Nationalism
Johann Gottfried Herder and Isaiah Berlin
Walzer, following Mill, bases many of his moral judgments on the rights of political communities to self-determination. These “political communities” clearly are represented, in Walzer’s mind, by states, and so he supports national sovereignty and a prima facie (non-absolute) ban against intervention in the affairs of other states. For this Walzer has been criticized as “statist.” We know that Walzer supports some degree of nationalism as a way to protect the individual human right to live in a community that represents a “way of life.” Here are some other statements about nationalism that are interesting to consider for our own time, when a major cause of war is related to ideologies of nationalism..
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
From Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A study in Its Origins and Background, Collier Books, 1944
“[For Herder] the national community was the necessary medium between mankind and the individual; the creative forces of the universal individualized themselves primarily not in the single human beings, but in the collective personalities of national communities.” (p.428)
“. . .he regarded the state as something artificial and accidental, nationality as something natural and essential.” (p.429)
“Each nationality was to him a living organism, a manifestation of the Divine, and therefore something sacred which should not be destroyed but cultivated. Every man, so he taught, could fulfill his human destiny only within and through his nationality. This was true of all nationalities: all were equally sacred, the seemingly advanced ones and those called 'primitive,' through them all, in different ways, the destiny of mankind fulfilled itself. A nationality lived about all in its civilization; its main instrument was its language, not an artificial instrument, but a gift of God, the guardian of the national community and the matrix of its civilization.” (p.431) “Herder was the first for whom the rights of nationality and language took precedence before the rights of the state.” (p.432)
Humanity remained for Herder the highest, though a somewhat vague, goal and criterion. His love for nationality embraced all nationalities and their national life. `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 supplement one another.” (p.433-434)
“Nothing seemed more ridiculous to Herder than national pride. What, he asked, would be the yardstick for comparisons among nations?” (p.435) “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.” (p.436)
(over)
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah, Berlin, “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power,” Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Hogarth Press, London, pp.333355, 1979.
"By nationalism, I mean. . .that the characters of the individuals who compose the group are shaped by, and cannot be understood apart from, those of the group, defined in terms of common territory, customs, laws, memories, beliefs, language, artistic and religious expression, social institutions, ways of life, to which some add heredity, kinship, racial characteristics; and that it is these factors which shape human beings, their purposes and their values.
“Second, that the pattern of life of a society is similar to that of a biological organism; that what this organism needs for its proper development. . .constitutes its common goals; that these goals are supreme; in cases of conflict with other values. . .these supreme values should prevail, since only so will the decadence and ruin of the nation be averted.
“The essential unit in which man's nature is fully realized is not the individual or a voluntary association but the nation. The nature and purposes of the nation is revealed not by rational analysis but by a `special awareness.”' (p. 342)
“[Nationalism] entails the notion that one of the most compelling reasons, perhaps the most compelling, 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. This is tantamount to saying that these rules or doctrines or principles should be followed not because they lead to virtue or happiness or justice or liberty. . .or are good or right in themselves, and therefore valid in their own right universally, for all men in a given situation; rather they are to be followed because these values are those of my group,for the nationalist, of my nation; these thoughts, feelings, this course of action, are good or right, and I shall achieve fulfillment or happiness by identifying myself with them, because they are demands of the particular form of social life into which I have been born. . .and apart from which I am. . .a leaf, a twig, broken off from the tree, which alone can give it life; so that if I am separated from it by circumstance or my own willfulness, I shall become aimless...”
“Finally. . .full-blown nationalism has arrived at the position that, if the satisfaction of the needs of the organism to which I belong turns out to be incompatible with the fulfillment of other groups, I, or the society to which I belong, have no choice but to force them to yield, if need be by force. If my group,let us call it nation,is freely to realise its nature, this entails the need to remove obstacles in its path. Nothing that obstructs that which I recognize as my,that is, my nation's,supreme goal, can be allowed to have equal value with it. There is no over-arching criterion or standard, in terms of which the various values of the lives, attributes, aspirations, of different national groups can be ordered, for such a standard would be super-national, not itself immanent in, part and parcel of, a given social organism. . .” (p.343)
[Berlin was describing the phenomenon of nationalism. Unlike Herder, he was not himself espousing nationalism.]