6
Igor Primoratz
The three essays comprising the first part of this book present three different positions on the nature and moral credentials of patriotism. John Kleinig seeks to show that we ought to be patriots, Simon Keller argues for a sweeping rejection of patriotism, while I present a middle-of-the-road view. In this chapter, I will engage critically with both Keller’s and Kleinig’s positions and, thereby, I hope, strengthen the case for my own understanding of the moral status of patriotism. My view is predicated on a distinction between “worldly” and “distinctively ethical” types of patriotism. I argue that the former is, at best, morally permissible, rather than obligatory or otherwise positively morally valuable, whereas the latter may, under certain circumstances, constitute a moral duty. I will seek to show that Keller overstates his case against patriotism, while Kleinig rightly highlights some good things about it, but does not succeed in showing that it is a stance we ought to adopt.
1 Patriotism and the Ethics of Belief
I have two main objections to Keller’s account and critique of patriotism. The complete shift of approach from that of ethics proper to that of ethics of belief results in a much too quick rejection of patriotism. Moreover, Keller overstates his argument that patriotism is wrong, or a vice, because it is bound up with bad faith.
Philosophers discussing the rights and wrongs of patriotism have sought to judge it by applying rules and principles of morality, that is, rules and principles that determine which acts and practices are morally right and which are morally wrong. Some of those rules and principles help us to determine the intrinsic moral character of acts or practices, whereas others refer to their consequences. The consequences of patriotism, of course, are many and varied. Some affect individuals, whereas others affect entire polities.
Defenders of patriotism have argued that love of one’s country and special concern for its well-being and that of compatriots motivate the individual to look, and venture, beyond his concerns for his own interests and those of family and friends. As Roger Scruton points out, “it is hard to deny [the] power [of patriotism] to instil a measure of generosity even into the meanest spirit, or to quieten the instinct to profit from another’s helplessness or loss” (Scruton 1980, 35). Patriotism encourages the individual to show interest in matters of public concern, to participate in public deliberation about such matters, to undertake commitments to common projects, and to work, and if need be make sacrifices, for their realization. It motivates the individual, in a way and to a degree nothing else can, to obey the laws of his country and support its institutions and policies, even when it would be in his interest not to do so. It makes him willing to fight for his country and if need be lay down his life for it and for his fellow citizens. It provides an indispensable basis for the smooth functioning of the institutions and practices of the political community and indeed for its very existence.
Furthermore, the patria not only requires the individual to do various things for it; it also bestows on him an array of benefits. Most importantly, it provides a wider context of purpose and meaning for the life of the individual. It relates that life to a common past remembered and a common future hoped for and provides a sense of belonging to a larger collective and a longer, indeed open-ended narrative, thus holding out a promise of a certain kind of transcendence of individual finitude. The most enthusiastic advocates of patriotism go on to claim that a person bereft of patriotic feeling and attachment is rootless, homeless, soulless. Thus Walter Scott asks in his poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
Understandably, patriotism has had many advocates. But it has also had many critics. They highlight what they see as its disadvantages and hazards, and those, too, seem to be many. The first – which is the source of most others – is that patriotism is an invidious, morally arbitrary preference for a certain group of people. “Why,” asks Martha C. Nussbaum, “should [our basic] values, which instruct us to join hands across boundaries of ethnicity, class, gender, and race, lose steam when they get to the borders of the nation?” (Nussbaum 1996, 14).
Advocates of patriotism portray it as a shining example of altruism; but its critics tend to be suspicious of this claim. Thus, Reinhold Niebuhr (who does not distinguish between country and nation, patriotism and nationalism) writes that “there is an alloy of projected self-interest in patriotic altruism. The man in the street, with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the necessities of social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic lust vicariously. So the nation is at one and the same time a check upon, and a final vent for, the expression of individual egoism.” This “combination of unselfishness and vicarious selfishness in the individual … gives a tremendous force to national egoism” (Niebuhr 1960, 93–94).
