Debate on Bernard Yack's bookNationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community

Abstract

Bernard Yack's Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community (2012) was the subject of the eighth in a long-running series of debates hosted by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and the journal Nations and Nationalism in November of 2013. These debates bring together the authors of recent important works in the study of nationalism and ethnicity with appropriate scholars to explore the questions they have provoked. On this occasion Professor Yack was joined by Professor Chandran Kukathas and Professor David Miller. Chandran Kukathas holds a Chair in Political Theory in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. His work addresses the history of liberal thought, contemporary liberal theory and issues of multiculturalism. He has examined the work of John Rawls and F. A. Hayek, and advances his own justification of liberalism and multiculturalism in The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford) (Kukathas 2013), in which he argues that the looser image of the ‘archipelago’ is a more fitting metaphor for this form of society than ‘the body politic’ or the ‘ship of state’. David Miller is Professor of Political Theory, Politics and International Relations, at Nuffield College, Oxford. His writing on political theory has been particularly concerned with issues of justice and equality, and the themes of nationality, citizenship, territory and immigration. A distinguishing feature of his work is the use of evidence from the social sciences to inform debates in political philosophy. Recent work has been particularly concerned with global and social justice, and problems of collective responsibility. He recently published Justice for Earthlings: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge UP) (Miller 2009).