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For Love of Country

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591799027003004

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POLITICAL
Bader / REVIEW
THEORY
ESSAY
/ June 1999
REVIEW ESSAYS

FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY

FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY: DEBATING THE LIMITS OF PATRIOTISM by

Martha Nussbaum with Respondents. Edited by Joshua Cohen. Boston: Bea-
con, 1996. 154 + viii pp.
FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY: AN ESSAY ON PATRIOTISM AND NATIONAL-
ISM by Maurizio Viroli. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1995. 206 pp.

Nationalism and patriotism seem to gain momentum in our times of globali-

zation and decreasing importance of the (nation-)state. Likewise, multicul-
turalism is becoming predominant while real differences of ethnic cultures
are decreasing globally as well as inside traditionally multiethnic states such
as the United States. Among the growing stream of publications concerning
nationalism or cosmopolitanism, two recent American books deserve special
attention. For Love of Country (edited by Joshua Cohen) contains Martha
Nussbaum’s essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” which first appeared
in the Boston Review (October/November 1994) together with eleven of the
twenty-nine replies she originally provoked and five new contributions, all
“debating the limits of patriotism.” This volume is of special interest because
leading American political theorists succeeded in getting broad public atten-
tion for problems excluded from the political agenda for so long. For Love of
Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism, by Maurizio Viroli, adds
historical depth and a comparative European perspective to these discus-
sions, which focus mainly on the United States. Therefore, it makes sense
that it be presented and discussed first. As is true of most of the contributors to
Cohen’s volume, Viroli tries to find a third way between “nasty” ethnocen-
tristic nationalism and “abstract” cosmopolitanism by adapting “noble”
patriotism to recent conditions of multiethnic and multicultural states and
global problems and obligations.

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 27 No. 3, June 1999 379-397

© 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.
379
380 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

I
Maurizio Viroli tries to achieve two goals not easily to be combined. As a
historian of political language or discourse, he aims “at understanding what
scholars, agitators, poets and prophets have meant when they spoke of love of
country” (pp. 4f). As a political philosopher and vivid defender of “true”
patriotism, he tries to convince us that his patriotism of liberty is the best atti-
tude to respond to the challenges of multiethnic diversity and of globaliza-
tion. These two goals are intertwined by his conviction that an underlying,
fairly consistent intellectual tradition of true patriotism exists in modern and
early modern political thought, which only has to be brought to the surface.
His true patriotism of liberty, consequently, has to be distinguished as sharply
as possible from nationalism, conceptually as well as historically. Patriotism
as the “love of political institutions,” the “common liberty of a people,” or
“the republic” is exclusively civic or political and completely opposed to
nationalism, which was forged in late eighteenth-century Europe, assuming
the existence of or striving for linguistic, cultural, religious, ethnic or even
racial unity, homogeneity, and purity (pp. 1ff, 6, 13, 185).
Chapter 1 traces the “Legacy of Republican Patriotism” in ancient, mainly
Roman, sources where love of country was pietas and republican political
patriotism was intertwined with religion. The basis for a distinctive republi-
can language of patriotism was developed in the fourteenth century in the
Italian city-republics by theorists of communal self-government and by civic
humanists. Florentine fifteenth-century patriotism, however, was also a cele-
bration of the city’s military and civic superiority, meaning that the rhetoric
of republicanism served to legitimate exclusions and aggression abroad
(p. 29). Machiavelli elaborated a different version, without the same parochi-
alism or exaggerated sense of civic pride.
The “Decline and Revival” of the language of republican patriotism in the
late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is sketched in chapter 2. It survived
in the few republics in Venice, Holland, and Naples, but this could not arrest
its decline in the unfavorable context of absolute monarchies and principali-
ties and the burgeoning language of raison d’état. The republican content was
lost; patria and liberty parted company. Republican patriotism regained a
central place again during the English revolution. Monarchical patriotism
replaced love of liberty with loyalty to the king but could not weaken the con-
tinuing actuality of republican patriotism.
In continental Europe, the language of patriotism also flourished in the
eighteenth century due to the renaissance of republican thought and, more
important, due to concrete experiences of political and military resistance
against absolutism (chap. 3, “Patriotism and the Politics of the Ancients”). In
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 381

opposition to the politics of the moderns (of states, princes, the king), patriot-
ism again meant res publica and good government. As a response to Vico’s
criticism that the ancient patriotism of heroic societies offends our sense of
justice and humanity, Montesquieu “rescued” that patriotism by presenting it
as a virtue suitable only for ancient citizens of ancient republics. He intro-
duced a distinction between political virtue and private interest (La douce
commerce), which one does not find in earlier republican writings. For the
“cosmopolitan” Encyclopédists and Voltaire, patrie is also synonymous with
republic and liberty (as opposed to the newly invented “oriental despotism”).
It has, however, no essential reference to a particular culture or ethnicity but is
reduced to its essential political and legal structure (rule of law, liberty, and
self-government): “the place does not matter, and history matters even less”
(p. 78). To resolve Montesquieu’s contrast between political virtues and pri-
vate interests, love of country is interpreted as enlightened or rational self-
love. Rousseau uses patrie as equivalent of republic but parts company from
Montesquieu (also for the “moderns”) and Voltaire (not only “rational self-
interest” but also passion). For him, love of country means not only purely
political love of an impersonal, abstract entity but attachment to particular
people as well.
“The Birth of the Language of Nationalism” (chap. 4) is situated at the end
of the eighteenth century. In England, the language of patriotism was estab-
lished as a major intellectual tradition, integrating ancient republicanism and
modern natural law tradition (the “boundaries that justice imposes on com-
passion”; p. 95). Issues of social justice and of integrating the “lower classes”
increasingly came to the fore. In Italy and Germany, “the language of patriot-
ism . . proved inadequate as a means of helping peoples to find their way to
liberty. The purely abstract ideal of patrie sounded too abstract” (pp. 106f).
This criticism of “culturally remote” patriots appealed to a different idea of
country (cultural unity) and a different love (pride or esteem). Love of coun-
try should be political and cultural, and liberty demands cultural unity. In
Germany, as a reaction to French Enlightenment cosmopolitism and German
cosmopolitans, a more radical critique of the language of patriotism was
developed, which rejected the priority of civic and political liberty in favor
of cultural and spiritual unity and ethnic identity. “Nation means oneness”
(p. 118). This language of cultural nationalism was used, at least in Herder’s
and in Fichte’s case, as a premise or preparation for a call to struggle for
political liberty (p. 129). The emphasis on unity and purity more than on lib-
erty and equality also infected Michelet and other French patriots.
This “Nationalization of Patriotism” (chap. 5) during the nineteenth cen-
tury infected even England, where working-class radical patriotism lost from
the Gladstonian and Disraelian project (p. 156). In an age of imperialism, it
382 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

