Nationalism consists of various beliefs on the “normative significance of nations and nationality.” (p. 108) They are often beliefs about the success and flourishing of one’s own nation. Some have taken a deflationary approach to nationalism by tracing it to tribal psychology, and further contend that nationalism is not only groundless but harmful as well. These approaches to nationalism are not fruitful. Nationalism should be conceived as a moral phenomenon and analyzed as such. Nationalism seems to give us reasons for partiality, and to go a step further, nationalism gives a distinct source of special obligations.[1] I explore the grounds for partiality and how they might become duties to favor conationals[2] over strangers (non-nationals). I do this by mainly drawing from the works of Jeff McMahan and Thomas Hurka. The first step is to explore the grounds for partiality towards conationals, and this involved identifying what the demands of impartiality are. [3] We can take a reductive approach or non-reductive approach to meeting the demands of impartiality, and I argue that the non-reductive approach offers robust grounding to mount special obligations owed to conationals (rather than mere permissions). I end by arguing that the resulting conception of special conational obligations implies at least minimal national borders.

Before diving into a discussion on nationalism, we must first deal with the worry that nationalism is not a concept worth looking at. The suggestion is that perhaps nationalism is a contrived and contingent phenomenon which we may shed; indeed, if it is harmful, perhaps we ought to shed. Jonathan Glover tracks the primitive psychology behind nationalism to primal tribes. Tribes can be thought of as pure or ideal archetypes of a nation: they have clear boundaries, have a single ethnic group, have a common language, and have shared beliefs. (p. 13) They have a Darwinian function of increasing kin fitness and propagating one’s genes. (p. 15) Nations now veer away from this ideal due to contingent modern circumstances of blurred boundaries and an emerging pluralism. Some have traced modern nations to eighteenth century European industrialism and capitalism (or related forms of colonialism). (p. 13) Charles Taylor tells a story of how nationalism arose from traditional elites resisting modernization, which threatens to disempower them and cut at their “dignity.” (p. 44-46) Modernization collapses the early hierarchical system of elites and redistributes the power among the citizens. (p. 36) In response, elites “force a new categorical identity to be the bearer of the sought-for dignity,” (p. 45-46) through attachments to a particular national culture. Some argue Taylor’s story is too extravagant and overly complicated. Will Kymlicka jettisons the talk of dignity and instead argues that modern nationalism results from the simple desire to live and work with people sharing one’s culture (i.e. language, beliefs, ethnicities, etc.). (p. 63) We may deflate nationalism to various historical contingencies which emerge from our primitive psychology.

The worry arises: if nationalism is merely a contingent phenomenon resulting from a more basic tribal psychology, then why should we care about it? Putting cosmopolitan arguments to the side, nationalism seems prima facie harmful when we look back on history. Glover suggests that nationalism is a sort of necessary evil. Tribalism is a necessary part of our psychology, and nationalism is a natural expression of our tribal psychology. (p. 25) Nationalism, as a proper expression of tribalism, can be a positive force to promote flourishing. (p. 19) Where it goes wrong is when bad leaders use our ingrained tribalism for their own malicious benefit (like Machiavellian leaders). Still, Glover is reticent to commit himself fully to the positive benefits of nationalism (qua ideal tribalism); rather, he claims that global humanism ought to trump nationalism everytime. (p. 29) Walter Feinberg takes a different approach from Glover, and finds the dismissal of nationalism as an “anachronistic remnant of tribal morality” (p. 67) completely wrong. Nationalism is distinct in kind from tribalism, and, “whatever its origins,” it is a distinct phenomenon developed “in response to economic, cultural, and social conditions that are unique to modern life.” (p. 67) I think this is right. The force of whatever tribal psychology we may possess does not appear to be necessarily connected to notions of nationalism – rather, we may tread cautiously with the knowledge that tribal psychology may cause us to favor some people for the wrong kinds of reasons. This essay will proceed with the assumption that nationalism is a phenomenon that is morally ambiguous, thus, morally interesting.

