Kantian patriotism

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 313-341

  Kleingeld, Pauline ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0742309697     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2000.00313.x     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. In her important defense of cosmopolitanism, Martha C. Nussbaum calls patriotism a "warm nestling feeling" that is "very close to jingoism" and stands in the way of the proper recognition of our moral obligations to all human beings in general. See "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism," in Martha C. Nussbaum et al., For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), pp. 2-17, here pp. 14, 15.
2. Benjamin R. Barber, "Constitutional Faith," in Nussbaum et al., For Love of Country, pp. 30-37;
3. Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The Illusions of Cosmopolitanism," in Nussbaum et al., For Love of Country, pp. 72-77.
4. David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 64-65.
5. This formulation, often used in discussions of these issues, goes back to Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 131-52.
6. See, for example, Andrew Oldenquist's well-known essay, "Loyalties," Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 173-93.
7. For a thorough defense of this position against skepticism and against appeals to state autonomy, see Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
8. On Kant's notion of cosmopolitan law and its current relevance to international law, see my article, "Kant's Cosmopolitan Law World Citizenship for a Global Order," Kantian Reviews (1998): 72-90.
9. Whereas Kant calls this federation a "Völkerbund" [league of peoples], what he means is a league of states. He explicitly remarks that 'international law' would properly be called 'law of states' (Metaphysics of Morals, VI, p. 343).
10. In order to avoid terminological confusion, I will use the word 'state' instead of 'people' or 'nation' when the juridico-political entity is meant. Page references to Kant's works are to Kants Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-).
11. E.g., Jürgen Habermas, "Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years' Hindsight," in Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal, eds. James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Cambridge: MIT, 1997), pp. 113-53.
12. Marcia Baron, "Patriotism and 'Liberal' Morality," In Mind, Value, and Culture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams, ed. David Weissbord (Atascadero: Ridgeview, 1989), pp. 269-300.
13. Alan Gewirth, "Ethical Universalism and Particularism," Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 283-302. Gewirth notoriously fails to argue for the thesis that such particularity is required, despite his stated intention to do so (p. 289). It is clear only that he regards it as at least permissible.
14. The basic elements of this account have been defended by Jeremy Waldron and are found in a somewhat underdeveloped form in John Rawls's Theory of Justice.
15. See Jeremy Waldron, "Special Ties and Natural Duties," Philosophy & Public Affairs 22 (1993): 3-30;
16. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 114-17, 333-42.
17. See also, George Klosko, "Political Obligation and the Natural Duties of Justice," Philosophy & Public Affairs 23 (1994): 251-70.
18. For example, Stephen Nathanson, "In Defense of 'Moderate Patriotism,'" Ethics 99 (1989): 535-52.
19. With Alasdair MacIntyre, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" in Theorizing Citizenship, ed. Ronald Beiner (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 209-28.
20. Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
21. Charles R. Beitz, "Patriotism for Cosmopolitans," Boston Review 19:5 (1994): 23-24.
22. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Cosmopolitan Patriots," in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, eds. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 91-114.
23. See A. John Simmons, "Justification and Legitimacy," Ethics 109 (1999): 739-71, here p. 753.
24. See, e.g., the goals expressed in the full (French) name of the eighteenth-century German "Société patriotique de Hesse-Hombourg pour l'encouragement des connaissances et des moeurs." See Rudolf Vierhaus, ed., Deutsche patriotische und gemeinnützige Gesellschaften (Munchen: Kraus International, 1980).
25. Habermas also shows that this kind of patriotism may lead citizens to lower rather than raise the threshold for immigration. See Jürgen Habermas, "Citizenship and National Identity," in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT, 1996), pp. 491-515.
26. Political criticism was so often presented as a form of patriotism that it even provoked a book with the title, Opposition no Proof of Patriotism, by William Arnall (London, 1735).
27. Cf. Hugh Cunningham, "The Language of Patriotism, 1750-1914," History Workshop 12 (1981): 8-33.
28. Viroli, For Love of Country, "Introduction," pp. 1-17.
29. Viroli's purist approach leads to problems even in his own historical account. Some of the key figures in his history of patriotism use nationalist rhetoric. For instance, fifteenth-century Florentine patriots defend imperialism and brutality in the name of their cultural superiority and the nobility of their ancestors (For Love of Country, p. 27). Viroli relegates this phenomenon to the footnotes while continuing to speak of these figures as defenders of civic patriotism. A more balanced presentation would show that patriotism meant different things in different contexts, already in the fifteenth century.
