ABSTRACT
A nation as conceived by naturalists can exist even if its members do not think that it exists or do not have an idea of it. Renan's account of the nation is a voluntarist one. What makes people a nation is something they will. Renan's brand of voluntarist nationalism was committed to a more radical rejection of the idea that there is a truth about what nations there are than to the idea involved in rejecting scientific truths about it or talk of 'true selves'. The version of a subjectivist voluntarism that we have been looking at is nonsocietal. A civil society so structured is a very different thing from the civil association of a reflective contractual voluntarism, for although there will be voluntary relationships within it, its overall character will appear not as that of a voluntary association but, rather, as a society within which people find themselves and participate by custom rather than by intent.