Let me start by stipulating what we will mean here when we talk about “nationalism.” The typical view, held by “universal” nationalists, says that everybody is entitled to value their own nation; whereas the less commonly view, held by “particular” nationalists, says that only they are entitled to value their own nation. The particularist views, according to McMahan, stems from an account of morality as just “a set of norms that evolve within and govern the various fundamental human relations.” (p. 118) Authors, like David Miller, argue that morality arises within communities – “moral selves are embedded” – and this necessarily leads to a distinction between members and outsiders. (p. 140) This particularist starting point is attractive insofar as it does away with many of the worries accompanying the universalist views, but the particularist lends itself to even more troublesome issues.  One stark issue is that it undercuts the idea of universal morality, and this seems counterintuitive to our general ideas of commonsense morality. As such, to avoid such concerns and narrow the scope of our discussion, this essay will proceed with the universalist’s version of nationalism.

The moral issue with nationalism is that it is essentially partial. If morality demands that we treat all persons with equal concern and nobody is counted with more concern, then nationalism seems to be prima facie incompatible with impartiality. We can approach this worry in a couple of ways. One: we can work on our notion of impartiality to ease its demands on us, and subsequently make room for nationalism. Some trace the strictness moral impartiality to the “Enlightenment” (p. 140), and this strict notion of impartiality may not reflect what morality is supposed to be. Two: we can accept whatever strict version of impartiality and instead work with our notion of partiality in nationalism. If we can conceptualize the partiality as conforming to impartial demands, then nationalism can be compatible with impartiality. Here, notions of partiality are couched within the demands of impartiality. Third: we can keep strict impartiality and stand our ground with conceptions of nationalism in that we do not try to make it conform to the demands of impartiality. Instead, we may take nationalism for what it is, and take impartiality for what it is, and argue that sometimes the demands on nationalism trump the demands of impartiality. As the rhetoric suggests, I will be arguing in favor of the third approach. In any case, we need a thorough explication of “impartiality,” as well as the relevant moral pieces of nationalism. 

Let us begin with the general, more intuitive arguments. Adhering to the strict demands of impartiality – namely, treating everybody the same and not favoring anybody over anyone else – seems to lead to a dull, robotic social life. There are virtues to being partial; in the context of nationalism, for instance, partiality leads to virtues of loyalty, commitment, and self-sacrifice. (p.111) These cannot be bad, right? Of course, the staunch impartialist might respond that these virtues of partiality come at the cost of attributing lesser worth to outsiders.[4] Then, the argument goes, impartial “morality must respect and reflect our nature as persons,” (p. 111) This does not have to be an argument about psychological facts and our inability instantiate strict impartialism. Rather, I take the argument to be that whatever universal morality there is, it does not demand that we make such significant sacrifices (e.g. special relations, personal projects, etc.) in the name of morality. But what exactly are the moral demands of impartiality?

We can distinguish two levels of impartiality: formal and substantive. (p.116) Let me draw out this distinction with an illustration.  Take a moral rule like, “Parents should care more about their child than other children.” This rule is formally impartial, but it is not substantively impartial. Substantively, this rule is not impartial because the content of the rule is just that parents ought to be partial (and, plainly, not impartial) towards their children. Substantive impartiality is at “the level at which principles are implemented in action.” (p. 117) Formally, this rule does not favor one particular group or person, but it still preserves some notion of partiality.[5] Perhaps formal impartiality is what we want out of moral impartiality; in other words, perhaps the strictness of substantive impartiality is not what morality demands of us. On the other hand, perhaps some principles (if we are committed to them) of equal concern and respect always demand substantive impartiality. The question now becomes one of strictness: does moral impartiality demand merely formal impartiality, or the stricter substantive impartiality?

There are different answers to which conception of impartiality we must commit ourselves to. These answers are typically informed by how we justify the grounds for partiality in our notions of nationalism.  The arguments for grounding partiality take two forms: reductive and non-reductive.[6] What is meant by “reductive” is that justifications of partiality are “reduced to” some impartial rule. The aim is to find something about nationalism which can be linked to a general principle (typically, formally impartial).[7] The non-reductive approach does not try to find this link; rather, it tries to find its own robust justification for why it is equally or more important than impartial principles.

