National identity is in a metaphorical sense like a little brother to nationalism, because even national identity could not exist, if there would not be the same basis.
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Download PDF. Subscribe Get our weekly email. He describes it as deriving from Romanticism and shows a lot of sympathy for it, but in the end he wisely declines to endorse it himself. The availability of linguistic community is indispensable to being a full human subject. It encompasses essential, vitally important traits and is partly a matter of what you are, independently of your choice, partly a matter of your identifications.
Notice that such care can involve deep emotional ties, a cathexis, as psychoanalysts would put it. The ties make the trait salient, and guide the desires of the identifier. Of course, coming to care about the trait and the associated commitments may involve some nonvoluntary steps being born a Lavinian, falling in love with a very patriotic Lavinian person , and some chosen, voluntary decisions avoid non-Lavinians!
The more you are proud to belong, the more you belong, and vice versa. In the case of a durable identification there is a loop of mutual reinforcement between the trait and the attitude. After thus having sketched at least some features of identity in the sense used in the debate let me give the floor once more to our nationalist:.
Most people agree that a lasting and stable identity is a necessary condition of the flourishing of each human being, and of the very possibility of particular political choices for individuals. Now, what kind of identity is central to human beings? Well, they need to belong to a unified and given that is, non-chosen and nonvoluntary comprehensive community, and to participate in its life in order to acquire and maintain a lasting and stable identity.
In order to have a stable and mature identity, a person must belong to a solid community, not of his own choosing. Tradition-based communities are ideal identity providers. This dovetails nicely with my previous statement about tradition. Remember that tradition encompasses actions and roles performer of such-and-such acts, participant in such-and-such a practice with such-and-such a status.
It constitutively determines the roles available within them, that is, a role has its identity only within a tradition. The roles empower their holders an umpire has the power to decide about excluding a player from a game and they carry with them a set of values and duties, also determined by the encompassing tradition.
Traditions typically constitutively belong to a larger social framework, most prominently an ethno-national one. Among all the traditional, historically developed candidates, it is the best and most reliable framework for cultural traditions. By being born into a national framework, an individual acquires his or her first and most important belonging.
Being a member of such a framework makes the insertion into most typical traditions within it morally obligatory, and at the same time it facilitates the insertion and makes it natural. Now, stable identity traits have to do with such a belonging and with the roles determined by the traditions flourishing within the national framework.
Roles and associated properties are among the most important potential identity traits for each person. Therefore the almost natural, initially non-chosen kind of belonging is the central provider of identity traits.
Participation, by disclosing values and norms, underpins the affective attachment necessary for identification. Typically, general loyalty to a tradition underlies the acceptance of the particular norms that figure within it. Let me illustrate this with a diagram:. This, then, is the connection between the psychological and cultural identity of a person and the traits of the ethno-national culture it belongs to.
The best candidate for an identity-forming and identity-protecting community is the ethno- nation, a traditional, historically formed community, with a non-voluntary criterion of membership.
National belonging is independent of the will of the person in question, since having a particular will depends upon having such an identity. The value has to be protected. By providing one and protecting it, the ethno-nation itself inherits some of the value in question, together with the right to be protected.
This concludes my general defense of the nation on the basis of the identity of its members. Let me add a slight complication. There are two ways to account for the importance of the ethno- nation in relation to identity consideration. If pressed, the defender of this second way might reverse the order of explanation: some traits for example, language are valuable because they belong to the ethno-nation, rather than vice versa the ethno-nation is valuable because it protects language, which has an independent value.
An alternative account proposes that certain traits—language, moral code, customs—can play the important role of providing identity for individual human beings. Their role is independent of their use in nationalistic or similar contexts, and derives from their general anthropological relevance. The other is a community of values. Now, since the ethno-nation incorporates and protects the trait, it is assumed to inherit its identity-related value.
Finally, the nation-state inherits the value from its role in fostering and protecting the ethno-nation. If successful, such a proposal then offers a genuine explanation of why the ethno-nation and its state are valuable to individuals, starting from the independent value of the traits they both enhance and protect. Whatever detailed account you choose, the overall story remains the same.
The preservation of a given ethno-national culture—in a relatively pure state—is a good independent of the will of the members of the culture, which ought to be assured by adequate means.
But, in order that such a community should preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume always or at least in most cases the political form of a state.
