One

The Idea of The Person

The ideas of every philosopher concerned with human affairs in the end rest on his conception of what man is and can be. To understand such thinkers, it is more important to grasp this central notion or image (which may be implicit, but determines their picture of the world) than even the most forceful arguments with which they defended their views and refute actual and possible objections.

—Isaiah Berlin

What is the essence of human nature? This question is a central methodological issue lying at the foundation of every political philosophy, as well as a very personal matter. To think about human nature is to think about ourselves as individuals, as members of certain communities and associations, as political and moral agents. When thinking of human nature we venture inwards and reflect on what we are, what we ought to be, and what we could potentially become. We expect a plausible description of human nature to reflect, at least in some sense, the way in which we perceive ourselves. The view that neither the totally situated description of a “national self,” nor the liberal description of a self antecedently free of all attachments adequately portrays human nature is now shared by many. This has motivated the search for a midway position able to encompass the nationalist belief that individuals are the inevitable product of their culture, as well as the liberal conviction that individuals can be the authors of their own lives.

“I have seen, in my times,” says De-Maistre, “Frenchmen, Italians, and Russians. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one may be a Persian; but as for Man, I declare I have never met him in my life; if he exists, it is without my knowledge.”¹ This description sheds light on one source of human diversity, namely, national and cultural affiliations. Mill suggests other sources, personal rather than communal. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, says Mill, “that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable.”² These two very different, although not necessarily incompatible, descriptions of human nature are at the heart of this book’s endeavour to outline a theory of liberal nationalism. Finding a common ground between the liberal and nationalist views of human nature will not ensure that all conflicts between these two schools of thought will fade away, but it could provide an adequate framework for discussion.

Several political philosophers have recently attempted, with considerable success, to bridge the gap between the liberal and the communitarian approaches to the question of human nature. Although not specifically concerned with the liberal nationalist debate, their writings have a bearing on the issues with which this book is concerned.³ In an attempt to present a concept of human nature that both liberals and nationalists might find acceptable, this book takes as its starting point the central argument emerging from these writings, that is, that embeddedness and choice are not necessarily antithetical. I shall only refer to issues directly relevant to this attempt, as covering all aspects of this philosophical argument would far exceed the scope of this book.

Two main methodological difficulties hinder the search for a midway position. The first is that it is hard to infer a shared interpretation of the concept of human nature from the writings of different nationalist thinkers. Herder or Mazzini suggest a radically different notion from that offered by Schelling, Treitschke, or Fichte, who himself entertained different interpretations of this concept at various stages of his life. It therefore seems quite impossible to identify the nationalist point of view. The second stems from the fact that nationalists and liberals have adopted radically different modes of discourse regarding this issue. Since this book takes liberal theory as its starting point, it attempts to “translate” nationalist arguments into liberal language. In so doing it relies on the current terms of communitarian discourse, which is akin to the nationalist one in its content.

The idea of the person developed in this chapter is inspired by both liberalism and nationalism, and combines the notions of personal autonomy and communal belonging. These concepts are viewed here as complementary rather than conflicting, suggesting that no individual can be context-free, but that all can be free within a context.

What Is Natural about Human Nature?

It is no surprise that the question of human nature features so prominently in liberal literature, while it is hardly ever mentioned in nationalist writings. The notion of a universal human nature is clearly more plausible to liberals than to nationalists. This should not immediately lead to the conclusion, however, that a theory of nationalism cannot accommodate the notion that individuals share some universal human features, as liberal theory need not deny the importance of particularistic circumstances in the structuring of personal identity and individual traits, preferences, and modes of behaviour. The tensions among the different interpretations of the concept of human nature adopted by these schools of thought centre around altogether different issues: What constitutes the stable core of universal human nature? What human characteristics vary in line with specific cultural environments? What is the status of these two types of features? Is it justified to claim that only universal characteristics are constitutive of our humanity whereas culture-bound features are of secondary importance? Can elements constitutive of our identity be a matter of choice?

Some preliminary remarks are in order before we plunge into the substance of the discussion. It is worth noting that the descriptive, empirical language often used in discussions about human nature is misleading. The body of knowledge made available through the natural and social sciences underdetermines “true human nature.” Consequently, every description unavoidably relies on normative assumptions, which are meant to fill the gap between what we know about human beings and what we think should be the essence of humanity. Thus, claims that human agents are, by nature, rational or nationally embedded, reflect moral and social convictions and are not merely descriptive. They interpret our knowledge in light of some ideal and suggest that we ought to treat human beings as if they have the potential to be rational, make free choices, or harbour strong national feelings, that these attributes are distinctively human, and that, if allowed to develop them, individuals will be better able to realise themselves. This does not mean that we can attribute to human beings any feature serving our theories, but rather that our interpretation of what we know is heavily biased by our theoretical perspective.