30. See, e.g., Cunningham, "The Language of Patriotism," pp. 18-27.
31. For purposes of this essay, it is not necessary to provide a more precise definition of 'nation,' nor to discuss the 'mythical' aspects of nations as commonly conceived.
32. Oldenquist, "Loyalties," p. 183,
33. and MacIntyre, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" p. 210.
34. MacIntyre, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" p. 210.
35. From this perspective, it is beside the point to argue, as MacIntyre does, that trait-based patriotism should be denied the label 'patriotism' on the ground that these traits might also inspire love of one's country in foreigners. MacIntyre, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" p. 210.
36. Metaphysics of Morals VI p. 433, note.
37. For a good account of the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, see Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 147-75.
38. On the issue of latitude, see also Marcia W. Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 88-107.
39. In the absence of any such argument, one cannot provide an adequate reply to Paul Gomberg's challenge that patriotism is as wrong as racism. See Paul Gomberg, "Patriotism is Like Racism," Ethics 101 (1990): 144-50.
40. Marcia Baron argues that the justification of patriotism would "indicate that thepartiality involved ... is fine for anyone: the action taken is something that I think is okay for anyone to take." She argues, similarly, that a defense of partiality toward my child might take the form of saying, "It's my daughter, and I think it quite all right for anyone to do that for his or her child." Baron, "Patriotism and Liberal Morality," p. 285. The fact that I think that it's fine for anyone to do X, however, is not a complete justification without an account that shows that the reasons I have for thinking this are good reasons and that I am not merely generalizing my subjective preferences. The account that follows fills this justificatory gap in Baron's argument.
41. Metaphysics of Morals VI, p. 312. Kant's argument hinges not on the empirical claim that human beings actually do commit violence to others but that such violence is possible, a possibility that is given with freedom. Waldron assumes that without a just state violence will occur, whereas Kant makes no such assumption; according to him, the sheer possibility of violence, which is given with human freedom, is enough to back up the normative requirement to found a just state. For present purposes, this dispute is not important.
42. Cf. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals VI, p. 312.
43. This might well be Kant's response to Simmons's objection that Kant leaves it unclear why "my mere refusal of reciprocal membership [in a state] (without any further wrong-doing) constitutes any kind of injury to those who already have the security they desire [i.e., who are members in a state]." (Simmons, "Justification and Legitimacy," p. 756).
44. This is important, not least because the defenses of the state in terms of benefits and in terms of consent are often taken to be the only two strategies available for universalists to defend patriotism. Significantly, David Miller shares this view and distinguishes merely between a "voluntary creation" and "useful convention" approach (Miller, On Nationality, pp. 58-65). He fails to consider this third, Kantian strategy when arguing for the thesis quoted at the beginning of this essay.
45. Cf. his essay, "Special Ties and Natural Duties," see note 12.
46. "Special Ties and Natural Duties," Ibid., p. 25.
47. "Special Ties and Natural Duties," Ibid., p. 30.
48. "Special Ties and Natural Duties," Ibid., p. 19.
49. Simmons's example is found in "Justification and Legitimacy," p. 752.
50. Kant himself discusses these matters in terms of 'republicanism,' not 'democracy,' because he does not advocate general adult suffrage. Moreover, he regards democracy as a despotic political system in which the people rule without a separation of powers (Perpetual Peace VIII, p. 352). In Kant's terminology, what we mean by democracy today is a 'republic' with general adult suffrage and with a more clearly worked-out system of political representation than that provided by Kant.
51. Samuel Scheffler, "Liberalism, Nationalism, and Egalitarianism, " in The Morality of Nationalism, eds. Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 191-208, here p. 197. The expression "may seem" in the quote does not, in this case, anticipate a later exposure of the appearance as false.
52. Scheffler does not see this instability as a reason to reject liberalism. In fact, he even regards it as a 'virtue' that liberalism allows for this tension, as it shows appropriate sensitivity to important values whose joint accommodation is genuinely problematic. Scheffler, "Liberalism, Nationalism, and Egalitarianism," p. 202.
