[Editor’s Note: The following new entry by David Millerreplaces theformer entry on this topic by the previous author.]

“Nationalism” is a word with a number of differentmeanings. It may refer to a political movement, to a psychologicaldisposition (devotion to one’s nation), or to a system ofbeliefs. The focus here will be on the third of these, and thephilosophical questions that these beliefs give rise to. Nationalismas a system of beliefs, or ideology, comes in many different shapesand forms, and can be combined with other belief systems. Thus one canbe a conservative nationalist or a socialist nationalist; one can alsobe a Christian nationalist, an Arab nationalist, and so forth. Thisarticle will for the most part tackle questions that arise for alltypes of nationalism, whatever their specific character.

What, then, are the elements that all forms of nationalism have incommon? Arguably, there are three central beliefs, which togetherconstitute the idea of nationality (Miller 1995: 10–12). Thefirst is that nations are real and valuable. When a person thinks thatthey belong to a particular nation, and it matters to them that theydo (so it would be a bad thing if the nation were to dissolve or bedestroyed), they are not merely being deluded or irrational. Thesecond is that nations are ethically significant, in the sense thatpeople who belong to them have special duties to their compatriotsthat are not owed to human beings in general. The third is thatnations are politically significant, and can make special claims to beself-determining, so the political architecture of the world should bedesigned in such a way as to allow every nation to achieveself-determination in an appropriate form (which might or might notmean having a state of its own).

These three beliefs need to be specified more fully and then examinedcritically. Although a few philosophers have offered defences of theirpreferred version of nationalism in recent years, most philosophicalassessments of nationalism have been negative, often stronglyso—for example, nationalism is sometimes compared to racism(Gomberg 1990). On this view, it is part of the philosopher’scalling to rise above the narrow and partial vision of the world thatnationalism represents, in the spirit of the ancient Cynic Diogenes,who when asked where he belonged, is said to have replied that he wasa citizen of the world. Those styling themselves cosmopolitans todaymay argue that national identities are fraudulent inventions designedto ensure citizens’ unconditional loyalty to the state, thatdisplaying partiality to one’s compatriots is a morallyarbitrary form of discrimination, and that claims to nationalself-determination lead inexorably to violent conflicts over territoryand natural resources. Their hope, therefore, is that as human beingsbecome more enlightened, nationalism as we know it today will fadeaway, leaving behind at most the special affection that people mayhave for the physical beauties and culture of the place where theywere born, or have made their home. Or as Fukuyama once put it,

national groups can retain their separate languages and senses ofidentity, but that identity would be expressed primarily in the realmof culture rather than politics. The French can continue to savortheir wines and the Germans their sausages, but this will all be donewithin the sphere of private life alone. (Fukuyama 1992: 271)

Such hopes are belied by the continuing resilience of nationalism as apolitical force, raising the question whether there can be a form ofnationalism that remains politically relevant without being ethicallydisfigured as its critics allege. To answer it, we must firstunderstand what it means to belong to a nation.

• 1. What is a Nation?
• 2. Nationalism and Patriotism
• 3. The Ethics of Nationalism
• 4. Liberal Nationalism and its Critics
• 5. National Self-determination and Secession
• 6. Is Nationalism Irrational?
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. What is a Nation?

This was the title of a famous lecture delivered by the French liberalthinker Ernst Renan in 1882, and equally famous is the short andmetaphorical answer he gave to it: “a nation’sexistence…is an everyday plebiscite” (Renan 1882 [2018:261–2). Before coming to his longer answer, we need to know whythe question is important. According to the idea of nationality,nations are groups of people who owe one another special obligations,and who have a claim to practise political self-determination, eitherthrough having their own state or through some other form ofself-government. Since such claims are often resisted, it may become amatter of controversy whether a particular group counts as a nation ornot (consider the dispute between Ukraine and the Russian governmentover whether Ukraine is indeed a separate nation or merely a region ofRussia).

Renan’s longer answer to the question was that for a nation toexist, two conditions were required.

One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; theother is present consent, the desire to live together, the will toperpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in anundivided form. (Renan 1882 [2018: 261]).

In specifying these subjective factors, he was explicitly settingaside as inessential a number of objective group characteristics thathave often been proposed as criteria of common nationality: race,language, religion, and so forth. He was in other words taking sidesin an ongoing debate with those who take the shared possession of oneor more of these features as necessary and sufficient for a nation toexist. But a third view is also possible. Even if Renan was right toinsist that shared memories and a continuing will to associate withone another are necessary conditions of nationality, they are notsufficient, since other groups—some religious groups such as theAmish, for example—also have these characteristics. It matterswhy people believe that they should associate together and practiseself-determination. In other words, it matters that the people whoform the nation should at least believe that  there is somethingpolitically relevant that distinguishes them from theirnear-neighbours, and that belief cannot be wholly false (even if itmay involve exaggerating the differences—a point frequently madeby critics of nationality).

But which distinguishing features are relevant? Some defenders ofnationalism will fasten on to one of the features dismissed byRenan—thus there can be racial nationalisms, linguisticnationalisms, and so forth. To understand nationalism in general,however, it may be better to follow the lead of J. S. Mill who arguedthat national sentiment may arise from a number of differentsources—he mentions “identity of race and descent”,“community of language”, “community ofreligion”, “geographical limits” and, “thestrongest of all”, “identity of politicalantecedents”; the latter is further spelt out as

the possession of a national history, and consequent community ofrecollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret,connected with the same incidents in the past. (Mill 1861: 287; seealso here Yack 2012: ch. 3)

He gives concrete examples to show that none of these, however, iseither necessary or sufficient for nationality (relying at this pointon the reader’s intuitions about which of the groups he refersto count as nations and which do not).

