Igor Primoratz
In these concluding remarks, I wish to comment on the main objections to my position advanced by Kleinig in Chapter 4 and by Keller in Chapter 5. Mine is a two-tier position, based on a distinction between the worldly and distinctively ethical types of patriotism. I will respond, briefly, to Kleinig’s and Keller’s objections to my account of each of these types of patriotism in turn.
As Kleinig points out, my argument for the claim that worldly patriotism has no positive moral significance is largely negative: I canvass and seek to refute a string of arguments meant to endow it with such significance. This approach is risky, he says, insofar as the arguments criticized “do not exhaust the field” (111). One might seek to exhaust the field of arguments concerning a particular view in two ways: by attending to all possible arguments, or to all arguments that have actually been advanced in the discussion. The requirement that one engage with every possible argument is implausible, since it is impossible to satisfy. There is no way one can anticipate all possible arguments on this (or any other) question in ethics; the list of such arguments is inevitably open ended. As for the arguments that have actually been advanced, in Chapter 3 of this volume, I discuss all the relevant lines of argument I have found in the literature: from common moral belief, moral education and growth, identity, gratitude, reciprocity, utility, and citizenship. I seek to refute each of these seven arguments. The belief that we ought to have special concern for the well-being of our country and compatriots may be widely shared, but that only shows that it is widely held, not that is true. The argument that the individual becomes capable of moral deliberation and action only through moral education provided by the community, and that this makes for identification with the community and special concern for its well-being, takes moral education to be the be-all and end-all of the individual’s moral life, whereas it may be only the starting point. The argument that special concern for the patria is part and parcel of one’s identity and is encapsulated in the expression “my country” trades on the ambiguity of this expression. The view of patriotism as an obligation of gratitude is undermined by the fact that many, if not most, of the benefits one receives from one’s country are not gifts, but rather things one has earned or paid for. The argument of reciprocity of special concern leaves out those compatriots who are most in need of such concern: those who, through no fault of their own, have nothing to contribute to the common enterprise that is their country. The special concern for the well-being of one’s country and compatriots that is grounded in utility will be found much too tenuous by a patriot worth his salt. Nor is such concern part and parcel of citizenship; a person who denies that she has a duty to show such concern beyond what the laws of her country mandate and beyond the concern she has for humans generally does not indicate lack of understanding of what citizenship is.
Kleinig does not bring up a list of further arguments that need to be considered. The sole additional argument he mentions is Albert O. Hirschman’s defense of loyalty to institutions as an efficient means of checking the tendency of dissatisfied members to exit (Hirschman 1970, chap. 7). But this is not a novel type of argument; Hirschman merely highlights one particular way in which loyalty in general, and loyalty to one’s country in particular, might be useful. Thus, his argument is exposed to my objections to consequentialist accounts of patriotism.
Kleinig and I differ on the moral standing of worldly patriotism: whereas I see it as at best morally permissible, but devoid of any positive moral significance, he argues that “membership obligations may sometimes include loyalty-based obligations.” With regard to the state, this means that citizenship of a state may sometimes include an obligation of loyalty to it, that is, patriotism. Given the role of the state in the maintenance of a country, Kleinig writes, “I would have thought that some measure of patriotism would be necessary for a country to survive and thrive. This may not show that every member of a country has such obligations, or what their content should be, or that such obligations are overriding, but it offers a plausible argument for the contingent value of patriotic loyalty” (111–112). Now, this contingent value of patriotism may be either nonmoral or moral. I would not question Kleinig’s claim if it referred to some nonmoral value; but he is clearly seeking to endow patriotic loyalty with moral value, to present it as morally obligatory. It seems to me, though, that a country’s survival does not necessarily require that its citizens should be patriots; what it does require is that they should be law-abiding. A country whose citizens do not by and large abide by its laws clearly faces an uncertain future. But whereas patriotism involves compliance with one’s country’s laws, it also involves much more. It involves a special concern for the country’s well-being that reaches well beyond mere law-abiding conduct. I do not believe that a country can survive only if its citizens show such concern.
