The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of HistoryPartridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Philosophy
The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of History
Partridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Education; History -- Philosophy; War
The main root of group antipathy is in all probability fear. Hatred is
an aspect of the aggressive defensive toward the stranger. Hatred is a
part of the aggressive reaction. As an expression of ferocity toward
all who are not known to be friendly, it belongs to the first line of
defense. Hatred is likely to be strong in the female because the
attitude of the female is universally defensive.
In the beginning, as MacCurdy (37) says, the contrasts between groups
were sharp, and these definitely separated groups must have felt
toward one another not only antagonism but a sense of being different
in kind. Intensity of feelings of opposition tends to magnify small
differences into specific differences. This sense of specific
difference is never lost, not even in the consciousness of enlightened
nations in regard to one another, and we may see it to-day displayed
as a mystic belief, on the part of many peoples, in their own
superiority. Nations are always outsiders to one another, and the
sense of strangeness perennially sustains defensive attitudes and
moods of hatred. The friendship of nations can never be very secure,
because the old idea of difference of kind is never quite abandoned.
Some degree of enmity seems always to be felt toward the foreigner;
that is, toward all who are not interested in the protective functions
of the group. MacCurdy thinks the intensity of suspicion and hatred of
peoples toward one another belongs to the pathological field, and that
one expression of this is the peculiarity of the mental processes by
which nations always justify their own cause in war. This, however, is
perhaps an exaggeration, since we can trace these states of mind in
all the history of the race.
How deep-seated the enmities and the sense of strangeness among
nations may be is seen in the fact that national groups living in
close proximity to one another tend to become less friendly rather
than to become affiliated. These feelings gradually produce conceptual
entities, which stand for the reality of the foreign. These concepts
are deposits, so to speak, from a great number of affective reactions,
and they always contain imaginative content based upon enmity and
suspicion. This underlying enmity between neighboring peoples is not
something rare in the world. All foreigners, even in the minds of the
most intelligent of peoples, are reconstructions, caricatures. These
feelings and attitudes are strong and deep and they prevent genuine
friendship among nations. We tend to think of all foreigners as in
some degree malicious, as designing, and lacking in the good qualities
and right habits which we ourselves possess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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