Although not made explicit by Renan, it is one of the existenceconditions of a nation that its members should wish to beself-determining—to achieve or retain control of their ownaffairs, since this is what the will to perpetuate their heritagerequires. But should we say that any group that makes a claim topolitical self-determination should by virtue of that fact alone becounted as a nation? In other words, is the will to beself-determining sufficient, regardless of whatever other propertiesthe group displays? That seems too permissive, since it implies, forexample, that if a large majority of Texans declare themselves infavour of independence from the US, that by itself settles thequestion of whether Texas is a nation. A more subtle view has beenproposed by Gilbert (1998), who argues that a nation just is a groupof a kind that has a (presumptive)right tostatehood—presumptive only, because there might be externalreasons for denying a nation the independent state it would otherwisebe entitled to. This turns the issue of nationhood into a normativequestion. But Gilbert’s view can be challenged. Although thequestions “Are the Scots a nation?” and “Do theScots have the right to form an independent state?” arecertainly connected, it would be odd to suggest that we should beginby answering the second question, and this will then supply the answerto the first. It is more plausible to start by examining whether andin what respects Scottish people are culturally different, havedifferent collective memories, etc. than people in other parts of theUnited Kingdom, and then to ask whether the differences aresignificant enough to make their demand for independencejustifiable.

There is a further question that arises here, which is about thenature and strength of the tie between nationhood and the claim toform an independent state. Some writers have drawn a distinctionbetweencultural nationalism andstatist nationalism(Gans 2003: ch. 1; see also Tamir 1993: ch. 3). According to Gans,those who endorse cultural nationalism hold that

members of groups sharing a common history and societal culture have afundamental, morally significant interest in adhering to their cultureand in sustaining it across generations. (Gans 2003: 7)

This then gives rise to a demand for political institutions that canprotect this culture and allow it to develop, which might or might notmean the cultural nation having a state of its own, depending oncircumstances. For those who endorse political nationalism, incontrast,

in order for states to realize political values such as democracy,economic welfare and distributive justice, the citizenries of statesmust share a homogeneous national culture. (Gans 2003: 7)

It is apparent that the relationship between nation and state is quitedifferent in the two cases. From a cultural nationalist perspective itis loose and contingent—it is possible that in a given case, thenational aspiration for cultural autonomy might be satisfied byparticipating in a multi-national federation—whereas from astatist nationalist perspective the relationship is tight—thepolitical ends that the nation serves to promote require that as faras possible all citizens should share in the same national identity.Since these are both recognizable forms of nationalism, this gives usan additional reason for keeping nationality and the right to form astate apart. The wish to be self-determining, discussed further below,is indeed a distinguishing feature of nationhood, but it need notalways be expressed as a claim to form an independent state.

Are there further respects in which nations differ from social groupsof other kinds? Several authors have emphasised themodernityof nations, claiming that nations can only exist in tandem with otherfeatures of modern society, such as the erosion of rigid socialhierarchies (see Taylor 1997, drawing upon Gellner 1983 and Anderson1983 [1991]; for a dissenting view, highlighting the deep historicalroots of nationhood, see Gat 2013). There is an element of paradoxhere, because in many cases nations think of themselves as havingroots deep in the historical past, as standing in a direct line ofdescent from the first occupants of the territory that now serves asthe national homeland. Nevertheless, even in cases in which acontemporary nation was formed around a particular long-standingethnic group (see A. Smith 1986), what constitutes it as a nation isan imagined collective past—a “story of peoplehood”(R. Smith 2003)—rather than biological descent. So nations couldnot exist without widespread literacy and the communication media,originally the printed word, that allow large masses of people toparticipate in the shared culture and the historical narrative thatseparates them from other nations. Anderson accordingly refers tonations as imagined communities,

imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will neverknow most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. (1983: 15[1991: 6])

Another respect in which nations are an essentially modern phenomenonis that the people who belong to them understand their relationship asone of equal standing, even though along other social and economicdimensions there may be very extensive inequalities between them. Thiscontrasts with earlier social forms in which people belonged in thefirst place to a sub-group, often organised as a hierarchy, and onlythrough that membership to the larger society (Taylor 1997). Seeingthis allows us to understand the connection between nation anddemocracy, though this is not entirely straightforward. As Greenfeld(1992: 10) puts it, “nationalism was the form in which democracyappeared in the world, contained in the idea of the nation as abutterfly in a cocoon”. The nation does this by providing asolution to the democratic boundary problem, identifying the group ofpeople who will form the demos that can then activate democraticinstitutions. Of course, not all nations are governed democratically,but even those that are not pay lip service at least to the idea ofpopular sovereignty, shown in many cases by the holding of riggedelections to legitimise the power-holders. However this identificationof “nation” and “people” may be challenged onthe grounds that the idea of popular sovereignty requires that the“people” should include all those living under thejurisdiction of the state, whether or not they identify themselveswith the nation (Yack 2012: ch. 4). Defenders of nationalism willreply that the very openness of national identities—the absenceof any single feature that serves to define membership—can helpto bridge this gap by allowing people from outside of thenation’s historic core to add their own stories to thecollective narrative that unites the nation. Whether nationality canbe a fully inclusive identity is an issue discussed further below.

Recognising the modernity of nations is essential if we are tounderstand the relationship between nationalism and patriotism,discussed in the section that follows.

2. Nationalism and Patriotism

In popular discourse, but also in the hands of some philosophers,nationalism is often portrayed as the ugly stepsister ofpatriotism—as an exaggerated and toxic version of an otherwisedecent emotion, love of one’s country (see Nathanson 1993: ch.14; Schaar 1981; Viroli 1995). However this picture of theirrelationship is far too simple. First, although nationalism issometimes used to refer to a psychological state, as when we describesomeone as an ardent nationalist, it is centrally a set of beliefs, asoutlined above. Patriotism, in contrast, is in the first place acharacter trait, and arguably a personal virtue (MacIntyre 1984). Audidefines it as

a feature of character that entails a significant degree of loyalty toone's country and an associated disposition to take pride in it, to besubject to emotions closely connected with one's perception of itswell-being, and to give some degree of preference to its needs andinterests over the needs and interests of other countries. (2009:367–8)

The last part of this definition alerts us to the fact that the issueof compatriot partiality—the extent to which it is permissibleto prioritise the interests of fellow-countrymen over those ofoutsiders—arises in much the same way for both patriotism andnationalism. But there are further respects in which the two ideaspull apart.