Since patriotism is essentially group egoism, it is not surprising that it should generate all manner of unfavorable, unfair, and ultimately hostile feelings and attitudes toward foreigners and foreign countries. To be a patriot, Voltaire wrote, “is to want one’s city to be enriched by commerce and powerful in arms. It is obvious that a country cannot gain unless another loses, and that it cannot vanquish without causing unhappiness. So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one’s fatherland is to wish evil to one’s neighbours.” Accordingly, “to be a good patriot, one is often the enemy of the rest of humanity” (Voltaire 1971, 329).
Furthermore, patriotic attachment tends to be uncritical and thereby also irrational: it tends to generate support for the patria no matter how just or unjust, good or bad its laws, institutions, and policies are, how well or badly it acts. Patriotism also tends to run together the country and the government and to assume that government policy – in particular its foreign policy – is always in the country’s best interest and therefore must always be supported by loyal citizens.
Finally, critics of patriotism often point out its connection with militarism and war. As John Somerville writes,
For centuries – indeed, millennia – there has been a special connection between “patriotism” and war. … Participation in war has been universally considered the primary form and activity in which patriotism manifests itself. To speak of patriotism was to think of war; to hear the words “a great patriot” was to visualize a man with arms in hand risking his life on the field of battle. […] As to risk one’s life is a supreme form of courage, so to risk one’s life for one’s own people and one’s own “fatherland” became a supreme form of patriotism, and the making of war itself thus became the supremely patriotic profession and institution. (Somerville 1981, 568)
Those who see patriotism in this light argue that it is a major, if not the major, cause of strife and war between peoples and states. Leo Tolstoy went so far as to say that we must choose: we can have either patriotism or peace, but not both (see Tolstoy 1987, 137–147).
Now, an overall moral evaluation of patriotism would need to assess all such claims about its intrinsic nature and its various good and bad consequences, to set aside those claims that do not withstand critical scrutiny, and to strike a balance between those that do. Keller sets out to construct a moral case against patriotism showing that “it would be better if people were not patriotic” (chap. 2, 1), but does not proceed along these lines. Instead of seeking to assess patriotism in terms of ethics proper, which investigates norms and values pertaining to human action, he almost entirely focuses on the ethics of belief, which investigates norms and values pertaining to the formation, maintenance, and discarding of beliefs.1 What is wrong about patriotism is that it is bound up with bad faith.
To be sure, at the beginning of his essay, Keller mentions the universalist argument about the moral arbitrariness of patriotism. He seeks to undermine it by claiming that “[it] would seem just as strong when expressed as an argument against friendship or against special concern for your children or parents” (49). If so, he says, surely it proves too much and therefore proves nothing. A critique of patriotism must take a different route. It must show that patriotism is a “singular kind of loyalty” and that the features that set it apart are the features that make it undesirable. These features have to do with bad faith. There is thus no attempt at showing that patriotism is indeed an invidious, morally arbitrary preference; instead, the issue of its moral standing is shifted into a different context, that of ethics of belief.2
Keller also looks into some practical consequences of patriotism. But these are all consequences that patriotism has because it fares so poorly in terms of ethics of belief – consequences of “patriotic bad faith in action” (64). Patriotism involves self-deception, or leads to it. Patriotic education discourages honest engagement with evidence that is relevant to, but not supportive of, the favorable beliefs about the patria the educator seeks to inculcate. In politics, patriotism shifts the focus of the debate from the moral and political merits and demerits of the policy at issue to whether the policy reflects the distinctive traditions and values of the patria (64–66). Thus, “patriotic education undermines some of the intellectual virtues that an education ought to develop,” whereas “a political debate involving self-described patriots is likely to be indirect and impoverished” (71).