seemed impossible to promote cosmopolitanism or proletarian international-

ism. In Italy, Mazzini could not effectively prevent the language of patriotism
from assuming nationalistic and monarchical tones, and the same happened
in France and Germany. Ernest Renan, however, showed that “even in the age
of imperialism,” the nation “must be understood as a political community
founded on the free consent of the citizens” (p. 159).
Finally, after this historical reconstruction, Viroli intervenes in his epilogue
in contemporary debates on “Patriotism without Nationalism” (Habermas,
Gian Enrico Rusconi, MacIntyre, Walzer, Schaar, Taylor).
Viroli’s vividly written essay presents a valuable reconstruction of the lan-
guage of patriotism. It reminds us that recent discussions have their historical
forerunners and that solutions to the many dilemmas involved do not have to
be invented from scratch. It also serves as a counterweight against histori-
cally uninformed normative theory still so prominent in America. The spe-
cific way, however, in which he combines writing history with normative
theorizing is the reason why his historical study is not completely convincing
and why he often simply reproduces old and unconvincing normative claims.
Let me start with the first point.
As a historian, Viroli is confronted with the well-known “Protean” nature
of the concepts of patriotism and nationalism (pp. 4f). Patriotism (and nation-
alism) show many faces: monarchical, republican, proletarian, liberal, com-
munitarian, Christian, ethnocentristic, nationalist, imperialist. The same
holds for cosmopolitanism: it can be stoic, humanist, catholic, professional,
socialist, and so on. How to construct one story of one patriotism out of the
many localized and contextualized stories? Viroli claims the historical exis-
tence of one and the same intellectual tradition of patriotism, which only has
to be brought to the surface by rereading the texts, following the line of refer-
ences, and cleansing this “true,” “right sort of patriotism,” “properly under-
stood” (p. 8) from all “degenerated” forms (pp. 69, 96), from the historical
“misuse” (p. 2) of this language, and from its “misunderstandings” (p. 7) by
historians and social scientists. This cleansing operation allows him a dubi-
ous normative criticism of historical actors as well as of fellow researchers
such as Deutsch, Benedict Anderson, Kohn, and Greenfeld, who use other
concepts of nationalism instead of his “historically accurate distinction”
(pp. 5, 7f). He does not explicate the pros and cons of his own normative or
ideal model of patriotism for historical research.
The construction of this noble patriotism as a love of “liberty,” “patria,”
and “the republic” is not very helpful in spelling out the distinctive historical
forms of patriotism itself and the shifts in the meaning of liberty, patria, and
the republic. We learn something about the enemies of patriotism in general
(tyranny, dictatorship, oppression, conquest, corruption), but we learn very
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 383

little about historical contexts and power positions. This may be a general
weakness of the history of discourses in which contexts and practices enter
only marginally to explain shifts in linguistic meaning, much less in social or
political meaning. In his critique of Rousseau’s “nationalist” patriotism,
Viroli mentions that the appeal to cultural unity of a people depends on the
fact of whether a people is already politically free and united or, to put it in
traditional language, has already achieved sovereignty by way of state-nation
building (pp. 91ff): “Divided and politically unfree people must above all
else love and be proud of its own national culture to be able one day to be
free,” traditionally by way of building a “nation-state.” And the appeal to cul-
tural unity also depends on resistance to external cultural threats of enforced
cultural assimilation and “against the tendency to absorb them in a uniformly
European or cosmopolitan way of life” (see p. 93 for Rousseau’s fears). Still,
every appeal to cultural unity, be it in the case of the Polish people by Rousseau
or in the case of the Germans by Herder and Fichte, is, according to Viroli, a
vice.1 On the other side, Ernest Renan’s political patriotism is naively pre-
sented without even mentioning the rhetorical battle about Alsace, enforced
French cultural assimilationism, and “chauvinist universalism.” Thus, Viroli
mentions contexts without appropriately pointing out that roughly the same
rhetoric of patriotism and of nationalism, which often are used synony-
mously, can have divergent or even contrary social and political meaning
depending on positions in asymmetric power relations. The same holds for
his abstract treatment of questions such as “how much and which type of
unity” is required. According to Viroli, “cultural unity,” projects of cultural
unification, and “democratic nationalism” from below are “vices” (p. 13),
regardless of power positions. These abstract statements benefit powerful
states and dominant majorities, which have reached political unity earlier and
present their culturally unified nations as neutral and universal. But this does
not seem to worry Viroli. Cultural diversity is good, unity is bad; patriots are
the good guys and nationalists the bad ones.
Let me now turn to my second normative line of criticism. Viroli’s plea for
a true patriotism of liberty or diversity contains at least three endemic prob-
lems that, in my view, are not treated in a wholly satisfying way: (1) how to
combine reason and history, the universal and the particular, the political and
the ethnic-cultural; (2) how to combine reason and passion; and (3) how the
presumed transformation of parochial into global obligations and allegiances
works.
(1) Viroli rightly draws a sharp analytical line separating universal, civic,
and political principles of liberty and democracy, of the rule of law, self-
government, and good government from particular places or soils, from eth-
nic and “racial” descent (blood), as well as from language, ethnic culture and
384 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