One important difference is that whereas, as indicated above,nationalism could only arise under conditions of modernity, patriotismhas a far longer historical reach, and was widely recognised as avirtue in the ancient world (Dietz 2020; Crowley 2020; Kapust 2020).This historical continuity was aided by the fact that the object ofpatriotic loyalty—the “country”—is often leftunspecified. In classical sources thepatria orfatherland was usually understood in political terms to mean thepolis,in the Greek case, or the republic, in theRoman case. Contemporary discussions of patriotism, in contrast, arekeen to emphasise that being patriotic does not mean supporting thestate, and may involve actively opposing it (MacIntyre 1984). So“country” may be given a wider meaning that incorporatesmany of the features of nationality. Kleinig recommends thinking ofit

in more holistic terms, generally as comprising a land, a terrain, apeople, a culture, a history, a collective self-understanding, and anetwork of social institutions framed and bound together by thedistinctive juridical structure of a governing order. (2015: 21)

Here a “country” effectively means a nation-state. So thecontrast between patriotism and nationalism that defenders of theformer are keen to preserve can only be sustained by adopting a narrowand unsympathetic version of the latter—defining the nation, forexample, in ethnic terms as a community of descent (Primoratz 2015:76). This stands in clear contrast to the understanding of nationhoodoffered by Renan and Mill.

A sharper difference between patriotism and nationalism emerges whenwe observe that patriotism involves no deep commitment to the idea ofcollective self-determination. It is possible, in other words, to bepatriot while still believing that the fatherland is best governed byoutsiders, so long as they govern it well. Of course, if a link isforged between the fatherland and a particular set of politicalinstitutions, then a patriot will be committed to defending thoseinstitutions (thus one can be a “constitutional patriot”along the lines of Habermas 1996 [1998]). But equally one can be botha patriot and a monarchist who believes that the king rules by DivineRight, whereas for a nationalist the nation conceived as a communityof equals is the ultimate source of political authority, and thereforehas the right to be self-determining.

It is also unclear whether switching from nationalism to patriotism isan effective way of inoculating oneself against the dangers thatnationalism is said to pose, such as licensing territorial aggressionagainst other countries. In both cases we can distinguish betweenegalitarian versus inegalitarian, and morally bounded versus morallyunbounded, versions of the doctrine (see Benner & Miller 2021). Inegalitarian versions, each people is regarded as having equal value,and as being suitable objects of patriotic (or nationalistic) concern,so in affirming my loyalty to my own country, I simultaneouslyrecognise that others should likewise affirm loyalty to theirs. Inmorally bounded versions, the partiality that I am entitled to show tocompatriots may only be exercised in a way that does not involvesignificant harm to outsiders (for example, breaches of their humanrights). Being a patriot does not entail adopting these more benignversions of the doctrine, and whether patriotism in practice tends tomanifest itself in egalitarian and morally bounded forms remains anopen question. Cosmopolitans who object to the narrowing of humanconcern that loyalty to specific communities can bring with it arelikely to attack patriotism in much the same way as they attacknationalism (see Gomberg 1990; Nussbaum 1996).

It is of course possible by definitional fiat to use“patriotism” to refer to the egalitarian and morallybounded forms of group loyalty, and “nationalism” to referto the inegalitarian and morally unbounded forms, but this merelyobscures both the conceptual similarities and the conceptualdifferences between the two ideas, as outlined above.

3. The Ethics of Nationalism

According to the principle of nationality, nations are ethicalcommunities whose members have obligations to one another that they donot have to outsiders. But many critics have found it mysterious howsimply belonging to such a large and anonymous group could beethically significant, and have therefore accused nationalists ofdefending irrational favouritism towards compatriots.

To assess this charge, it is important first to distinguish specialobligations that might arise from nationhood itself from those thatarise from citizenship. As citizens, and therefore as participants inan ongoing co-operative practice, people will have obligations to oneanother on grounds of reciprocity: I benefit when you keep the law andpay your taxes, so I owe it to you to do likewise (Dagger 1997: ch.5). Obligations to fellow-nationals, in contrast are a species ofassociative obligation: they arise directly from the relationship thatexists between compatriots by virtue of their shared identity (seeScheffler 2001). Are they therefore redundant in the context of anation-state where compatriots are also united by common citizenship?No, because they help to explain why it is permissible in the firstplace to practise a form of citizenship that generates reciprocalobligations among fellow-citizens from which outsiders are excluded,and also because they can influence the shape of these latterobligations. In particular, when citizens are also bound together byties of nationality, they can depart from strict reciprocity, whereeveryone expects to receive from the state an equivalent of what shehas contributed, in favour of a looser form that encompassesanticipated redistribution from the better-off to those in need(Miller 1995: 71–3).

If national obligations are best construed as a species of associativeobligation, they face two challenges. The first is a general challengeto the very idea of associative obligations—obligations thatstem directly from the relationships in which people stand to oneanother, rather than from personal features such as having specialneeds or being the beneficiary of a promise. The second is a morespecific challenge to the claim that the tie that exists betweenfellow-nationals is the right kind of tie to bring associativeobligations into play. Here a sharp contrast may be drawn between thenation and smaller groups such as the family whose members areinteracting directly with one another. Since the first challengeraises general questions about how, if at all, special obligations ofany sort can be justified, it is beyond the scope of thisarticle—but see Scheffler 2001, Baron 2002 and the entry onspecial obligations. The focus here will therefore be on the second challenge.

For associative obligations to arise from within a relationship, twoconditions are required. First, the relationship in question must beintrinsically valuable, which for present purposes we can take to meanthat people’s lives go better merely as a result of theirinvolvement in it, over and above any instrumental benefits that mayalso ensue. Second, it must be in part constitutive of therelationship that it should include having special obligations to theother participants. These conditions are clearly met in the case offriendship, for example: having friends enriches a person’s lifewhether or not they derive any material benefit from the friendship,and it is part and parcel of being someone’s friend that aswell as enjoying their company you should offer them support when theyare in need, even at some cost to yourself (see Raz 1994: 41–2;though this is challenged in Lazar 2016).

