Kevin Williams; National Sentiment in Civic Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 3, 30 May 2006, Pages 433–440, https://doi.org/10.11.

Yael Tamir's book Liberal Nationalism seeks to show that liberalism and nationalism are not incompatible political philosophies. Nationalism need not take the closed, authoritarian form it has so often taken; and liberalism is premised on certain national ideas, including national self-determination. This critical discussion of her account is broadly sympathetic to the compatibility thesis, but takes issue both with her notion of nationalism, with her account of a nation as a self-conscious cultural community, and with the sharp line she draws (...) between civic and cultural concerns. Although her book does not deal with education, this paper concludes with remarks about what the role of nationality should be in education, in both a Tamirian and a non-Tamirian framework. The latter is applied to education in Britain. (shrink)

The paper examines two recent arguments, by Keith Graham and Richard Norman, to the effect that a liberal individualist foundation is insufficient for a socialist conception of democracy and needs to be replaced or supplemented by collectivist notions [I]. It concludes that these arguments are unsound and that a defensible education for democratic citizenship on socialist lines should be based on liberal values, not least that of personal autonomy. At the same time it concedes to collectivism that socialist democracy needs (...) to operate within a social framework, but sees national communities rather than social classes or smaller-scale groupings as the most promising candidates for this. (shrink)

The paper examines two recent arguments, by Keith Graham and Richard Norman, to the effect that a liberal individualist foundation is insufficient for a socialist conception of democracy and needs to be replaced or supplemented by collectivist notions [I]. It concludes that these arguments are unsound and that a defensible education for democratic citizenship on socialist lines should be based on liberal values, not least that of personal autonomy. At the same time it concedes to collectivism that socialist democracy needs (...) to operate within a social framework, but sees national communities rather than social classes or smaller-scale groupings as the most promising candidates for this. (shrink)

Arguments from stability for liberal nationalism rely on considerations about conditions for the feasibility or stability of liberal political ideals and factual claims about the circumstances under which these conditions are fulfilled in order to argue for nationalist conclusions. Such reliance on factual claims has been criticised by among others G. A. Cohen in other contexts as ideological reifications of social reality. In order to assess whether arguments from stability within liberal nationalism, especially as formulated by David Miller, are vulnerable (...) to a comparable critique, the rationale for their reliance on factual claims is discussed on the basis of a number of concerns in John Rawls’s political liberalism. The concern with stability in liberal nationalism differs from stability in Rawls’s work, mainly because of the stronger non-ideal or ‘realist’ focus of the former. In so far as the ‘realism’ of arguments from stability for liberal nationalism is recognized, they are not vulnerable to the reification charge. But if the arguments are construed as realist, this at the same time makes for other tensions within liberal nationalism. (shrink)

Around the world, multiethnic states are in trouble. Many have proven unable to create or sustain any sense of solidarity across ethnic lines. The members of one ethnic group are unwilling to respect the rights of the members of other groups, or to make sacrifices for them, and have no trust that any sacrifice they might make will be reciprocated. Recent events show that where this sort of solidarity and trust is lacking, the consequences can be disastrous. In some countries, (...) the result is violent civil war, as in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and various parts of the former Soviet Union. In other countries, the state has dissolved in a more peaceful way, as in Czechoslovakia, albeit with significant economic and psychological costs. In yet other countries, particularly in Africa, the state has stayed together, but is little more than a shell, a loose confederation of more or less hostile groups who barely tolerate, let alone cooperate with, each other. (shrink)

The principle of national self-determination has usually been justified by extending to national groups an entitlement that individuals are regarded as having, namely, to the conditions necessary for their self development. In order to extend the concept of self-determination to nations in this way, an argument that it is important for nations to exist within their own political communities must be given. In this essay, I describe and criticize one type of argument for such a principle of national self-determination – (...) what I will call the communitarian argument.Contemporary communitarians usually contend that determining who rightfully has membership in a political community must precede the allocation of rights and responsibilities between members. Community is understood to mean a national community; membership in communities therefore results from the ascription of national identities to individuals and to the consequent sorting out of loyalties that follows from this ascription. A right of self-determination for nations is required, on this view, in order to ensure that political communities are legitimately formed in accordance with national identities. (shrink)

We have found that a sparse version of the claim that alienated labor is a bad thing can inform a political morality without turning that morality into one which makes more comment on people's ends than the liberal can accept. We have also seen that a modification of the ideas of alienation from our species being can play a limited role in a liberal political morality, but that the rational kernel of the critique from species alienation is already a familiar (...) part of the liberal tradition. However, the substantive view of the good life - as one which essentially involves engagement in communal ties and satisfying labor - cannot play the role which certainly many Marxists would like it to play in their critique of capitalism, at least if their critique is to be recognizably liberal. Why should it matter so much that Marxists be able to accommodate central liberal insights? It is not because a political morality has to be liberal in order to be successful in the real world: history and the contemporary world are full of examples of political views which command wide assent despite (or because of) their illiberality. But the foreseeable stages of a socialist society will be plagued by the circumstances of justice as they have been classically conceived. A socialism which is sufficiently better than capitalism to be worth the significant risk and sacrifice it is likely to require must be liberal in the sense that it can be regarded as defensible to each person who is actually subject to it. This does not require that it accommodate the greed of the greedy or the injustice of the unjust. But it does require that it not presume the unworthiness of the moral commitments of its reasonable citizens. 47. (shrink)