I do not mean to deny that these consequences of patriotism are pertinent to its overall moral evaluation. But surely, such evaluation must also – indeed, first and foremost – be based on an assessment of the consequences patriotism has for our actions, policies, and practices. Yet Keller does not discuss consequences of patriotism of this latter kind. He says that a patriot’s bad faith “is likely to affect her judgments about weighty matters, like what sacrifices she should make and what policies she should support” (63). But a patriot’s judgment on a range of weighty matters, including her willingness to make sacrifices for the patria and her decisions to give or withhold support to government policies, will surely be affected by many facets or traits of patriotism other than the bad faith that is inherent in it according to Keller: for instance, by the role of patriotism as part and parcel of the patriot’s very identity, by its promise of a certain kind of transcendence of individual finitude, by its special concern for compatriots, by its tendency to generate dislike of and hostility to foreigners, and so on.
Keller is the first philosopher to consider patriotism in a sustained way and in detail from the point of view of ethics of belief. This shift in approach from ethics proper to ethics of belief results in an original argument that tells us something interesting and important about a certain type of patriotism. But the argument does not apply to all patriotism, patriotism as such, and Keller’s sweeping rejection of all patriotism is not warranted.
According to Sartre’s seminal account, a person falls into bad faith when her beliefs are adopted and maintained because she wants to hold such beliefs, rather than because they are mandated by evidence, and when she resists owning up to her true motivation for adhering to those beliefs, that is, deceives herself about it. For Sartre, bad faith is bad because it is the very opposite of authenticity. But there are also further, more mundane reasons to think ill of it and seek to avoid it. Bad faith is a type of self-deception; it makes for false beliefs, uninformed choices, and unsuccessful actions.
Keller brings this account of bad faith to bear on the issue of patriotism and constructs a three-step argument:
1. Patriotism, he says, involves “endorsement” of one’s country: a judgment that the country is a good and worthy one. Therefore, it must be based on certain beliefs about the patria: beliefs that some of its core, enduring, and distinctive traits are highly valuable. These traits ground one’s patriotism: a patriot brings them up when asked what is so great about his country that he should be loyal to it.
2. These traits, if they are to amount to reasons for patriotic attachment and loyalty, cannot be understood as being in the eye of the patriotic beholder. The beliefs about them must be considered objectively sound, that is, based on universal standards of value and sufficient evidence.
3. Yet they are not based on sufficient evidence the way one’s other beliefs normally are. Rather, a patriot is motivated to adopt and maintain some such beliefs about the patria independently of evidence and to stick to them in the face of evidence to the contrary, which is ignored or reinterpreted. He is biased in favor of the patria from the very beginning. But he cannot own up to this motivation, to this a priori bias, because doing so would disqualify those beliefs from serving as reasons for his loyalty and thereby also undermine the loyalty itself. Thus, he deceives himself about the source and soundness of his patriotic beliefs and falls into bad faith.
Keller’s argument that patriotism is wrong, or a vice, because it is bound up with bad faith, can be taken in two ways: as a conceptual or as an empirical claim. In the first case, the claim is that patriotism is necessarily, conceptually bound up with bad faith; all patriotism, patriotism as such, is flawed in this particular way. In the second case, the connection is empirical and contingent, rather than conceptual and necessary; some patriotism is flawed in this way, but there are also cases, or perhaps types, of patriotism that are free of this particular flaw.
In his first contribution to this volume, Keller does not make it clear in which of these two senses his argument should be taken. Some of his wordings seem neutral in this respect. Thus, he says that his aim is to show that we have “reason to think that patriotism is undesirable” (50) or that “there is something wrong with patriotism” (67). Other wordings suggest that the connection between patriotism and bad faith is conceptual. Patriotism “involves delusions, as a matter of its very nature” (51). Bad faith “emerges from the very structure of patriotism. To the extent to which a person is patriotic, she is self-deceiving” (63). Yet other formulations suggest that the connection is nevertheless only empirical. Patriotism is said to “lead” to self-deception (63) and bad faith (70). In Keller’s earlier discussion of patriotism in his book The Limits of Loyalty, too, he is at first similarly unclear on this point; but eventually, he makes it clear that what he means to put forward is a conceptual argument, one that refers to patriotism as such, that is, to all patriots (Keller 2007b, 77–79).