tradition, and history. Patriotism as opposed to cosmopolitanism and to

ethnocentric nationalism implies a specific, contested combination of the
universal and the particular: one “must enter into the dangerous world of
particularity” (p. 12). It turns out to be very difficult to “adequately connect”
(p. 175) the civic-political and the ethnic-cultural, not only for historical
patriots but for Viroli as a normative theorist as well. On one hand, he criti-
cizes all positions that neglect or try to disemphasize the spatial (Toland,
Shaftesbury), ethnocultural, and historical (Voltaire) aspect as much as pos-
sible.2 On the other hand, and contrary to his own critical remarks, he seems
to applaud the Habermasian strict separation or disentanglement of politi-
cal, “constitutional patriotism” from all “pre-political community of lan-
guage and culture” (p. 170). Rusconi’s criticism of Habermas’s strategy—
reclaiming a “synthesis” of universalistic principles and ethnocultural val-
ues, of cultural and political community (pp. 172f )—is firmly rejected by
Viroli: “a love of common liberty should be all that we need. We need, to put
it simply, patriotism and we must at the same time help to reduce, rather than
invoke, identification with ethnocultural values” (p. 174). If history enters
this project at all, it has to be history cleansed from all ethnic aspects: the
purely political history of a people (pp. 16f) or its republic (p. 13), its political
institutions and practices, and its struggle for liberty.
Viroli’s own normative concept of patriotism eventually seems to be “sus-
tained by politics alone,” accepting no “pre-political” bases of love of coun-
try. It very much resembles the old myth of American exceptionalism: “to
love one’s country means to love the republic as a political community based
on the principle of common liberty, with its own culture and way of life”
(p. 183 with Walzer, Schaar, de Tocqueville, Taylor). But one may wonder
what remains of “its own culture and way of life” if all “ethnocultural values”
are left out. Viroli’s patriotism, in the end, is nearly indistinguishable from
the “purely” political patriotism he himself started to question. This patriot-
ism has a hard time as soon as one recognizes that (1) the borders of all politi-
cal units—be it empires, city-states, modern “nation”-states or immigration-
states—cannot be derived from political principles of liberty or democracy
and that the borders of “nation”-states as well as those of immigration-states
more or less explicitly refer to prepolitical, ethnic concepts of the nation(s)
and (2) that universalist “political” principles get particularized as soon as
one looks at their interpretation, at their institutional translation, and at civic
and political cultures, virtues, and traditions of good practices.3
Viroli’s “adequate connection” of the ethnic and political aspects boils
down to a matter of right “emphasis” (pp. 2, 139), which means the “priority”
or “primacy” of the political. He can only repeat well-known magic formulas
like “love of liberty” in which love is “particularist” and liberty is “inclusive”
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 385

or universal (p. 12). Such a strand is too malleable. It allows him to criticize
both cosmopolitanism and more nationalist patriotism without specifying
exactly what would be required. If one chooses the “thin” political version of
his patriotism, one may ask Viroli himself whether this can still be called
“love of country.” There may be a patriotism without nationalism, but there is
no patriotism without patria, which most of the time includes a lot of ethnona-
tional values. There is, therefore, no patriotism without “natio” in modern
times, and such a “patriotism” would be indistinguishable from cosmopol-
itanism. If one chooses the “thicker” version, one can allude to “colors,” “fla-
vor,” “warmth” and to places, customs, traditions, and ways of life. To each
what she or he wants to hear.
Which cultural politics and which institutions would Viroli recommend? I
seriously doubt whether his patriotism of liberty, sharing so much with tradi-
tional republicanism, can really live up to the conditions of multiethnic, mul-
tinational, and multicultural states. In its “thin” version, it may make enough
room to “organize diversity” as so many neorepublicans try.4 However, I can-
not find any sign that such a cultural pluralism would be accommodated by
institutional pluralism, a concept and project fiercely rejected by traditional
republicans as well as by neorepublicans.5
(2) The magic formula “love of liberty” also has to answer the old question
of how to combine reason and passion. Liberty and justice stand for reason,
which is loosely associated with truth, universalist principles, rights, and
obligations, appealing to anonymous, disinterested, dispassionate, rational
moral agents; impersonal observers; or ideal speakers. It remains cold, dis-
tant, and general and cannot mobilize a motivating force, which are crucial
weaknesses of “rationalist,” “enlightened” liberalism or cosmopolitanism. It
is opposed to love as a passion loosely associated with “the real world” of par-
ticularist people in time and places. Love’s language is rhetorical, warm,
nearby. It appeals to the virtues that are presented as particularist feelings
(p. 176), sentiments, emotions, and compassion. It can mobilize people to
sacrifice their lives. Republican patriotism claims that “between the ideal
worlds of rational moral agents . . . and the real world of exclusive and narrow
passions there is space for a possible politics for the republic” (p. 17). Follow-
ing Barber and others, republican patriotism is presented by Viroli as an alter-
native to both liberalism aiming at a moral foundation of politics and commu-
nitarianism aiming at a culturalist foundation. Against “bloodless” liberalism
and cosmopolitanism, however, patriotism and nationalism “compete on the
same terrain of passions and particularity” (p. 8; see p. 14). Both are emi-
nently rhetorical, playing on the passions of particular people, their cultural
and historical identity. Both “possess a unifying and mobilizing force that
others lack.” Patriotism is thus a “formidable opponent of nationalism” and
386 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

should be embraced by “the democratic left” in search of a language “capable

of countering nationalistic and communitarian languages” (p. 15, praising
Rorty). Though patriotism and nationalism appeal to the passions, they try to
mold “different types of love”: the love of patriots is “inclusive” (pp. 58, 98),
“expansive,” “charitable,” “generous,” “intelligent,” “defensive,” and full of
“compassion” and of “tolerance” and “respect” for diversity. The love of
nationalists is “exclusive,” “invidious,” “deaf and blind,” “offensive,” and full
of “contempt,” “intolerance,” “hatred,” “fear,” and “resentment.” It longs for
“uniqueness,” “pride,” “glory,” “grandeur,” “domination,” “oppression,” and
“exclusion.” Against nationalism “one must find ways of encouraging and
sustaining the right sort of passions and love” (p. 12) by working “on bonds
of solidarity and fellowship that like feels toward like to transmute them
into forces that sustain liberty instead of fomenting exclusion or aggres-
sion” (p. 8).
Viroli’s version of this old saga of reasonable patriotic love rests on three
highly questionable assumptions:

