Civic virtue grows through identification with the polity, offering new identities
Evidence
Civility or civic virtue may not be so difficult of achievement as it often seems. It involves not just the internalization of public values and the disciplining of personal desires; given the communitarian nature of freedom as non-domination, it also involves identification with larger groups, even with the polity as a whole, and access to new and satisfying identities. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1297
Categorization
- XREF: Connects directly to social-identity work on solidarity formation via shared membership rather than out-group opposition. — connects to: Mutual trust predates and is prerequisite for civic virtue. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 33; Civic virtue grows from rewarding group identification, not self-discipline.; Legitimacy, built through contestatory democracy, generates civic virtue. (+6 more)
- SEED: Core material for an essay on solidarity built through attractive shared identity rather than external threat.
- DEEPTHINKING: Inverts standard cost-of-virtue framing: civic virtue is less about self-denial than about gaining satisfying identities through group attachment.
Broader Connections
- Identity is transformed by political action, not a precondition of it
#expands(0.85) - Contestatory democracy cultivates the civic virtue the state needs
#corroborates(0.78) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1292 - Democratic institutions presuppose the civic spirit they are meant to create.
#qualifies(0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 702 - Recognition from peer groups converts a local fight into valued public citizenship
#expands(0.72) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1475