Einmal ist keinmal

This text is a contribution to the debate initiated by Professor Holländer in his essay called Twilight of the modern state. This text responds to both the original text and the text of Professor Přibáň called Morning alpenglow of global constitutionalism: the “joyful” legal science in the postnational society. Value foundations of the modern state can be, according to Prof. Holländer achieved only within a certain conception of the modern state while Prof. Přibáň finds them in a number of other centers of authority. This essay supplements the discussion by another view of what constitutes a modern state. The values of the modern state are fulfilled not only through authoritative decision, our goals can be better achieved, when the founding values serve as a tool for communication and discursive contact. These changes and tensions that Prof.Holländer terms a twilight are not the signs of otherwise perfectly functioning system. These moments are its structural components, because each system is structurally incomplete and thus always prone to a “crisis”.