(Draft. Being revised. Footnotes need to be added)
Nationalism, in
particular ethnic nationalism, has
been responsible for some of the world’s greatest atrocities in the last
hundred years. Although we shrink from its extremist passions, the 19th
Century German philosopher Johann
Gottfried Herder saw another side of nationalism. He considered the national
community to be the necessary medium between mankind and the individual. For
Herder nationality was a living organism, something sacred. Each person, so he
taught, “could fulfill his human destiny only within and through his
nationality.”
Twenty-five years ago, after Hitler but before Bosnia and Rwanda, philosopher Isaiah Berlin warned that we still were not appreciating the powerful force of nationalism. As Berlin describes it, nationalism holds that “The essential unit in which man's nature is fully realized is not the individual or a voluntary association but the nation” and that for the nationalist the most compelling reason for holding a particular belief, pursuing a different policy, serving a particular end, living a particular life, is that these ends, beliefs, policies, are ours.
What should the philosophers of today say about nationalism and national identity? It would be tempting to argue—indeed, I am tempted to argue, having talked with ultranationalist Jews in Israel, Palestinian members of Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, Afrikaaners in South Africa, and a self-styled Chetnik in Bosnia, that the tribal force of nationalism is something the human community must overcome, that we must instead adhere to a universalist perspective that sees every person on the globe as having an equal claim to our concern and attention and every belief as being subject to the scrutiny only of pure, impartial human reason. This was the dream of the Enlightenment, and in some ways I confess it is also my own dream.
One cannot, however, ignore that nationalist passions have been liberating as well as oppressive or, worse, genocidal. Nor can we ignore that nationalism expresses something deep in human nature. So I would like to do something more modest but perhaps less dreamlike than simply urge the transcendence of nationalism. I would like to explore whether there can be a morally defensible nationalism and to make some suggestions about what it might entail.
First, let me place nationalism in a larger philosophical context. Nationalism is a form of partiality, and in the last few years philosophers have focused a good deal on challenges to the Enlightenment ideal that we must be purely impartial. Perhaps it’s no exaggeration to say that for a long time all of us having been saying things that we don’t really believe like “love thy neighbor as thyself,” construing “neighbor” to be anyone on this planet. Not only is it psychologically impossible to “love” so universally but few think we should even strive to act with the same concern for all people. Who among us has not bought something for ourselves or our child that was not really needed and with money that could have saved quite a few lives in a developing country? Philosophers have spent a lot of time arguing about how much we are each required to sacrifice to save distant lives, human lives that it really is in our power to save, but it’s plain that few of us think that in a choice between our own child’s health and the lives of 5 Indonesian children, we would be obligated to sacrifice our child’s health, or for that matter our 70-year old mother’s or father’s life or that of our younger brother. The point is that contrary to the rhetoric of pure impartiality, in our lives we take some forms of partiality for granted. And not just as a human weakness. If we read in the paper about someone who allowed her child or parent to die in order to save a few children overseas, it’s not clear that we would think of her as a moral hero. We don’t just grudgingly accept partiality; we embrace it as an important part of living a full life, a life lived among people with whom we have a special connection and an appropriate special concern.
If we accept that partiality toward “our own” is not only inevitable but perhaps ethically justifiable, maybe even obligatory, then we must ask two questions. One is to what degree is partiality acceptable? The other is what forms of partiality are acceptable. For the purposes of our discussion today, let me focus on the second. Most of us who accept partiality would concede that partiality toward members of our family is acceptable, not only to our children to whom we have arguably made a kind of promise or commitment but also with respect to our parents and siblings and maybe even to our cousins and to close friends who are “like family.” And most of us would claim, at the other extreme, that partiality toward members of our own race is not morally defensible.
