The prologue of Invisible Fatherland examines how Weimar Germany has become a metaphor for democratic failure and is often remembered for its catastrophic collapse and the rise of Adolf Hitler. This narrative overshadows the nuanced and sophisticated efforts by Weimar contemporaries to build an open and forward-looking democracy amid social, political, and economic turmoil. Written from Charlottesville, a city grappling with its own history of democratic challenges, the prologue reflects on the vibrant practices of Weimar democracy by looking at the Republic from its hopeful beginning rather than its tragic end. At the same time, it also acknowledges the challenges Weimar faced, as authoritarian and illiberal ideologies exploited its legal and cultural vulnerabilities. Setting the stage for the book’s broader argument, the prologue asks readers to reconsider the meaning of democratic fragility — not as a weakness, but as a strength that fosters flexibility and adaptation. This reflection is especially urgent as democracies worldwide confront rising authoritarianism and polarization.

The success of a democratic society depends, Rawls thought, on members having a shared sense of justice, a common basis for reasoning about what is right. Otherwise, disagreements born from conflicts of interest and identity – and associated “distrust and resentment” – will have corrosive effects on social cooperation. But can we reasonably hope for a broadly shared sense of justice? Religious and philosophical pluralism arguably leave hope for an overlapping consensus on a conception of justice sufficient to cabin those corrosive effects. But what about the pluralism of conceptions of justice themselves? I argue that, even on favorable assumptions about people and social cooperation, we should expect serious disagreement about conceptions of justice and the forms of democracy they recommend, as well as conflicts between and among the interests and identities of citizens who endorse those competing conceptions. Even on these favorable assumptions, then, we have reason to worry – as I think Rawls always did – about the fragility of democracy.