Liberal Restrictions on Public Arguments: Can Nationalist Claims be Moral Reasons in Liberal Public Discourse?

References

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• By pointing to what seems acceptable or not in our liberal democratic societies, I want to stress that such ‘agreement’ is the result of a specific historical and intellectual journey, but that this should not close the door to judgments of practical reason as to the worth of these achievements. The point of view from which we proceed to such judgments will always be ours; but we should not give up the quest for objectivity.
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• For example, Habermasians may argue that such a point of view confuses the justification of norms with their applicability, whereas we have to keep these issues separate.
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• Dworkin . 1993 . “ ‘Lord Devlin,’ 63. Kedourie's ” . In Nationalism is a good example of an emotional characterization of nationalist aspirations: “It is at these extremes of human nature which they knew so well how to explore, where horror and delight, love and hate, cruelty and tenderness are indistinguishable, that the Romantics sought a heightened, transformed, superhuman existence, which might abolish life as it is actually lived; nationalism is the political expression of this quest.” Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson 1966), 87. In the same vein, Ignatieff writes that “As a moral ideal, nationalism is an ethic of heroic sacrifice, justifying the use of violence in the defence of one's nation against enemies, internal or external.” Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (Toronto: Viking, 3. He also blames romanticism for this ‘dark’ side of nationalism (see, for example, 4 and 63–64).
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• Cairns , Alan and Williams , Cynthia , eds. 1985 . Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada Toronto : University of Toronto Press . Liberals such as Norman and Kymlicka recognize that the stability of liberal institutions depends on the sense of a shared identity that an abstract justification of moral principles alone cannot generate. Taylor has been defending such an argument for a long time, although from his point of view legitimacy, rather than stability, is the crucial issue relative to identification; see for example his ‘Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity and Alienation in Late Twentieth Century Canada,’ in. The problem of the interplay between abstract moral principles and the embeddedness of their signification in concrete settings would be a fruitful way of assessing the relationships between liberalism and nationalism from the point of view of moral psychology.
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