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Aristotle, Catholicism, Christianity, clan, family, halakha, imperialism, Islam, Judaism, liberalism, loyalty, Marxism, milkhemet hareshut, milkhemet mitzva, nationalism, Protestantism, The Virtue of Nationalism, tribe, Yoram Hazony
Hazony, Yoram. The Virtue of Nationalism. New York: Basic Books, 2018. 304 pp.
Ever since the cultural turn in academia in the early 1970s, it has become de rigueur to disparage nationalism as a volatile and dangerous sentiment susceptible to extreme violence and prejudice. Nationalism was cast as an imagined community with the implication that it was a simulacrum whose substance came wholly from fabricated myths, rituals, and symbols. In this echo chamber, Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism comes as a rare and welcome breath of fresh air that revives the idea and places it in context with other alternatives that have been offered over the ages.
Hazony looks to the Bible, specifically Devarim, to find his definition of nationalism. The scriptures actively promote the feeling of brotherhood among all members of the Jewish nation and Mosaic law would serve as their constitution; the king of the Jewish state, its priests, and prophets would all be drawn from among the brotherhood and each would have a role in preserving the traditions, customs, and laws of the community. Geographically, the boundaries of Israel are set by Moses as he expressly forbids the expansion of the nation-state into the neighbouring lands of Esau, Moav, Lot, and Ammon.
The ambitions of nationalism are clearly limited and not inherently expansionist or committed to world domination as critics are prone to hyperventilate. Hazony does not deny that there has been great violence in the past in the name of nationalism but that is also true of any other theory of mass organisation, ethics, and governance. This is an interesting proposition put forth by the author, that nationalism is not merely a feeling of cultural connectedness between people who do not know each other but properly seen, it also includes a system of ethics.
According to Hazony, the roots of nationalism are to be found in the structure of the family – individuals are biologically related in a family and share a sense of rights and duties, blood and belonging, vis-a-vis one another; the prosperity of one member is the success of them all. As families band together into clans, clans into tribes, and tribes into nations to provide better security and accomplish greater tasks, the loyalty commanded by the heads is transferred upwards towards common characteristics the members share, such as language, faith, or ethnicity.
Using the family as a model of organisation for the state is certainly not peculiar to the Bible – similar notions are found as far apart as China and Greece. Confucius clings to the metaphor a little too closely with the result that the ideal Chinese state tends towards authoritarianism; Aristotle sees the polis – state – as the full flowering of the family life but does not carry the analogy too far as he recognises that there is a difference in the nature of power within states and families, not just quantitatively but qualitatively as well.
The Virtue of Nationalism juxtaposes a localised nationalism with universalist ideologies such as imperialism, Christianity, Marxism, and Liberalism. Nations are inherently anti-imperial and therefore more stable, the argument runs, because its members are connected to each other through bonds not mediated by institutions of state. Nations are particular to geography, language, faith, ethnicity, or some other criterion that defines the community whereas the universalist aspirations of Christianity, Islam, Marxism, and Liberalism fall to the temptation of conquest and subjugation of the entire world to the one “true” doctrine of choice.
Hazony’s depiction of nationalism as limited may be true in the Jewish tradition but it has had a very different history in Europe and Asia, at least. Halakha distinguishes between milkhemet mitzva – war of obligation – and milkhemet hareshut – optional war. In the first category fall, for example, the wars of Joshua against the seven nations while David’s campaigns of expansion come under the latter classification. In fact, G-d prohibits David from building the Temple because he was “a man of battles and [had] shed blood.”
It is also problematic to portray imperialism as a universalist principle. Although imperialists have no bounds to their geographic ambitions, it is usually also true that the imperial quest is usually carried out in the name of a nation; the various nations that fall to a growing empire are neither treated nor seen as equals. We see this again and again from the Roman Empire to the pink-tainted map of British expansion. Rome expanded its citizen base only in the latter years to stave off a fiscal crisis brought on by decades of decadent emperors but ties by birth or marriage to the Italian peninsula and preferably Rome were favourable traits to possess well into the second century. Similarly, London scoffed at Mohandas Gandhi’s idea that Britain welcome all inhabitants of its dominions as equal citizens of their empire. Hazony accepts this at one point, but not before an unnecessary discourse on the universalist instincts of imperialism.