53. I restrict my discussion to the civic duty of the citizen in a just state. Even the duty to a just state is in dispute, and resolving this issue first may help determine (in the future) what the duties are of persons in despotic or somewhat just states.
54. Many theorists attach importance to special responsibilities being non-derivative and fundamental, rather than being justified indirectly from universalist premises. Samuel Scheffler claims that if special responsibilities are justified indirectly, this "drastically demote[s] such responsibilities in status and significance," and that the only account that accords them proper status and significance is one that treats them as "ethically fundamental." The Kantian rejoinder is to say that this claim seems to rest on the problematic idea that a conclusion of an argument has less 'status and significance' than the premises from which it follows. What matters is that special obligations are theoretically justified, not that they are justified immediately rather than mediately. The fact that special responsibilities are not first in the order of justification does not mean that they are "ultimately insignificant" in the eyes of the moral agent. Cp. Samuel Scheffler, "Family and Friends First? Review of Martha C. Nussbaum et al., For Love of Country," Times Literary Supplement December 27, 1996, pp. 8-9;
55. here p. 9. See also, "Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism," Utilitas 11 (1999): 255-76, esp. pp. 259-60.
56. This is a crucial difference between the defense of civic patriotism presented here and the one provided by Gewirth. See Gewirth, "Ethical Universalism and Particularism," pp. 298-302.
57. The argument is radically different from that presented in Richard W. Miller, "Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern," Philosophy & Public Affairs 27 (1998): 202-24. His focus on the 'cost of lost social trust' and on providing aid-based incentives to the less well off to secure their political cooperation leads to a line of reasoning that, while built on the premise of equal respect for all, is essentially consequentialist. More importantly, I believe there are empirical grounds for arguing that the relationship between the rich and the poor compatriots within a country mirrors that between rich and poor countries in more respects than Miller thinks (pp. 213-14, 217-18), and hence I do not think that a profound bias towards compatriots in tax-based aid can be justified along the lines sketched by Miller.
58. Andrew Mason, "Special Obligations to Compatriots," Ethics 107 (1997): 427-47. When, as is here presumed, the just democratic state itself is conceived as a collective of individuals united for the sake of justice, one could also say that the duty of patriotism is a duty toward one's compatriots. It is important to realize, however, that it is a duty toward them collectively, as united into the democratic state for the sake of justice (and that this duty is not based simply in the fact that they are compatriots). Even when construed in this way, however, the Kantian defense of civic patriotism still gives good sense to the distinction between citizens and residents and it thus answers Mason's challenge.
59. Whether, on Kantian principles, this peaceful cooperation should ultimately take the form of the merger into a world state or that of a voluntary confederation of states does not need to be decided here.
60. This argument is quite close to the account in Onora O'Neill, "Instituting Principles," in Kant's 'Metaphysics of Morals,' ed. Nelson Potter and Mark Timmons, Southern Journal of Philosophy 36, supplement (1997): 79-96,
61. and Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
62. See Kant, Metaphysics of Morals VI, p. 390.
63. This argument should not be confused with the defense of group rights or national self-determination. It focuses on the duty of the member of the national group towards the group, not on the proper attitude on the part of others towards the group and its legal protection. For a defense of group rights, see Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
64. for a defense of national self-determination, see Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, "National Self-Determination," Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 439-461.
65. MacIntyre goes even further than that and argues that patriotic loyalty is a "prerequisite for morality." As I am here concerned with the question of whether a line of argument based on the idea that the nation is a good can fit in a Kantian framework, however, I shall not discuss MacIntyre's view, which is obviously incompatible with it. Instead, I concentrate on the version of this kind of nationalism that aspires to be called 'liberal.' This kind of argument is found in Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 95-116.
66. This objection is elaborated in Jeremy Waldron, "Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative," University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25 (1992): 751-93.
67. On the negative duty to do no harm to others, in relationship to patriotism and cosmopolitanism, and illustrated with recent examples of such violations, see Thomas W. Pogge, "The Bounds of Nationalism," in Rethinking Nationalism, eds. Jocelyne Couture, Kai Nielsen, and Michel Seymour (University of Calgary Press, 1996), pp. 463-504.