Respectability and Morality: From the Personal to the Political

Moral values are often understood as personal convictions — private matters of conscience, faith, and character. Yet history reveals that morality rarely remains private. Instead, it is regularly drawn into political life, where it becomes law, ideology, and cultural discipline. The regulation of sexuality, behavior, and identity becomes inseparable from the project of building nations and governing populations. This transformation from personal virtue into political strategy is the central insight of the historian George L. Mosse, whose work demonstrated that “respectability” is not simply a social expectation but a political weapon.

Respectability and the Invention of Moral Citizenship

In Nationalism and Sexuality, Mosse argues that modern nationalism did not arise merely through political borders or legal structure, but through emotional and cultural identification. National identity was not solely something people belonged to — it was something they felt. It was built through symbolic experiences, collective myths, cultural rituals, and moral expectations.

Mosse writes:

“Nationalism became a secular religion, endowed with its own system of rites and myths, which demanded emotional surrender and offered a sense of belonging.”

This religious analogy is key. Like faith systems, nationalism first entered the imagination before it entered the law. Citizens were taught not only where they belonged, but what kind of person they ought to be.

At the heart of this moral formation was respectability. Mosse defines respectability not as simple good behavior, but as a socially manufactured ideal of sexual, emotional, and physical conformity. The “respectable” citizen was gender-conforming, heterosexual, married or marriage-oriented, restrained, patriotic, and productive. Anything that diverged became suspicious — not merely different, but morally and politically hazardous.

Mosse observed:

“The norms of respectability developed as part of the bourgeois attempt to control its own members and subordinate classes.”

Thus morality functioned as a social boundary. The nation was defined not only through language or territory, but through morality. To belong was not merely to be born within borders, but to behave within invisible ones.

The Political Construction of “Abnormality”

One of Mosse’s most powerful interventions was to demonstrate that “deviance” was never a stable concept. Instead, it was historically constructed.

“The bourgeois ideal of respectability created its own counter-image — a threatening ‘Other’ against whom the norm defined itself.”

In Mosse’s analysis, what societies called “abnormal sexuality” was not discovered; it was invented. Acts, identities, and orientations that had once existed without sharp categorization were gradually organized into “normal” and “abnormal,” “natural” and “degenerate,” “healthy” and “diseased.”

This taxonomy did not arise through science alone but through politics. Sexual deviancy, especially homosexuality, became politically stigmatized because it disrupted the symbolic family structure upon which the state relied. Reproduction, lineage, inheritance, and gender hierarchy were imagined as the biological foundation of nationalism.

Mosse explains:

“Respectability increasingly came to be tied to sexual conduct. Sexuality became a political category.”

This transformation relocated power directly onto the body. Sexual behavior became a test of loyalty and normality. In political terms, this is a form of biopolitics — governance exercised through life, reproduction, and physical identity rather than law alone.

Discipline, Surveillance, and Internalized Authority

Mosse shows that control did not operate primarily through coercion, but through culture. Schools, art, fashion, museums, law courts, and civic rituals became tools for moral shaping.

This parallels later political theory — particularly the work of Michel Foucault — who argued that modern power disciplines individuals into obedience through normalization rather than force. While Mosse wrote as a historian rather than a theorist, his conclusions align with this model: morality becomes internalized authority.

Respectability worked as self-surveillance. Individuals learned not merely to obey, but to police themselves — to feel shame, anxiety, and guilt where no law existed.

Mosse states:

“Only those who lived within the framework of respectability were considered fully human.”

This may be one of his most devastating conclusions. Normality becomes humanity. Citizenship becomes moral performance. Identity becomes survival.

Nationalism as Emotional Architecture

Beyond sexuality, Mosse emphasized that nationalism functions through emotion as much as ideology. Nations are not rational contracts. They are symbolic families.

“The national mystique was based upon emotion… it appealed to the heart rather than reason.”

Symbols — flags, monuments, hymns, uniforms — were not decorative. They were psychological structures. They organized collective feeling. Nationalist politics was not merely administrative; it was aesthetic and spiritual.

Morality gave these emotions direction. Individuals were taught to love certain ideals and fear certain identities. Desire itself became suspect. Private life became political territory.

This aligns with modern political theory: states create meaning systems, not merely laws. Identity becomes a site of governance.

The Price of Moral Politics

Mosse did not deny the value of morality. His critique was aimed at moral authority, not moral feeling. When morality becomes an instrument of the state, it no longer protects dignity — it categorizes it.

When respectability defines worth, difference becomes danger. When nationalism defines virtue, dissent becomes corruption.

History demonstrates where this leads.

Exclusion.
Scapegoating.
Bureaucratized cruelty.
Cultural cleansing.

Mosse’s work is therefore not only historical — it is a warning.

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Moral from the Political

Mosse asks us not to abandon ethics, but to rescue them from power.

Morality belongs in conscience, not legislation.
Respectability belongs in character, not classification.
Identity belongs to people, not states.

Once morality becomes ideological, personal life becomes regulated.
Once national belonging requires conformity, difference becomes treason.
Once respectability becomes political currency, humanity fractures into types.

The lesson Mosse leaves is timeless:
When morality is no longer personal, it becomes an instrument.
When respectability becomes national, it becomes exclusion.
When virtue becomes political, it ceases to be virtuous.

References:

Mosse, George L. Mosse. Nationalism and Sexuality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Mosse, George L. The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany. New York: Howard Fertig, 1975.

Foucault, Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality, Volume I. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

Anderson, Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983.

Arendt, Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.