Social scientists can, nevertheless, be helpful in clarifying the terms of this debate. Geertz makes an important contribution when he ridicules the hope to uncover the “fundamental unchanged nature of man.” Unmodified human nature has never existed and “could not, in the very nature of the case, exist.”⁴ Geertz criticises the “stratigraphic” view of human nature as a composite of layers, and rejects the notion that, after stripping off culture and social organisation, we shall uncover a series of natural psychological factors or basic needs, and still below some biological foundations—anatomical, psychological, or neurological components that have developed independent of culture. There is no human nature independent of circumstances. Human beings have developed in close interaction with culture; they are “incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish themselves through culture—and not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it.”⁵

Geertz’s criticism suggests that the term “human nature” is meaningless. It is therefore preferable to place at the focus of this discussion a different notion, namely, the idea of the person. This notion emphasises that the argument concerns those characteristics ascribed to human beings as part of a cetain picture of the world. Our idea of the person has developed alongside civilisation:

From a simple masquerade to the mask, from a “role” (personage) to a “person” (personne), to a name, to an individual; from the latter to a being possessing metaphysical and moral value; from a moral consciousness to a sacred being; from the latter to a fundamental form of thought and action—the course is accomplished.⁶

Many have questioned the linear, evolutionary assumption latent in this description. Nevertheless, it is still the case that our idea of the person has developed hand in hand with “different societies, systems of laws, religion, customs, social structures and mentality,”⁷ and is “both culturally specific and a historical product.”⁸

Formulating this discussion in terms of the idea of the person rather than of human nature enhances the relevance of the nationalist approach. If the human qualities essential to our discussion are not context-free, then terms like “culture,” “membership,” and “embeddedness,” which are central to the national discourse, become pivotal.

On Atomised and Situated Selves—Two Polarised Ideas of the Person

Nationalism and liberalism are modern movements. Both share the view that free, rational, and autonomous human beings are capable of exercising full responsibility for the conduct of their lives, and both share a belief in the human ability to attain self-rule, self-expression, and self-development. Despite this broad consensus, nationalism and liberalism have developed radically diverse interpretations of these human qualities.

Liberals emphasise and celebrate the plurality of desires, beliefs, and conceptions of the good adopted by different individuals, and assume that “where not the person’s own character but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress,” namely, the element of unimpeded individual development.⁹

Nationalists stress the inescapable social aspect of personal identity, and suggest that the only way in which individuals can realise themselves to the full is by identifying with the nation, serving it, obeying its customs, and unreflectively celebrating its greatness.

Nationalists approach societies as natural organs incapable of division into independently viable parts. The social whole is therefore seen as “prior to, more important, and greater than all its parts.”¹⁰ Individuals are reduced to being parts in a whole, means for safe-guarding the latter’s existence and well-being. According to this view, national ends have priority over individual ends, and personal freedom is attainable only through identification with, and subordination to the “national will.”

Liberals do not altogether reject the organic description of society, but stress that social relations among individuals are based on mutual advantage. Society allows individuals to profit from the complementary nature of their inclinations by enabling them to enjoy, through the activities of others, those aspects of their own personality that they “have not been able to cultivate.”¹¹ Hence, from a liberal perspective, self-expression and individual diversity are the crux of the organic view of society, and these elements should enjoy priority.

Nationalists view the liberal idea of the person as an empty abstraction, to which liberals reply with an analogous counterclaim: Community, they claim, is a “fictitious body,” and the interest of the community is merely the sum of the individual interests of its members. A people, claims MacDonald, “doesn’t exist except as an abstract conception; the only realities are the individuals who actually make up the people.”¹² Thus, “no rational person could elevate the supposed interests of a fiction above the real interests of real individuals.”¹³

As described by nationalists, liberals are committed to an idea of the person as antecedently free, and as a rational, reflective agent “for whom group membership is voluntary.”¹⁴ Liberals are accused of misunderstanding the power of social affiliations, and of promoting an atomistic, alienating notion of association based on competition, mistrust, and narrow egoism, inevitably leading to national decadence, defeat, and humiliation.¹⁵ For their part, liberals have described nationalism as antithetical to rationality, and as rooted in primitive forces tending to overpower judgment and freedom. They have accused nationalists of endorsing the view that “human beings are totally constituted by the social relationships in which they are necessarily to be found,”¹⁶ and have warned that such views can be used, and indeed have been used, to justify the brutal oppression of individuals.

But these descriptions, however widespread, rest on simplistic and radical interpretations of both liberalism and nationalism. They invite us

to see the moral universe in dualistic terms; either our identities are independent of our ends, leaving us totally free to choose our life plans, or they are constituted by community, leaving us totally encumbered by socially given ends; either justice must be independent of all historical and social particularities or virtue must depend completely on the particular social practices of each society.¹⁷

These extreme portrayals reflect the fact that nationalism and liberalism tend to emphasise different features in the idea of the person, to the point where both become easily refutable “straw men.” A closer look will reveal that liberals need not reject the importance of cultural contextualisation, whereas nationalists need not ignore the importance of personal freedom. A much more balanced idea of the person, revealing broad areas of agreement between these seemingly opposing views, thus emerges.