Now if patriotism by its very nature involves bad faith, that is a telling objection to patriotism as such – to all types and instances of patriotism, however different from one another in other respects. If patriotism does not involve bad faith by its very nature but only leads to it, that leaves open the question whether particular types and instances of patriotism do so or not. This question is a factual one. If we want to know just how strong the connection is, whether it is to be found in some or even many types or instances of patriotism, or only occasionally, the only way to find out is by conducting an empirical investigation. Pending such an investigation, we cannot tell whether the connection between patriotism and bad faith is typical or atypical and accordingly cannot really assess the force of Keller’s argument. What is clear, though, is that by presenting it as a conceptual one, Keller seeks to make it more damaging, as well as more philosophically interesting, than it would be if it were merely an empirical one.
By doing so, Keller overstates his case. He commits himself to an overly narrow understanding of patriotism and to saying that certain types of attachment to one’s country we would normally consider clear instances of patriotism are not patriotism. Let me say something about each of the three steps of his argument, in reverse order.
The third and final step of Keller’s bad faith argument is about bias. Anyone who has had some experience of patriotism knows that at least some, and possibly many, patriots tend to be biased in favor of their own country – not only in how they act and how they feel but also in what they believe. But Keller does not simply highlight this well-known fact. He argues that a patriot is bound to be given to bias in favor of her country and that she cannot admit to this bias – neither to others nor even to herself. This latter claim is discussed in detail by Keith Horton in his essay “Patriotism and Bad Faith: A Critique of Keller.” Horton makes a number of points. According to Keller, were a patriot to admit to bias in favor of the patria, she would thereby concede that if she were free of bias, she would hold a belief different from the belief she actually holds. She is unwilling to do so, for that would undermine the credibility of that belief and the integrity of her patriotism. However, Horton argues, this possibility is in many cases highly unlikely. If there is overwhelming evidence in support of a certain belief, the fact that one has come to adopt the belief in a biased way need not affect its credibility very much, if at all. And many patriotic beliefs can indeed be supported by overwhelming evidence:
It is more or less undeniable … that some countries have wonderfully rich cultural traditions, for example, or striking achievements in sport or science or other fields. There is little serious doubt that many countries have established democratic institutions, or fought off invaders, or won their independence, often against considerable obstacles, and with great courage and other virtues manifested by certain people. Perhaps all countries could be said to have produced some great individuals, and to have some kind of significant natural beauty. And so on. (Horton 2007, 58)
In other cases, the evidence may not be overwhelming, but may still be quite strong; admitting to bias in such a case might reduce the credibility of the belief at issue, rather than undermining it completely. Moreover, one’s patriotism need not be undermined or lose its integrity because one is no longer fully confident about every single patriotic belief one holds. “Why,” asks Horton, “can’t a patriot function with patriotic beliefs in which she has a fair amount of confidence, but not absolute confidence? Don’t most patriots – or at least most ‘thinking’ patriots – have patriotic beliefs of this kind?” (59).
Even if admission of bias would indeed undermine the credibility of a patriot’s belief about his country, that need not pose a threat to his patriotism such that he would be bound to deceive himself about his bias. His other beliefs about the patria may be undoubtedly true, or at least highly likely to be true and, taken together, might provide enough support for his loyalty to his country.
Finally, a patriot, if she is a thinking one, should be capable of discarding a belief about her country that has been undermined by contrary evidence and replacing it by another, more critical but more warranted by evidence and still favorable enough to support her attachment to her country. In fact, as Horton says, “ratcheting down in this kind of way appears to be a very common part of mature patriotism” (60).
