Patriotism

Charles Jones, Richard Vernon

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781509518364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie politique

From flag-waving to the singing of national anthems, the practices and symbolsofpatriotism are inescapable, and modern politics is increasingly full of appealstopatriotic fervour. But if no-one chooses where they were born, and ourethicalobligations transcend national boundaries, then does patriotism make any sense?Doesit encourage an uncritical attachment to the status quo, or is it a crucial wayofunderstanding and applying our freedoms and moralduties?

In this engaging book, Charles Jones and Richard Vernon guide us throughthesequestions with razor-sharp clarity. They examine the different ways patriotism hasbeendefended and explained, from a republican attachment to free anddemocraticinstitutions to an ethical and historical fabric that makes our entire moral lifeandidentity possible. They outline its relationship to a range of other key concepts, suchasnationalism and cosmopolitanism, and skilfully analyse the issuessurroundingpartiality to country and whether we should prioritise the welfare of ourcompatriotsoveroutsiders.

This concise and lucid volume will be essential for both students and generalreaderswishing to understand the contemporary resonance and historical developmentofpatriotism, and how it intersects with debates about global justice, cosmopolitanismandnationalism.

1
Community, Loyalty and Partiality

‘All morality is tribal morality …’

Andrew Oldenquist (1982: 178)

‘I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.’

James Baldwin (1955: 9)

In the Introduction we attempted to clarify the meaning of patriotism and to offer some initial thoughts on assessing its moral and political status. Our present task is to introduce three large themes around which to consider in more detail what it means to be a patriot and how patriotism measures up to ethical scrutiny. The themes are community, loyalty and partiality. We will address three sets of questions. First, is patriotism a desirable form of community attachment that every person needs in order to live a meaningful life? Second, is the fact that patriotism is a form of loyalty sufficient to give it significant ethical weight? And third, does the partiality of patriotic commitment render it morally questionable? Should we worry that an impartial viewpoint seems to be both morally necessary yet impossible for a true patriot to adopt?

Community, identity and patriotic attachment

Associative duties

We all participate in special relationships of various kinds – within families, with friends, with fellow workers, with co-participants in social causes, and with compatriots – that involve commitments that give our lives both a focus and an identity. To be committed in these ways is to be willing to pursue certain goals and to make sacrifices along the way. It is widely believed that members of certain normatively important social groups – families, friends, colleagues and compatriots – owe fellow members special duties. Samuel Scheffler has coined the label ‘associative duties’ for these special responsibilities we often recognize toward associates in the various communities to which we belong (Scheffler 2001: 4, 49–65). On this common-sense view, to be a member of one of these communities is to be required to act on the associative duties that members recognize they have toward each other.

Associative duties should be distinguished from two other types of duty: natural and transactional. We owe natural duties, like the duty not to harm others, to every person without reference to any association or community to which we belong. Transactional duties, on the other hand, originate in actions we perform, such as promises or contracts: here a person's duty follows from a voluntary commitment or agreement they make. Our focus here is on associative relationships, which make essential reference to specific groups to which we belong and do not necessarily depend on any voluntary action on our part. For example, we do not choose our parents and, while we can to some extent choose our friends (if they accept our choice), we can but mainly do not choose our country.

Notice that it is one thing to say that it is permissible to favour associates over non-associates, but another thing to say that such favouritism is morally obligatory (Scheffler 2001: 79; Primoratz, in Kleinig et al. 2015: 83). To speak of associative duties is to highlight their obligatory or morally required status: on this view, we are obligated to show special concern for members of certain communities to which we belong. In order to evaluate patriotism we must first recognize that it commits us not merely to allowing special concern but also to demanding that we favour compatriots. How could such stringent requirements be justified? Are we correct in thinking that membership in a particular country or nation-state should be so morally salient that it will properly play a central role in our practical deliberations by creating special duties to our compatriots? (Stilz 2009: 3).

Suppose my affiliation with my country matters to me. Does it follow that I may legitimately privilege my compatriots over non-compatriots in thought and action? If I feel that I belong to my country or have a strong connection to it, why should I conclude based on these feelings that I am morally required to show favouritism toward my compatriots? One answer appeals to the values of community and identity: my country is special because it is the community that gives me the values with which I identify, values that give me an identity and enable me to live a worthwhile life.

Community, identity and morality

As we saw in the Introduction, Alasdair MacIntyre claims that the morality of patriotism corresponds to a communitarian conception of morality according to which ‘the questions of where and from whom I learn my morality turn out to be crucial for both the content and the nature of moral commitment’. Who I am, my sense of my own identity, is tightly linked to the ‘particular community’ in which I was raised and to which I belong (MacIntyre 1984: 8). If I am patriotic I love an intergenerational community of which I am a part, a community that makes me the person I am. We simply cannot understand ourselves as individuals without situating ourselves within the historical narrative our community shapes for us. For MacIntyre, we must take our ‘moral starting point’ for understanding our duties from the particular roles we play in these unfolding stories, as daughter, son, mother, father, friend, teacher, citizen, national and patriot. We can know what to do only if we know the narratives in which we play our part (MacIntyre 1981: 216). Similarly, for Michael Sandel, there is a sense of community uniting members of society in which ‘community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of their identity’ (Sandel 1982: 150). Sandel claims that our identity is bound up with our ‘aims and attachments’, our basic allegiances that demand loyalty to particular others while at the same time making us the particular people we are. The reality of our ‘moral experience’ requires that we view ourselves ‘as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this republic’ (179). In short, identity comes with its own implications for our moral allegiances, including duties to our compatriots.

