Worldly Citizens: Civic Virtue without Patriotism
Simon Keller, Victoria University of Wellington
1. From civic virtue to patriotism
There can be no state without citizens, and no flourishing state without good
citizens. A healthy democratic state is sustained by citizens who, among other things,
follow the law, pay their taxes, contribute to the state‟s political life, work to make the
state more just, and are prepared to protect the state against other states, should the
need arise. 1 A civic virtue is a character trait that helps make a person a good citizen.
According to a natural and common line of thought, one civic virtue – and hence one
character trait a state has reason to commend and cultivate – is patriotism. 2 And the
reason why patriotism is so naturally regarded as a civic virtue is that it seems so
obviously better than the alternatives.
For many authors and many politicians, the pertinent alternative to patriotism
is selfishness. 3 People who do not have patriotic attachments to their countries, it is
assumed, are unlikely to be attached to anything much, apart from themselves.
Someone who cares only about himself will not be a good citizen, because he will not
make sacrifices for his country or his compatriots. The remedy to selfishness, on this
1
For a helpful taxonomy of the roles of the good citizen, see p. 631 of William A.
Galston, „Pluralism and Civic Virtue,‟ Social Theory and Practice 33:4 (2007): 625635.
2
The basic case for considering patriotism a civic virtue is nicely laid out (though not
endorsed) by Harry Brighouse in ch. 6 of his On Education (Abingdon, UK:
Routledge, 2006), see especially p. 102.
3
For a philosopher‟s view, see Andrew Oldenquist, „Loyalties,‟ Journal of
Philosophy 79 (1982): 173-193, especially pp. 187-191. For a politician‟s view, see
John McCain‟s article in Time magazine (25 June 2008). McCain, writing as the
Republican nominee for US president, says that patriotism is “service to a cause
greater than self-interest,” and draws a contrast between the “good citizen and patriot,”
on the one hand, and the “cynical and indifferent” person, on the other.
1
way of thinking, is the cultivation of loyalty to country. Someone who acts for her
country, not just for herself, is more likely to act as a good citizen.
For others, especially in the academic literature, the interesting alternative to
patriotism is not selfishness but cosmopolitanism. 4 The cosmopolitan‟s first
commitment is to humanity undifferentiated. The cosmopolitan sees himself as a
citizen of the world. While the cosmopolitan may show great concern for others, runs
the thought, he does not show any special concern for his own country and its people.
The cosmopolitan, it appears, will then have no motivation to promote the flourishing
of this country, rather than others: no motivation to promote justice here rather than
elsewhere, no motivation to protect this country rather than its neighbors.5 When the
comparison is with cosmopolitanism, patriotism becomes the cause of particularity.
The patriot, in contrast with the cosmopolitan, has the motivation required to be a
good citizen of her own country in particular.
The claim that patriotism is a civic virtue plays a special role in the prevailing
debate about the ethics of patriotism. Many arguments against patriotism depend upon
evaluations of patriotism as a narrow personal trait. It is argued that patriotism
involves the drawing of morally obnoxious boundaries of concern, that patriotism is a
kind of idolatry or self-abasement, and that patriotism encourages self-deception. 6
4
See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre, „Is Patriotism a Virtue?‟ The E. H. Lindley
Lecture, University of Kansas, 1984. Reprinted in Patriotism, ed. Igor Primoratz
(Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2002), pp. 43-58 (see especially pp. 48-50). See also
the debates in Martha C. Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen, For Love of Country? (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2002); and Stephen Nathanson, „Is Cosmopolitan Anti-Patriotism a
Virtue?‟ in Patriotism: Philosophical and Political Perspectives, eds. Igor Primoratz
and Aleksander Pavkovic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 75-91.
5
See Anna Stilz‟s case of Sally from Toronto, in Stilz, Liberal Loyalty: Freedom,
Obligation, and the State (Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 3-9.
6
Paul Gomberg, „Patriotism Is Like Racism,‟ Ethics 101 (1990): 144-150; Nussbaum,
„Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,‟ in For Love of Country? pp. 3-17; George Kateb,
„Is Patriotism a Mistake?‟ Social Research 67:4 (2000): 901-924; Simon Keller,
„Patriotism as Bad Faith,‟ Ethics 115:3 (2005): 563-592.