The difficulty of sustaining nations on abstractions such as liberalism stems from the inability to justify loyalty to the principle. The likelihood of changing our minds as we experience life and are exposed to more information means that any belonging to an ideal remains unstable at best. Hazony takes help from psychology to make the case that humans are social animals who have a need to belong to networks and believe in something greater than than the mere material of life. Here, he brings up a word not often seen in nationalism studies these days – loyalty – which is the crux of the debate. It is not easy, if at all possible, to have loyalty to an idea in the same manner one feels ties to a sibling or parent.
Hazony reworks several historical events to lend support to his hypothesis, in many cases problematically. For example, rather than see the Thirty Years’ War from the traditional perspective of a conflagration between Protestants and Catholics, Hazony casts it as being primarily motivated by universalist impulses against local inclinations. While most historians would agree that the religious element ceased to animate the conflict as the years passed, the war remained an old-fashioned struggle for geopolitical dominance between France and the Habsburgs.
Perhaps the most jarring incongruity in The Virtue of Nationalism is how the second Christian schism is repackaged as a contest between universalism and particularism. At a certain level, it is undeniable that Catholic allegiance to their Pope made way for dual loyalties. However, it is hardly the case that Protestantism was a particularist creed any more than Christianity a sub-sect of Judaism. While the theological reorganisation gave monarchs their independence from Rome, the faith itself still believed it possessed a universal message. The recent Evangelical movement has strongly underscored this conviction.
The largest empire in the modern era was put together by Britain and it was Prussian militarism that sank Europe into the first of its cataclysmic convulsions of the 20th century. The United States began its expansionist project with Manifest Destiny and then eyed territories beyond; none of these countries were Catholic. What is disappointing is that these ill-considered examples are unnecessary and distract from Hazony’s already persuasive defence of nationalism.
These weak digressions may conceal the real import of The Virtue of Nationalism, which is an assault on the cult of the solitary individual. Hazony traces the roots of this ideology to at least one of its origins, John Locke. Hazony finds the English philosopher’s initial assumption that all people are rational and his utilitarian methodology in assessing rationality flawed. Contrary to Locke, Hazony argues that the fundamental unit of existence is not the individual or even the family but the community. Our ethics arise from our communal interactions as does our sense of self; in turn, these inform all our other beliefs and relations, such as liberty or nationalism.
This is at the root of the conservative world view, that the community and family are prior to the individual. Ever since the early Liberals recast society as a collective of individuals, the idea has taken hold and grown to a point where it is not even questioned any more. The few who reject this modern normal have usually done so on theological grounds and have been easy to ignore in an increasingly profane world. By reviving a classical framework, The Virtue of Nationalism fires a broadside at not just the critics of nationalism but the entire Liberal project. Not only are the dangers of a universalist mindset compared against nationalism and found to be as dangerous if not worse, but individual liberty is argued to be mere license if not exercised within the bounds of community and morality. Thus, this is as much a work of political philosophy as it is about nationalism.
It is to the author’s credit that he does not pay much heed to the silly distinction between patriotism and nationalism – Vidura counters this best in the Udyoga Parva in India’s treasured epic, the Mahabharata, when he says, “[t]hose prone to get drunk get drunk on knowledge, wealth, and good birth; but the same are triumphs of the strict.”
The Virtue of Nationalism is a short book and not written in a solemn academic tone despite boasting an impressive bibliography. Hazony would do well to realise, however, that his understanding of nationalism is peculiar to Judaism and not characteristic of all politico-cultural movements. The inadvertent contradistinction, however, should be most interesting to scholars of nationalism. Readers should beware that the chatty affectation of the book belies a profound sociopolitical weltanshauung and a powerful critique of Liberalism in all its guises. There may be some historical quibbles but they do not, oddly, take away from the overall argument and to narrowly focus on those would be to miss the forest for the trees. In an era of Liberal activist academia, Hazony’s efforts to take us back to first principles and rethink our implicit assumptions is a welcome intellectual challenge.
Very nice summarized post Jaideep with clear ideas to dwell on. Thanks.
I continuously see a recurrent theme in your post: a kind of xenophobic fear of choice as if choice was a western import.
When dalits choose to take up professional activites beyond sewage (with or without the help of society), something’s happening: They’re realizing that the dignity of an individual corresponds to his freedom to match his aspirations to his destiny. To package this fundamental idea as a western import is what makes Nationalism dangerous in the first place. Because anything challenging it needs to be understood through the xenophobic lens of – this was brought to us from the outside.