For example, both schools of thought can agree on a characterisation of individuals as agents who look to society to lend context to their personal thoughts, namely, as agents who acknowledge that their ends are meaningful only within a social context, but who do not necessarily accept socially dictated ends unreflectively. Their conception of the good is neither totally individualistic nor wholly communal, and they may at times place their personal good before the common one while overturning their priorities at others. Society is thus seen as essential for the fulfillment of some ends, and as an obstacle hindering the attainment of others.

In fact, this is a rather common view among liberals. Gaus claims that the modern liberal theory of man combines a view of the individual as a unique manifestation of humanity, an end in himself, with that of the individual as a member of a social group. He shows that six modern liberals—Mill, Green, Hobhouse, Bosanquant, Dewey, and Rawls—all attempt to “develop a theory of man that reconciles the pursuit of individuality with sociability and membership in a community.”¹⁸ Although Gaus’s argument does not apply equally to all six, most liberals do see individuals as rooted in society, and as dependent on communal relations for their moral and personal development.

The sociability of human beings must not be understood in a trivial fashion, claims Rawls. It does not merely imply that living in a community is essential for fulfilling the needs and interests of individuals, nor is it exhausted by the truism that social life is a necessary condition for developing the ability to speak, think, and take part in the shared activities of culture. “We need one another as partners in ways of life that are engaged in for their own sake, and the successes and enjoyment of others are necessary for and complementary to our own good.”¹⁹ Society, according to this view, is necessary to enable individuals to reach self-development, self-expression, personal happiness, and satisfaction.

The definition of individuals as social beings does not seem to evoke strong controversy. The conflict between liberals and nationalists lies elsewhere, and concerns the process whereby individuals acquire membership in particular social groups, and the links between these memberships and personal identity.

Most contemporary liberals, such as Rawls, Dworkin, Raz, and Ackerman, do not ignore the fact that affections, loyalties, and social ties are constitutive factors of individual identity. Indeed, the situated nature of individuals, their attachment to particular communities, and the way in which such attachments influence their decision-making, motivated Rawls to seek a thin overlapping consensus rather than a thick moral and cultural understanding. The parties in the original position thus needed to be placed behind a veil of ignorance, allowing them to make judgments unencumbered by their constitutive affiliations. Citizens, suggests Rawls, “may regard it as simply unthinkable to view themselves apart from certain religious, philosophical and moral convictions, or from certain enduring attachments and loyalties.”²⁰ They may therefore find it impossible to stand apart from, and objectively evaluate, these affiliations from the point of view of their purely rational good.

Rawls’ claims presuppose that individuals are social beings and that social membership is a constitutive element of personal identity, but this view leaves open the question of how individuals define this identity: Is it, as nationalists claim, a matter of discovery, of disclosing the ways in which communal relations mould identity, or is it a matter of choice? This is an essential point of contention between liberal and nationalist conceptions of the self.

Choice, Discovery, and the Formation of Identity

Liberals acknowledge the importance of social relations and communal affiliations, but they presume that individuals can distance themselves from their social roles and affiliations, “adopt, perform or abandon any at will (though not all, and probably not even many, at once).”²¹ Will, choice, reflection, and evaluation are therefore central to the liberal idea of the person.

In this respect, the communitarian or nationalist idea is the reverse of the liberal one. It sees social roles and affiliations as inherent, as a matter of fate rather than choice: “Who I am is answered both for me and for others by the history I inherit, the social positions I occupy, and the ‘moral career’ on which I am embarked.”²²

There is therefore an apparent incompatibility between these two approaches. Once again, however, the gap seems greater than it really is. A distinction between two types of identity may sharpen the focus of this discussion: Moral identity, built around the question of what sort of person I would like to be, reflecting the conceptions of the good, the moral values and convictions, the life-plans and interests of individuals; and communal identity, reflecting their social affiliations.

Indeed, these two aspects of identity are closely related: The latter sets the terms of discussion for the former, while the former helps shape the critical evaluation of the latter. As far as the ability to define and reflect on personal identity is concerned, however, the two may be viewed separately. We can therefore define four models of identity formation as follows.

1. The strict discovery model. This model assumes that both our moral and communal identities are wholly prescribed for us by our history and our social affiliations. Therefore, they can only be discovered and cannot be a matter of choice.
2. The communal choice model. This model suggests that our communal identity is a matter of choice, but once defined, it dictates our values, permissible ends, and conceptions of the good, and thus prescribes our moral identity.
3. The moral choice model. According to this model, history and fate define our communal identity, which can therefore only be discovered, but our moral identity is left undefined. Our communal membership may set the limits of our moral horizons, but it does not determine our conceptions of the good and our life-plans.
4. The strict choice model. This model claims that individuals can reflect on and choose both their communal and their moral identities. This model does not assume, however, that we are free to detach ourselves from all our communal and moral attachments at once, and reflect on them from some Archimedean point. Yet, it claims that we can, in the course of our lives, reflect on and choose our ends, our conception of the good, and our life-plans, as well as our communal affiliations. According to this model, individuals can distance themselves from both their moral and communal identities.²³

It should be noted that, since we do not usually embark on a process of comprehensive change that questions our moral and communal identities all at once, discovery retains an important role in the latter model. Consequently, at every point in the course of reflecting on our identity, we engage in a process that combines discovery and choice. The ability to discover our social position is thus as essential to this model as the ability to reflect on it. Choice, reflection, and discovery are thus seen as mutually complementary rather than antithetical.