Keller replies to Horton in an essay titled “How Patriots Think, and Why It Matters.” He concedes Horton’s point that a patriot can admit his bias and the self-deception it involves. But he goes on to argue that this cannot happen as part and parcel of his thinking about his country as a patriot:
… What I mean (or ought to mean) is that [a patriot’s] reasoning cannot be informed by an awareness of [the] motive [to maintain his favorable beliefs of his country independently of evidence]. This does not rule out his having such awareness when in a philosophy classroom, or at a psychological level that is detached from his patriotic thinking. (Keller 2007a, 72)
This concession seems inescapable; but it seriously damages Keller’s case against patriotism. What remains is the thesis that in our patriotic moments, we have a disposition to be biased, to deceive ourselves, and to fall into bad faith. But we also have the capacity to step back from all that; to recognize our bias, self-deception, and bad faith for what they are; and to revise or even discard those beliefs that are not supported by sufficient evidence. To use Horton’s terms, we may be given to patriotism of an unthinking, immature kind, but we – or most of us, at any rate – also have it in us to step back from it, to reconsider, and to replace it with a thinking, mature kind of loyalty to our country. This may not mitigate the intrinsic wrongness of bias, self-deception, and bad faith, but certainly tends to reduce considerably their bad consequences – in education, in politics, and in the lives of individuals and societies more generally. If so, Keller’s bad faith argument against patriotism loses much of its force.
The issue of bias can arise only if one’s country’s virtues must be understood as valuable objectively, rather than merely subjectively. The claim that a patriot must understand her country’s valuable traits in this way is the second step in Keller’s bad faith argument. But must they indeed be understood in this way? Why not allow for the possibility that, at least in some cases, the virtues of the patria are understood relationally, that is, as traits that are valuable to the patriot because they stand in a certain relation to him and play a certain role in his life?
Consider the case of Lot, not as recounted in the Bible (Gen. 19: 1–25), but rather as portrayed in Karel Čapek’s “apocryphal” story “Pseudo Lot, or Concerning Patriotism.” Two angels come to Sodom and tell Lot, the sole righteous person among Sodom’s inhabitants, that he must leave the city, together with his wife and daughters, as God is about to destroy it and all its inhabitants with fire and brimstone as punishment for their sins.
“I am not coming,” said Lot. “Forgive me, but I am not coming. […] I cannot go away, for I am one of the people of Sodom.” […] “I have thought about it all night; and I remembered so many things that I wept. Have you ever heard the people of Sodom sing? No, you do not know them at all, for then you would not have come like this. When the girls walk along the streets they swing their hips and hum a tune between their lips; and they laugh as they draw water with their pitchers. No water is clearer than that from the springs of Sodom; and no tongue of all the tongues has a fairer sound. When a child speaks I understand him as if he were my own; and when they play, they play the same games that I played when I was little. And when I cried, my mother comforted me in the speech of Sodom. Oh Lord!” Lot cried aloud, “as if it were yesterday!” (Čapek 1975, 53–54)
Unlike Lot in the Bible, Lot in Čapek’s story refuses to leave Sodom and be saved: “If you condemn Sodom, you condemn me. I am not righteous. I am like them. I will not go away from here. […] I don’t want to die; but I can’t bear that they should die either. I shall stay” (54–55).
Surely, Čapek’s Lot is a patriot. Yet he does not “endorse” Sodom and explain his loyalty to it in terms of some objective standards of value that must be acknowledged by everybody. He grounds his attachment in the good and beautiful things that only a person who was born in the city, grew up in it, and has lived in it all or much of his life will appreciate as such. Yet on Keller’s account, what we have here is not patriotism at all. I think this indicates much too narrow an understanding of patriotism.
