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Against Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Harry Brighouse
Harry Brighouse*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Extract

A recent resurgence of interest within analytical political philosophy in the status of ethnic and national minorities coincides with the re-emergence of national identity as a primary organizing principle of political conflict, and with an increasing attentiveness to identity and recognition as organizing principles of political struggle. The recent theoretical literature within political philosophy has focused very much on recognizing the importance of national identity, and allowing attention to national sentiment to inform the design of social institutions.

In this paper I shall state the case for a version of the position which Will Kymlicka has dubbed ‘benign neglect’ toward cultural identities. Benign neglect is the position that the state should, as far as possible, be neutral among the cultural (and hence national) sentiments of its citizens. The position is, I think, implicit in the theoretical work of many contemporary liberals, and also in much socialist theory and some socialist practice. But it is rarely defended explicitly. Liberal theory is generally developed on the unrealistic assumptions that the society to be regulated is closed and coincides with the membership of a single nation.

Type
PART III: For and Against Nationalism
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 22: Rethinnking Nationalism , 1996 , pp. 365 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1996

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References

1 It is hard to infer positions on this question by attention simply to practice, especially to socialist practice which has hitherto been (and will for the foreseeable future be) explicitly rectificatory. Nevertheless many (though probably not most) socialist currents have been hostile to national sentiment both because it is a barrier to immediate political projects and because it is desirable to do away with it in the long term.

2 Scruton, Roger, Philosopher on Dover Beach (London: St. Martin's Press 1988), 299Google Scholar

3 I do not mean to imply that all internationalist socialists will feel this way. I am just describing what seems to me a possible (and, for some people, actual) psychological scenario.

4 See Buchanan, Allen, Secession (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1991)Google Scholar; Copp, David, ‘Do Nations Have a Right to Self-Determination?’ in French, Stanley G., ed., Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association 1979), 71–95Google Scholar; Miller, David, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995)Google Scholar for more elaborate characterizations of nations.

5 This corresponds to the idea in Cohen's, Joshua description of the ideal procedure in a deliberative democracy that “On the deliberative conception it is important that collective choices be made in a deliberative way, and not simply that those choices conform to the preferences, convictions and ideals of citizens,” ‘The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy,’ Social Philosophy and Policy 6:2 (1987) 25–50 at 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is important for liberal legitimacy that assent be actually achieved, and not simply be consistent with people's preferences, convictions, and ideals.

6 Galston, William, Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 243-47CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Copp, David, ‘The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living: Justice, Autonomy, and Basic Needs,’ Social Philosophy and Policy 9:1 (1992) 231-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an account of how our interest in autonomy supports rights to access to a basic level of resources.

8 Some self-described liberals accord it no formal weight at all, for example, William Galston.

9 This worry might be dealt with in practice by making the right to secede conditional on the new state recognizing that minorities within the new nation have more limited rights of self-determination. See Allen Buchanan, Secession, especially ch. 4.

10 This example has limited force because the case involves only harms and bads, and not the cessation of guarantees for autonomy-supporting conditions.

11 It is important to note that my use of the term ‘citizen’ does not reflect any commitment to any sort of national identity. Saying that citizens of a state owe these obligations to one another carries no implication that they owe any less or any different to citizens of other states. Nor does it imply that they have any right to determine the conditions of entry to or exit form citizenship. Anti-liberals are prone to accusing liberals of inconsistency when they use the language of commonality or citizenship. Roger Scruton says,

“Nor are liberals consistent in their repudiation of the national idea, as is shown by a characteristic liberal attitude to immigration … The argument is advanced that we have no right to close our doors against immigrants from our former colonies, since it was we who exploited them, or reduced them to the state of economic and cultural dependence which ensures that their best- perhaps their only - prospects are now on British soil. If you examine the use of ‘we’ in that sentence you will find the perfect instance of the national idea, as I have described it: the idea of moral unity between people, based in territory, language, association, history and culture, and so bound up with the self-consciousness of those who are joined by it, as to make subsequent generations answerable for the sins of their forefathers … “ Scruton, Roger, Philosopher on Dover Beach, 320Google Scholar.

