Alasdair MacIntyre, Is Patriotism A Virtue? | Clarifying What Patriotism Is | Core Concepts

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[00:00:49]Alister MacIntyre begins his short article is patriotism a virtue by explicitly staking out his position as a moral philosopher, and he says that one of the central tasks of a moral philosopher is to articulate the convictions of the society in which he or she lives, so that these convictions may become available for rational scrutiny, which is a way of saying that they're trying to clarify what it is that people in that society believe, so that then it can be scrutinized. It can be criticized. It can be perhaps verified.

[00:01:34]And so he says that when you have a variety of conflicting and incompatible beliefs within one and the same community, either by rival groups who differ on key moral questions or one in the same set of individuals who find themselves within competing uh moral allegiances, this task is really important, and MacIntyre says, I've got a problem like that to work through right here, and that question is patriotism.

[00:02:07]Is it a virtue or isn't it? Or is it perhaps even at the other end of the scale so that it's not just you know, a neutral state, but rather actually a vice." And so he says, "You know, there's a lot of different views on this, but we're going to in in a somewhat artificial manner say that there's a spectrum of views that extend from one end where they say patriotism is a virtue, usually meaning my patriotism or the patriotism of people in my country, all the way over to patriotism is a vice. And MacIntyre says, "Listen, we can find representatives of this within contemporary American society and and many other societies as well."

[00:03:05]And so, you know, where do we get this patriotism as a virtue? He says, "Uh this was taken for granted by almost everyone in the 19th century, and it's a commonplace in the literary culture of the McGuffey Readers.

[00:03:21]Um the other patriotism as a vice, he says, is expressed with sometimes shocking clarity in the 1960s, protest movements and things like that."

[00:03:32]And MacIntyre says, "Uh I'm not actually going to say which of these is right or wrong.

[00:03:41]My goal is actually to clarify the issues, dividing them, and then it's up to you, dear reader, to figure out where you want to take a stand on this. So, how does he do that?

[00:03:58]In this very first section of the the article, he says that a necessary first step is going to be distinguishing patriotism, what he calls properly so-called. So, patriotism in any real sense of the term, we need to be able to distinguish that from two other sets of attitudes, he says. So, one of these, very common as we see especially in wartime, but also in peacetime, uh and in the in-between uh conflict stages as well.

[00:04:36]The first is exhibited by those, he says, who are protagonists of their own nation's causes. So, that's part of being patriotic, right? You take up your nation's causes. Why? Why do you do that? Because in your view, your nation is the champion of some great moral ideal.

[00:05:01]So, he gives you some interesting examples here. During World War I, we saw intellectuals belonging to all sorts of countries making some pretty big claims. So, he's going to use uh you know, Max Weber, uh who said that Imperial Germany should be supported because it was the cause of culture.

[00:05:26]Emile Durkheim, who's in France, claimed with equal vehemence that France should be supported because it was the cause of civilisatio, civilization, right? And we see this with Americans, you know, we are the representatives of of the the right way to do things, the post-war order, capitalism, liberal democracy, pick whatever else you want to roll in there. And lots of other countries do this as well. And so he says, um we see this here here and now with American politicians who claim that the United States deserves our allegiance because it champions the good of freedom. Now, in the time that MacIntyre is writing, against the evils of communism, right? This is during the Cold War. Uh there are some people today who like to throw around the word communist, but usually don't have much of a a clue about what it actually means and are basically just trying to score political points. But we see people doing that today with all sorts of other supposed enemies of the freedom that America embodies.

[00:06:32]And he says, "What distinguishes this attitude from patriotism? Why is this not actually patriotism?" is twofold.

[00:06:39]First, it's the ideal and not the nation which is the primary object of their regard. So if it's capitalism you're supporting, you actually like capitalism, you don't like the US.

[00:06:49]You'll you know, you would actually support any place that has capitalism or market freedom or whatever else you're going to call it.

[00:06:56]Second, insofar as their regard for the ideal provides good reasons for allegiance to their country, it provides good reasons for anyone at all to uphold their country's cause irrespective of their nationality or citizenship. What's he saying there?

[00:07:14]So if you're going to claim that France is somehow the representative of civilization, it's not only French people who should support France, it's everybody in the world because that's a great moral ideal.

[00:07:28]So that's different than patriotism.

[00:07:33]So he goes on and he says, "Patriotism is defined in terms of a kind of loyalty to a particular nation, which only those possessing that particular nationality can exhibit. And so he's going to use France as an example. Only French people can be patriotic about France.

[00:07:53]Anybody can make civilization their own. Now, of course, you could become nationalized, you know, you could be an immigrant and say, "I want to identify with France."

[00:08:04]Or I want to identify with the United States. Or I want to identify with Mexico or whatever new home country you have. Uh then he's going to go on and and make another important distinction.

[00:08:16]So, universal ideals, that's one thing.