The first step in Keller’s bad faith argument is the claim that patriotism involves “endorsement” of the patria and therefore must be based on certain favorable beliefs about its virtues. When queried about the reasons for her patriotism, a patriot refers to these virtues. But this claim, too, can be challenged. In his first contribution to this volume, Keller simply asserts that loyalty to one’s country that does not involve such beliefs is not patriotism, without supporting this assertion with any argument (55–58). In his book on loyalty, he does try to explain the claim. If the claim is denied, he says, then “you may, consistently with your loyalty, feel a thoroughgoing disgust for your country, detesting all that you take it to symbolize. It would then sound very odd to call you a patriot, and this is the main reason … why I think that the kind of loyalty under discussion is not enough for patriotism in the ordinary sense” (Keller 2007b, 80). True, the person who feels disgust for her country is no patriot, but not because she does not “endorse” her country. Rather, she is no patriot because disgust rules out love of the country and indeed any affection for it – and love, or at least strong affection, for one’s country is part and parcel of patriotism on any plausible account. Now suppose we query someone about the reasons for her loyalty to her country, and she says: “This is my country, my home, and that is all there is to it; I need no further reason to be loyal to it.” This may not be a very thoughtful and mature answer. We may agree with Johann Georg Zimmermann that “the love of one’s country … is, in many cases, no more than the love of an ass for its stall” (Zimmermann 1771, 137). But however unreflective, egocentric, and asinine, surely it qualifies as “paternalism in the ordinary sense.” If so, Keller’s conception of patriotism proves yet again to be too narrow.
Neither the type of patriotism illustrated by Čapek’s Lot nor its egocentric type is vulnerable to Keller’s bad faith objection: the former because it is not grounded in some objectively identifiable virtues of the patria and the latter because it does not presuppose that the country has any particular traits at all, except, of course, the relational trait of being the patriot’s own country. Additionally, it may apply to some instances or types of what I term worldly patriotism, but not to what I call distinctively ethical patriotism. For this type of patriotism is not concerned at all with the more worldly traits and achievements of the patria, but rather with the morality or immorality of its actions, policies, and practices. Keller’s argument turns out to have a very limited reach, and to fall well short of a compelling case for holding that patriotism as such, all patriotism, is seriously morally wrong or a vice.
2 Patriotism and Human Flourishing
The kind of patriotism both Keller and Kleinig have in mind is what I call worldly patriotism. Whereas Keller argues against this type of patriotism, Kleinig seeks to show that a certain version of such patriotism is morally acceptable and, moreover, that we ought to adopt it. I can go along with Kleinig’s first claim; I, too, hold that a certain version of worldly patriotism is morally acceptable. I agree with much of what Kleinig says in its defense. But I take exception to his second claim, the claim that we ought to adopt the patriotic stance. In my view, the choice whether to adopt worldly patriotism is a morally free choice: a matter of personal inclination, rather than moral obligation.
Kleinig presents patriotism as an associative duty. Taking human flourishing to be the core moral value, the telos of morality, he argues that patriotism is morally obligatory because polity is a condition, and indeed a constituent, of human flourishing. Obviously, the entire argument may be found unconvincing simply because it is predicated on a broadly Aristotelian, teleological understanding of morality; for not everyone subscribes to this view of morality. But I will not take this path; going into such foundational issues is well beyond my brief. I will restrict my comments on Kleinig’s more specific arguments.
In my first contribution to this volume, I discuss Andrew Mason’s account of patriotism as an associative duty. Mason argues that in so far as our patriotism is grounded in a certain kind of citizenship, it is grounded in an intrinsically valuable special relationship that generates a duty of special concern for our fellow citizens. I hope to have shown that Mason’s account is not convincing. Kleinig, too, makes use of the idea of associative duty, but his argument is different. The point of departure is the thought that “humans do not mature and flourish in isolation, needing only material sustenance, but their flourishing is enabled and to some extent constituted by various associational connections and ties – families, friends, schools, and a range of other relations and institutions” (22–23). A life lived from beginning to end with no special, intrinsically valuable relations – say, no family, or no friends – would not be considered a good, flourishing human life. Now, these numerous relations and attachments, and practices and institutions to which they pertain, require an encompassing framework for coordination, support, adjudication of conflict, and defense from external aggression. Given the human condition as we find it, this framework can only be provided by a polity, that is, the legal and political order of a country, a patria. Kleinig takes the state or polity to be based on and morally constrained by a social contract. This state or polity, he says, will “bind together, moderate, imprint [itself] on and help to secure the people, land, terrain, culture, history, and network of social institutions that comprise a country. Patriotism as I understand it is to be conceived of as a loyalty that has regard to this complex whole …” (26).