The question, then, is whether these conditions can be extendedupwards from small groups such as family and friends to much largergroups such as nations each of whose members only interacts directlywith a tiny fraction of the rest. Critics such McMahan point out thatwhereas small groups are held together by direct knowledge of oneanother’s characteristics, so that there can be genuinecommonalities within the group, within nations such commonality asexists depends upon assumptions about a “nationalcharacter” that all members are supposed to share. But this isin part illusory because

the correlation between membership in the nation and possession of thenational character is inevitably imperfect when membership is normallya matter of birth, with no screening or selection. (McMahan 1997:127)

Another question raised by critics is whether belonging to a nation isintrinsically valuable in the way that family and friendship are, suchthat it would be real loss to someone if they were obliged to liveapart from their compatriots. Hurka suggests, however, that we shouldthink of the significance of a given membership as having two relevantdimensions: how close the relationship between members is, and howmuch good the relationship has produced over the course of itsexistence. Comparing the family with the nation, he argues thatalthough the family scores higher on the first dimension, on thesecond they score roughly the same, at least in the case of a countrylike Canada, where

if we consider the benefits each Canadian receives from living underthe rule of law and with social programs such as medicare, they aresurely of similar size to those that person receives from his or herfamily. (Hurka 1997: 154–5)

However Hurka’s argument might be faulted on the grounds thatthe benefits he cites in the case of the nation are instrumentalrather than intrinsic whereas the goods created within the family areto a large extent intrinsic. To justify national partiality, we mustassume that nationality is intrinsically valuable—that it ispart of a person’s good to belong to an intergenerationalcommunity that over time has created a range of benefits, includingperhaps those that Hurka mentions alongside others. In other words,what matters intrinsically is not receiving the benefits as such butbeing an active participant in the community that acts to producethem. Why such involvement is significant discussed insection 5 below.

In order to justify special obligations within a group, it isimportant that the group should not be disfigured by injustice, eitherinternally or in relation to outsiders. Such obligations cannot arisein the case of criminal gangs or the Ku Klux Klan, for example (seeMiller 2005). This condition, however, applies to families and nationsalike, since both are capable of being sites of injustice. A lineneeds to be drawn between relationships that inherently involveinjustice—by their very nature they are discriminatory orexploitative—and those that are valuable in themselves but maynevertheless have the potential to create injustice if their memberschoose to act in certain ways, though exactly where it should be drawnmay be disputed. Some critics of nationalism would place the nation inthe first category on the grounds that nations always claim the rightto exclude outsiders from the resources contained in their territory,even when they suffer severe harm as a result. But here it isimportant not to beg the question by taking for granted a particularaccount of international or global justice, since what is at stake atthis point is whether nations are entitled to give a certain degree ofpriority to their own members.

To sum up, it is contestable but not entirely implausible to regardnations as one of the social forms within which members owe oneanother special obligations. These obligations are different from,though not always weaker than, the obligations that hold between themembers of family or friendship groups. E.M. Forster famously saidthat “if I had to choose between betraying my country andbetraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray mycountry”, but this was written in 1938, and it may be doubtedwhether he would have said the same two years later if his friend weredetected passing vital information to the Luftwaffe. In times ofcrisis, national loyalties may prove to be indispensable.

If duties of nationality arise directly from the relationship betweencompatriots, and are therefore not just convenient ways of discharginguniversal duties owed to all human beings, we must ask whether eitherset of duties has priority over the other. One very tempting answer isto say that universal duties must take priority; once these have beendischarged, compatriots are then left free to act on their specialobligations to one another, but these must be sculpted in such a waythat they do not interfere with the performance of universal duties,understood as duties of justice owed to human beings as such (seeBarry 1999; Tan 2004). As Tan puts it

impartial cosmopolitan justice serves to define and secure the globalbackground conditions under which individuals may legitimately favourthe demands of their compatriots as well as pursue other national andpartial projects. (2004: 158)

Whether this leaves adequate scope for special obligations tocompatriots to exist will depend on the form and demandingness ofthese cosmopolitan duties of justice. Tan speaks of the need to securepeople’s “baseline entitlements” without specifyinghow these are to be conceptualised. In particular, if suchentitlements are to be understood in egalitarian terms—asequality of resources, capabilities or welfare, for example—thiswill place severe constraints on the exercise of special obligationsamong people living in richer societies, since the effect of doing sowill be to confer unjust advantages on their inhabitants, usingresources that could be used for the benefit of poorer outsiders(Scheffler 2001 refers to this as the “distributiveobjection” to associative duties). If, conversely, baselineentitlements are understood in sufficientarian terms, as requiringthat all human beings should enjoy anadequate (rather thanequal) set of resources and opportunities, then this leaves more spacefor special obligations to be fulfilled. Even so, the result ofconstraining duties of nationality within the bounds set bycosmopolitan duties of justice will be revisionary. Beitz, forexample, having conceded that there are indeed specialresponsibilities arising directly from the relationship that existsbetween compatriots, nevertheless concludes that

the special responsibilities to compatriots that can plausibly bedefended are not nearly as extensive as the priority for compatriotsfound in conventional morality. (Beitz 1999: 213)

It is in any case not self-evident that cosmopolitan justice mustalways override duties of justice owed to compatriots (see furtherMiller 2013). If we take a case in which essential resources are inshort supply, it seems permissible to give priority to meeting theneeds of compatriots even where the needs of foreigners are moreurgent. For example in a global pandemic where supplies of vaccine arefor the moment limited, cosmopolitan justice appears to require thatthe most vulnerable individuals should receive the vaccine first,regardless of which nation they belong to. The alternativeview—priority for compatriots—holds that all nationals atserious risk should be vaccinated first, and only then should vaccinebe sent to countries that would not otherwise have access to it. Thisalternative view can acknowledge that there is a global duty ofjustice to supply the vaccine once it is available, but holds thatunder these circumstances it is constrained by the stronger duty owedto fellow-nationals (for a discussion of this case, see Beaton et al.2021)

4. Liberal Nationalism and its Critics

Most recent philosophical work written in support of the nation hasoffered a defence of liberal nationalism (see Tamir 1993, Kymlicka1995, Miller 1995, Moore 2001a) although there have also beenadvocates of conservative nationalism (Scruton 1990, Hazony 2018). Thecontrast between the two is not always clear, and may be disputed(Daniel 2022), but turns centrally on the form that national identityshould take. For liberal nationalists it must be multi-stranded andopen to revision, making it potentially inclusive of groups such asethnic minorities and immigrants whose cultural values may not alignwith those of the majority (for a fuller analysis, see Gustavsson2019), whereas for conservative nationalists the collective identityhanded down from previous generations, while not immutable, must betreated as authoritative, and national loyalty is seen as a cardinalvirtue.

