Editing Talk:Transcendent values (section)

==The Böckenförde dilemma==

"The liberal secular state lives on premises that it cannot itself guarantee."
    - Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde in ''Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit'', Frankfurt, 1976.

[Liberal, here, means freedom-oriented. Böckenförde was not referring to the current political terminology that has drifted in recent decades due to political power shifts in 
the various party value changes that have occurred.]

The quoted sentence from Böckenförde's article is referred to as the [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6ckenf%C3%B6rde_dilemma Böckenförde dilemma]. The rest of his paragraph is instructive:

"This is the great adventure it has undertaken for freedom's sake. As a liberal state it can endure only if the freedom it bestows on its citizens takes some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large. On the other hand, it cannot by itself procure these interior forces of regulation, that is not with its own means such as legal compulsion and authoritative decree. Doing so, it would surrender its liberal character and fall back, in a secular manner, into the claim of totality it once led the way out of, back then in the confessional civil wars." 

A democratic state is supported by the democratic convictions of its citizens. Those convictions cannot be supported by the democratic state itself in some ouroborous paradox.

[[User:Craig Calcaterra|Craig Calcaterra]] ([[User talk:Craig Calcaterra|talk]]) 18:20, 7 May 2024 (CDT)