Liberals view the ability to choose as the most essential characteristic of the human agent, and in fact, the only one that is beyond the limits of human choice, as choosing not to choose entails a choice. But living a life in which choice plays an important role does not entail living an eclectic life, choosing one thing today and its opposite tomorrow. Choice is not to be identified with change. In the context of an argument against the notion of choice as intrinsically important, Kymlicka tries to refute the claim that life is more valuable the more we exercise our capacity for choice by means of the following example: We do not suppose, he argues, that someone “who has made twenty marriage choices is in any way leading a more valuable life than someone who has no reason to question or revise their original choice.”²⁴ This is obviously true, yet this argument is based on the fallacy of identifying choice with change, and overlooks the fact that staying in a marriage also reflects a choice. How do we know that we have no reason to question and revise our original choices unless we reflect on them and decide on them anew? Our lives will be better if upon reflection, we choose to remain with our spouses or preserve our communal identity, but not if we do so out of convention and routine.

Introducing choice into the process of shaping a communal identity does not imply that this identity is unsubstantial or marginal, but rather that even its constitutive elements are subject to choice. Not only are our communal affiliations—or, for that matter, our marriages—not weakened by the constant exercise of choice, they are in fact strengthened by it.

Granting choice such a central role requires an explanation of how individuals make choices bearing on their most fundamental attachments and values. This is the concern of the next section.

Choosing a Moral Identity

Individuals are unable to make choices simultaneously touching on all realms of their lives. It therefore seems more plausible to assume that they usually behave in line with one of the combined models of choice, namely, they hold constant one aspect of their identity, either their communal membership or their moral identity, and reflect on the other.

Reflecting on issues concerning moral identity is dependent on the presence of a cultural context. The importance of a cultural context is evident even in relation to the most casual everyday decisions. The answer to a question such as “What shall I have for breakfast?” often reflects national affiliations. An English breakfast is not the same as a French or an Israeli one, and all reflect shared social norms and beliefs about what is healthy, respectable, or fashionable.

Lest we end up selecting options at random, choice is contingent on having a socially acquired set of values that serve as criteria for evaluation. Taylor’s concept of the strong evaluator clearly captures this interplay between choice and context.²⁵ Strong evaluators do not judge preferences on the basis of their contingent incompatibility with other alternatives, but on a qualitative evaluation of the alternatives “as higher and lower, noble and base, and so on.”²⁶ The set of values they rely on in order to make these judgments is not an external instrument picked at random but a constitutive element of their identity; and as long as they adhere to it, some of their choices are inevitable.

Both liberals and nationalists could see strong evaluators as incarnating their own views. The ability of strong evaluators to reflect on and evaluate preferences and interests could be seen as a liberal attribute, whereas nationalists might view the evaluators’ embeddedness in a cultural context and the precedence given to social membership as a precondition for choice, as an instance of national thinking. Liberals, however, face the question of whether the process of socialization, which enables individuals to become strong evaluators in the first place, might not prevent them from distancing themselves from their social context and from reflecting critically on its fundamental values.

Taylor assumes that certain fundamental features are “inseparable from ourselves as agents.”²⁷ Our personal identity, as well as our basic values and norms, reflect our background, and to reject them would imply rejecting ourselves. But if we have no way of reflecting on the values prescribed by our background, the liberal self disappears and a well-situated agent takes its place. Having begun with a choosing agent and progressed through the need for context and socialization, we now find that the liberal self has not only lost the antecedent to social affiliations, but is confined to a restricted set of values drawn from this background. When taken to extremes, this position may only leave room for trivial choices.

If we are to restore the idea of a choosing agent, we must assume that one can at least distance oneself from some basic moral values provided by society and adopt a new or reformed set of values. Such a radical process of reflection may lead us to claim that a person is no longer the same person: “We know what this means: we refer to a profound and pervasive shift, or reversal in a person’s final ends and character.”²⁸ Although such extreme changes may shatter the most basic characteristics of the self, this does not necessarily mean that they are impossible.