Community and family is prior to the individual – All this has been tried and tested. Its easy to gloss over history and then come up with such constructs to make a case for nationalism. Because the whole point of history is the study it and understand how families have controlled the freedom of nations, the liberty of individuals and reigned because they happened to be from a family. We can’t just throw all that history down that drain while it achieved for us through many movements including the French Revolution – Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The Rennaisance and the recognition of individual dignity, creativity and reason over and above.
Even the ideas above (liberty, reason) have their place. That doesn’t mean we don’t need a sense of community or nationalism. I am reminded of a saying of C.S Lewis who said that when does love for your country – a good – get corrupted? Love for the nation turns into nationalism when it comes to mean hatred for people of other nations.
In a country where people suffer so much because they can’t marry the person of their choice and some extreme cases go to honor killings, I am amazed that anyone could think the community and family are prior to the individual. I am ok if this is seen in a certain light e.g say, as St. Thomas too said, the common good is above the individual good (moral aspect) or through a legal or constitutional standpoint (A nation is a collection of individuals as opposed to a collection of races or communities. If it were the latter, it would always be debatable, in that case, which race gets preference? In the former, you attest and secure that all individuals are equal)
You may like to believe that such a theory is non-expansionist and so less threatening or that christianity, marxism etc can be juxtaposed to Nationalism. But just history of the 20th century of how christianity spread say to China through silent evangelization in a controlled state and in that same century, how nationalist passions made off with 5 million jews, it is easy to see the flaw in that juxtaposition.
If Marxism spreads but makes people less free, it is not worth it. If Nationalism advances to make the majoritarians feel like first class citizens and the others, at a lower level, it is not worth it. If Christianity makes people less free, it is not worth it. On the other hand, if it makes people more free from their own social evils, it is welcomes, why Christianity, if Islam can do that, it is welcome too. What plays a big factor is not the imperialist force of these big terms(marxism, christianity) rather the reception by societies that find it as a preferrable option. It is the latter that gives them credibility instead of ruling them out without evidence on the ideological altar of nationalism.
Hence, democracy, individual liberty, separation of church and state etc, work because empirically, they are seen as better for the lot of man and his destiny instead of serving the ego of some vague ‘this is our history and its roots’ that, just like Marxism and its promise to liberate Man, when comes in touch with the particular ‘man’ overrules him, takes away his children, his freedom to innovate, or motivation because the ‘State knows best’.
Ciao Rickson,
It is difficult to follow your train of thought here, man. I will try to respond to the points as best as I understand.
a. You keep saying xenophobic but you then go on to talk about Dalits – I am not sure why you think they are outsiders. Perhaps you are defining my boundaries of self and other for me?
b. About ideas being from outside, I don’t know what you mean – which ones are you talking about? Democracy? Nationalism? Marxism? Outside to what? The book does not restrict the argument to one state and neither do I, in which case I don’t understand what is outside to whom. Yet in principle, ideas that have evolved in other countries may possibly reflect their historical and social realities better than yours and this whole copy-paste model of development becomes a total disaster. A classic example is US aid to Africa and SE Asia.
c. Three points on the community, family and individual thing – first of all, it was only Aristotle who said the community was before the family and he meant it in a manner totally different from what I think you are going on about here. His was a teleological observation about the structure of society, not a blueprint for society.
Two, I can hurl your same argument back at you by pointing out the failures of liberté, égalité, et fraternité…for that matter, of reason too. Cherry-picking incidents, sometimes out of context, is not going to take this discussion forward. Neither Hazony nor I deny the excesses of nationalist fervour but it is exactly that – fervour, and not an inherent trait of nationalism.
Three, you flip-flop on the idea yourself (bringing in Thomas) and worse, you conflate the individual for the community. Communities don’t have choice of marriage, people do – but when they do, they must consider the reaction of the community they live in. That’s just common sense, not political theory. I also take issue with your definition of nation but I assume that to be just a clumsy mistake in an informal response to a blog read by almost no one 😀
d. Your comment on the non-expansionist point makes me think you have not paid any attention to what was written in the review. The example is peculiarly Jewish and is something nationalism scholars should study more than they have so far. Perhaps there are parallels, or maybe not – but I am curious.
e. Your position on freedom seems to be license more than freedom and such a thing does not exist without severe negative repercussions. Moreover, the definition of freedom is loaded towards a modernist, empirical framework which is exactly what the counter-argument is against – not just mine, but pretty much right from the Counter-Enlightenment. If we cannot agree on what it means to be free, it will be difficult for us to agree on how much freedom is appropriate.
Thanks for reading, it’s been a while since I heard from you and I didn’t know how many people bother reading what I write. I thought it was all for my own self-edification 😀