Abstract
Love for a country has come to be linked with two terms: patriotism and nationalism. The conceptual distinction between these two ideas has been a matter of controversy. In this chapter we propose that one way of thinking about and distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism is via the very concept of love. We make the claim that what distinguishes patriotism and nationalism is not the quality of love but the type of love invoked. We argue that love in patriotism is similar to familial love (love for one’s parents) whereas love in nationalism resembles intense passionate romantic love. We furthermore argue that love involved in our conception of patriotism can be harmless, while the kind of love associated with the relevant conception of nationalism can be dangerous and easily involves “bad faith,” a deceptive faith in the superior goodness of one’s country. To substantiate our claim, we draw from literature across different disciplines: philosophy, political psychology, and biology.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept of patriotism is not discussed in Rawls’s theory. However, it plays an important role in the transition from the second stage of the “morality of association” to the third stage of the “morality of principle” (see Callan 2006).
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Ioannou, M., Boot, M., Wittingslow, R., Mattos, A. (2021). Patriotism and Nationalism as Two Distinct Ways of Loving One’s Country. In: Cushing, S. (eds) New Philosophical Essays on Love and Loving. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72324-8_14
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