Which Love of Country? Tensions, Questions and Contexts for Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism in Education

Abstract

The paper considers Martha Nussbaum’s motivation for departing from her earlier cosmopolitan position in favor of now promoting a globally sensitive patriotism. Her reasons for endorsing patriotism will be shown as exemplary for related argumentations by other authors, especially insofar as love of country as a motivating force for civic duty is understood as in tension or even as incompatible with cosmopolitan aspirations. The motivation for turning to patriotism as articulated by Nussbaum and others will be demonstrated to rely on misleading understandings of love of country as a possessive emotion. Relying on Alice Crary’s (Beyond moral judgment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007) critique, it will be argued that sound moral judgment with regard to the patria as well as from a cosmopolitan stance is equally tied to our sensitivities and equally requires their education. Furthermore, I will discuss Axel Honneth’s notion of solidarity, a form of love inflected by justice, as a possible alternative for conceptualizing the social bonding patriotic attachment is supposed to provide. However, a critical patriotism ultimately needs to transgress this inward-directed focus and take into account how a country is seen by noncitizens, the historical relationships, and the obligations that arise in terms of historical justice in relation to other countries. If we take patriotism in this outward-looking perspective seriously, we also come to understand why it would be a mistake to skip patriotism altogether. Rather than constructing cosmopolitanism and patriotism as mutually exclusive opposites, critical cosmopolitanism and critical patriotism can be shown to have different but complementary and mutually corrective functions.