As their name suggests, liberal nationalists aim to reconcilenationalism and liberalism, but the linkage between the two comes inweaker and stronger versions. The weaker version holds simply thatthey are compatible. There is no theoretical or practicalcontradiction involved in valuing both the rights and freedoms thatliberals defend and valuing goods such as national identity andnational self-determination that nationalists champion. One set ofgoods does not come at the expense of the other: it is possible for asociety both to offer its members a wide variety of lifestyle choicesand to protect them from discrimination on grounds of race, gender andso forth, and for those members to participate in a shared nationalidentity and to enjoy collective self-determination as bearers of thatidentity.

The stronger version, by contrast, holds that liberalism needsnationality to survive: there cannot be a stable liberal society thatdoes not have a national basis. This has centrally to do with theconditions under which citizens who in their personal lives may holdvery different values and pursue conflicting conceptions of the goodcan nevertheless be tolerant of one another, and trust one anothersufficiently to allow democratic institutions to function. The liberalnationalist claim is that a widely shared national identity isnecessary for—or at the very least highly conduciveto—generating the required level of solidarity. This isespecially so when liberalism takes the form of liberalegalitarianism, requiring the better off to acquiesce in, if notpositively support, redistributive policies such as those thattogether make up the welfare state.

Critics of liberal nationalism may therefore choose to direct theirfire at either version. In the case of the stronger version, the issueis to a large extent empirical: is it possible to show that the effectof having a national identity is to make citizens more likely to trustone another and/or to support redistributive policies? The evidence sofar is mixed (see Moore 2001b; Miller & Ali 2014; Holtug 2020).The weaker version, in contrast, raises normative questions aboutliberalism itself.

Some liberals will argue that liberalism leaves no space fornationalism, since it is founded on a principle of equal concern andrespect for all human beings that prohibits states from privilegingthe interests of their own citizens. However most liberals, today andin the past, have not held such a radical view. John Rawls’s(1971) theory of justice, for example, is designed to apply within asociety that takes the form of an independent state, and he deniesthat the principles that make up the theory should be applied atglobal level. Although this refusal has drawn criticism, it isimplausible to claim that Rawls—and other liberal egalitarianssuch as Nagel (2005)—are disqualified as liberals simply becausethey do not endorse strong global egalitarianism. The more challengingquestion, therefore, is whether liberalism of this latter type mustalso conflict with nationalism. Such a conflict might appear to arisefrom the liberal commitment to personalfreedom or from theliberal commitment toequality between citizens.

To see how a conflict might arise over personal freedom, considermeasures that a government might introduce in order to protect orstrengthen its citizens’ national identity. It might pass a lawcriminalising burning or defiling the national flag; it might requireall schools to teach a national curriculum that presents thenation’s history and culture in a good light; it might introducea national service requirement; and so forth. In each case it isremoving a freedom that citizens would otherwise enjoy. But does thisshow that nationalism and liberalism are incompatible? Only ifliberalism is understood to include a principle of maximisingindividual freedom, which would assimilate it to libertarianism. Mostliberals do not hold such a view: Rawls, for example, having initiallyproposed such a maximising principle of liberty, gave as his finalconsidered version that “each person has an equal right to afully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatiblewith a similar scheme of liberties for all” (Rawls 1993: 291).By introducing the idea of abasic liberty that must not beinfringed, Rawls is in effect conceding that there are other freedomsthat may be restricted when there are good (public) reasons for doingso. Liberal nationalists are also committed to the view that basicliberties must not be infringed, but they might disagree with otherliberals over where exactly the line between basic and non-basicliberties should be drawn (does the freedom to burn the national flagcount as a basic liberty?) as well as over the grounds on whichnon-basic liberties can be restricted (may compulsory national servicebe introduced only in time of war, or also in peacetime as a means offostering national solidarity?)

Next consider why liberal nationalism might pose a threat to liberalequality. Critics will charge that national identities are alwaysconstructed in such a way that some citizens will be able to identifymore fully with the nation than others. Even though liberalnationalists insist that these identities must be multi-stranded andrevisable, it will remain the case that some people, especiallyimmigrants whose cultural backgrounds are different from those of thenational majority, will find it harder to embrace them. For example,if a country has historically had a national religion, this will haveleft a lasting imprint not only on its architecture and landscape butalso on aspects of its culture that are not themselves explicitlyreligious (such as the national language). So even though religiousobservance is no longer treated as a qualifying condition forbelonging to the nation, those from a different background will feelalienated to the extent that these cultural features continue toinform the public culture and social mores of the country theyinhabit.

The charge, then, is that when states take the form of nation-states,as liberal nationalists argue that they should, some part of thecitizen body will think of themselves, and be thought of by themajority, as “second-class citizens”. This will be so evenif, in law and public policy, they are treated in exactly the same wayas those from the cultural majority. For egalitarian reasons,therefore, the only form of nationalism that is acceptable is a purely“civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) nationalismaccording to which the common identity that holds citizens together isto be understood in narrowly political terms as allegiance to certainpolitical principles, and institutions such as a constitution orparliamentary democracy (Ignatieff 1993, Barry 1999).

To this, liberal nationalists will respond that the idea of a purelycivic nation is in fact a myth, As Yack puts it

it suggests that your national identity is nothing but your choice:you are the political principles you share with other like-mindedindividuals. Real nations, in contrast, combine choice and culturalheritage. (2012: 30)

Not only are there no wholly civic nations to be found in the world,but such an identity could not have the motivating power of identitieswith cultural and historical as well as political elements (for acritique of the contrast between civic and ethnic conceptions ofnational identity, see Laborde 2002: 597–8). There would, forexample, be no reason to resist the state you belong to being absorbedby another state so long as the political principles on which it wasbased continued to be observed.

The liberal nationalist response to the equality challenge, therefore,is to concede that at any moment there are likely to be groups whofind it difficult to embrace their state’s national identity asit stands, but to insist on the dynamic character of these identitiesand their ability to absorb new cultural elements fromhitherto-excluded minority groups. The remaking of national identitycan be a democratic process in which cultural icons and practices aredebated, and in some cases modified or abandoned. Where a yes/nodecision on some cultural issue has to be made, the majority view (ifthere is one) must prevail, but even here it may be possible toprovide recognition for minority perspectives. Thus if a nationalevent such as a coronation or presidential inauguration hastraditionally involved a religious ritual, this can be modified so asto allow representatives of minority faiths to play a part in theceremony alongside those of the historically recognised religion (fora fuller discussion see Miller 2020).