On the other hand, if a country is to thrive, it may well be necessary that its citizens, or at least a sufficiently large number of them, should show special concern for its well-being, that is, that they should be patriots. But do individuals have a prima facie moral obligation to do whatever is needed for their country to thrive? Perhaps they do, on some strongly communitarian views. However, Kleinig presents his views as those of a liberal, rather than a hard-line communitarian. If his understanding of the self, society, and polity is indeed liberal, that is, if the individual comes first, both conceptually and morally, then he should retreat from this implication of his argument. For a moral obligation to promote one’s country’s flourishing would be so far-reaching and demanding that the zone of moral indifference, the scope of morally unencumbered personal choice, would be reduced to a degree unacceptable in a liberal society and polity. But if Kleinig does retreat from this claim, he will thereby retreat from the view that worldly patriotism is something we ought to embrace and live by.
Keller’s objection to my account of worldly patriotism is of a different order: he argues that the kind of worldly patriotism I consider morally permissible, namely, patriotism constrained by universal moral considerations, is really no patriotism at all. In Chapters 2 and 5 of this book, Keller never spells out a definition of patriotism he assumes in his argument against it. But he does offer a characterization of patriotism; it includes identification with one’s country and endorsement of its virtues and achievements as determined by some objective standards. He points out that “the patriot takes her connection with her country seriously … [it] plays a significant part in her life and her system of values. Patriotism is not a trivial matter. [It] is not a mere indulgence” (59). In his book on loyalty, Keller comes closer to offering a definition: “To be a patriot is to have a serious loyalty to country, one that is not characterised by the phenomenology of choice, is essentially grounded in the country’s being yours, and involves reference to what are taken to be valuable defining qualities of the country” (Keller 2007, 70).
None of this implies that requirements of patriotism can never be overridden by other, weightier moral considerations. Yet that is precisely what Keller argues in Chapter 5. “Moderate” or “liberal” patriotism is “unstable,” because in certain circumstances liberal morality and patriotism make incompatible demands, and as its would-be adherents face these demands, they “come under considerable pressure to compromise either [their] liberalism or [their] patriotism” (129). Therefore, Keller says, a “moderate” or “liberal” patriot is in fact no patriot at all. I find this implausible. For by the same token, one could claim, say, that family loyalty that is constrained by universal moral considerations of justice and common humanity is “unstable,” “compromised,” and in fact no family loyalty at all. The same might be claimed of any other attachment and loyalty – to one’s friends, one’s local community, one’s profession, or one’s religion: that it qualifies as such only in so far as it is absolute, unconstrained by any universal moral considerations. But there is considerable middle ground between embracing any such particular attachment and loyalty as absolute, unyielding to any conflicting moral consideration, and adopting a sweeping universalism that would deny legitimacy to such attachments and loyalties. In fact, in the lives of most of us, all or almost all particular attachments and loyalties inhabit this middle ground: they carry substantial, but not absolute, weight in our deliberation and action. In some cases of conflict, they override more general moral considerations, whereas in others they give way to such considerations.1 When they give way, that does not make them trivial, nor does it reduce them to the level of mere indulgence.
Keller offers no further argument for reserving the epithet “patriot” for those for whom “large interests” of their country trump any moral consideration with which those interests might come into conflict and denying it to anyone whose attachment to his country falls short of that. He says that we need to “keep an eye on the ordinary notion of patriotism” (129), but that notion is by no means so restrictive. If we attend to ordinary usage of the word “patriotism” and its cognates, we will find that “I am a patriot, but the interests of our country must not be promoted by unjust or inhumane means” is not a contradiction in terms, but rather a statement entirely in accord with ordinary usage. As far as such usage is concerned, “moderate” or “liberal” patriotism is not a misnomer, but rather a possible, and indeed fairly common, type of patriotism.
I can deal with Kleinig’s and Keller’s criticism of my view on distinctively ethical patriotism very briefly, since their objections largely overlap. They argue that my arguments for ethical patriotism are contingent, that they apply with equal force to other attachments and loyalties, and that the stance they support falls short of patriotism.