Therefore, once the state is in place, its citizens have the right and obligation to favor it and their own ethnic culture in relation to any other. They can and should indulge in loving it and in hating its enemies. Nevertheless, I do not think that it fulfills its promises. Take the two key claims, that non-chosen identities are much more important—in point of fact as well as morally—than chosen ones, and that among the former national identity is paramount. On a literal reading that would entail that loyalty to non-chosen identities race, gender, nation should for the most part prevail over loyalty to chosen ones.
Is it possible that a civilized person should think that it is morally bad to marry a person of different race or ethno-national belonging?
No decent intellectual would claim this nowadays; so what does our nationalist really mean by his view that loyalty to the non-chosen identity should prevail? Under what circumstances? What should it be allowed to dictate? Let me then charitably assume that our nationalist does not literally mean to advise you to avoid friends of other race or ethnic belonging; he restricts this to special circumstances, which he does not care to specify. Let me first try to fend off a possible misunderstanding.
In some situations they seem plausible: for instance, the plight of some stateless national groups—the history of Jews and Armenians, the historical and contemporary misfortunes of Kurds—lends credence to the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems.
Still, there are good reasons to examine nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of the nation-state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even central, moral and political value, and that claims in its favor have normative validity.
Once this is established, a further defense is needed. Some classical nationalist claims appear to clash—at least under normal circumstances of contemporary life—with various values that people tend to accept. Some of these values are considered essential to liberal-democratic societies, while others are important specifically for the flourishing of creativity and culture. Liberal nationalists are aware of the difficulties of the classical approach, and soften the classical claims, giving them only a prima facie status.
Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have participated in an ongoing philosophical dialogue between proponents and opponents of the claim. Further lines of thought built upon these considerations can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.
For brevity, each line of thought will be reduced to a brief argument; the actual debate is more involved than one can represent in a sketch. Some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate will be indicated in brackets see Miscevic The main arguments in favor of nationalism will be divided into two sets.
The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, sometime seen as coming from the interests of their individual member e. The first set will be presented in more detail since it has formed the core of the debate. It depicts the community as the source of value or as the transmission device connecting its members to some important values. The general form of deep communitarian arguments is as follows. First, the communitarian premise: there is some uncontroversial good e.
Then comes the claim that the ethno-cultural nation is the kind of community ideally suited for this task. Then follows the statist conclusion: in order for such a community to preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume always or at least normally the political form of a state. The conclusion of this type of argument is that the ethno-national community has the right to an ethno-national state and the citizens of the state have the right and obligation to favor their own ethnic culture in relation to any other.
Although the deeper philosophical assumptions in the arguments stem from the communitarian tradition, weakened forms have also been proposed by more liberal philosophers. A liberal nationalist might claim that these are not the central values of political life but are values nevertheless.
Moreover, the diametrically opposing views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid, abstract, and unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism we refer to moral and political doctrines claiming that. Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism.
In his writings, B. Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions in which each of us participates, apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and an overly abstract cosmopolitanism Putnam The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin and Taylor , , [ 19 ] and in the last two decades it has occupied center stage in the debate and even provoked re-readings of historical nationalism in its light.
Here are then the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that liberal, limited-liberal, and cosmopolitan nationalists propose. First, ethno-national claims have only prima facie strength and cannot trump individual rights. Second, legitimate ethno-national claims do not in themselves automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy.
The main models of autonomy are either territorial or non-territorial: the first involves territorial devolution; the second, cultural autonomy granted to individuals regardless of their domicile within the state. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices the concerned individuals are free to make. Consider now the particular pro-nationalist arguments from the first set.
The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, but it further ascribes to the community an intrinsic value. The later arguments point more towards an instrumental value of nation, derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like. Taylor concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable.
Assuming that the ethno- nation is the natural unit of culture, the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of ethno- national culture. David Miller has developed an interesting and sophisticated liberal pro-national stance over the course of decades from his work in to the most recent work in He accepts multicultural diversity within a society but stresses an overarching national identity, taking as his prime example British national identity, which encompasses the English, Scottish, and other ethnic identities.
A skeptic could note the following. However, multi-cultural states typically bring together groups with very different histories, languages, religions, and even quite contrasting appearances. One seems to have a dilemma. Grounding social solidarity in national identity requires the latter to be rather thin and seems likely to end up as full-on, unitary cultural identity.
