A Critical Analysis of Patriotism As an Ethical Concept: A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 1, 1918Reidenbach, Clarence
Philosophy
A Critical Analysis of Patriotism As an Ethical Concept: A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 1, 1918
Reidenbach, Clarence
Patriotism; Thesis (Ph. D.)
The patriotism that looks within the country demands public spirit.
It calls for unselfishness on the part of the individual and devotion
to the betterment of the country. J. S. Mill’s _Autobiography_ shows
in its pages that Mill was actuated in his work by an unselfish and
devoted public spirit. High-minded patriots demand everyday devotion
to the country. Bosanquet tells us what patriotism means to him. He
says: “In their patriotism, their feeling for the community, Hegel
tells us, people are apt to follow their custom of being generous
before they are just, and excuse themselves by a potential romantic
magnanimity for a lack of prosaic everyday loyalty to the commonwealth.
But it is this latter, the sense of daily duty, which is real
patriotism--the foundation and seed-plot of the former.”[127]
This public spirit means, for one thing, that the individual himself
be a good citizen. “... Patriotism demands that, in ourselves, we
be good and true. The country’s worthy citizen must be personally
worthy,--emulous of culture, devoted to virtue. No man personally
dishonorable, can be patriotic in the highest degree.”[128] It means,
for another thing, that a man shall be interested in the welfare of
the people of his country. Although an enthusiasm for the people
sometimes weakens nationalistic feeling, as in the case of Tolstoy,
nevertheless patriotism often derives great strength from humanitarian
sympathy. This sympathy shows itself nowadays in the desire for a
greater measure of justice in the relations between the classes. In a
patriotic address, John Grier Hibben says: “In the throes of its new
birth the world today needs a new industrial conscience, a new sense
of social responsibility, a new standard of national integrity. We
must realize that the strength of a nation lies ultimately not in its
natural resources, or in its method of efficiency, or in its numerical
superiority, or in its army, or navy, but in its moral and spiritual
vigor.”[129] Even J. M. Robertson, who on the whole thinks that
patriotism is a bad thing, has for the nation an ideal of “scientific
social development.”[130] It is easy to see in his book that he has
a large sympathy with “the people” not only of other countries, but
also of his own. That is his patriotism. The International Reform
Bureau published a book entitled “Patriotic Studies.” And it was not,
as one might suppose, a series of learned articles on the subject
of Patriotism. It was a compilation of Congressional documents of
the years 1888-1905 for the study of public questions. The questions
treated in this volume were the following: “1. Moral and Social
Functions of Education. 2. Municipal Reform. 3. Immigration. 4. The
Lord’s Day and the Rest Day. 5. The Labor Problem. 6. The Family. 7.
National Reforms. 8. Amusements, With Special Reference to Purity.
9. Gambling. 10. Prevention and Punishment of Crime. 11. The Liquor
Problem. 12. The New Charity.”[131] All this was considered by an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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