Nationalism in the Theories of Political Philosophy

Because secession and nation building figure into my work, I must cover the issue of nationalism, a study of political theorists for many centuries. One of their prime questions, to which no universally satisfactory answer has been provided, is "What is a Nation?"

Karl Deutch, in "Nationalism and Social Communication," outlines a great number of other theorist's views on this question of what makes a nation.

Otto Brauer's "Community of Fate"

Deutch says Brauer distinguishes between similarity among people and a

deeper conception of a community of character, this no longer means for us that the individuals of the same nation are similar to each other, but that the same force has acted on the character of each individual -- no matter how different the other forces may be which are effective beside it ... While ... simialarity of character can only be observed in the majority of the members of the nation, the community of character, the fact that they are all the products of one and the same effective force, is common to all of them without exception. This effective force, that which is historical in us, is that which is national in us. It is this which welds us into a nation.

Brauer lived in another day and age. Most everyone in the world learned about the aeroplanes hijjacked and then crashed into prominent buildings in America, but that does not make the world a nation. If individuals with no personal connection to the event in El Paso, America, and those across the border in Juarez, Mexico, had differing views of what occured, that is because of a previous bond, and, therefore, at least in this case, nationalism is being used to explain nationalism.

It is easy to imagine that any great victory or challenge to the government of a state would necessarily lead to a lot of talk about that event within the state, which creates a collective consciousness of an event, even if it in no way determines how the individuals affected will consider the event.

certain that the different nations also have different masses of mental images (Vorstellungsmassen ). ... These differences of knowledge ... determine the differences of will ... this we arrive at a narrower concept of national character which means ... merely the difference in the directions of the will, the fact that the same stimulus releases different motions.

Edmund Burke

The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial, and made, like all other fiction, by common agreement ... [The] particular nature of that agreement ... is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast ... When capacity to a state, they are no longer a people .. they are a number of vague loose individuals. ... Many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass, which has a true, political personality . ... To enable men to act with the weight and character of a people, we must suppose them to be in that state of habitual social discipline, in which the wiser, the more expect, and the more opulent conduct, ... the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune.

This certainly seems like the perspective of someone in the catbird seat. If it is a fiction, then there is nothing to worry about, and if the wiser lead it, there is nothing to worry about.

Benjamin Disraeli

The phase "the people" is sheer nonsense. It is not a political term. ... A people is a species; a civilized community is a nation. Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of time. A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences -- the influence of original organization, of climate, soil, religion, laws, customs, manners and extraordinary accidents and incidents in their history and the individual characters of their illustrious citizens. These influences create the nation -- these form the national mind. ... If you destroy the political institutions which these influences have called into force, and which are the machinery by which they constantly act, you destroy the nation. The nation in a state of dissolution then becomes a people; and after experiencing all the consequent misery ... they ... again ... establish themselves into a society.

We are a long way off from Victorian England. This quote pleases me. It's quaint, because so few people live on the soil anymore, and many are greatly removed from being impacted much by the climate. I'd also like to point out the difference between the idea of illustrious citizens as the most exemplary of citizens, and those who are most discussed.

J. V. Stalin

A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture ... It is worthy of note that we never meet with a demand connnected with Bauer's all-embracing "national character." And this is natural; "national character" in itself is something elusive, and, as correctly remarked by J. Strasser, "what can be done with it in politics?"

Graham Wallas and Quincy Wright

This quote is from Wallas.

The modern state must exist ... as an entity of the mind, a symbol. ... The possible area of the State will depend, therefore, mainly on the facts which limit our creation and use of such entities. Fifty years ago the statemen who were reconstructing Europe on the basis of nationality thought that they found the relevant facts in the causes which limit the physical and mental homogeneity of nations. A State, they thought, if it is to be effectively governed, must be a homogenous "nation," because no citizen can imagine his State or make it the object of his political affection unless he believes in the existence of a national type to which the individual inhabitants of the State are assimilated; and he cannot continue to believe in the existence of such a type unless in fact his fellow-citizens are like each other and like himself in important respects. ... Bismarck deliberately limited the area of his intended German Empire by a quantitative calculation as to the possibility of assmilating other Germans to the Prussian type.

Oswald Spengler, Karl Lamprecht, Friedrich Metnecke, Don Luigi Sturzo

Represented by Don Luigi Sturzo...

Nationa means individuality of a people; and this cannot come about without a stable geographical contiguity, a historical and cultural tradition, an economic interest. When to these preliminary conditions is added an awakened consciousness on the part of th epeople of one of those sociological syntheses which only great ideas, such as religion, libarty and independence, can bring about, then there develops the collective personality which we call nation. For us the individuality of a people means only the de facto differentiation between one ethnical group and another. On the other hand, the personality of a people indicates the active consciousness which springs out of the differentiated group, giving the latter