Virtues are not a privileged terrain of republicans, communitarians, or nationalists (see Macedo,
O’Neill). The crucial question is, Which virtues? In this regard, it is doubly misleading that
Viroli identifies “civic virtue” with “a love of the republic” (p. 183) because, first of all, virtues
6
are specific competences to act in a normatively praised way, not feelings or passions. Second,
pace MacIntyre, not all virtues are “particularistic” (p. 176): civic and political virtues are uni-
versalistic or “generic” (see O’Neill).
If not virtue, is then not love essentially “particularistic”: whom can we love? Only particular
individuals or also a people or even humanity? Only people or also institutions, states, and so on?
Only persons or also ideas, principles? If Viroli, following Rousseau, really believes that “one
cannot love strangers, or unknown or anonymous individuals” (p. 81), then his love of country
has a hard time in modern states where most compatriots are anonymous strangers.
If one can also be fiercely attached or committed to universalistic principles, it becomes less
obvious that “justice” and “liberty” are unable to mobilize any motivational force at all. Their
motivational force may be “weak,” and it certainly is weaker than the hot republican language of
“sacrifice.” Even if Viroli does not ask for “heroic self-abnegation” (p. 185), a bit more distance
to “white-hot” republican motivations may be healthy.

(3) How does the transformation of parochial into national and global
obligations and allegiances work? All true patriots hope and expect that some
such transformation takes place, and historical references can be found
throughout Viroli’s essay. “We have to appeal to the feelings of compassion
and solidarity that are—when they are—rooted in bonds of language, culture,
and history. The work to be done is to translate these bonds into love of com-
mon liberty. To make this alchemy of passions possible, we surely need
moral arguments that appeal to reason and interests, but we must also be able
to resort, as good rhetoricians do, to stories, images, and visions” (p. 10).
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 387

Patriotism “works on the already existing ethnic and cultural bonds that
somehow connect members of the same people to transform them into a
generous commitment against oppression, political corruption, and dis-
crimination” (p. 14). “Patriotism tries to translate a particular attachment
between people who are culturally similar into a commitment to a good— the
republic—which is still particular as it is the republic of a particular people,
although it encompasses cultural diversity” (pp. 16f, see “direct,” “shape”
[p. 17]; “transform sordid and ignoble passions into higher and more gener-
ous ones” [pp. 17, 162]; “translate” [pp. 77, 175]; “enlarge” [p. 55]; “love’s
expansive drive” [p. 100]). Viroli, like all patriotic authors, follows the same
logic or paradigmatic argument of concentric circles: love, attachment, com-
mitment, allegiances, and obligations develop first and are most intense or
“fundamental” with regard to family and intimates. Love of country is “a pas-
sion that pushed him to embrace and enlarge his affection for other peoples
beyond the sphere of family and to extend respect and understanding to peo-
ples beyond the boundaries of his own country” (p. 55, for Milton). This logic
is never questioned (see below), but even if one accepts it for the moment, the
argument remains inconclusive. In fact, one can detect two different types of
argument. The first “appeals to the [political] culture that grows out of the
practice of citizenship” (p. 13). This traditional republican argument can
explain, to a certain degree, how and why familial, local, and regional alle-
giances are transformed into “national ones.” The love of country may
“stimulate sharing” and may “breed solidarity” (p. 37) inside the country, but
it cannot explain how and why this sharing and solidarity should stretch
7
beyond the borders at least as long as these practices of citizenship are not
also transformed in a transnational direction. In Viroli’s essay, one looks in
vain for any political or institutional proposals in this direction. On the con-
trary, one gets the impression that he agrees with Mazzini’s famous state-
ment, “only citizens can successfully demand social justice. . . . Without
country you have neither name, token, voice, nor rights” (p. 149).8
The second argument appeals to global moral principles and obligations.
This “liberal” argument stresses the same universal principles of liberty and
justice, whatever the “embodiment”: “In labouring according to true princi-
ples for our country we are labouring for humanity” (Mazzini, p. 151). Here,
“our most fundamental moral obligations are to humanity” (p. 150). No
appeal to the specific color, flavor, and warmth of the “embodiments” of
“equal liberty” (p. 13) and social justice can help here. When it comes to
global obligations, not only all references to “ethnocultural” values but also
all references to purely “political” history and love of “patria” are counter-
productive. This argument is much more plausible, but here patriotism dis-
solves into cosmopolitanism that, by the way, knows its own rhetoric and tells
388 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

its own stories, images, and visions. The conflicting tendencies of the “repub-
lican” and the “liberal” argument cannot really be reconciled by arranging
them under the catholic roof of “common liberty.” An appeal to common lib-
erty cannot do the job, and “love of the common liberty of one’s people” in no
way “naturally” (pp. 59, 77) or “easily extends beyond national boundaries
and translates into solidarity” (p. 12).
Why, how, and under which conditions such a transformation is possible
and has worked historically is never questioned or explained. Transformation
resembles juggling, and it is no coincidence that the metaphor of “alchemy”
is frequently used (pp. 5, 10, 98; see Barber, p. 35, for the “American trick”).
To explain chemical processes, scientists don’t use alchemist models and
engineers don’t rely on alchemy in the production of synthetics. Why should
social scientists believe in alchemy when it comes to explaining how, when,
in which degree, and under which conditions parochial allegiances have been
or can be translated into global ones? Why should political theorists do it
when it comes to designing institutions and policies to stimulate and develop
this transformation?