How does this process take place? What is the nature of radical reflection? Some claim that individuals can distance themselves from constitutive elements of their identity through a gradual process of reflection. It seems, however, that this assumption cannot, in and of itself, explain our ability to embark on a radical reflective process. If a person’s set of fundamental values is consistent, then keeping some of them constant while reflecting on the others cannot generate radical change. The assumption that reflection is a gradual process is therefore of little help in explaining radical change. What options are we then left with? On the face of it, it would appear that if we have a consistent set of values, to reevaluate some of them we must appeal to values that are outside our “horizon of evaluation.” This would require us either to invent a totally new and detached set of values, or to appeal to some prevailing elsewhere, an approach Collini terms the “offshore” model.²⁹ This latter process entails moral mimicry, imitation, and adaptation. It is a modern phenomenon, contingent on the ability of individuals to be exposed to ways of life, belief systems, and sets of norms other than their own. The discovery that others hold a different set of norms and beliefs might tempt us to reconsider our own.

Suppose that an ultra-Orthodox Jewess comes across secular women and becomes aware of the fact that they act in ways different than hers. She finds herself both repelled and attracted by their behaviour. As she becomes more familiar with alternative ways of life, she is tempted to imitate them, despite the fact that, according to her values secular behaviour is sinful. She may then be tempted to reflect on her own set of values in the light of the secular values she has encountered, and decide that ultra-Orthodox tradition discriminates against women. At this point, the status of women might become the overriding variable in light of which she evaluates different forms of life. She may then seek a compromise enabling her to continue to adhere to some of her religious values while accommodating her newly found beliefs, or may gradually reach the conclusion that the inability of herold set of values to incorporate the new ones implies she should reject it altogether. At the end of this process, she may possess a totally new set of values.

Anthropologists speak of an analogous process known as “going native.” This is what happened to Father Jack in Brian Friel’s play Dancing at Lughansa. Father Jack, a missionary priest, is sent to Uganda and gradually embraces the native culture, to the point of including himself in the “we” that he uses to describe native rituals. With deep longing he tells his sisters about the Mass he used to hold in Uganda. When he had a church, he recalls,

Okawa—my house boy—summons our people by striking a huge iron gong. . . to offer sacrifice to Obi, our Great Goddess of the Earth, so that the crops will flourish. Or maybe to get in touch with our departed fathers for their advice and wisdom. Or maybe to thank the spirits of our tribe if they have been good to us; or to appease them if they’re angry.³⁰

But does this a process entail choice, or is it a slow and unconscious drift, whereby one first yields to curiosity and temptation and only later seeks to rationalise it? In most cases, we do not begin with choice, just as the ultra-Orthodox Jewess probably did not set out to meet secular women with the deliberate intention of changing her life. Similarly Father Jack was sent to Uganda to bring the natives under the wings of the church, and had no intention of becoming a Ryangan.

Once this process is set in motion through the encounter with other forms of life, individuals become aware of the presence of different options. Although aware of certain disadvantages inherent in their original set of values, they may nevertheless decide to uphold them, or may decide to adopt a new set of values. In this sense, this process does indeed involve choice.

Do we not imply that a radical process of reflection and choice has taken place when we praise someone for becoming a certain type of person “despite his background”? Might not this be the reason for our greater disappointment with certain individuals of privileged background who choose to follow a different, and in our judgment, less worthy set of values? Why otherwise the need to explain how someone who grew up in a communist home became a broker on Wall Street? Or what happened to a nineteenth-century aristocrat who opted to become a member of the working class? Or to Patricia Hearst when she joined her kidnappers and became part of a criminal gang?

It could indeed be claimed that when moral changes are radical enough, they imply joining a radically different social framework. Instances such as those of the broker, the aristocrat, or Patricia Hearst, show that radical moral changes are possible without necessarily changing one’s nation affiliations.

Individuals could, however, follow a less radical process and challenge the conventional understanding the basic set of social norms and values prevalent in their society in terms advocated by these same values. In such instances, the motivation for reflection and change is rooted in tensions and inconsistencies internal to the system. These reflections might lead to a reinterpretation of socially held norms and values, or to the broadening of their scope. Collini refers to this process as “the voice of the underdog.” The social changes advocated by feminism and the civil rights movement illustrate well the workings of this type of reflective process.

Rejecting the assumption that individuals have the potential to reflect on and refuse the values and norms offered to them in the course of their socialisation sets us on a slippery slope leading to social and cultural determinism. Every conception of the person acceptable to liberals must therefore include the notion of this potential.

Adopting a National Identity

We now turn to the second combined model of choice, namely, one where individuals hold constant their moral values and norms and make choices concerning their communal affiliations. In this section, the discussion will focus on national choices. In line with my definition of “nation” as a form of cultural community, cultural and national choices are used interchangeably.

Can one choose a nation to belong to? Can individuals, from a situated position, distance themselves from their national culture, reflect on it, and make choices? Nationalists would like to deny this possibility, since they view cultural and national affiliations as a matter of fate rather than choice. Why, then, do nationalists contemplate assimilation as a nightmare and celebrate the renewal of national identity? This suggests that, at least in practice, nationalists admit that individuals are indeed capable of changing their national affiliations. From a national point of view, the question then is not whether assimilation is possible, but whether it is desirable or permissible. Nationalists think it is undesirable because it leads to the disintegration of the nation, and it is morally wrong since it reflects a betrayal of one’s cultural loyalties.