How then should we look at partiality toward our nation? On the one hand, people sometimes refer to their nation as a “motherland” or “fatherland,” suggesting that it is a natural extension of our concern for members of our own family. Blood and Belonging, the title of a work on nationalism, captures some of the power of this connection. On the other hand, others have claimed that nationalism has exactly the same moral status as racism. If one were faced with scarce life-saving resources and decided whom to save not based on the chance of success but only on the person’s being a “fellow Serb” or “fellow Palestinian” or “fellow Jew,” it’s not clear how such partiality is any more justifiable than a preference based on race.
If we are troubled by nationalistic partiality and yet recognize that a world government is unrealistic, we might be tempted to defend nation-states but only as purely administrative units, like counties, purged of the emotional and ethnic content associated with the most troubling forms of nationalism in recent history. Such a state would be based on what I call “administrative nationalism,” in contrast to the cultural nationalism of most contemporary states like Serbia or Japan or Armenia. A state based on administrative nationalism would need to give preference to its own citizens but only as a realistic and efficient means of meeting larger global needs. It would still share an ultimate commitment to impartiality and universality but use partiality only as a means to achieve that larger objective.
Nonetheless, I would like to offer a moderate defense not of this kind of neutral administrative nationalism but of cultural nationalism, and then I will indicate some of the challenges that must be met to make such cultural nationalism acceptable.
Cultural nationalism responds to some basic human needs, and there are good reasons to want to see these needs satisfied for many people even where they cannot be satisfied to the same degree for all. Many authors—for example, Michael Walzer, Yael Tamir, and Muhammad Khalidi—have argued that persons need, and have a right to, the “common life” (Walzer) “shared public space” (Tamir), and national self-expression (Khalidi) afforded by being a member of a self-determining nation.[i][13] For Tamir,
Membership in a nation is a constitutive factor of personal identity. The self-image of individuals is highly affected by the status of their national community. The ability of individuals to lead a satisfying life and to attain the respect of others is contingent on, although not assured by, their ability to view themselves as active members of a worthy community . . .Given the essential interest of individuals in preserving their national identity…the right to national self-determination should be seen as an individual right.
A second justification for cultural nationalism is the desirability of preserving a diversity of “ways of life.” We regret the loss of an indigenous culture, just as we regret the loss of a species or ecosystem, and one might attempt to argue that cultures or ecosystems themselves have interests and can be bearers of rights. But even if cultures themselves do not have rights, individual human beings have an interest in the preservation of a diversity of cultures, each making actual some of the possibilities of human consciousness through distinctive forms of expression. It is reasonable to view the loss of an indigenous culture’s language and way of life as a loss for humanity in general. And it is also reasonable to think that those cultures have a better chance of surviving if they enjoy the protection of national self-determination or, if that is not possible, if they come under the protection of a state that is committed to an enlightened form of cultural nationalism.
One might be forgiven for being skeptical about that possibility. Many of the most passionate recent forms of cultural nationalism have been anything but enlightened. Yet I think it is possible to outline requirements of a morally defensible nationalism that are within human reach and are not, like a call immediately to abolish all nation-states, merely idealistic dreams.
First and most obvious, a nation-state must respect the political rights of minority cultures. An obvious feature of globalization and migration is that the boundaries of states do not coincide with the boundaries of cultures or nations. Most states are not multicultural to the same extent as the United States, but almost every state includes national minorities: Turks in Germany, Kurds in Turkey, native Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, Palestinian Arabs in Israel. Although minorities cannot expect to achieve the same kind of national self-expression as majority cultures—unlike Christmas, neither Ramadan nor Passover is a national holiday in the United States—minorities must be granted equal citizenship and the right to full participation in the political process.
But citizenship rights are not enough. A second requirement of an ethically defensible nationalism is that it not merely tolerate but encourage and celebrate the diversity of cultures within its borders. This principle is violated, in my view, when Turkey restricted the teaching of Kurdish, when Morocco discouraged use of the Berber language, and when France prohibits the wearing of head scarves in public schools. I myself would not object to making English the one official language in the United States but only if it were part of a larger effort to fund, encourage, and celebrate Hispanic and other cultures, Spanish and other immigrant languages, rather than being tied to an anti-immigrant “English only” agenda.