II
Martha Nussbaum clearly does not believe in this alchemy of transforma-
tion. “At bottom nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not alien to
one another but akin” (p. 5). Rejecting fine-grained distinctions between
nationalism and patriotism, she holds that appeal to particularist national
sentiments “subverts . . . the substantive universal values of justice and
right” (p. 5), that patriotic pride is “subversive of some of the worthy goals
patriotism sets out to serve” (p. 4). Her plea for cosmopolitanism, for the
“possibility of a more international basis for political emotions and concern”
(p. 4) where the “primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in
the entire world” (p. 4), is motivated by two concerns:

1. By “international quality of life issues” (hunger, extreme poverty, extreme inequalities,

and ecological problems). She reminds us of “moral obligations to the rest of the world”
and criticizes “moral hypocrites who talk the language of universability but whose uni-
verse has a self-servingly narrow scope” (p. 13).
2. By a “renewal of appeals to the nation” among American liberals like Rorty and Hackney,
who, in their opposition against multiculturalist “politics of difference,” argue for a new
“politics of nationalism” and try to regain the language of patriotism for “the American
Left” (just as Viroli recommends). Such appeals to patriotic pride “undercut the very
case for multicultural respect” (p. 14). Nussbaum clearly does not rely on any automatic
or naturally “universalizing tendencies” of patriotic values, and she does not see why
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 389

universalistic values of liberal democracy, like liberty and justice, “lose steam when
they get to the borders of the nation” (p. 14).

Patriotic allegiances seem counterproductive to her in both regards, and

consequently, she asks for a reversal of our primary allegiances and obliga-
tions from citizens of a (nation-)state to “citizens of the world,” for a radical,
decisive shift in emphasis or “priority” from national toward global commit-
ments. Although it may sometimes look as if she argues—in an either/or
way—for a complete replacement of particularist (local, national) obliga-
tions by global or universalist ones, no such replacement strategy is really
defended (see p. 9, “no need to give up” and the “concentric circles” imagery;
see p. 13, “special degree of concern . . . is justifiable in universalist terms”).
For four reasons, we should make “world citizenship, rather than democratic
or national citizenship, the focus for civic education” (p. 11): to “learn more
about ourselves” (pp. 11f), to be able to solve problems that require interna-
tional co-operation” (p. 12), to “recognize moral obligations to the rest of the
world that are real and that otherwise would go unrecognized” (pp. 12ff), and
to be able to make “a consistent and coherent argument based on distinction
we are prepared to defend” (pp. 14f).
Nussbaum’s essay provoked many critical reactions from American patri-
ots and only few positive ones embracing the project of a decisive shift
toward transnational and global obligations and allegiances. Criticism
focused on (1) conceptual, (2) moral, and (3) legal/political issues.
(1) Conceptual criticism highlighted the importance of distinguishing
patriotism from nationalism, chauvinism, and jingoism in the same way as
Viroli did (see Bernan and Blum in Boston Review [BR]; Glazer, p. 61, for
many). Patriotism as well as cosmopolitanism has many forms with different
social and political meanings in different contexts (Lloyd Rudolph and Charles
Beitz in BR; Wallerstein, pp. 122ff; Glazer, p. 64). It is one-sided and unfair to
focus only on the “pathologies” of patriotism (Barber) and not also on the
“perversions” of cosmopolitanism (Walzer, pp. 126f). And finally, Nussbaum,
intentionally or not, seduces us into making the wrong choices of “either”
cosmopolitanism “or” patriotism (McConnell, p. 79; Taylor, p. 119) and of
replacing democratic or national citizenship by world citizenship.
Falk and Wallerstein point to the many forms of patriotism and cosmopol-
itanism and criticize context-independent “choices.” Falk also declares both
options unsatisfactory in recent global capitalism: the “ethical viability of
patriotism depends on sufficient political space at the level of the state” (p. 55)
and the “cosmopolitan orientation is not much more satisfactory on these
matters” (p. 56). It should be supplemented by “a critique of the ethically
deficient” neoliberal globalization. Wallerstein generally opposes an
390 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

“abstract” or “universal” evaluation of both patriotism and cosmopolitanism

in our “deeply unequal world”: “our options vary according to social loca-
tion” in power structures (see also Rudolph, Lerner, and Connolly in BR).
The strong and rich have xenophobic options as well as “magnanimous com-
prehension of ‘difference’” but remain privileged, and the weak and poor
need “group equality” and may stimulate “nationalism” or “ethnic assertive-
ness” (pp. 122ff). Consequently, the “stance of citizenship of the world” is a
deeply ambiguous response. Instead, we have to “break down existing ine-
qualities and help to create a more democratic, egalitarian world” (p. 124).
(2) Such sociological and historical criticism is resumed by postmodern
critics of the universalism of morality itself. Butler places “universality in
culture”: a “ready made universalist perspective” is misleading because “the
meaning of ‘the universal’ proves to be culturally variable” (p. 45); it has no
“transcultural status.” Hilary Putnam finds the “notion of universal reason—
as something independent of all traditions” (p. 95)—indefensible. It is a
“strange” “overreacting to Rorty” (p. 93) not in line with the many wonderful
books Nussbaum has written previously. He refutes her cosmopolitanism as
well as Rortian tribalism and defends a notion of situated, critical intelligence
in our endless renegotiations of our understanding of reason itself. Yet he
misses Nussbaum’s crucial point that a decisive shift toward global obliga-
tions is urgent. Himmelfarb bluntly states that the presumed universalism of
cosmopolitan values is an illusion. Justice, rights and reason, and the even
more “culture-” and “polity-bound” values of democracy and liberty “are . .
predominantly, perhaps even uniquely, Western values” (pp. 75f), a claim
that is clearly refuted by Sen (pp. 117f).
Against Nussbaum’s universalist moral point of view, defenders of patri-
otism have fired the traditional battery of critical arguments:
(i) Her cosmopolitanism with its appeal to reason and universal principles
is seen as dispassionate, abstract, disembodied, and lacking the motivational
force of patriotic passions (Barber, see Leo Marx, A. Schlesinger Jr. in BR).
Nussbaum halfheartedly nourishes this impression by accrediting patriotism
“special power among the motivations” but still holds that cosmopolitanism
“need not be boring, flat, or lacking in love” (p. 17; see “Reply,” p. 139 vs.
“bloodless,” “characterless”). Charles Beitz (in BR) offers a more aggressive
argument by treating patriotism as a question of self-conception or identity
and rescuing the idea that moral principles can be “powerful, even revolu-
tionary.” Instead of powerless reason of cosmopolitanism versus irrational
passions of patriotism, the discussion should focus on matters of degree,
kinds of passion, and shifting emphasis.
(ii) Her cosmopolitanism abstractly confronts universal reason with the
particularities of history and nation and thus fails to combine them
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 391