MacIntyre and Sandel are correct that our social roles set the stage for determining our moral duties to others. When considering associative duties – to family, friends, compat­riots – we cannot avoid addressing the expectations set for anyone who fills the role in question. The problem with their analysis, however, is that this account of ‘role morality’ places too much emphasis on discovering our roles rather than deciding what they should be and what duties follow from inhabiting them. We do not have clearly defined duties that follow directly from our assigned station; instead we cannot avoid making difficult decisions about what to do, as a parent, friend or fellow citizen (Feinberg 1988: 117). There is a relationship between community and identity, but it is not that we simply discover our communal identities as a sort of destiny; rather we can choose to use our reasoning capacities to shape our identities to a significant extent (Sen 2006: 32–9). In the end it is up to us to decide how prominently to place our love and loyalty to our country within the range of sympathetic commitments we recognize.

Amartya Sen describes what is to be said for having a deep sense of communal identity (Sen 2006: 1–5, 18–23). Sharing an identity with our compatriots can produce emotionally strong bonds that help us overcome the temptation to act in our individual self-interest. Consider also the consequent harm that is done by attempting to understand human conduct while disregarding the fact that we identify with particular others and attach value to our social identities. It is important to recognize that we are social animals whose development depends on shared communal resources such as language, customs and culture. There is little doubt that human beings need to belong to communities if they are to avoid being detached from sources of meaning and value in their lives. To be affiliated with others seems to be a condition of living a life with a range of interests and commitments in which individuals feel connected to others rather than cut off from them. Yet at the same time the communities to which we belong can be suffocating and damaging to our social and moral development. So if we want to avoid both being isolated and lonely on the one hand, and being herded into an oppressive group on the other, we should seek integration on fair terms with others (Feinberg 1988: 118). In this way, we can have the benefits of social membership while avoiding the loss of individuality it sometimes threatens. At the level of one's country, the national community that merits its members' loyalty should affirm this ideal of integration while recognizing that its members, given their social nature, will belong to many other communities – family, friends, religious, academic, work-related – beneath and beyond the country level. Memberships in some of these communities overlap, but others do not, so the plurality of any person's affiliations is a fact to be registered and a potential source of conflicting commitments. And it should be emphasized that strong communal identities, especially those produced in ways that exclude others, can generate conflict between communities leading all the way up to all-out war. Despite the value of social identities, they can be dangerous because in-group solidarity often combines with hostility toward outsiders. As Sen puts it, a ‘strong – and exclusive – sense of belonging to one group can in many cases carry with it the perception of distance and divergence from other groups. Within-group solidarity can help to feed between-group discord’ (Sen 2006: 1–2).

Miller on community identity

But it could still be said that ethical thought must have a fundamental place for our community identities, including most prominently our sense of patriotism. David Miller rejects what he calls ‘ethical universalism’ in part because its emphasis on generic human characteristics (e.g., neediness) or capacities (e.g., for making choices) fails to accept any basic role for relational facts, such as that I am a father or husband or member of a nation, in conceiving the structure of ethical thinking (Miller 1995: 50). In particular, he objects to the way universalist thinking makes an implausibly strong separation between moral agency and both personal identity and moral motivation. What Miller has in mind is that universalists focus on abstract, general, rationally defensible claims such as the promotion of human happiness, with the consequence that they fail to allow any role in ethical thinking for ‘considerations about who I am, where I have come from, or which communities I see myself as attached to’ (57).

Two replies to Miller seem in order. The first asserts that, contrary to Miller's claim, as ethical agents we are not required to abstract ourselves ‘from all social particularity’ (MacIntyre 1984: 12, cited in Miller 1995: 57). Rather we need to retain the capacity to abstract from any particular source of identity – say, as parent, friend or citizen – in order to evaluate the demands on us. These demands include not only those arising out of our particular associational memberships but also more general considerations that include taking account of those outside our in-group. The second reply is that where we begin our ethical thinking is less important than how we engage in it. If we start from a universalist standpoint, recognizing the demand to promote human happiness or protect basic human rights, this does not rule out taking account of associative duties to family, friends or compatriots. And if we begin from a particularist standpoint, asking what is required of a compatriot in a given situation, this does not allow us to overlook our duties to our fellow human beings or to accede to the received view about the relative strength of these competing sources of motivation.

Moral values as community values

How much critical judgement can patriots display? (Nathanson 1993: 93). Michael Walzer argues that the only sort of critical commentary that should be taken seriously is the attentive criticism that comes from insiders, so-called ‘engaged’ or connected critics (Walzer 1987, 1988). We can imagine at least two reasons, epistemic and motivational, why this claim might seem well founded. First, community insiders are more likely to know the social and historical context in which their country finds itself. In short, their knowledge gives others reason to take them seriously. Second, true insiders are presumably motivated by love for their country, so their compatriots are unlikely to doubt that they want what is best for it. But suppose someone voices criticism of their country's policies or actions by appealing to allegedly universal moral values. One way of rejecting such criticism is by claiming that values themselves are relative to communities so that appealing beyond them to the wider world involves a misunderstanding of what it means to evaluate one's community.

We can distinguish two versions of the communitarian claim that moral values are community values: descriptive and normative. The descriptive version says that this is simply what values are, namely, any norms we understand and accept will be those of our community. If values come from outside, they are not our values. Since this claim purports to describe the world as it is, it is worth pointing out that it is false. First, consider the difference between moral development and moral acceptability. We learn about values through a process of moral education in which the lessons of our particular traditions play a crucial role. To become a morally mature person is to participate in this learning process, to listen to moral authorities, and to come to accept core values handed down to us. (Even this account of moral development can be questioned: we do not – and should not – simply accept what is handed down to us.) But it is one thing to describe how we come to possess our moral perspective on the world; it is quite another to suggest that this story prevents us from objecting to our community's practices by appealing to any values we think relevant. We can bracket aspects of our moral views and subject them to criticism whose sour...