Scruton does not quote a liberal anti-nationalist, so his attribution of inconsistency is only to a statement which he has made up himself. But even on the way he has construed the position it does not take a great deal of charity in interpretation to render the position consistent. The first ‘we’ in his sentence refers only to the group of people who have the de facto control of the gates. The subsequent uses of ‘we’ and ‘our’ are indeed careless (though, as I say, the carelessness is that of a liberal in Scruton's imagination), but they are a shorthand for the individualist idea that we, the de facto controllers of the gates, are, unjustly, the beneficiaries of a current distributive injustice which was caused by the behaviour of past de facto controllers of the gates who also, coincidentally, were our forebears (or some of our forebears). We do not owe anybody anything just because our forebears did wrong to their forebears. We owe things to them because we are currently on their wrong side, which situation was indeed brought about by the actions of our forebears. The appeal to groups here, furthermore, is not a fundamental appeal to group identity, but a convenient appeal for the sake of social policy, which must always be applied to well-defined groups, even though it must fundamentally be justified on individualist grounds.

12 In fact, violations of neutrality of intent sometimes make it easier for the victims to fulfill their conceptions of the good. Obvious cases are conceptions of the good which see persecution as a precondition of demonstrating full faith. Less obviously, cultures which suffer mild persecution are sometimes artificially sustained by the resistance that persecution provokes. That said, when a policy has publicly demonstrated negative effects on a particular conception of the good for some lengthy period of time it is sometimes reasonable for those who are disadvantaged by it to feel devalued even when in fact the justification of the policy was neutral.

13 Of course, if the neutral justification were proposed by Baroness Thatcher no one would believe that she was being sincere. Discussions of justifications of policies are usually highly stylized because it is difficult in practice to establish the real justifications of any given measure. Not only are people often insincere about the public justifications they offer, but even when they are not, in democratic processes the supporters of any measure or package of measures typically diverge in their motivations. I address this issue in ‘Neutrality, Publicity, and State Funding of the Arts,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 24:1 (1995) 36-63.

14 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971), esp. 75–90, 100-8Google Scholar

15 Galston, William, ‘Two Concepts of Liberalism,’ Ethics 105:3 (1995) 516-34 at 526CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Galston, , ‘Two Concepts of Liberalism,’ 526Google Scholar

17 Galston, does appear to put forward a proposal favouring large-nation national sentiment in his account of civic education. See Liberal Purposes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Galston, , ‘Two Concepts of Liberalism,’ 527Google Scholar

19 See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987)Google Scholar. I discuss autonomy-facilitation as an element of liberalism in ‘Is There a Neutral Justification for Liberalism?,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77:3 (1996), 193-215, and ‘Egalitarian Liberals and School Choice,’ Politics and Society 24:4 (1996), 457-86.

20 Miller, David, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995), 49Google Scholar

21 Miller, , On Nationality, 50Google Scholar

22 Miller, , On Nationality, 70Google Scholar

23 Miller, , On Nationality, 70Google Scholar

24 Miller, , On Nationality, 69Google Scholar

25 Miller, , On Nationality, 24Google Scholar

26 Miller, , On Nationality, 25Google Scholar

27 I do not mean to preclude the possibility of successful assimilation, but, at least for adults, it takes a very long time and considerable good fortune.

28 He explicitly distinguishes national self-determination from the view that every nation should have a state, though he is friendly to that idea. Miller, On Nationality, 80.

29 Miller, , On Nationality, 83–86Google Scholar

30 Miller, , On Nationality, 88Google Scholar. Notice that this advantage, unlike the other two, requires that the state be democratic. Whereas mediating our distinctive obligations and protecting our national culture can be done by an authoritarian state, it is meaningless to say that we are exercising collective autonomy unless the mechanism by which we are doing this is responsive to our demands.

31 The problems are not, in my view, insuperable. See for example Herman, Barbara, ‘Agency, Attachment, and Difference,’ Ethics 101:4 (1991) 775-97CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Railton, Peter, ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 13:2 (1984) 134-71.Google Scholar

32 Miller, David, ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 10:1 (1993) 3–16 at 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Miller, , ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ 11Google Scholar

34 These were the thirteen Labour MPs identified by The Sun as opponents of the war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

35 Miller, , On Nationality, 87Google Scholar

36 Miller, , On Nationality, 88Google Scholar

37 I have discussed the issue of state funding of the arts in ‘Neutrality, Publicity, and State Funding of the Arts,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 24:1 (1995) 36-63. I think that the moderate argument I make there against state funding of the arts applies even more compellingly to state support for a particular national culture. For more discussions of state funding of culture, see Dworkin, Ronald, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1985), ch. 11Google Scholar; Carroll, Noel, ‘Can Government Funding of the Arts be Justified Theoretically?,’ Journal of Aesthetic Education 21:1 (1987) 21–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Black, Samuel, ‘Revisionist Liberalism and the Decline of Culture,’ Ethics 102:2 (1992) 244-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Miller, , On Nationality, 90–92Google Scholar

39 Miller, , On Nationality, 92Google Scholar. See also ‘In Defence of Nationality,’ 9-10.

40 See Shapiro, Andrew, We're Number One (New York: Vintage Books 1992)Google Scholar, Wolff, Edward N., Top Heavy: A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America (New York: Twentieth Century Fund 1995)Google Scholar, Folbre, Nancy, The New Field Guide to the U.S. Economy (New York: The New Press 1995)Google Scholar for some evidence of this failure.

