Patriotism is one of a large class of words that are linked to the virtues of membership. To participate in relations of, for example, friendship, community, nationhood, citizenship, or marriage implies normative conventions. In other words, there are value expectations built into such membership. One important dimension of any membership relation is an expectation of loyalty. Fidelity or loyalty to a nation, community, friend, citizenship, marriage, or state is thus implied in the actual practice. To participate openly and self-consciously, therefore, in any of these membership practices involves adherence to loyalty-based virtue. In this context, the term patriotism usually denotes a specific loyalty virtue, consequent upon membership of a country or state. However, the term loyalty alone does not quite cover the range of values associated with patriotic membership. Patriotism also signifies a sense of personal identification with, and concern for, the well-being or welfare of that country or state. Further, it entails a readiness to make sacrifices for its defense or welfare. In addition, it provides (for some) the ground for all moral action — in the sense that morality, in itself, is seen to be, quite literally, premised on patriotic membership. Patriotism also indicates a special affection, feeling, or emotive response. This emotive response is commonly designated as a "love of country."
A distinction is often drawn between the terms patriot and patriotism. The former is seen as an older usage, traceable back to the ancient Roman republic, while the latter is viewed as an eighteenth-century neologism. Patriotism, as in most ideological "isms," is therefore often considered a more recent word. However, the older term patriot still covers many of the conceptual aspects of patriotism. The term patriotism figured in European and North American political discussion (and poetry) over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, during the larger bulk of the twentieth century its academic usage diminished. Certainly up to the 1990s it was considered, in academic debate, to be an antiquated term — particularly in liberal and Marxist political theory. However, there has been, over the last decade, a rediscovery of patriotism (among other membership-related concepts) within political theory and related disciplines. This rediscovery began in the 1980s with communitarianism and then developed into a renewed academic interest in nationalism, multiculturalism, citizenship, and the like. Patriotism is one of the latecomers to this process. It should be stressed, though, that this academic interest, or lack of interest, has little bearing on the ordinary political usage of these terms. Patriotism, regardless of academic concerns, persisted in lay political vocabularies throughout the twentieth century. The deep roots of the word patriot lie in Roman antiquity, particularly in terms such as patria and patrius, which indicate fatherland, city, native, or familiar place. Familiar has links with the word family (familia ). This also has ties with the term father or paternal (pater, p è re, Vater, padre ), or what is implied by the "role of the father" within a family. In terms of the "role of father," patria and patrius have subtle connections with property, authority, and status. The word patriarch evolves from this dimension. The links between father, authority, family, property, and politics can be observed, for example, in the Roman patrician class, who possessed considerable wealth in land and were dominant in the older Roman political structure. Their property enabled wide-ranging political influence. This was also connected to the original use of the cognate terms patron and patronage. Early Roman political factions, as in later European monarchies, worked through powerful wealthy families. Loyalty to kin in politics was supremely important for survival and political success. Early Roman pietas was, therefore, originally loyalty to the family hearth. However, Roman republican writers, such as Cicero, also saw a wider patria in the res publica (the public thing). The later Roman legal Digesta and Institutiones referred to two patrias affecting citizens: the more local (patria sua ) and the more abstract public Rome (communis patria ). Under the later Roman Empire (and again under later European absolute monarchies), this second patria became increasingly more abstract and legalistic. In effect, the highest patria (status and estate) became synonymous with the state. The state was, in a sense, paternal authority "writ large." This idea can still be seen in seventeenth-century doctrines of political rule, such as patriarchalism, where all authority is traced to the paternal role. The prince thus embodied the essence of the state. Traces of this can still be seen in eighteenth-century writings, such as Henry St. John, first viscount Bolingbroke's (1678 – 1751) Idea of a Patriot King (1749). The opposition to this reading of the state also employed the language of patriotism. Yet it wanted to colonize the state with a different set of values. Thus, liberty under the law became a motif for a divergent set of arguments. Consequently, if republicans, dissenters, and revolutionaries absorbed the language of patriotism, they could claim to be struggling for the "real" rights and freedoms of the people, and consequently for the soul of the state. At this point in the argument, in the early nineteenth century, the language of patriotism began slowly to mutate into nationalist language. In summary, the qualities of "local familial or community loyalty" and an "impersonal abstract legal loyalty" have remained part of the vocabulary of patriotism to the present day. Local communal identification implies a more visceral loyalty, an attachment and love for the "familiar." This is why some contemporary commentators can still insist that patriotism is more of an emotion than an intelligible political idea. Yet at the same time, the loyalty to the remote authoritative legal abstraction of the state or city-state embodies another important formal aspect of the legacy of patriotism.