A third requirement of a morally acceptable cultural nationalism goes a step further. It is perhaps the most difficult requirement but arguably the most important. It calls for what Martha Nussbaum “cosmopolitan education.” In Nussbaum’s view education should nurture the ideal of world citizenship, remind us of “the interdependence of all human beings and communities,” and help us “recognize moral obligations to the rest of the world that are real and that otherwise would go unrecognized,” particularly the obligation of wealthy countries like our own to the developing world.” But I want to focus on just one aspect of this education, the one most important for tempering extremist passions often associated with nationalism. That aspect is historic truth.
Perhaps that seems a rather big build-up for something obvious and uncontroversial, but I submit that it is both controversial and rarely achieved. In probably the most famous article on nationalism, “What Is a Nation?” Renan writes:
Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations…
Renan claims, further, that a heroic past and the memory of past glory are “the social capital upon which one bases a national idea.”
An insistence on historic truth means that nations can celebrate their past glories only if they are also able to acknowledge their past shames. Some nations have made progress in doing exactly this: the Nazi past is taught in German schools, South Africa had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Americans have to some degree confronted the legacy of slavery and mistreatment (to put it mildly) of Native Americans. But forgetting and denial are still the norm in many countries.
Let me focus for a moment one on one area of especially intense conflict, Israel/Palestine. I have engaged in intense discussions with Jews and Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and I have participated, as an American Jew, in Arab-Jewish dialogue groups in Michigan. I also feel privileged, at a time when the Arab and Muslim world are the focus of so much world-wide attention, to be teaching at a university campus located in the city of Dearborn, which has the largest Arab population in North America.
What is clear from many discussions is the inability of each “side” to see the other as historic victims and the importance so many attach to the acknowledgement by their adversaries of being victimizers. Some otherwise educated Palestinians consider the Holocaust an “exaggeration” and a disturbing number do not consider Israeli children innocent victims when killed by suicide bombers. Israeli Jews are not taught about the sins of their fathers in establishing the state of Israel, and most that I interviewed at Hebrew University did not know about Deir Yassine, the most famous massacre of Palestinians, or about the destruction of Palestinian villages after the War of Independence. These facts, known by every Palestinian, are not taught in Israeli schools, so Palestinian rage is easily seen as a kind of blind hatred or even a renewal of Nazi-like racial anti-Semitism. (A brief attempt to change the Israeli school curriculum to include a less narrowly nationalistic perspective was reversed by the Sharon government.) A morally acceptable nationalism, for both Israelis and Palestinians, would include aim for the kind historic truth the Renan thought to be incompatible with nationalism and a strong national identity.
In the kind of cosmopolitan education that I envision, citizens would learn both the glories and sins of their national ancestors and, equally important, the richness of other cultures, in particular that of potential adversaries. This is important both as a step toward global reconciliation and for the expansion of human consciousness. Just as Stravinsky’s atonal music or the initially uncomfortable forms of abstract expressionist art introduce us to new possibilities of human consciousness and human meaning, coming to appreciate other cultures enlarges our understanding of what it means to be human.
I began with Johann Gottfried Herder’s glorification of nationalism and his insistence that nationality is a gift of God. But Herder’s nationalism was not narrow or xenophobic. Perhaps surprisingly, Herder claimed that “nothing is more ridiculous than national pride” because all nationalities are sacred. Herder insisted that “In each nation the feeling of sympathy for all other nations must be cultivated so much that each one may imagine itself in the place of the other.” “No love for our nation shall hinder us in recognizing everywhere the good which can be effected progressively only in the great course of times and peoples.' For the nations are diversified and unique in order to supplement one another.”
If we can embrace something closer to Herder’s vision of nationalism, a cultural nationalism that is compatible with cosmopolitan education and world citizenship, then I think we will have taken a large step toward global reconciliation.
Elias Baumgarten
January 2006