Clearly, the argument cannot end here. For what Kleinig has shown so far is only that polity has instrumental value. This instrumental value may well be immense, but it is still instrumental value only. It certainly enables a wide range of special relationships which, on their part, both enable and constitute human flourishing; but it does not itself constitute human flourishing. Therefore, the argument so far cannot ground patriotism. Kleinig approaches patriotism as a type of loyalty and defines loyalty as a virtue that “we cultivate to enable us to stick with the objects of associative relations that we have come to value for their own sake … especially when it may not appear personally advantageous to persevere with their demands or expectations of us” (22, emphasis added). Kleinig sees patriotism as an associative duty; but associative duties are generally understood as duties pertaining to special relationships that are valued in themselves, rather than merely as a means to something else. The limited reach of Kleinig’s argument so far is compounded by his view of polity as based on a social contract. The social contract theory of polity and political obligation is a paradigmatic example of the individualistic and purely instrumental approach in political philosophy.
Kleinig is aware of this and supplements the first step in the argument with the second, crucial step, introducing the idea of identity:
[When we acknowledge] that the complex of associational ties is held together as some sort of unity – that is, as a broadly conceived way of life embedded within and sustained by a distinctively characterizable country – then it is likely that we will view it not simply as instrumental but also as integral to our identity and therefore intrinsically valuable. In identifying with it we thus see our commitment to it as obligatory … Of course, we may view it as less. But what I am suggesting is that, as would be the case were we to see friendship or familial or other intimate relations simply as instrumentally valuable, we would be shortchanging them and lay ourselves open to criticism for viewing them as only or at most a convenience. (32–33)
According to Kleinig, then, when we understand that our various associational ties are underpinned and held together by our polity, we are likely to identify with the polity and view our relation to it as part and parcel of our identity and therefore as something valuable in itself, rather than merely as a means; and we are also likely to see our commitment to it as morally mandatory. I want to highlight the word likely; for elsewhere in his first contribution to this book, too, Kleinig uses the language of possibility or likelihood, rather than conceptual or nomological necessity: “Although [my] account of a patria may look rather instrumental – and indeed has an important instrumental dimension to it – we can also see how it comes to and indeed ought to be valued not merely instrumentally but also for its own sake as an aspect of what one perceives oneself to be” (27, emphasis added). “Just because of the integrative and formative role that a country can be expected to play in the lives of its citizens … patriotic loyalty is not only likely to develop but also to carry normative significance. That is, a country’s citizens are likely to develop a normative commitment to it …” (28, emphasis added). But if the developments Kleinig highlights can happen, or are likely to happen, by the same token, they may not happen. Moreover, we are not told, and cannot tell, just what the likelihood of these developments may be. What we do know is only that some of us will indeed have made the move from understanding the integrative role and instrumental value of our polity to identifying with it and taking our membership of it to be integral to who we are and therefore valuable in itself and bound up with certain duties to the polity and fellow citizens – and that others will not have done so. Addressed to the former, Kleinig’s argument looks like preaching to the converted. The latter may well decline to make the move and stick to the purely instrumental view of polity and citizenship. Persons holding cosmopolitan or anarchist moral and political views, as well as those advisedly apolitical, are sure to do so.