First, in the medieval period, the patria could be identified with a locality, hamlet, clan, village, township, or city. The patriot was one who submitted to the village or city and was prepared to defend it. Second, in terms of the feudal structure, defending homelands could also entail defending the lands of a local lord or prince. In this sense, feudal and vassal relations became integral to patriotic argument. Third, in Augustinian Christian thought the significant patria was the "city of God," which transcended all cities and states. During the later medieval period, Roman imperial thought was utilized by secularizing territorial states (initially city-states) in Europe. However, "abstract legal Rome" (communis patria ) was a movable feast. It could apply equally to Venice, Florence, Paris, or London. Princes became, in effect, supreme lawmakers (sovereigns) and emperors in their own realms. The objects of patriotism thus became the new territorial states with their fatherly princes. From the twelfth century, the notion of patria often arose in the context of defense of a state territory. Defense of patria was a key ground for "just war." This identification with patria intensified with renewed study of writers such as Cicero (106 – 43 b.c.e.), and later, with the thirteenth-century re-discovery of Aristotle's political writings. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) also touched on the issue of the religious duty of citizens to render themselves vulnerable to death for their patria — pro patria mori. Religious language was immensely important here. Death for patria and death for the Christian faith became virtually coeval by the late medieval and early modern period. The emotive religious memorials and formal recognition we still give to patriotic war dead are a testimony to how deeply this idea has permeated state theory. It is crucial to the understanding of patriotism to the present day. Finally, it is important to underscore the point that patriotism is formally compatible with any political creed or "object of attachment." Family, locality, city, tradition, land, absolute monarch, total state, and republic have all been objects of patriotic loyalty.
In contemporary discussion there have been a number of renderings of patriotism. These can be distinguished between two forms — strong and moderate patriotisms. The stronger version argues that patriotic loyalty is the sole source of any meaningful moral claims. The content of patriotism is therefore always particular or local. In this context, the loyalties demanded from the patriot are simply to whatever values are regarded as dominant within a state or community. The key critical opposition to this perspective comes from universalist forms of argument, such as universal human rights claims. However, the larger bulk of recent writings on patriotism have appeared within the moderate category. The moderate category tries to mediate between universalism and localism.
The strong variant of patriotism does not have as many proponents as the moderate form. One key example of this is strong communitarian patriotism. In his 1984 essay, "Is Patriotism a Virtue?," Alasdair MacIntyre sees patriotism as one of a class of "loyalty-exhibiting virtues." These virtues exhibit "action-generating regard" for particular persons or groups, and they are embedded in highly particular relationships. Morality is thus rooted within communal relations. For MacIntyre, morality is always learned from within a particular way of life. Goods are always the particular goods of communities. The morality of patriotism is therefore seen as perfectly natural to us as communal beings. MacIntyre's citizen is basically a very mild-mannered political animal; however, it is important, nonetheless, to realize that the strong particularist arguments he deploys have been utilized by much more worrying forms of politics. Racial exclusivism or political authoritarianism could well be justified within this framework. The dangers implicit within this perspective are those of extreme exclusion and the lurking possibility of communal jingoism. In the twentieth century, strong variants of patriotism have been associated (rightly or wrongly) with the militaristic or bellicose stance of German national socialism and Italian fascism in the 1930s.