Most reductive grounds for partiality try to make sense of partiality within the constraints of mere formal impartiality. Arguments of this sort take the form of instrumental goods which can be traced back to a formally impartial moral rule. Hurka terms these sorts of arguments, “cultural perfectionist,” (p. 141) (others call them “flourishing” or “instrumental” arguments) and they say that culture is necessary for our flourishing. McMahan notes that nationalism promotes the “well-being” (p. 116) of those involved, so we can sufficiently justify principles such as, “each person should be loyal and partial to his or her own nation.” (p. 117) “Well-being” entails benefits from being a part of a nation, such as the language used to think and speak, the environment to cultivate intellectual capacities, the values which give life purpose, the structure to foster relationship, and so forth.[8] (p. 130) These can be traced back to something like a general duty of gratitude or debt to one’s nation.[9]

The non-reductive approach requires a stronger justification because it must provide reasons for subverting impartiality. Accordingly, the focus here is on intrinsic goods, or goods in themselves. First, relationships, particularlu familial relationships, seem to be the paradigm case for justified partiality. This argument could take a reductive, instrumental form; however, McMahan seems to convincingly close this avenue: “The suggestion that parents ought to cultivate strong dispositions to favour their own children because this arrangement is more conducive to the general happiness than the alternatives is a grotesque caricature of the sources of parental obligation.” (p. 115)[10] Reducing familial obligations to our general moral duties seems plainly wrong, and it seems more like an ad hoc maneuver to save impartiality. If there is something intrinsically good to familial relations that are pursued as an end in itself – and, as such, familial relations are justifiably partial – then perhaps conational relations may be justified in the same way.

Are conational relations similar enough to familial relations? There is one crucial piece missing from conational relations: intimacy. I live thousands of kilometers away from some of my fellow Canadians, I know nothing about them other than the fact that they are Canadian, and I probably will never meet them in my lifetime. This leaves us with a very thin notion of “relation” to work with. McMahan notes the “commonalities” among conationals, like “language, ethnicity, religion, culture, custom,” (p. 124) but then questions if these commonalities have moral significance. McMahan notes that the morally significant commonalities are ones of shared values, ideals, commitments, and sometimes even interest. (p. 125) Hurka responds by saying that these relations would give rise to special duties of (something like) admiration, but these duties would not be “special” in the proper sense because somebody from another nation could admire these same qualities. So, for example, if we based our partiality towards conationals on the fact that we have a common value of freedom and equality, then we would have similar grounds for partiality to any other nation who values freedom and equality. The “specialness” comes from the fact that they are discretely among conationals, and we need some grounds to distinguish only conationals and nobody else. Again, in the case of familial relations, we may plausibly point to intimacy as the distinctive grounds for generating (special) familial obligations. McMahan makes a further concession: even if we grant that we have warranted reasons for partiality for special relationships, this does not mean we have special duties rather than mere permission for special treatment of conationals. We need further reasons for duties rather than permissions.

Let us now take stock of what we are looking for in a non-reductive justification of partiality. First, it must revolve around relations between conationals that are morally significant.[11] Second, the moral significance must be discretely conational, and it must not include anybody else. Third, it must be sufficient to generate special duties, and not mere permissions. Let us make things easier and understand the last condition minimally: a sufficient condition to generate special duties consists in having reasons to favor the beneficence of a special party over non-special parties.

Hurka seems to suggest one such approach to justify partiality non-reductively. He investigates the constituents of intimacy by taking a closer look at relationships of love. To love your wife, he writes, is to love her “as an individual.” (p. 150) This individuating condition is shared history. Your wife, for instance, can have pretty brown eyes, but other women can have just as pretty brown eyes; however, no other woman can have the shared history of unique memories between you and your wife. Shared history is the core of intimacy, although there are various other contingent aspects which supplement accounts of intimacy. Conationals also share a history, and these may similarly be grounds for justified partiality. For example, in the 1960s, Canadians created a national health care system that “provides high-quality medical care to all citizens.” (p.153) Hurka asks the right question: “If certain people have a shared history of doing good, what determines the degree of partiality that is justified between them?” (p. 153) He addresses this question by outlining two criteria: first, the degree to which the people’s history is shared or involved interactions between them; second, the amount of good their interaction produced. (p. 153) Familial relations, and other relations of love and intimacy, score fairly high on both criteria. Conational relations score low on the first criteria, but high on the second (e.g. good of Canadian health care). This seems like a plausible justification for national partiality.

