Since then we are in fact in sources such as Christianity, Enlightenment and humanism. But do not automatically in every religion. "

A secular version of this idea is already found in Aristotle: that the virtue of a state is founded on the virtue of citizens, and that these on their conditioning, habituation and rational insight is based - what is also in the conventional wisdom, that every people has the Government, it deserves. Indeed institutionally difficult to be guaranteed - - Task good state order therefore political ( character ) education therefore appears as an essential condition of existence and.

Criticism

In this context, the discussion about changing values ​​must be considered.

According to the pessimistic interpretation Elisabeth Noelle - Neumann, a continuous decline in values ​​has taken place since the sixties. As symptoms especially the erosion of "bourgeois virtues" such as public spirit and job satisfaction, but also meaning losses of church and religion are called. According to Helmut Klages, however, less of a decline in values ​​, but rather a synthesis of values ​​old and new values ​​takes place. Ronald Inglehart posits a shift from tangible to intangible assets, which democracy ultimately strength: As a consequence of changing values ​​he takes a high willingness to participate and greater freedom to.

Gerhard sky man points out that the sociologists of the discussion about a decline in values ​​countered that serve " the modern social control mechanisms and the democratic manners as the basis of social integration ". Not the appeal including the communitarians, but the public discourse, the domination -free communication ( Habermas ) created out of itself ( " self-creation process"), those values ​​and behaviors (democratic virtues ), the needs of the liberal state to live and survive. Jürgen Habermas also sees the danger that a derailed modernization of society makes the democratic band tired and the kind of solidarity auszehrt to which the democratic state, without being able to enforce legally, is dependent.

Michael House Also, the Böckenförde thesis as unfounded. From Böckenförde finding that the modern democratic state was created under the influence of the Christian religion, does not necessarily follow that today's society is dependent on religion as a foundation. Much talk, however, that a civic consensus could also rest on connecting similarities as common interests, interdependencies, constraints, opportunities for cooperation, a common history or common historical learning processes.

Although Axel Montenbruck follows Böckenförde approach. But Montenbruck leads, although " connecting ethos " quite within the meaning of Böckenförde collectability of a, the western- secular idea of ​​civil religion, one that is old and on Rousseau's idea of the " Civil Religion " back: " The" solution " to this dilemma may only take place on an even higher level, such as that of the preambles. the people must create beyond the state own " substitute religion of internalized values ​​and principles ", which it must then submit. About those have the people, as it etc the preambles to their constitutions. prove. only it prepares them understandable manner trouble now yet again to speak of a religion, even if it is only a civil religion. "

Effect

Since the 1990s, this idea is taken up in a modification of Paul Kirchhof and to demographic trends related ( → Diogenes paradox).

The Böckenförde doctrine is considered the " center of the Liberalkonservativismus ".