Kleinig’s response to them is to charge them with shortchanging the concept of citizenship, just as those who purport to see only instrumental value in friendship or family relationships are shortchanging these concepts. But this is question-begging, for what is at issue here is the analogy between friendship and family relationships, on one hand, and citizenship, on the other. Moreover, the analogy is untenable. Those who think of friendship or family relationships in purely instrumental terms do shortchange these concepts: they betray lack of understanding of the core meaning and intrinsic value of these relationships. If A says “Yes, B is my friend, but only because, and as long as, I find it useful to be associated with her,” that seems odd and shows that A does not really relate to B as to a friend and that he does not understand what friendship is. But citizenship is a different matter, and those who think of it in purely instrumental terms – ubi bene, ibi patria – do not necessarily betray lack of understanding of its core meaning and intrinsic value. For there is no uniform, core meaning of citizenship; there are different conceptions of it, and while some of those conceptions portray it as valuable in itself, others do not. Therefore, if X says “Yes, I am a citizen of Y, but only because, and as long as, I find it useful to be one,” that need not be thought odd and cannot be taken to indicate that X is not really a citizen of Y or that she does not understand what citizenship is.
If so, Kleinig’s argument from human flourishing does not succeed. We still lack a compelling argument for the claim that worldly patriotism is morally mandatory and indeed that it has any positive moral significance. Provided it does not offend against universal moral constraints, such patriotism is merely morally permissible.
3 Conclusion
Ethical theories seek to tell us what is morally obligatory or prohibited, right or wrong, good or bad. They advance a range of different criteria for the application of these notions. But whatever the substantive differences between ethical theories, they all need to live up to certain formal criteria of credibility. One of these criteria is what James S. Fishkin terms “a robust zone of moral indifference” (Fishkin 1982, 20–24). A theory may circumscribe certain actions and practices as morally obligatory or prohibited, right or wrong, good or bad, but it should not determine that all or even most of our actions and practices fall under one or the other of these categories. It must allow for actions and practices that fall under none of these headings, but are rather morally indifferent – a matter of morally unencumbered, free personal choice. Moreover, it will not do to allow for a sphere of such actions and practices, but only on the narrow margins of human life. Under normal conditions, the zone of moral indifference must be robust: it must include a significant proportion of our actions and practices. For, as Marcus George Singer put it, “not every occasion of life is momentous, nor is every choice we make or thing we do. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that every occasion of life gives rise to a moral problem, and that everything we do requires justification, and this is simply false. One who consistently thought so would die from moral perplexity” (Singer 1971, 185). Another consequence of failing to allow for a robust zone of moral indifference would be that “most of us must be immoral in the entire way of life we take for granted. For we would then be ignoring a host of obligations as a matter of course. Unless by blind luck we always do the right thing anyway – without even being aware of the moral questions involved – we must be subject to a host of failed obligations of both omission and commission” (Fishkin 1982, 21–22).
With regard to worldly patriotism, I have sought a middle ground between its sweeping condemnation and the view that it is morally mandatory. This middle ground is the zone of moral indifference. There are types of worldly patriotism that are deeply morally flawed and should not be endorsed, since they offend against certain universal moral considerations. But there is also a type of worldly patriotism that acknowledges the universal moral constraints of justice and requirements of basic human solidarity. Such patriotism is morally unobjectionable. But it is not morally required, and those who do not adopt it are not deserving of blame. Nor is its adoption supererogatory, that is, not morally required, but valuable and praiseworthy when freely chosen. It is a matter of morally neutral, free personal choice – a matter that, together with innumerable preferences, likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies, belongs to the zone of moral indifference.
References
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3. Horton, Keith. 2007. “Patriotism and Bad Faith: A Critique of Keller.” In Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives, edited by Igor Primoratz and Aleksandar Pavković, 55–62. Aldershot: Ashgate.
4. Keller, Simon. 2007a. “How Patriots Think, and Why It Matters.” In Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives, edited by Igor Primoratz and Aleksandar Pavković, 63–73. Aldershot: Ashgate.
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Notes
1 For a brief overview of ethics of belief, see McCormick (2013).2 Keller also discusses the universalism–partialism debate in a postscript to his book on loyalty; but the discussion is very brief and, more to the point, inconclusive (see Keller 2007b, 220–223).