Hurka’s account seems to do well insofar as we are looking for. A “good” shared history seems to do the job of McMahan’s “commonalities” in that it ties conationals together in morally relevant ways, but it does a better job of demarcating conationals from strangers. Still, it is unclear how we tie into the historical narrative. Does my mere citizenship in a state mean that I have ties to that nation’s historical narrative? Moreover, how do we end up with duties rather than permissions? Hurka states that the special duties generated between conationals are not grand, but would I have the same duty to (say) a lifelong citizen of Canada as I would to somebody who became a Canadian citizen yesterday?

We can address question of the link from a citizen to historical narrative of the nation with a theory of social membership. Anybody who carries a particular tie to a nation’s history must be sufficiently integrated into the narrative of that nation, and I think this is done by being a social member of that nation. Social membership is a precondition for nationalism. Joseph Carens (2013) suggests two considerations for social membership: “residence and length of stay.” (p. 164) This is a good starting point, but Carens’ aim is more practical, and considers the institutional factors of being “relevant, objective, and easy to measure.” (p. 165) We need more principled reasons; namely, non-instrumental reasons for social membership. Taylor points out an instance of this in that people taking social membership as an end in itself want their culture and society to flourish long after their own deaths, just like a parent wanting their children to flourish after they pass away. A precise, principled outline of social membership is difficult to define because there will be countless counterexamples which need patching. I want to suggest adding McMahan’s morally significant “commonalities” – namely, things like shared values, ideals, and commitments. Remember that the problem with generating partiality from these commonalities was that it could not distinguish between nations with shared commonalities. But now we have stable grounding in shared history. We can now use commonalities, instead, as a principled criteria to distinguish who carries shared historical ties, and consequently who we owe special conational duties to.

It seems if we accept that we have special duties to conationals, a corollary would be that there is a boundary to distinguish how we treat conationals differently from strangers. In a minimal sense, this is a border (whether it is a closed border or open border is a different discussion). What I want to do now is examine this implication of a minimal border. If the conclusion of a minimal border is untenable, then we seem to have a reductio argument against the idea of special duties to conationals. This is a rich topic, particularly in debates between statists and cosmopolitans. I want to leave these discussions aside and focus briefly on just the topic of consistency between the principles of justice and the idea of national borders.  

David Miller (2008) frames the issue as “two conflicting intuition” between inequalities between people living in different places and the responsibilities of nations within their own borders. (p. 385) The basic sketch of his solution is to sketch a more refined theory of (global) justice to incorporate both the intuitions of universal human rights and “fair terms of interaction between independent political communities.” (p. 383) He distinguishes justice as having comparative and non-comparative requirements. (p. 392) In essence, comparative requirements have to do with the gap between rich and poor, whereas the non-comparative requirements have to do with an absolute condition of living “minimally decent lives.” (p. 394) Miller argues that the comparative requirement only applies “among people who already stand in a certain relationship to each, and especially among those who are fellow-citizens of a nation-state.” (p. 394) The idea is that global justice does not demand that we need to close the gap between rich and poor on a global scale. In effect, the principles of justice are not incompatible with the inequalities caused by national borders. [12] This is all very fast, but I merely want to show that there is no strict logical contradiction with justice and borders, and this can be accomplished with one plausible account (and I think Miller’s account is more than plausible).

By and large, what we end with is a very modest conception of special duties to conationals, and this implies an equally modest notion of national borders. To reflect back, it is inappropriate to think of our reasons to show special, partial treatment to conationals as something required by our general moral duties. Nationalism is a moral phenomenon which gives rise to distinctive, sui generis, special duties. This gives us a solid foundation to mount the idea of minimal national borders.

