In a way that seemed unimaginable in 1989, the "nervous fever of the national" (Friedrich Nietzsche) now shapes international politics. How sensible is the attempt to counter populist slogans with a politics of reason? The author traces the theory of the great narratives of our time (family, nation, homeland). He incorporates the philosophical and sociological tradition (Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, Plessner, Tönnies) as well as the history of modern nationalist movements. According to Leonhard Emmerling, the answer can only lie in an ethics of otherness beyond identity, in a determined politics of equality that reimagines the territories of foreignness and belonging.