[00:08:20]Patriotism is also not, as he's going to call it, mindless loyalty to one's own particular nation, which has no regard for characteristics of that nation. And as a matter of fact, patriotism is not going to be mindless loyalty anyway, but uh the characteristics of that nation, he says, are important. So, he says that patriotism generally and characteristically involves a peculiar regard not just for one's nation, but for the particular characteristics and the merits and the achievements of one's own nation. There's got to be something worth being patriotic about. So, if your nation is really just a a garbage heap, it's tough to be patriotic in any real sense about it. You can be tribalistic about it. You could say, "This is my turf."

[00:09:23]But if you really think your nation is a crap hole, you can't really effectively be patriotic.

[00:09:29]And so he says that, you know, the characteristics, merits, achievements are valued as merits and achievements and their character as merits and achievement provides reason supportive of the patriots attitudes, but the patriot does not value in the same way all their similar merits and achievements when they're the merits and achievements of some other nation. So, you know, we think our our democratic system with checks and balances is is the best and our constitution is wonderful cuz it's the oldest and all that. Uh we might look at another country and not appreciate those things in quite the same way. And they might actually be doing that better than us, all right?

[00:10:14]Now, he's going to go on and pick out another really important aspect of patriotism. So, he's distinguished what patriotism isn't. Well, what is patriotism then?

[00:10:26]So, he says, "All right, if patriotism is indeed a virtue, and that's still a big if at this point, what kind of virtue would it be?"

[00:10:36]He says, "It would be among the what he's calling loyalty-exhibiting virtues."

[00:10:44]Okay, so what are these? He's going to say, "Other examples would be marital fidelity, right? You're married to a spouse. You don't cheat on them. There's probably a whole bunch of other things rolled into fidelity as well. You don't lie to them, you know, you don't uh cook the books or anything like that. Um uh the love of one's own family and kin.

[00:11:11]Okay, that's relatable. Friendship.

[00:11:13]That's another loyalty-exhibiting um uh virtue." And then he says, uh "Loyalty to institutions like school and cricket or baseball clubs." And that entire He's from Scotland originally.

[00:11:30]Uh came over to the United States, spent a good portion of his life there, wants to be able to talk to both sides of the Atlantic with that. But, we can think of all sorts of other organizations and institutions we might belong to.

[00:11:43]So, he says, uh, "What's going on in these loyalty-exhibiting virtues?" Well, he says that there's two important things and then one other one that's going to be a little bit problematic. So, the first one is, he says there's regard for these particular persons or institutions or groups. And he calls these action-generating regards. So, you're going to do something or say something at least, right? And what is this going to be based on? A particular historical relationship of association between the person exhibiting the regard and the relevant person, institution, or group.

[00:12:30]So, you belong to a, let's take a sports team, right? You grow up rooting for them. You watch them on TV. Maybe you get to go to a game once in a while.

[00:12:44]They play. They hopefully do their best.

[00:12:46]You get up and you know, do a good job. I'm going to wear your jersey and all that. Those are, you know, ways of exhibiting loyalty. Somebody says the the team that you like isn't any good, well, you stick up for them, uh, even though maybe they actually aren't all that good. Uh, same thing though, let's take a less silly example.

[00:13:09]Uh, you could also be doing things, this this regard, for your spouse or your friend or your family member, right? And it's based on this, uh, relationship of association that you have with them. You might say, "Why are you doing this thing for this spouse and not for anybody else who you happen to come across who's of the same age and of the same gender?" He said, "Well, they're not my spouse.

[00:13:40]We've got a history, right?" So, that's part of it. And then MacIntyre talks about a feeling of gratitude.

[00:13:49]So, this is also important. Gratitude for the benefits which the individual takes him or herself to have received from the person, institution, or group.

[00:14:02]Now, he notes that this is not enough to get you patriotism or other attitudes of loyalty. They're not at their core primarily responses of gratitude, but it plays a role there because you could have gratitude towards others, but not feel that kind of loyalty. So, he says, "What patriotism and other attitudes involve is not just gratitude, but a particular kind of gratitude. And what those who treat patriotism and other loyalties as virtues are committed to believing is not that they owe their nation or whomever or whatever it is simply a requital for benefits received based on some relationship of reciprocity of benefits, right?" So, he says, "One may as a patriot love one's country or as a husband or wife exhibit marital fidelity and cite as partially supporting reasons one's country or one's spouse's merits and your own gratitude." So, these two two conditions, but there's going to be something else that's involved here.

[00:15:11]What is it?

[00:15:13]What is valued is valued as the merits as he's going to put it of my country or my spouse or as the benefits received by me from my country or spouse, the particularity and what he calls an ineliminable particularity of the relationship. It's essential and ineliminable, and in identifying it, we've already specified one central problem, he says. What is the relationship between patriotism as such, the regard for this particular nation, and the regard which the patriot has for the merits and achievement of his or her nation and the benefits which he or she has received. And he says, we're going to have to put that off a little bit and talk about another issue that's going to arise, which might lead us to think that patriotism is a vice. But at least now we have a solid conception of what MacIntyre takes patriotism properly so-called to be.

[00:16:16]It's not its facsimiles or simulacra of mindless devotion or substituting some sort of moral ideal for the nation. It is based in this loyalty that is generated over time, that involves um regard for the the nation, gratitude, but also that particularity as well.