41 See, for example, Davis, Mike, Prisoners of the American Dream (London: Verso 1984)Google Scholar.

42 See, for example, Esping-Anderson, Gosta, Politics Against Markets (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1985)Google Scholar and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1990); Przeworski, Adam, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 ‘The state of the nation is all my concern

When I'm gnawing a crust for my dinner

I can't afford meat on the money I earn

And I'm growing steadily thinner

But its all for the good of the nation.

The Nation the nation

The nation is in such a terrible state

Stagnation, inflation

If we all pull together we'll once again make Britain Great.'

Leon Rosselson, from ‘The Good of the Nation; lyrics printed in Leon Rosselson

and Perks, Jeff, For the Good of the Nation (London: Journeyman Press 1981)Google Scholar.

44 See Goodin, Robert, ‘What's So Special About Our Fellow Countrymen?; Ethics 98:4 (1988) 663-86CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a careful defence of a universalist approach to nationality.

45 Most of my discussion focuses on the arguments made in Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989)Google Scholar, and developed in Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995). A distinct argument, concerning the importance of societal, or institutionally complete, cultures, is developed in Multicultural Citizenship. See Allen Buchanan's contribution to this volume, ‘What's So Special About Nations?', for criticism of this argument.

46 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 166Google Scholar; Multicultural Citizenship, 82- 84

47 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 182-3Google Scholar

48 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 183Google Scholar

49 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 183Google Scholar. See also Multicultural Citizenship, where he says ‘The viability of their [national minorities’] societal cultures may be undermined by economic and political decisions made by the majority. They could be outbid or outvoted on resources and policies that are crucial to the survival of their societal cultures. The members of the majority do not face this problem. Given the importance of cultural membership this is a significant inequality which, if not addressed, becomes a serious injustice,’ 109.

50 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 185-6Google Scholar

51 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 187Google Scholar

52 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 152Google Scholar

53 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 152 (emphases in original)Google Scholar

54 Buchanan makes and elaborates this point in ‘What's So Special About Nations?’.

55 Aboriginal peoples in the U.S. have been subjected to massacres, thefts, juridical inequality of liberty, political inequality, and inequality of opportunity, and hardly any living North American descendants of American Indians who were resident at the time of the worst infractions have avoided the consequences. Even on Robert Nozick's view living North American Indians merit substantial compensation.

56 See Dworkin, , A Matter of Principle, chs. 14 and 15Google Scholar.

57 For Dworkin's, version of the initial auction see ‘What is Equality Part 2: Equality of Resources,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 10:3 (1981) 283–345Google Scholar.

58 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 188Google Scholar. For a less formal rendering of the main argument I am discussing here see Multicultural Citizenship, 108-15.

59 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 188Google Scholar

60 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 189Google Scholar

61 I suppose that children growing up in the wild lack a cultural context of choice, but also that there is nothing that can be done about this except searching for them and placing them in societies.

62 Allen Buchanan makes a similar point in Secession, 101-2.

63 For discussion of the state of English and Welsh in Wales, see Adler, Max, Welsh and the Other Dying Languages in Europe: A Sociolinguistic Study (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag 1977)Google Scholar, and Coupland, Nikolas, ed., English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict and Change (Bristol, PA: Multilinguistic Matters Ltd. 1990)Google Scholar.

64 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 194-5Google Scholar; Multicultural Citizenship, 152

65 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 37Google Scholar. See also 81-82.

66 Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and Culture, 196Google Scholar; Multicultural Citizenship, 153

67 Allen Buchanan has pointed out to me that while some proscriptive minority language rights, like Bill 101 in Quebec, are external protections, they are also internal restrictions, since they are binding on the members of the culture as well as on non-members.

68 Raz, Joseph, ‘Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective,’ Dissent Winter 1994, 67–79 at 71Google Scholar.

69 Raz, , ‘Multiculturalism,’ 71Google Scholar

70 Kymlicka, , Multicultural Citizenship, 113Google Scholar

71 I am grateful to Darrell Moellendorf for extremely valuable discussions and for suggesting that I write this paper, and to Allen Buchanan for extensive comments on it. I'm also grateful to Jonathan Barrett, Lynn Glueck, and Andrew Levine.