The more recent moderate account of patriotism contains four subtle variants. First, for neoclassical republicans the distinctive character of patriotism is its focus on political liberty and civic virtue. Love of country is not love of a language or ethnicity, but rather of political liberty. This is not a love of a particular liberty, but a generic nonexclusive liberty as embedded in law. It is seen essentially as a universalizing force. A republic is seen to embody a powerful sense of local solidarity contained within a universal vessel of liberty under law. For its proponents, republican language is thus a viable alternative to current liberal foundationalism, ethnic nationalism, and strong patriotic arguments. Second, for recent theorists such as Charles Taylor, moderate communitarian patriotism envisages a direct link between patriotism, republicanism (although some would categorize it as civic humanism), and communitarian motifs. Communitarians are clearly not of one mind here. The distinction between strong and moderate patriotism has direct parallels with the distinction, made within communitarian theory, between strong and moderate senses of community. Whereas MacIntyre sees a direct synonymity between nationalism and patriotism and adopts a narrower, stronger, and more exclusive sense of community, Charles Taylor seeks some separation between patriotism and nationalism and adopts a more differentiated view of community (incorporating multicultural diversity). Further, whereas, for Taylor, moderate patriotism is a matter of self-conscious citizen identification with a polity, strong patriotism swims in murkier waters, usually envisaging patriotism as a prepolitical, nonintentional attachment. Moderate communitarian patriotism, for Taylor, has no "prepolitical" reference. It rather implies more intentional attachment to a country and its laws. Patriotism is therefore always "politically defined," as in the American and French Revolutions. However, most moderate communitarian patriots admit that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the vocabularies of nationalism and patriotism became confusingly intermeshed. Third, Stephen Nathanson, in constructing his moderate liberal patriotism, has contrasted it with both the "extreme patriotism" of MacIntyre and communitarian arguments. Moderate liberal patriotism basically sees certain liberal universalist, essentially neo-Kantian, moral constraints acting upon patriotic goals. Too much patriotism, or too much liberal universalism, is to be avoided. Patriotism therefore requires a middle way. Thus, liberal universalism can and should legitimately restrain local solidarities and membership loyalties. Nathanson's position is at least a salutary reminder to republicans that liberal universalist language is not necessarily always antipatriotic. The fourth, final strand is constitutional patriotism. This is associated with the writings of J ü rgen Habermas on what he calls Verfassungspatriotismus. This is essentially, again, a neo-Kantian orientated loyalty to the universalistic principles of liberty and democracy embodied in a constitution. The emphasis is quite explicitly legalistic. Constitutional patriotism is an allegiance to a constitutional juristic tradition embodying certain fundamental rational values. The background to this is Habermas's own deep sensitivity to the events of World War II in Germany, particularly in relation to nationalism. In Habermas's case, constitutional patriotism is patriotic loyalty to the universalistic principles embodied in the German constitution. Citizens, in this scenario, are linked together by a formal common agreement on the shared values of the constitution. Habermas is insistent that constitutional patriotism has no connection with any prepolitical attachments, characteristic of nationalism or strong patriotism. This kind of general constitutional theme can be found, for some Habermasians, in the polity of the United States and, possibly, even the burgeoning European Union legal structures.
There are negative and positive arguments for both separating and fusing nationalism and patriotism. The positive statement for their fusion is contained in stronger views of communal identity. Both concepts embody powerful statements on the moral priority of the community. The positive view therefore involves the direct normative assimilation of nationalism and patriotism to communitarianism. This can be termed the "positive assimilation model." MacIntyre articulates this view, in which patriotism and nationalism become indistinguishable. The negative reading of the "fusion" views patriotism and nationalism with equal contempt as blemishes on political and moral discourse. This can be termed the "mutually disagreeable model." There are a number of background points to this model. First, patriotism is seen as a verbal "sleight of hand" to avoid the pejorative connotations of nationalism; however, basically they are the same. The separate use of patriotism therefore has a face-saving character. Second, it might well be the case that patriotism did have an older individual meaning, but since the nineteenth century that older sense has been totally lost. Patriotism is exactly the same appalling entity as nationalism. Patriotism should therefore share all the opprobrium heaped upon nationalism. The "mutually disagreeable model" was well formulated by Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tolstoy found both ideas repellent. Despite great efforts by states to foster patriotism, it is the same doctrine as nationalism. In the final analysis, both entail the renunciation of all human dignity, common sense, and moral conscience. The opposite thesis to the above is the separation of nationalism from patriotism. This again has positive and negative dimensions. The positive reading of the separation is most forcibly rendered by recent republican writers. Thus, true patriotism must be kept completely distinct from nationalism. For such republicans (as Maurizio Viroli), the language of patriotism invokes a specific love of the political institutions and laws that embody a nondominatory concept of liberty. It is therefore about sustaining a particular way of life in a republic. Nationalism, on the other hand, is seen as a highly exclusive, prepolitical, culturally oriented attachment that is antagonistic to liberty. It is therefore deeply pernicious to confuse patriotism and nationalism, since patriotism is the theoretical and practical antidote to nationalism. The negative reading of their separation suggests that patriotism and nationalism should be kept distinct on negative grounds. The concepts are historically different. Each has a distinct historical trajectory. Patriotism, for example, is an older terminology that has a much more intimate connection with both the state and religious language, whereas nationalism has closer connections to modernity and secularism. However, both terms are to be mistrusted for different reasons. Both are equally objectionable as narrow, exclusive, tribal, and deleterious to human dignity. In this context, the separation between patriotism and nationalism is valid, but this redeems neither doctrine. See also Nation ; Nationalism ; State, The ; Romanticism in Literature and Politics .
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