productively.9 Gutmann opposes Nussbaum from a more interesting angle in

this regard. A defense of democratic citizenship and democratic education
includes a commitment to liberty and justice for all, to basic human rights. It
should not be misunderstood as opting for “national values.” It is not “a weak
concession to anything,” certainly not to a “nationalistic view” (p. 67). It is as
universalist as anything and can be associated with “nationalism” only in one
sense in which Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism is also “nationalist”: that it is
taught within states.
(iii) Nussbaum’s statement that borders are “morally arbitrary” (p. 14) and
state membership is “a morally irrelevant characteristic” (p. 5) elicited many
critical reactions. Bok uses William Godwin’s example of two drowning
persons, one of whom is a relative, to argue against the moral irrelevance of
special relations. Nussbaum did not succeed in mediating between the two
conflicting perspectives, leading to a “glaringly different conclusion about
domestic and international politics” (p. 39), already recognized by Sidgwick
“to threaten any coherent view of ethics” (p. 40):

• the “universalist view” stressing the moral irrelevance of all particular, special relations
and identities, particularly the “accident of where one is born” (p. 7);
• the “bounded view” emphasizing particular allegiances that “cannot be over-ridden” by
global obligations.

In her first contribution, Nussbaum already stated that special attention,

care, and concern and special obligations are “justifiable in universalist terms”
(p. 13). In her reply, she tries to explicate the moral point of view, clearly mis-
understood by Gintis (BR) and others: “To count people as moral equals is
to treat nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, race, and gender as ‘morally
irrelevant’—as irrelevant to that equal standing” (p. 133). The “equal worth
of all human beings” has to work “as a regulative constraint” on particular
allegiances. Instead of “either” global “or” particular moral obligations, the
question, then, becomes one of shifting emphasis in specific contexts. In
Nussbaum’s treatment, however, the realm of normative or “practical reason”
is unduly limited to moral arguments, and most contributors use such a “flat”
frame, which does not even allow posing the right questions of how to bal-
10
ance moral, ethical, prudential, and realist normative arguments.
(iv) The imagery of “a series of concentric circles” (p. 9) points to such a
direction under the condition that three traditional dogmas—normally linked
with it—are criticized. First, it suggests a ready-made answer to questions of
priority of moral obligations: there is just one throw of one pebble, and the
obligations are strongest the closest by, getting weaker and weaker the farther
away from this center.11 Second, this presumably natural priority of moral
392 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

obligations toward intimates and compatriots is mixed up with the dogma of

an equally natural logic of the development of moral sentiments and obliga-
tions: first parents, then other relatives, then local, regional, national, and
“finally, if at all, we get to humanity on the outside” (pp. 141f). In her reply,
Nussbaum refutes such a simplistic “account of moral development that
makes a mystery out of familiar experiences of commonality” (p. 141), offer-
ing an alternative account in which experiences and recognition of universal
needs and of particular people develop “at the same time.” “All circles
develop simultaneously, in a complex and interlacing movement. But surely
the outer circle is not the last to form” (p. 143). Third, a criticism of these dou-
ble dogmas of “diminishing” moral obligations and sequential moral devel-
opment has consequences for moral education. Bok rightly states that educa-
tional programs “that declare either a global or a more bounded perspective to
be the only correct one are troubling insofar as they short-circuit reflection
concerning” the question “how, and on what grounds, to weigh these claims
when they conflict” (p. 42). In educational practice, we are confronted with
“agonizing choices . . . because syllabi, like canons, are not infinitely expand-
able” (Rachel Hadas in BR). We need to be selective and to begin somewhere:
“Is it better for parents and teachers to begin at the outer edges and move
inward, to move back and forth between the two, or to begin with the inner
circles and move outward?” (Bok, p. 42). To argue for simultaneous teaching
does not mean to deprive children “of a culturally rooted education” (Bok,
p. 43). If one does not trust the patriotic alchemy of passions, if one is con-
vinced that moral development and moral education “from part to whole” is
not “a by-product” (McConnell, p. 80), not natural or easy, let alone auto-
matic, one should be more critical with regard to the sequential logic than all
patriotic critics of Nussbaum. Finally, it is astonishing that none of the con-
tributors distinguishes between development and teaching of sentiments,
feelings, identifications and identities, affiliation, loyalty, and commitment,
on one hand, and moral principles and obligations, on the other hand. As if all
were the same, all followed one evolutionary logic in all contexts. And only
few contributors explicitly12 criticize traditional assumptions about “one,”
“static” fairly “homogeneous” identity and culture so common to many patri-
ots and so at odds with multilayered ties, relations, identities, and commit-
ments on so many levels in recent multicultural, global society.
To be sure, Nussbaum’s argument in favor of a decisive moral shift toward
universal, global obligations could have been much stronger if she had
avoided many terminological ambiguities and suggestions of a replacement
of particular by universal allegiances that have been interpreted as “either/or”
and then, rightly, have been criticized as wrong choices. It nevertheless
remains astonishing that the basic thrust of her essay in favor of such a
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 393