Before entering the discussion of these normative aspects, a preliminary question seems in order: What is implied by the assumption that individuals can make national choices? First, it means that a statement such as “I would like to be French” is meaningful. This statement differs from the statement “I am French” or “I feel French.” It is a statement of preference about communal affiliations. I can express a preference for being French, whether I am French or not; I may be French and happy with my lot, or I may not be French and wish I were. Both these claims share the assumption that I can have preferences regarding my national identity. But can I act on them?

Concepts such as “assimilation” and the “renewal of national identity” imply that one can do more than reflect on these matters, namely, one can indeed decide to adopt a new national identity. This statement needs to be qualified to some extent:

1. Individuals who decide to adopt a new national identity can act in ways that will bring them closer to this goal, but cannot be assured that they will in fact succeed in attaining this end. Similarly, individuals may sincerely desire to become good persons and decide to behave in ways that they believe are required to accomplish this goal, but may nevertheless fail in their endeavour.
2. “Full-scale” assimilation is rarely possible and relies on a variety of factors, of which individual will is only one. It remains a fact, however, that irrespective of the hardships involved in any process of conversion, and despite the almost insurmountable hurdles faced by those attempting to become “real members,” individuals do choose to change their national affiliations.
3. Membership is based on acceptance and mutual identification. Convincing others that one has become a member is the most difficult aspect of assimilation. It involves a readiness to adopt the national culture as well as to exhibit a sense of identification with, and responsibility toward, other members of the same national group.³¹ Incidentally, this could encourage those wishing to assimilate to adopt rather conservative interpretations of the new national culture, hoping to gain acceptance and recognition in the eyes of veteran members.

These qualifications notwithstanding, individuals can assimilate or embrace the national identity of their forefathers, even though they might be completely estranged from it, and they make these choices in much the same way in which they reflect on their moral identity. In both instances, mimicry, temptation, and curiosity, largely facilitated by modern communication, are essential elements of the choice process. Very few isolated communities remain in the modern world, and most individuals are acquainted with more than one way of life and more than one national community. It is precisely for this reason that national communities strive for closure—if choice were not an option, closure would be unnecessary.

But how can members of one nation opt for membership in another that they only know superficially? It seems preposterous to suggest that one can choose a national identity merely on the basis of partial and fragmentary information. Yet if such choices were only possible following intimate acquaintance with alternative cultures, they would be extremely rare. One would have to closely study and live in a variety of cultures before making a choice, a relatively exceptional occurrence.

“Members of one culture can, by the force of imaginative insight, understand (what Vico called entrare) the values, ideals, the form of life of another culture or society, even those remote in time and space.”³² They may, of course, misinterpret the other culture, modify or distort a language to create their own dialect, detach symbols and rituals from their original use. Nonetheless, their contact with a new culture, or with their own image of it, however distorted and spurious, may assist them in reflecting on their own culture and bring about change.

Admitting that individuals can choose their communal identity still leaves open the question of whether they can choose to adopt any national culture or whether their choices are restricted. It is patently evident that individuals can make far-reaching choices and succeed in implementing them. Even a cursory look at the way in which the House of Windsor became English, or the House of Bernadotte Swedish, will show that complete assimilation is indeed possible. The most recent and interesting example may be the attempt to suggest that Sonia Ghandi, an Italian-born woman, should become the leader of the Indian nation.

Had the young Sonia Ghandi been asked to which national group she would prefer to belong and had she answered, “The Indian people,” the most likely reaction would have been to express surprise, and misgivings about her chances of ever accomplishing this wish. But had this young Italian girl had Indian ancestors, even if she had never met them and herself knew very little about Indian culture, her choice would have seemed more plausible. Why do we think that it is more “natural” and less strange for individuals to adopt an identity embraced by their parents or grandparents? Why do we tend to think that individuals of Jewish origin who decide to define themselves as Jews, although they know very little about Judaism, are “renewing” their identity? What does “renewal” mean in this context? Why is it that, although we no longer believe it is “natural” for a shoemaker’s son to be a shoemaker and for the daughter of a working-class family to remain in her parents’ social stratum, we still think it is “natural” for the son or the grandson of a Jew to be one too?

We welcome social mobility. The age of guilds is over, and watchmakers want their sons to be lawyers and not necessarily watchmakers. Individuals want their children to move out of the old neighbourhood, to have more successful lives, to belong to another class, and to make new friends—but they still want them to retain their national identity.

Why is this so? First, in the professional sphere, as is the case with neighbourhoods and classes, there is an accepted hierarchy. It is possible that the shoemaker will think it is better to be a lawyer than a shoemaker, and will welcome such a change for his children. No such agreed scale exists in the national sphere, and individuals tend to see their children’s assimilation as the rejection of something that is dear to them, in favour of an alternative that is not demonstratively better. It is only when individuals view another culture as superior to their own, as was and is the case for certain groups of immigrants, that they welcome assimilation.