Thick constitutional patriotism may be one interesting possible attitude that can ground such solidarity while preserving the original cultural diversity. The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing, and cultural values.
They appeal to actual or alleged circumstances that would make nationalist policies reasonable or permissible or even mandatory , such as a the fact that a large part of the world is organized into nation-states so that each new group aspiring to create a nation-state just follows an established pattern , or b the circumstances of group self-defense or of redressing past injustice that might justify nationalist policies to take a special case.
Some of the arguments also present nationhood as conducive to important political goods, such as equality. These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. More remote from classical nationalism than the liberal one of Tamir and Nielsen, it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning.
Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intensity of trans-national interactions, such openness seems to many to be the only guarantee of stable social and political life see the debate in Shapiro and Kymlicka In general, the liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil, and there is much to be said in favor of it.
It tries to reconcile our intuitions in favor of some sort of political protection of cultural communities with a liberal political morality. Very liberal nationalists such as Tamir divorce ethno-cultural nationhood from statehood. Also, the kind of love for country they suggest is tempered by all kinds of universalist considerations, which in the last instance trump national interest Tamir ; passim, see also Moore and Gans In the last two decades, the issues of nationalism have been increasingly integrated into the debate about the international order see the entries on globalization and cosmopolitanism.
The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable, and suitable units of the international order. A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization see Kaldor Moreover, the two approaches might ultimately converge: a multiculturalist liberal nationalism and a moderate, difference-respecting cosmopolitanism have a lot in common.
This section will pay attention to right-wing populist movements, very close to their traditional nationalist predecessors. This corresponds to the situation in the biggest part of Europe, and in the US, where nationalist topics are being put forward by the right-wing populist.
Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. First, there is the elite vs. The second, horizontal dimension distinguishes the predominantly left-wing from the predominantly right-wing populisms and leaves a place for a centrist populist option.
Take classical strong ethnic nationalism. The relation between right-wing populism and such a nationalism is very tight. The term captures exactly the synthesis of populism and the strong ethnic nationalism or nativism. From nationalism, it takes the characterization of the people: it is the ethnic community, in most cases the state-owing ethnic community, or the ethno-nation. In his work, Mudde documents the claim that purely right-wing populists claim to represent the true people who form the true nation and whose purity is being muddied by new entrants.
In the United States, one can talk about populist and reactionary movements, like the Tea Party, that have emerged through the recent experience of immigration, terrorist attacks, and growing economic polarization. We have to set aside here, for reasons of space, the main populist alternative or quasi-alternative to national populism. In some countries, like Germany, some populist groups-parties e. Others combine this appeal with the ethno-national one.
Interestingly, liberal nationalism is not very attractive to the populists. The rise of populism is changing the political playfield one must work with. The tolerant liberal nationalist or anti-nationalist views are confronting new problems in the populist age marked by migration crisis, etc. The dangers traditionally associated with military presence are gone; the national populists have to invent and construct a presumed danger that comes into the country together with foreign families, including those with children.
In short, if these conjectures hold, the politicians and theoreticians are faced with a change. The important element is the promiscuous character of the populist choices. It is probable that the future scholarship on nationalism will mainly focus on this new and challenging playfield, with an aim to address the new contrast and locate kinds of nationalism in relation to it.
The migration crisis has made the nation-state in global context the central political topic concerning nationality.
Before moving on to current events, the state of art before the crisis should be summarized. First, consider the debates on territory and nation and issues of global justice. She nevertheless stresses that more than one ethnic group can have formative ties to a given territory, and that there might be competing claims based on settlement.
Stability might therefore require that the pluralist society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense intra-state interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, reduce prejudice, and create a solid basis for cohabitation. But where should one stop? The question arises since there are many geographically open, interacting territories of various sizes.
Here, the tough nationalistic line is no longer proposed seriously in ethical debates, so the furthest pro-national extreme is in fact a relatively moderate stance, exemplified by Miller in the works listed. Here is a typical proposal of his concerning global justice based on nation-states: it might become a matter of national pride to have set aside a certain percentage of GDP for developmental goals—perhaps for projects in one particular country or group of countries This brings us to the topic of migrations, and the heated debate on the present scene.
So, immigration plus the nationalist-populist reactions to it are in the current decade the main testing ground for nationalist and cosmopolitan views.
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