decisive shift has found so little enthusiastic response, particularly with

regard to the moral scandal of hunger, poverty, and global inequality. Sissela
Bok at least explicitly states the challenge: “This widening gap between
haves and have-nots, and the sheer magnitude and intensity of present suffer-
ing, challenge, I suggest, all existing conceptions of human rights and duties
and obligations. What does it require in practice, under today’s conditions, to
give priority either to world citizenship or to national or community alle-
giances? . . . And whose obligation is it to offer assistance on the scale now
needed, or to protect rights . . . when violated by others abroad?” (pp. 41f ).
(3) The fact that this shift has not been applauded more broadly may not
only have to do with the specific parochialism of American patriots. It may
also be the consequence of two serious legal and political weaknesses of Nuss-
baum’s position, clearly criticized by many contributors: her sloppy, meta-
phorical use of the language of citizenship and her neglect of principles and
practices of democratic polities.
It has been widely, and rightly, noted that the language of “world-
citizenship” is highly misleading: Walzer is “not a citizen of the world. . . . I
am not even aware that there is a world such that one could be a citizen of it.
No one has ever offered me citizenship, or described the naturalization
process, or enlisted me in the world’s institutional structures, or given me an
account of its decision procedures (I hope they are democratic), or provided
me with a list of the benefits and obligations of citizenship, or shown me the
world’s calendar and the common celebrations and commemorations of its
citizens” (p. 125; see, similarly, Glazer, pp. 62f; Gutmann, pp. 68ff; Himmel-
farb, pp. 74ff for many). Sen’s defense (pp. 112, 116) and Nussbaum’s reply
(pp. 132ff ) try to clarify that the language of “citizenship of the world”
should be understood in the moral sense only (as a “postlegal” as well as a
“prelegal” concept) and not as “a legal form of language that excludes” the
possibility to be a citizen of the world without there being a world state. But
even such a clarification has two obvious disadvantages. First, in a substan-
tive sense, “citizen of the world” would be identical with “human being,” and
citizenship rights would be identical with human rights. This, however, is not
a harmless, though superficial, duplication of terminology because, second,
the actual relationship between human rights and citizenship rights in our era
is obscured. Increasingly, civic rights, social rights, and even some political
rights are not only claimed but also guaranteed regardless of citizenship
status or nationality in the legal sense. Specific political rights such as the
right to vote and get elected, however, are reserved to “nationals” and cannot
even be thought of independently of political units of decision making.13 Not
only in our present world but also in all institutional designs of better worlds,
a great variety of separate political units have to exist beside and above each
394 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

other. Instead of opting for a second decisive, institutional shift toward new
transnational and global political institutions, on one hand, and toward a
devolution of power to more regional and local institutions, on the other
hand,14 Nussbaum neglects institutional concerns completely, and this weak-
ens the practical political force of her moral appeal considerably. Still, it
remains astonishing that so few commentators try to fill this gap to rescue the
institutional dimension of the shift toward more global institutions.
The weakness of politics and democracy in her cosmopolitanism criti-
cized by Gutman (p. 69) and Himmelfarb (pp. 75f; see Beitz in BR) follows
from Nussbaum’s specific (neo)stoic version of cosmopolitanism. Spe-
cific democratic principles—autonomy, political freedom and equality,
participation—are absent from her list of universal values, and the question
of the adequate political units for democratic self-government is never raised.
“Liberal” principles of “liberty and justice” may not easily be combined with
democratic principles. They may point to different directions in policies of
first admission and international redistribution (see Bauböck 1994; Bader
1995, 1997). This should be no reason, however, to neglect or de-emphasize
them completely, particularly if one recognizes that not only internal policies
“to forestall excessive inequality . . . require a high degree of mutual commit-
ment” (Taylor, p. 120; see Fletcher in BR) but transnational and global poli-
cies as well. The absence of democratic politics and democratic commitment
also contributes to the moralistic weakness of Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan
intervention.15
Many of her American critics appeal to the outworn story of American
exceptionalism that, so it is said, is able to combine strong democratic com-
mitment with global moral obligations (see Barber, pp. 30-33; McConnell,
pp. 83f; Pinsky, pp. 86, 90; Leo Marx and Anthony Kronman in BR). To a for-
eign commentator, this rhetorical move is understandable but still somewhat
strange. It has to be pointed out that American republican patriotism has not
adequately addressed, let alone resolved, the two burning questions that have
motivated Nussbaum’s essay. First, how to respond adequately to long-
standing national, “racial,” and ethnic diversity inside the United States?
American patriotism, implicitly or explicitly (see Lind), requires too much
“national” cultural unity and has difficulties accepting institutional diversity
and separation.16 Viroli’s hope that it would be easy to develop a patriotism of
“liberty or diversity” remains a far cry. Second, how to live up to minimal
global moral obligations? Even in a comparative perspective, American for-
eign policy, particularly with regard to foreign aid, ecology, and international
trade, does near to nothing to address the moral scandals of our times. A lot
has to be done by noble American patriots to criticize American “chauvinist
universalism,”17 which still promotes a “self-servingly narrow scope” as
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 395

Nussbaum rightly reminded her readers and, it seems to me, most of her
critics.

—Veit Bader
University of Amsterdam

NOTES
1. Herder’s cultural nationalism, his opposition against cosmopolitanism and cultural
assimilation, and his condemnation of conquest and imperialism (pp. 119, 123) are not ade-
quately understood in the context of German Kleinstaaterei, predominant French culture of Ger-
man aristocracy, and oppositional bildungsbürgerlicher Kultur versus French “civilisation.”
Fichte’s republican nationalism is not understood as a specific reaction to the French revolution
and the Napoleontic conquest. Viroli’s standard-type criticism—Herder “did not teach them to
look at it [the nation] from the right angle and he did not teach them to love it in the best way”
(p. 124)—is not corroborated by a historical counterfactual or by historical examples (why not
Förster?). In the case of the Left, supposedly “fleeing the field” of patriotism in the “age of impe-
rialism,” he presents such a completely unelaborated counterfactual conditional questioning
“whether the left did all it could” (p. 157). Again, he fails to discuss historical examples of social-
ist patriotism and the reasons why they too “would probably not have worked.” Marx and Engels
on nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism are absent throughout and, implicitly, accused of
abstract proletarian internationalism. But why is the explicitly “patriotic socialism” of Lassalle
and others not even mentioned? The whole history of “socialist patriotism” in all its varieties is
lacking: from English patriotic socialists, the patriotic socialism of A. de Leeuw or the Austro-
Marxists (most prominently Otto Bauer) until the VIIth World Congress of the Communist Inter-
national, and the rhetoric of socialist patriotism of the so-called really existing socialist (RES)
countries. This is particularly astonishing if one takes into account that Viroli has dedicated his
book to Norberto Bobbio and explicitly wants to reconsider Left thought and attitude regarding
patriotism. The example of the rhetoric of RES—“socialist patriotism”—could also work as a
reminder that one should more often look at the huge discrepancies between rhetoric and prac-
tices. It also reminds us that it is important to recognize whether one speaks in exile (as Mazzini),
in the resistance (as Carlo Rosselli, pp. 161ff, or Simone Weil, pp. 163ff), in opposition, or in
power—a fact generally neglected by Viroli.
2. See pp. 14-16 versus “liberalism.” Toland’s and Shaftesbury’s purely political, “true”
patriotism is criticized for making “the gap between the patriotism of the soil and political patri-
otism too wide.” It gives “no indication as to how to incorporate natural attachment to a place into
a moral and general political patriotism” (pp. 59f). In his “attempt to separate love of country
from cultural rootedness,” Toland “did not recognize that liberty found in another country cannot
have the same flavour. . . . A pure love of country . . . is a different love. One may wonder whether
a purely political love can still be called ‘love of country’” (p. 56). Viroli’s argument that “one
can be attached to but one soil“ (p. 56) and that “one can be hardly attached to the soil of the world
or any other country as to one’s native soil” (p. 56) shows the traditional weaknesses: (1) why so
much fuss about “soil” instead of “people” or “community” (see Rousseau: “amour des Citoyens
plut′òt que celui de la terre,” p. 83)? (2) People can be attached to more than one soil (as they can
be attached to more than one person) and increasingly are in an age of migration. (3) If anything,
396 POLITICAL THEORY / June 1999