Second, continuity and respect for the past are inherent in national-cultural identity. Nationhood and culture are conceived as a progression through time, based on the transmission of language, traditions, and norms from one generation to the other. According to this conception, it is the duty of each generation to pay their debts to their ancestors by remaining within the fold. In this metaphysical sense, individuals are born with a set of communal duties they are meant to fulfill. By assuming the identity they have inherited from their forefathers, individuals take it upon themselves to comply with this duty. The term “identity renewal” thus reflects a belief about a certain continuity of identity across time. It assumes that when an individual of Jewish parentage chooses to define himself as a Jew he is thereby returning to his roots, renewing his ties with his past and embracing an identity that could have been his. George Perec, a French author of Jewish descent, once said in a television interview about a script he wrote for a film on Ellis Island: “This place is, for me, part of a potential memory, of a possible autobiography.”³³ It is this sense of potentiality that is captured by the term “renewal.” Individuals renew an option, a potential identity offered by their past. Although it may seem philosophically awkward, this concept is an essential aspect of our thinking about national identity.

Identity renewal and assimilation teach us that individuals can reflect not only about the kind of human beings they would like to be, but also about the kind of communal identity they would like to develop. The notion of identity renewal may indicate why individuals are more likely to choose to be what they are, or what their forefathers were, while assimilation reminds us that they can also choose to adopt a foreign culture to which they seem in no way connected.

No doubt, individuals are motivated to make specific choices by a variety of religious, social, political, and economic reasons, as well as by their own psychological makeup, all of which are beyond the scope of this work. It is also true that not all choices are similar, that some cultures are more difficult to leave or enter than others, that a particular colour of skin or certain physical features can make assimilation more difficult, and at times impossible. But this is also true regarding other choices. Take, for instance, career choices. Some careers are harder to embark on than others, and some demand qualifications that most individuals might never obtain. If my mother is a lawyer and has her own law firm, my chances of becoming a successful lawyer are greater than if she is a factory worker. Nevertheless, we still assume that individuals can make career choices. The claim that it is possible to make choices merely requires showing that a person has some options, not that all options are open to him. The same is true about choices concerning national identity: It is enough to show that an individual has some plausible options to claim that he has a choice.

The concept of communal choices is important for our discussion because it singles out two of the most important aspects of modern identity—the need to live one’s life from the inside and the need to be rooted—and thus captures the duality inherent in the image of the modern individual. It is important to note that individuals will be unable to exercise their right to make cultural choices unless they live in a culturally plural environment. Since we have assumed that human beings must be embedded in a culture, reflecting critically on their culture can only be productive if there are others to which they can compare their own, from which they might learn or borrow, and into which they might assimilate. The plurality of cultures thus acquires an intrinsic value, as Raz rightly suggests: “If having an autonomous life is an ultimate value, then having a sufficient range of acceptable options is an intrinsic value.”³⁴ Hence, the right to make cultural choices is only meaningful in a world where the plurality of cultures is protected.

Individuals can benefit from cultural plurality in two distinct ways. In the “strong sense,” cultural plurality ensures that reflections about one’s own culture take place within a genuine context, one offering models for imitation and even options for assimilation. In its “weak sense,” cultural plurality is aesthetically valuable. Just as we prefer a stimulating cultural enviroment where we might enjoy the precision and elegance of Japanese painting, the naturalistic perfection of ancient Greek sculpture, and the power and irony of modern American art, we prefer cultural plurality because it broadens the range of possibilities for pleasure and enrichment. Cultural plurality is to be valued not only because it offers alternative life-options but also because it is a way of improving our lives within our own culture and preserving “different types of Men as variant species of the same genus.” The loss of valuable forms of life can therefore be seen as a “failure of mankind to protect and value its own capacity to be different.”³⁵

In the modern world, cultures are forced to compete for the attention of their followers, give an account of themselves and defend themselves against their opponents. Mill holds unreasonably naive and optimistic expectations about the inevitably positive outcome of competition as leading to the disappearance of the “least morally worthy” cultures and the proliferation of better and richer ones. It is not even safe to claim that the most liberal cultures, which encourage cultural pluralism, are those best equipped to “win” in an open cultural contest. In fact, many individuals find the feelings of closeness, solidarity, and assurance offered by authoritarian cultures very attractive. Hence, support for the plurality of cultures is not synonymous with an attempt to eradicate all nonliberal cultural options. It simply means that individuals are the best judges of what cultural enviroment is most suited to their needs: If in their exercise of cultural choices individuals do not try to hinder others from exercising theirs, there are no grounds for preventing them from pursuing their life-plans as they see fit.