I put forward three arguments for distinctively ethical patriotism: from being particularly well placed to judge and help safeguard the moral integrity of one’s country, from the benefits the country bestows on its citizens, and from democracy. Each argument is indeed contingent: it applies only under certain circumstances. Those circumstances may or may not obtain. One may be marginalized in one’s own country and thus not at all in a good position to make a difference. One may be greatly disadvantaged in one’s own country, receiving virtually no significant benefits from it. One’s country may have a political system that does not allow for meaningful participation of ordinary citizens in political decision making. In such cases, my arguments for ethical patriotism do not apply. I explain all this in the concluding section of Chapter 3. The reach of my arguments is admittedly not unlimited, but it is still considerable, and I do not see why that should be considered a flaw.
Kleinig and Keller claim that my arguments for distinctively ethical patriotism are not really arguments for a certain kind of patriotism; they are rather arguments for acknowledging one’s partaking in collective responsibility that accrues to members of any group when the relevant circumstances obtain and for showing special concern for the group’s moral integrity. Now, one could indeed argue along the same lines in relation to various groups, large or small. But this type of argument becomes an argument for ethical patriotism when the group in question is a country (and polity) and when it is my country in some significant, rather than purely formal sense – when I feel much affection for it and identify with it and with my compatriots. I can have a lively sense of collective responsibility in relation to many groups, large or small, but I can be an ethical patriot only when the collective is my patria. A heightened sense of collective responsibility is indeed at the core of distinctively ethical patriotism and a range of other attachments and loyalties – to one’s local community, one’s profession, one’s religion, and so on. This in no way undermines my arguments for shouldering such responsibility in relation to one’s country. Nor does it make inappropriate the application of the term “ethical patriotism” to the stance the arguments enjoin. Kleinig writes that the circumstances my arguments focus on “[do] not constitute the country as one’s own” (113). Keller points out that “there is some conceptual distance between having a sense of collective responsibility regarding some collective entity … and loving and identifying with that entity” (131). This is to put the cart before the horse. The circumstances highlighted by my arguments – being best placed to criticize the moral record of one’s country, benefiting from its policies or from one’s membership of it, participation in democratic politics – mandate special concern for the country’s moral record provided the country is one’s own in a significant sense.
To be sure, one can live in a country without feeling any great affection for it or identifying with it in any significant sense. The country can be one’s country only in a minimal, formal sense; the word patria can be out of place. In such a case, one can still partake in the type of collective responsibility I have in mind and become bound to show special concern for the country’s moral record. That, too, will be an ethical stance, but it will not be ethical patriotism. Again, I do not see how this undermines my arguments for such patriotism.
Therefore, I stand by the view of patriotism I present in Chapter 3. It is a two-tier view, based on a distinction between worldly and distinctively ethical patriotism. The former is concerned with mundane aspects of one’s country’s well-being such as political stability, economic prosperity, or cultural vibrancy; the latter focuses on the country’s moral record, seeking to ensure that its laws, policies, and practices are just and humane.
Some versions of worldly patriotism are much too strong: they tend to offend against universal moral considerations of justice and common human solidarity. Therefore, they are morally unacceptable. But worldly patriotism can also be moderate, that is, constrained by considerations of justice and humanity. There is no moral obstacle to adopting this type of patriotism, if we are attracted to it; I do not believe that Keller has provided a compelling case for rejecting all patriotism. However, we have no reason to believe that such patriotism is either one of our moral duties or that it is morally valuable if freely adopted; in my view, Kleinig’s attempt to show that we ought to be patriots does not succeed. Worldly patriotism, constrained by universal moral considerations, belongs to the zone of moral indifference, in which we are allowed to exercise free, morally unencumbered, personal choice.
Distinctively ethical patriotism is a different matter. It is, basically, a heightened sense of collective responsibility, when the collective at issue is one’s patria. It is not a moral duty binding everyone, at all times and in all circumstances. But it is a duty under certain circumstances: when our country is ours in a significant sense, that is, when we have much affection for it and identify with it and with our compatriots, and when we are particularly well placed to help safeguard its moral integrity, or when, being its citizens, we accept significant benefits or, lastly, when we take part in our country’s democratic politics. These are fairly common circumstances, and therefore, many of us indeed ought to be ethical patriots.