5. National Self-determination and Secession

As indicated earlier, the desire to be self-determining is integral tonationality. Nations are groups of people who want to decide the termson which they are to live together, and also the impact they will makeon the outside world. Such claims are often met with scepticism,however. Critics will point to the size of nations and also to theirinternal diversity. For self-determination to be valuable, it seems itmust be valuable not just for the nation as a collective but also forits individual members. But how is it possible for a person to feel incontrol of their destiny when they are one among many millions, andwhen on many issues they find themselves in deep disagreement withtheir compatriots?

Under what conditions, then, can a nation be self-determining? Thefirst is that it should exist in an environment that allows it makecollective choices over matters that are important to its members.This is not to be confused with the issue of state sovereignty. Anation might control a state that is formally sovereign (it is subjectto no higher legal authority) and yet fail to be self-determining, forexample because it is wholly reliant for its subsistence on aneighbouring state that uses its dominant position to determine whatthe first state does. Of course, no nation is able to act entirelywithout external constraint, so we see immediately that nationalself-determination in practice is a matter of degree, and thecorresponding normative demand can only be that each nation shouldenjoy anadequate measure of self-determination.

In particular, a self-determining nation must be able to exercisejurisdiction over the area of land that it claims as its nationalhomeland. The relationship between nation and territory isconstitutive (see the section on nationalist theories in the entry onterritorial rights and territorial justice) and so self-determination must involve, among other things, decidingon the future use and appearance of the physical space that it regardsas its own. To support such territorial claims, nations can appeal tothe transformative labour of past and present generations that haveenhanced the value of the territory, to its symbolic importance as arepository of national culture and national memory, or to both at once(Miller 2012). Of course, these claims are often disputed when rivalnations claim the same area of land as rightfully theirs on suchgrounds.

The second condition is that the nation should have a mechanism formaking collective decisions that allows all members to see the outcomeas an expression of their collective will (for general discussion ofthe institutional conditions that are necessary for a people to beself-determining, see Stilz 2016). This means both something more andsomething less than that it should be governed democratically.Something less, because it is at least possible that there can be whatRawls (1999) has called “decent hierarchical peoples”whose rulers take decisions guided by comprehensive doctrines,typically religious in character, that are very widely shared in thesociety. So long as there are mechanisms that ensure that the rulinghierarchy remains aligned with the beliefs and values of the people asa whole when making these decisions—such as allowing dissentingvoices to be heard without fear of suppression—a form ofself-determination can be achieved. Something more, because democracyin its procedural form, such as the holding of regular, freeelections, may not be sufficient for self-determination if there is noattempt to reach policy outcomes that everyone is able to endorse. Forexample, in the case of a nation divided along religious lines,self-determination requires that those in the majority camp should notuse their position of advantage to vote through policies thatdiscriminate severely against the minority. What matters is thateveryone should be able to regard the policies that are chosen as areasonable expression of their underlying values, even if they are notthe policies they would have chosen themselves.

Although the desire to be self-determining is integral to nationality,more needs to be said to explain why self-determination, at nationallevel, should be valuable. Here we should distinguish betweeninstrumental and intrinsic arguments for the value ofself-determination (Margalit & Raz 1990; for a full discussion ofthis value, see Stilz 2016). The instrumental argument is fairlystraightforward: when a group has collective preferences about itsfuture way of life, the most secure way for it to ensure that thosepreferences are met is to make decisions for itself. Outsiders, nomatter how well-intentioned, are always liable to misunderstand whatthe group wants, or to strike the wrong balance between differentpriorities. The intrinsic argument—the claim thatself-determination is valuable quite apart from the concrete outcomesthat it produces—is, however, more open to challenge.

One version of that argument appeals to personal autonomy. It saysthat where individuals are involved in making decisions on behalf ofthe groups they belong to, outside interference with these collectivedecisions diminishes their autonomy. Just as it matters to someonethat they should be in control of their own personal life, it mattersthat the groups they are involved in controlling should beself-determining, and therefore not subject to external interference(Wellman 2005). Margalit and Raz (1990) argue that nations are“encompassing groups”, having a number of special featuresthat make membership in such groups particularly important to thosewho belong to and identify with them. It is also important to be ableto express one’s membership by participating in politicalactivities within the group. Therefore, they conclude,“self-government is inherently valuable, it is required toprovide the group with a political dimension” (1990: 451). Butnot everyone accepts bridging arguments of this kind. Buchanan (1998a:17–18) points to the gulf that exists between individual andcollective self-government (which he identifies with democraticdecision-making):

it is simply false to say that an individual who participates in ademocratic decision-making process is self-governing; he or she isgoverned by the majority.

Personal autonomy, he argues, can be expressed in many different areasof social life, and need not require political involvement at nationallevel.

A second version of the intrinsic argument in favour ofself-determination appeals to respect for persons. The claim is that“individuals are disrespected in a morally objectionable mannerwhen their group is denied self-determination” (Altman &Wellman 2009: 38). Where a group has developed the ability andwillingness to govern itself, to deny it that right is to show themdisrespect. This is particular clearly illustrated, Altman and Wellmanclaim, in the case of colonial government, which denies the colonisedthe “recognition respect” they deserve by virtue of theirwillingness to perform the functions that are needed to support alegitimate state.

This way of explaining the value of self-determination does howeverraise the question whether groups of all kinds, not only nations, canclaim to be disrespected if they are not granted the right to beself-governing. Can the colonial case be generalised to apply, forexample, to minority nations living within established states who makeclaims to secede? It appears not. Could the Scots, for example, claimthat they were being disrespected if the government of the UnitedKingdom turned down their demand for Scotland to become an independentstate? The obvious counterargument is that since Scots are beingtreated as equal citizens within the UK, with the same rights andresponsibilities as other citizens, their political capacities arealready being shown appropriate respect. Nor does the refusal to grantindependence communicate the message that the Scots would be incapableof forming a state of their own. It merely signals they have yet toprovide a good enough reason for creating such a state.

