OWN VALUE SYSTEM

In the beginning of the 19th century, the German Romantic thought which starts with Herder discards the idea of culture as a unitary reality, showing History as a succession of cultures, each one with its own conception of the world and its own value system. The ideological justification of nationalism, within the European context, and more concretely of linguistic nationalism, is a direct consequence of German Romanticism. On the one hand, the extraordinary political consequences of this ideological foundation have been felt throughout the last two centuries. At a certain stage, they served for the unification of both Germany and Italy, due to their basic linguistic identity. On the other hand, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered into small national units, each one with different languages. The Soviet Union tried to match the unity of the communist system with the autonomy of nationalities, which only reached their full independence after its dissolution.