2
Against such arguments, the link between patriotism and good citizenship can be
played as a trump card. Whatever the drawbacks of patriotism viewed in isolation, it
may be said, from the point of view of the political community we cannot do without
it. Putting it another way: even if we concede that patriotism is distasteful intrinsically,
we can say that its instrumental value, through its connection with good citizenship, is
so great as to make it a good thing, all things considered.7
My goal in this paper is to interrupt the argument from the value of good
citizenship to the importance of patriotism, by drawing attention to a third alternative
to patriotism. There are many people who move from one country to another, and who
become perfectly good citizens of their new countries, without ever becoming patriots
of their new countries. These people are not purely selfish, and they need not be
cosmopolitans. They are, I shall say, “worldly citizens,” and their ways of thinking
about and engaging with their adopted countries provide a model of good nonpatriotic citizenship that anyone, in principle, can follow. When patriotism is
compared with worldly citizenship, not just with selfishness and cosmopolitanism,
patriotism looks less appealing.
Before getting to worldly citizenship, I need to do a little by way of setting up
the argument. First, I will say something about the nature of patriotism, and about
patriotic citizenship. That in hand, I will say how my question relates to two other
debates in the vicinity, which have recently gained a great deal of attention: the debate
about liberal nationalism, and the debate about special duties to compatriots. Then, I
shall give my description of worldly citizenship and its virtues, explaining why I think
that worldly citizenship is as good as – and in some ways better than – patriotic
7
Galston, „Pluralism and Civic Virtue,‟ 625-627; Eamonn Callan, „Love, Idolatry,
and Patriotism,‟ Social Theory and Practice 32:4 (2006): 525-546, p. 526; Sigal BenPorath, „Civic virtue out of necessity: Patriotism and democratic education,‟ Theory
and Research in Education 5:1 (2007): 41-59, p. 49.
3
citizenship. Finally, I shall offer some thoughts about the link between worldly
citizenship and cosmopolitanism.
2. Patriotism
Patriotism is loyalty to country. But not just anything counts as a country, in
the respect necessary for patriotism, and not just any loyalty to country counts as
patriotism. Here are some of the conditions that loyalty to country must meet, if it is
to qualify as patriotism.
First, the object of love – the country – must be politically unified and
independent, or must be an entity that the patriot wishes to be politically unified and
independent. You can be a patriot of America, but you cannot be a patriot of New
York, or of New England, or of greater North America, unless it is your aspiration
that New York or New England breaks away from America and achieves statehood
for itself, or that the countries of greater North America unite and form a single state.
Similarly, if it is your wish that America be absorbed into a greater North American
state, then you are not a patriot of America. As it is often put in the literature, to be a
patriot is to be committed to your country conceived as a project, where the project in
question involves the flourishing of the country as a distinct political entity. 8
Second, the country to which you are loyal must be your country, in quite a
demanding sense.9 If you are an American, then you might love France, and you
might even feel a kind of loyalty to France, but you cannot be a patriot of France,
8
MacIntyre, „Is Patriotism a Virtue?‟ pp. 52-53; Callan, „Love, Idolatry, and
Patriotism,‟ pp. 534-535; Igor Primoratz, „Patriotism – Morally Allowed, Required, or
Valuable?‟ in Primoratz (ed.) Pariotism, pp. 187-199, see pp. 188-189; Margaret
Moore, „Is Patriotism an Associative Duty?‟ The Journal of Ethics 13:4 (2009): 383399, see p. 385.
9
MacIntyre, „Is Patriotism a Virtue?‟ p. 44; Callan, „Love, Idolatry, and Patriotism,‟ p.
533.
4
because France is not yours. Nor can you simply decide to make France your country,
in the sense that would allow you to become a French patriot. In standard cases, at
least, you can no more decide which is to be your country than you can decide who is
to be your mother. If you move from America to France, you may become a citizen of
France, and you may make France your home, but that does not necessarily make you
French – not in the sense required for French patriotism.
Third, as a patriot your loyalty to country is, as we might say, basic. It is not
derived from any deeper commitment, or inculcated explicitly to serve some
independent purpose. Your attachment to America might be dependent upon your
commitment to democracy, so that you support America for just so long as supporting
America is a good way to further the cause of democracy; then, your attachment to
America is not the attachment of a patriot. You might be loyal to America just
because you think that being loyal to America is fun, so that the minute it ceases to be
fun, you would see no reason for your loyalty to survive; then, again, you are not a
patriotic American. If you are patriotic American, then you are loyal to America in the
first instance, as you might be loyal to your child or your parent in the first instance –
not, that is, because America meets some independently specified value or role. 10
Fourth, and related to the last two points, the loyalty of a patriot is a kind of
expression of identity. To be an American patriot, you must be American, but you
must also take it to matter – to be an important fact about who you are – that you are
American. To some extent, your conception of yourself must be tied in with your
conception of your country. You cannot be a patriot, while at the same time thinking
that what happens to your country happens simply to other people, or that whether
10
MacIntyre, „Is Patriotism a Virtue?‟ p. 44.