Nationalists often face the charge that their commitment to politicalself-determination opens the door to political turmoil. According toCanovan,

it is of the essence of nationalism…. to be a revolutionarydoctrine, calling for the destruction of existing states and theconstruction of new ones with different boundaries, and therebyupsetting existing legal frameworks. (1996: 11)

There is no doubt that, in the case of Europe at least, nationalismhas had this corrosive effect at certain historical moments, such asin the revolutionary period in the mid-nineteenth century, and in theaftermath of World War One. But these were also moments whenlong-established empires were in the process of collapsing. Wherenationalist demands emerge within states that are already constitutedas nation-states, there are options besides secession andboundary-redrawing that can respond to these demands (for a fulldiscussion, see Norman 2006).

One such response is nation-building. Nation-states cannot in any casehelp being involved in reproducing the national identity and cultureof their people over time, often in ways that are so banal as to passvery largely unnoticed (Billig 1995), and so faced with separatistdemands they can make a more conscious attempt to strengthen theinclusive aspects of national identity, while at the same timeadjusting its content to make it more accessible to members ofminority nations. For example, national histories, which anyway arecontinually in process of being rewritten in the light of contemporarypolitical concerns, can give greater prominence to the role played bypeople from these groups in promoting the nation’s interests andcontributing to its culture. This need not—and shouldnot—involve outright falsification of the national past (see thefollowing section (§6)).

A second response is to create institutions that allow nationalminorities to be self-determining in areas that are important tothem within the boundaries of the larger nation-state (Kymlicka1995, esp. ch. 6). This could be done on either a territorial or anon-territorial basis. If the nationalism of these groups ispredominantly cultural in character, it may be sufficient to give themcontrol over the relevant cultural institutions. (Gans 2003: ch. 3;Tamir 1993: ch. 3). More commonly, devolved forms of government can becreated in those parts of the territory where minority nations mainlylive (and which they regard as their homeland), as has occurred incountries such as Belgium, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. Thesearrangements are not entirely stable, since the experience ofself-government may give national minorities the confidence to ask foryet more rights, while experiencing the frustration of having tooperate within broad policy guidelines and budgetary constraintsimposed by central government. Thus there is the risk of a slipperyslope that leads to secession, and for that reason states that attachgreat importance to preserving national unity may be very reluctant togrant minorities political rights in the first place (Kymlicka 2004).Yet where such anxieties can be allayed, perhaps through inclusivenation-building policies as outlined above, partial autonomy fornational minorities may produce a better outcome all round thanoutright secession.

One reason to think so is that secession, when it occurs, is rarely“clean”, in the sense of establishing a nation-statevirtually all of whose inhabitants endorse the new arrangement.(Miller 1998). In many cases there will be a minority within theminority nation who strongly prefer to remain within the larger state,and whose interests may be put at risk if the secession occurs. Theremay be disagreement over where the territorial boundary between thenewly-created state and the rump state should be drawn, about thedivision of the spoils in relation to natural resources and otherassets, and about who should be entitled to take part in any proposedreferendum on secession. Although there have been historic examples ofconsensual secessions, these are the exceptions to the rule thatsecessions are at best politically contested and at worst occasionsfor civil war. It is therefore important to underline that believingin the value of national self-determination does not entail believingthat any group that qualifies as a nation must be granted the right toform its own independent state.

6. Is Nationalism Irrational?

Albert Einstein is said to have described nationalism as an infantiledisease—“the measles of mankind” (1929:117)—which would therefore pass away once human beings,together, had reached maturity. As noted earlier, many philosophershave shared his conviction that it represents a collective mentalaberration of some kind. But if so, in what more specific way isnationalism claimed to be irrational? This section explores three mainpossibilities.

First, nationalism might be irrational because it requires thearbitrary privileging of one particular identity out of the manyidentities that might matter to a particular person. Buchanan (1998b)has developed this point:

in pluralistic societies nationality will be only one source ofidentification and allegiance among others, and for some people itwill be of little or no importance relative to other sources ofidentification and allegiance, whether these are cultural oroccupational or religious or political or familial. (1998b: 294)

Nationalism proclaims that national identity reigns supreme, and this,he argues,

is an insult to the equal status of every citizen whose primaryidentity and allegiance is other than national and to all who have nosingle primary identity or allegiance. (1998b: 295)

Defenders of nationality will reply that this seriously misrepresentstheir view. They make no claim about the relative importance ofdifferent forms of identity to the person whose identity is inquestion. It is not misguided or ethically problematic for someone tosay that their religious identity matters more to them than theirnational identity, so that if forced to relinquish one of these, theywould opt to forfeit their national identity (for example by choosingto go into exile). National identity is privileged only in the sensethat it can form the basis for a stable form of political order. Incertain circumstances, this would provide the justification fornation-building policies as described above. But the rationale forsuch policies is not that national identities are of greater worththan identities of other kinds, and therefore should be promoted attheir expense, but that in the absence of a sufficient degree ofidentification at national level, the society is liable to break down,or at least be unable to sustain democracy and social justice. Eventhose who do not find national identities intrinsically valuable cantherefore have reason to support their promotion.

Second, some critics will claim that the very act of identifying witha nation is irrational. This might be because there are in fact nosuch things as nations, understood as bodies of people who share thecharacteristics, such as a common culture, that are said to mark outone nation from another. The idea of “national character”is illusory, these critics say. A Frenchman will, in general, have nomore in common with another Frenchman than he will with a German or aSpaniard. So if nationalists claim that nations are like-minded groupsof people among whom special responsibilities and obligations arise,they are simply deluded.

One response to this was suggested by David Hume, who conceded howeverthat national similarities were often exaggerated:

the vulgar are apt to carry allnational characters toextremes; and having once established it as a principle, that anypeople are knavish, or cowardly, or ignorant, they will admit of noexception, but comprehend every individual under the same censure. Menof sense condemn these undistinguishing judgements: Though at the sametime, they allow, that each nation has a peculiar set of manners, andthat some particular qualities are more frequently to be met withamong one people than among their neighbours. (Hume 1748 [1985:295])

Hume’s suggestion might be developed by proposing a familyresemblance view of nationhood, according to which there is no featurethat serves as a necessary condition for belonging to a particularnation, but instead there is a range of features that are found moreoften among the members of one nation than among others (see Moore2020 for discussion). This view can then allow that one particularSwede might have a greater number of features in common with aparticular Italian than she does with another individual Swede, whilestill maintaining that Swedes overall have many more overlappingfeatures with one another than they do with Italians. In that sensenations as bodies of people with cultural and other qualities incommon are not mere illusions.

