How to Understand Patriotism?The Legacy of Contemporary Normative Disputes

Abstract

The subject of this research is the legacy of contemporary normative disputes about the meaning of patriotism. The focus is on the debates that took place within moral philosophy and political philosophy from the 1970s until the end of the the twentieth century. The main thesis of the article is that these debates positioned patriotism at the very boundary between the two disciplines, which led to the concept`s dual normative burden. The position of a boundary concept carried with it conflicting and often even contradictory, normative expectation. This is illustrated through examples of the most infuental ethical and political theories of patriotism of that period. As one possible way of overcoming the difficulties arising from the dual normative burden of the concept, the article suggests that its ethical and political content be more clearly distinguished by linking them to specific dimensions of patriotic allegiance. Patriotic allegiance can be analytically divided into the object of patriotic allegiance – that to which the patriot is attached, and the nature of patriotic allegiance – the form in which it is expressed. The reasons for partiality are always stem from the object of patriotic allegiance, while the manner in which patriotism is expressed is subject of moral evaluation.