Abstract

This reply examines to what extent Claes’s qualitative research on volunteers, meaningfulness and citizenship mirrors dimensions of republican citizenship. Republican citizenship brings together the idea of freedom as membership of a self-governing community and the ideal of commitment of those members to the common good of the community. According to the author, the idea of republican citizenship that emerges from the interviews is connected with An experience of meaningfulness that is self-fulfilling, but at the same time places life in a larger context, A deeper inner side of civic engagement, A notion of civic virtue that is not too demanding due to its inner link with self-discovery through active citizenship, A strong awareness of the plurality of ways of living a human life, and not a passive identification with an abstract, homogeneous social whole.