Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T07:15:34.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Theoretical Difficulties in the Study of Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Yael Tamir*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
Get access

Extract

Philosophical questions are not like empirical problems, which can be answered by observation or experiment or entitlements from them. Nor are they like mathematical problems which can be settled by deductive methods, like problems in chess or any other rule-governed game or procedure. But questions about the ends of life, about good and evil, about freedom and necessity, about objectivity and relativity, cannot be decided by looking into even the most sophisticated dictionary or the use of empirical or mathematical reasoning. Not to know where to look for the answer is the surest symptom of a philosophical problem.

Isaiah Berlin

Critics of recent philosophical analyses of nationalism suggest that nationalism is a unique social phenomenon that cannot, and need not, be theorized. Are there, indeed, some special features constitutive of nationalism that might defy theorization? Those answering this question in the affirmative point to the plurality and specificity of national experiences, as well as to the emotional and eclectic nature of nationalist discourse.

Type
PART 1: Methodological Turnings
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jahanbegloo, R., Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (London: Phoenix Paperback 1992), 27Google Scholar

2 Kedourie, E., Nationalism (London: Hutchinson 1960)Google Scholar

3 Gellner, E., Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1971), 149Google Scholar

4 Kriek, E., in Sabine, G. H. and Thorson, T. L., A History of Political Theory (Hinsdale: Dryden Press 1973), 816Google Scholar

5 Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul 1962), 49Google Scholar

6 Weinstock, D. M., ‘Is There a Case for Nationalism?Journal of Applied Philosophy 13:1 (1996) 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 In Weinstock, , ‘Is There a Case for Nationalism?’ 88Google Scholar

8 Berlin, I., ‘The Bent Twig: A Note on Nationalism,Foreign Affairs 51 (1972) 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Seton-Watson, H., Nations and States (London: Methuen 1977), 445Google Scholar

10 Benn, S., ‘Nationalism,’ in Edwards, P., ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Macmillan: The Free Press 1967)Google Scholar

11 Kohn, H., The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Collier McMillan 1966)Google Scholar; Plamenatz, J., Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1968)Google Scholar; Smith, A., Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth 1993)Google Scholar

12 MacCorrnick, N., Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1981), 250Google Scholar

13 Graham, G., Politics in Its Place: A Study of Six Ideologies (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986), 140Google Scholar

14 See Tamir, Y., Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1993).Google Scholar

15 O'Brien, C. C., ‘Nationalists and Democrats,Times Literary Supplement, 15, August 1991, 29Google Scholar

16 Ha'am, Ahad, The Collected Essays of Ahad Ha'am (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Dvir Publishing House 1954)Google Scholar

17 Walzer, M., ‘The National Question Revised,Tanner Lecture, Oxford, 1989Google Scholar

18 Berlin, I., Against the Current (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979), 344Google Scholar

19 If suffering is a necessary qualification of acquiring national rights then the sanctification of suffering is inescapable; if national rights could be supported on more general grounds then the reference to past sufferings might be avoided, and might be replaced with more forward looking, reconciliatory policies.

20 Brilmayer, L., ‘The Moral Significance of Nationalism,Notre Dame Law Review 71:1 (1995) 7Google Scholar

21 Brilmayer, , ‘The Moral Significance of Nationalism,’ 12Google Scholar

22 See the distinction I draw between the right to national self-determination and the right to self-rule in ‘The Right to National Self-Determination,’ Social Research 58 (1991) 565-90.

23 This process demands that the specific features of each case be closely examined: the nature of the groups involved, the history of the conflict, and the possible violation of rights that would follow from the proposed arrangements. Only then will it be possible to determine what kind of national rights are entailed in each specific case.

24 Brilmayer, , ‘The Moral Significance of Nationalism,’ 3031Google Scholar

25 Note that some approaches will combine both kinds of justifications. Still it will be important to know which kind of justification is grounded in a theory of nationalism and which ones are grounded in other types of theory.

26 The distinction between principles and policies somewhat parallels Max Weber's distinction in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ between the ethics of conviction, which refers to absolute values and need not compromise with reality, and the ethics of responsibility, which judges particular situations in a pragmatic fashion, “not leaving absolute moral standards totally out of consideration but at the same time not letting them govern one's political actions.” In Gerth, H.H. and Milles, C. Wright, eds. and trans., From Max Weber (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul 1948).Google Scholar

27 Kymlicka, W., Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford University Press 1996), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 194Google Scholar

29 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 17Google Scholar

30 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 15Google Scholar

31 In her intriguing discussion of the faces of injustice, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven: Yale University Press 1990), Judith Shklar reminds us that the definition of injustice is social and political. What usually passes for an injustice “is an act that goes against some known legal or ethical rule. Only a victim whose complaints match the rule-governed prohibitions has suffered an injustice. If there is no fit, it is only a matter of the victim's subjective reaction, a misfortune, not really unjust.” Injustice may sometimes be unavoidable, but we must not ignore it. Our normative rules ought to be structured so as to help us judge what is the best thing to do in each particular case, and to acknowledge injustice even when unable to alleviate it or forced to impose it.

32 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 46Google Scholar

33 The structure of this claim follows Raz's, J. definition of a right in The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986), 165192.Google Scholar

34 See mainly the writings of Taylor, Charles, on this matter especially Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Politics of Recognition,’ in Gutmann, A., ed., Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1994).Google Scholar

35 See Mill, J. S., Representative Government (esp. chap. 16) and Miller, D., On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995)Google Scholar.

36 Defining the desire to preserve and enhance the national or cultural identity as the shared grounds of all theories of nationalism challenges the widely accepted interpretation of nationalism as necessarily prescribing the creation of a nationstate. The statist approach to nationalism is misleading in its endorsement of a specific political solution, which was popular in a particular historical setting as the sole end and the only true interpretation of nationalism.

37 For a discussion of polycentric nationalism see Smith, A., Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth 1983)Google Scholar; for the idea of reiterated nationalism see Walzer, M., ‘Two Kinds of Universalism,Tanner Lecture, Oxford, 1989Google Scholar.

38 Judt, T., ‘The New Old Nationalism,New York Review of Books, 22 May 1994, 4950Google Scholar

39 Walzer, M., Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell 1983)Google Scholar

40 Dworkin, R., ‘To Each His Own,New York Review of Books, 14 April 1983Google Scholar

41 Plamenatz, , Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, 29Google Scholar

42 On the problem of abstraction in political theory, see Walzer, M. and Dworkin, R., ““Spheres of Justice“: An Exchange,New York Review of Books, 21 July 1983.Google Scholar

43 Nozick, R., Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 4Google Scholar

44 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971), 141 (my emphasis)Google Scholar

45 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, 139.Google Scholar

46 Judt’ s criticism, according to which a veil which allows members to acknowledge the general division of the world into nations and the fact that they themselves are members of such nations “isn't hiding anything significant,” is based on a misunderstanding of the role of the veil.

47 Katznelson, I., Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1996), 160Google Scholar

48 Dworkin, R., ‘Reply,New York Review of Books, 21 July 1983Google Scholar

49 Judt, T., ‘Reply,’ New York Review of Books, 23 June 1994, 64Google Scholar