Sources

Abizadeh, Arash. (2010) “Democratic Legitimacy and State Coercion: A Reply to David Miller. Political Theory: 38 (1).

Blake, Michael. (2001) “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy.” Philosophy and Public Affairs: 30 (3).

Carens, Joseph. (2013) “The Ethic of Immigration.” New York: Oxford University Press.

McKim, Robert, and Jeff McMahan. (1997) “The Morality of Nationalism.” New York: Oxford University Press.[13]

Miller, David. (2010) “Why Immigration Controls Are Not Coercive: A Reply to Arasha Abizadeh” Political Theory: 38 (1).

Miller, David. (2008) “National responsibility and global justice.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: 11 (4).

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[1] I use “obligations” and “duties” interchangeably.

[2] I use “conationals” instead of “compatriots” to exclude the connotation of polity.

[3] When I mention “impartiality,” I mean morally relevant forms of impartiality. Moreover, I mean morality in a loose sense to encompass what some may designate as merely political or pragmatic considerations.

[4] Even if we assign the same amount of (say) respect to all, the strict impartialist will have qualms with treating some more with more beneficence than others.

[5] A rule, then, that fails to be formally impartial might be something like, “Daniel should care more about Canadians than Koreans.” Note that this maps onto the universalist-particularist distinction; that is, universalists nationalism is compatible with formal impartiality. (p. 117)

[6] Different authors use different terminological distinctions to flush out the distinction I am trying to make. I do not think that the terms make much of a difference here as long as they capture the general idea of demarcating the grounds for partiality.

[7] Some try to moderate the degrees of nationalism and subsequently fit them into impartial demands. These attempts try to cash out the particular right to be nationalistic, and investigate how the right to be nationalistic stacks up with other universal human rights.

[8] McMahan adds the idea of “complex identification” (p. 121-122), which entails further modes of identity from a range of groups (e.g. family, community, employee, etc.). This is meant to supplement nationalism as life-enriching by capturing more groups which add to the cumulative weight of “well-being.”

[9] Note that “general” duties are both formally and substantively impartial. These general duties can provide a further justification for merely formal duties (and justify jettisoning substantive impartiality). We may have reasons for having special duties (e.g. instrumental value), and one of these reasons might be to follow a general duty (e.g. gratitude).

[10] McMahan adds that this is not say that these special obligations are morally primitive. They can be analyzed in terms of genetic connection, voluntary assumption of responsibility, and so forth.

[11] This goes to Feinberg’s point: “The question is not simply, Why nationalism?’ It is why nationalism rather than something else…” (p. 68) Racial partiality is condemned as “arbitrary, illegitimate, and pernicious form of discrimination.” (p. 111) Racial relations fail to have morally significant commonalities. Biological markers are not morally significant, and races do not have commonalities of value. Moreover, perverse or evil shared values cannot be counted as morally significant (along with trivial ones).

[12] Some have retorted with the suggestion that national borders are only justified by those subject to the coercive force of the borders, which include those outside the borders. Michael Blake (2001) holds that the “coercive network of state governance” (p. 258) only applies to citizens. (Blake has the same style of argument as Miller, but his argument rests on the notion of the “principle of autonomy” and he takes the existence of national borders as a matter of fact.) Arash Abizadeh (2010), drawing from a conception of autonomy and self-determination from Joseph Raz, says that borders pose coercive force on the autonomy of those outside the borders. Miller (2010) responds effectively to this challenge by drawing a distinction between “coercion” and “prevention,” where prevention does not undermine autonomy.

[13] I used the following sources from this book: Jonathan Glober’s “Nations, Identity, and Conflict,” Charles Taylor’s “Nationalism and Modernity,” Will Kymlicka’s “The Sources of Nationalism: Commentary on Taylor,” Walter Feinberg’s “Nationalism in a Comparative Mode: A Response to Charles Taylor,” Jeff McMahan’s “The Limits of National Partiality,” and Thomas Hurka’s “The Justification of National Partiality.”