Personal identification with a nation may be regarded as irrationalfor a different reason. Critics claim is that it allows those who arepersonally undistinguished to bask in the reflected glories of theirnation, whose achievements are accordingly greatly exaggerated.Schopenhauer, for example, thought that

national pride is transparently a surrogate kind of pride forindividuals who possess no qualities of their own….unremarkablepeople—and to him, most people were unremarkable— tend toboast of the accomplishments of some greater collective to which theybelong; they grasp after something that will make them seem great andimpressive but find nothing in themselves. (Norberg 2022)

A similar charge was laid by Erich Fromm who, borrowing Freud’sconcept of narcissism, claimed that nationalism often functions as aform of “group narcissism”:

What should feed the narcissism of a poor man, who has little socialprestige, whose children even tend to look down on him? He isnothing—but if he can identify with his nation, and can transferhis personal narcissism to the nation, then he iseverything…“My nation is the strongest, the mostcultured, the most peace-loving, the most talented of allnations”. (Fromm 1980: 51–2)

The charge being laid here—that identifying with a nation isirrational because it is driven by an unacknowledged need tocompensate for a sense of personal worthlessness—is speculativeand hard to assess (similar claims have been made about religiousbelief). More tractable is that part of the critique which says thatnationalists everywhere make claims about the superiority of theircountry to others, along relevant dimensions, which for obviousreasons cannot all be true. Keller goes further, arguing that loyaltyto a country involves a form of “bad faith”, wherebybelief in the nation’s superior qualities is protected byblocking out evidence that might undermine it. A patriotic person

is motivated to believe that her country has certain features, and shemarshals the evidence in ways that support this belief; but she cannotmaintain the belief in its full-blooded form if she admits to herselfthat it is not grounded in an unbiased assessment of the evidence; soshe does not make this admission. (Keller 2005: 580)

It is worth pointing out here that even if these psychologicalmechanisms are ubiquitous among those who hold nationalist beliefs,this would at most show that nationalism as a social phenomenon isirrational, not that the beliefs themselves are unfounded (showingthat a certain belief is widely held for reasons unrelated to itstruth may suggest, but certainly does not prove, that the beliefitself is false). Moreover the evidence collected by psychologistssuggests that among those who identify with their nation, there isconsiderable variation both in the content and level of“national pride”—the features of the country thatare valued by the identifier—and in the extent to which theirnationalism is critical or uncritical—whether they endorse thedirection that their country is taking, or on the contrary censure itand wish it to change course (see Huddy & Khatib 2007; Miller& Ali 2014). The causal factors that may lead a particular personto identify with and support their nation are sufficiently varied toundermine the charge that such commitments must always beirrational.

There is, however, one further way in which nationalism might bejudged to be irrational. This has to do with the prevalence ofnational myths in the historical narratives that form anessential part of every national identity—the “rich legacyof memories” that Renan believed every nation must possess (fordiscussion see Miller 1995: ch. 2: Archard 1995; Abizadeh 2004) Thesememories are of significant events in the nation’shistory—often involving either national triumphs or nationaldisasters—and it is undoubtedly the case that the way that theseevents are remembered by the general public in the country in questionis likely to diverge significantly from the best scholarly accounts asprovided by historians. Here, however, it is important to distinguishbetween two kinds of myth: what we might callpure myths,such as legends of how the nation was first established by some heroicfigure in the distant past (Aeneas founding Rome, his grandson Brutusfounding Britain) which are a feature of pre-modernity, and cannotsurvive the conditions of free enquiry that prevail in liberalsocieties; and what we might callpartial myths, wherepersons who undeniably lived or events that undeniably occurred areglossed in such a way as to fit into a “story ofpeoplehood” that serves a normative purpose for people now, forexample by reassuring them that they are the legitimate holders of theterritory they occupy, or providing them with ethically inspiringmodels of conduct to emulate. But is the omnipresence of such partialmyths sufficient to show that nationalism is irrational?

There are two points worth making here. First, it is important to notethat someone may endorse a partial myth while recognising that thestory that they are telling, while faithful to the spirit of theoriginal event it describes, is not accurate in all its details. Touse an American example, we now know that the Liberty Bell was not infact rung in Philadelphia on July 4^th 1776, and that PaulRevere did not actually ride all the way from Lexington to Concord,but these stories will continue to be told and retold because theyform part of a wider narrative about an event—the AmericanRevolution—that undoubtedly did occur, and whose significance isunquestionable. Some may believe these accounts to be literally true,while others may recognise their partly mythical character, but theimportance of a shared narrative as a source of national unity is suchas to make it reasonable in certain contexts to suspend disbelief.

Second, the moral value of a national myth will depend upon the endsthat it serves to promote, and in particular whether the story ittells about the nation’s past is one that all of its presentmembers can identify with. To continue with the same example, the myththat the American Revolution was an all-American rising against theoppressive British, and not at the same time an internal conflictbetween patriot and loyalist factions within America, also obscuresthe role played by Black Americans (many of whom fought on theloyalist side) in this event. In doing so, it conceals the racialdimension of the Revolution. The myth does not serve Black Americanstoday well, and needs to be recast to carry out the unifying andmotivating functions that national myths, in the best cases, canperform.

This section has reviewed reasons of different kinds for holding thatnationalism is irrational, some having to do with what nationalistsbelieve, and others having to do with the motivation that inducespeople to hold these beliefs. The general charge of irrationalitycannot be substantiated, but it remain an open question how far theversion of nationalism that (some) philosophers are willing to defendis also the version that moves people in different places to actpolitically, sometimes with earth-shaking consequences.

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• Miscevic, Nenad, “Nationalism”,StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta& Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2025/entries/nationalism/>. [This was the previous entry on this topic in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy – see theversion history.]

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