Mill assumed that absorbing a developed people into a less advanced one is an evil and a loss to humanity, whereas when an improved, cultured nation overpowers a small, “backward” one, we experience a net “gain in civilisation.” For example, he thought it would be best for the Irish to unite with their nearest neighbours, who were not only wealthier but “one of the freest, as well as the most civilised and powerful nations of the earth.”³⁶ Needless to say, most Irishmen disagreed with him. Raz offers a modern version of Mill’s argument and suggests that, when a liberal culture encounters an illiberal one, whose members do not endorse “the condition of autonomy,” it would be justified to take action “to assimilate the minority group, at the cost of letting its culture die or at least be considerably changed by absorption” since illiberal cultures are “inferior to the dominant liberal culture.”³⁷ Raz does acknowledge that wrenching individuals out of their communities may destroy their ability to live the autonomous life he would like them to have, and recommends toleration, although he is motivated by prudential reasons rather than by respect for illiberal ways of life. Raz thus seems to give priority to the preservation and proliferation of the conditions of autonomy, over the preservation and proliferation of forms of life that individuals may autonomously decide to pursue. This is equivalent to saying, however, that a life lived from the inside is a worthy life only if it is a liberal one, and that personal autonomy is to be respected as long as the range of choices includes only liberal alternatives. Therefore, if we have chosen to lead an illiberal life, it is justified, although costs must be taken into account, to oppose our choice, either actively or passively. It then seems that what is being respected is not actual individual choices but the abstract ability to exercise choice and that the latter is more valuable than the former.

Yet, if we wish to respect individuals as the authors of their own lives, we must accept that some of their choices will seem to us less valuable than others. Although they may choose to lead illiberal lives, follow authoritarian traditions, join Opus Dei or Hare Krishna, or dedicate themselves to what one might think of as a meaningless project, their choices merit respect as otherwise, autonomy and pluralism become devoid of all content.

Three different arguments can thus be offered in favour of cultural pluralism, relying on the interests of three distinct groups:

1. The participants—members of the particular cultural group
2. The potential users—those who may choose to assimilate in a particular culture, or may learn from it, borrow its norms and values, imitate its rituals, and use it as a trigger for reflecting on their own
3. All others—nonmembers who do not view the culture as an option for assimilation, for whom the existence of any culture enriches their own experience of what it means to be human

Preserving the plurality of cultures is thus a valuable resource to all human beings. Individuals, says Walzer, are like “artists and writers who pick up elements of one another’s style, or even borrow plots, not for the sake of imitation but in order to strengthen their own work. So we make ourselves better without being the same.”³⁸

The Contextual Individual

The views presented in this chapter may appear to be diametrically opposed to conventional nationalist wisdom. The “thick” national approach indeed rejects the notion that we can make cultural choices, and assumes that individuals are imprisoned within the culture they were born into. This leads not only to a reprehensible moral position, but also overlooks the fact that, in reality, individuals do assimilate, break cultural ties, and move from one national community to another.

Yet, the approach presented here does not imply that individuals have “a view from nowhere,” that they can make choices as entities lacking all background, attachments, or commitments. Reflection always begins from a defined social position, but contextuality need not preclude choice.

The claim that, if given to choice, identity features cannot be constitutive, seems unreasonable. We readily accept that life-plans, religious beliefs, and social roles are objects of reflection and choice, yet constitutive of our identity. Cultural and national affiliations fall under the same category, of being both chosen and constitutive.

Our discussion so far suggests a concept of the person that embodies both the liberal virtue of self-authorship and the national virtue of embeddedness. It portrays an autonomous person who can reflect on, evaluate, and choose his conception of the good, his ends, and his cultural and national affiliations, but is capable of such choices because he is situated in a particular social and cultural environment that offers him evaluative criteria. Self-determination, autonomy, and faculties of critical reflection and choice are essential features of this concept of the person, but so are cultural affiliations, religious beliefs, and conceptions of the good, namely, the products of these choices. The discussion so far has thus led to the claim that individuals can behave in line with both the communal choice model and the moral choice model, thereby indirectly implying the plausibility of the strict model of choice, which assumes that individuals can reflect on both their national and moral identity, without requiring that they do so simultaneously or radically.

The idea of the person developed in this work, the “contextual individual,” combines individuality and sociability as two equally genuine and important features. It allows for an interpretation of liberalism that is aware of the binding, constitutive character of cultural and social memberships, together with an interpretation of nationalism that conceives of individuals as free and autonomous participants in a communal framework, who conceive of national membership in Renan’s terms, as a daily plebiscite. The concept of the contextual individual thus brings liberal and national theories one step closer.

Acknowledging that cultural affiliation, history, and language are constitutive for the contextual individual leaves a range of unresolved issues between liberals and nationalists, since this concept might be interpreted in two different ways. Whereas liberals would tend to see cultural and national rootedness as descriptive and stop short of deriving normative consequences, nationalists rely on them to justify a broad range of moral commitments. The following chapters elaborate some of these tensions, beginning with a discussion of the right to culture—namely, the right to preserve the national culture one chooses to adopt. This right lies at the core of both personal and national self-determination, and is thus the cornerstone of liberal nationalism.