one’s “native” soil is local rather than “national.” (4) Why has the enlargement of this supposed
attachment to the soil to stop at the boundaries of national territory?
3. See Veit Bader, “The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship,” Political The-
ory 25, no. 6 (1997): 783-89. Viroli, strangely enough, eventually seems to adhere to what Joe
Carens has aptly called the “hands-off” approach to cultural fairness.
4. See Michael Lind, The Next American Nation (New York: Free Press, 1995); David
Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Herman van Gunsteren,
Organizing Plurality: Citizenship in Post 1989 Democracies (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998).
5. See Veit Bader, “Egalitarian Multiculturalism: Institutional Separation and Cultural
Pluralism.” In Blurred Boundaries, eds. R. Bauböck and R. Rundell (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,
1998), 185-220. Indicative is Viroli’s criticism of Walzer’s pluralism, which is treated as just
another version of the liberty of the moderns (pp. 10f).
6. See Bader, “The Cultural Conditions,” 786.
7. Quite to the contrary, it proved to be very difficult to prevent that the “tie which holds
together . . . those who live under the same government” and the internal solidarity of “one peo-
ple” (if and to the degree in which it really exists) excludes the “common interests of outsiders”
(see, for completely reverse “priorities,” p. 29 for Bruni, p. 32 for Machiavelli, and p. 90 for
Rousseau). Viroli’s rejection of Todorov’s claim that acts of solidarity are at the same time acts of
exclusion (p. 12) is apodictical and waves away the problem to be addressed: “citizenship as
exclusion” does not really enter Viroli’s reasoning.
8. See Veit Bader, “Conclusion.” In Citizenship and Exclusion, ed. Veit Bader
(Houndsmills, UK: Macmillan, 1997), 182-84.
9. See Pinsky (pp. 85, 89f), Putnam (pp. 95f), and Kronman in BR.
10. See Veit Bader, “Conclusion,” 176f, with Habermas and Raz. See Beitz in BR for the dis-
tinction between moral and ethical arguments.
11. See the examples of this dogmatic logic of “first-second,” “part-whole,” which auto-
matically gives priority, primacy to the “most fundamental” obligations toward intimates. This
automatically seems to stretch to “strangers” within state boundaries treated as “compatriots”
and automatically excludes or de-emphasizes strangers beyond borders: Barber, pp. 34f; Bok,
p. 43 (only God’s love not from part to whole); Glazer, pp. 63f; McConnel, pp. 79ff; and Walzer,
p. 126 (“start with the center,” “begin by,” “to open the inner one’s out,” “then we extend,” “ulti-
mately to all,” and “commitments and obligations are diminished as they are extended”). Excel-
lent criticism of the metaphor itself and, particularly, of the inconsistent treatment of strangers
inside and outside the modern state is articulated by Henry Shue, “Mediating Duties,” Ethics 98
(1998): 687-704.
12. See Nussbaum, p. 135, asking for “tough thinking”; Appiah, Butler, and Taylor, p. 121;
Sen, pp. 113f. See my treatment of the problem: Veit Bader, “Fairly Open Borders.” In Citizen-
ship and Exclusion, ed. Veit Bader (Houndsmill, UK: Macmillan, 1997), 28-60.
13. See my “Citizenship of the European Union: Human Rights, Rights of Citizens of the
Union and of Member-States,” Ratio Juris, forthcoming, 1999.
14. See Bader, “Conclusion,” 184. See Charles Beitz in BR. See Falk’s second proposal “to
disengage the practice of democracy from its traditional state/society nexus” (p. 59).
15. In her most recent book, Cultivating Humanity, she discusses the role universities can
play in educating cosmopolitan citizens in liberal democratic societies, stressing deliberation
and learning to argue. Still, no attention is paid to specific democratic institutions and politics.
16. Sociological, liberal, and republican dogmas of “unity” are criticized by Richard Sennett
(in BR) as “errors” and “exercises in nostalgia” diverting from the contemporary questions “how
to live in difference, not how to transcend difference.” See my more extensive treatment in Bader,
“Unity and Stability in Modern Societies and Recent Political Philosophy.” In Individualism,
 Bader / REVIEW ESSAY 397

Civil Society, and Civil Religion, eds. A. V. Harskamp and A. W. Musschenga (Leuven, Bel-
gium: Peeters, 1999).
17. See Wallerstein for the uneasy mix of “narrow nationalism,” “nationalism of the
wealthy,” and “the hypocrisy of American Kantianism”: “America is the defender of the univer-
sal values of individual liberty and freedom of opportunity” (pp. 123f).

Veit Bader is a professor of philosophy (social philosophy) and sociology at the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam. He teaches social and political philosophy as well as sociology of
work and labour and theoretical sociology. At present, he is writing a book on cultural
diversity, institutional pluralism, and political unity.

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