It goes without saying that we see ourselves as members of a national community. But is what we call our national identity really unified? Is it the same in everyone who has it? Is it also uniform in the sense that it is made up of the same factors?

The book seeks the answer to these questions, and its basic thesis can be formulated as follows: what we call national identity - which can be chosen and constructed to some extent - is built on regional identity. By developing the distinction, we get conceptual tools to resolve a tension that has formed a fundamental contrast in nationalism research since the 1980s, namely the contrast between modernist and anti-modernist nation concepts.
The other content strand of the thought process is provided by the narrative aspect, the hermeneutic consideration that our national identity is not given to us in the form of things, but becomes accessible through linguistic mediation, primarily by telling stories.

We believe that the concept of the national community, the nation, is essentially similar to that of the individual, from the point of view that its uniqueness and difference from other national communities does not lie in characteristics, but in the development of a story.

OLAY CSABA DSc, Head of Department, University Professor, ELTE BTK Department of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. He studied philosophy, mathematics and physics in Budapest, Liechtenstein and Tübingen. He has been teaching at ELTE since 2001, and was a guest lecturer in Berlin, Dijon, Oldenburg, Nagyvárad and Cluj. Main research area: 19-20. century continental philosophy, existentialism, hermeneutics, political philosophy, Heidegger, Jaspers, Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Frankfurt School.