5
your country succeeds or fails means nothing for your life. To this extent, insofar as
you are patriotic, you take the fate of your country personally. 11
Those, anyway, are four features of patriotism. None of them is supposed to be
a point of controversy. Among writers who take themselves to be talking about
“patriotism” in its ordinary sense, at least, the four features are widely accepted as
essential elements of patriotism. There are other aspects of patriotism apart from these,
but these are four that I take to be uncontested, and to play the most important roles in
allowing us to understand patriotic citizenship. 12
There is no guarantee that a patriot will be a good citizen. A patriot could have
a nasty, exclusionist conception of her country‟s national project; she could have a
hatred for those whom she thinks fail to live up to the country‟s values; she could be
weak-willed or easily manipulated; she could be wrong about what it takes for her
country to flourish. But, it is easy to see how someone who is a patriot, displaying the
four features of patriotism just mentioned, could thereby be likely to be a good citizen.
If a patriot lives in her own country, then the country to whose laws she is
subject, to which she owes taxes, and so on, will be a country in whose flourishing
she takes a deep and personal interest. She will not relate to the country simply as one
individual to an impersonal institution, or to the country‟s other inhabitants simply as
one individual to other individuals. It will matter to her, for its own sake, that her
country and its inhabitants do well. She will have a motive to make sacrifices for the
sake of her country‟s flourishing, whether that means working to make her country
more just, or, at the extreme, defending her country on the battlefield. Her
commitment to her country will not be conditional, in any straightforward respect.
11
Igor Primoratz, „Patriotism: Mapping the Terrain,‟ Journal of Moral Philosophy 5
(2008): 204-226, see pp. 223-224.
12
I give a more complete characterization of patriotism in ch. 3 of my The Limits of
Loyalty (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
6
She will not see the country simply as a vehicle for her independent goals or values.
She will have a special focus upon serving and improving her country in particular.
Accordingly, there are reasons to think the patriot ideally placed to perform as a good
citizen.
3. Liberal nationalism and special obligations
It may be helpful to locate the debate about patriotism and citizenship with
respect to two other debates about citizenship that have recently received a great deal
of attention. Some prominent political philosophers argue for a view called “liberal
nationalism.” They say that liberal principles can (or must) be manifested within a
political community made up of individuals united by bonds of shared ethnicity, or
shared religion, or shared history (real or imagined), or a shared and distinctive way
of life: a community that constitutes a nation, not just a polity. 13 The demand for
liberal nationalism, for present purposes, can be seen as one that incorporates and then
goes beyond the demand for patriotic citizenship. The allegiance to nation
recommended by liberal nationalists is similar to the allegiance to country displayed
by a patriot, with the added condition that the cause of the country should coincide
with the cause of a nation. The question of the connection between patriotism and
nationalism (and liberalism) is complicated, but what matters for now is that when I
advocate an alternative to patriotic citizenship, I take myself thereby to advocate an
alternative to liberal nationalism too.
The debate about patriotism, along with the debate about nationalism,
concerns motivation; it concerns patterns of emotion, loyalty, identity, and concern.
13
The major defenses of liberal nationalism are Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism
(Princeton University Press, 1993); and David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995). For critical discussion, see Stilz, Liberal Loyalty, especially
ch. 6.
7
Another question about our relationships with our countries, which more narrowly
concerns action, is whether we have special obligations to our countries and
compatriots. Some political philosophers argue that we can derive such special
obligations from an impartial or liberal starting point, properly construed. The claim is
that purely impartial or liberal principles can show why we should pay taxes to our
own countries but not other countries, work to promote justice in our own countries
before other countries, and so on.14 Strictly speaking, this claim is independent of the
question about patriotism, because it is possible to recognize and fulfill special
obligations to your country or your compatriots without feeling any patriotic
sentiment towards them. Having taken a loan from a bank, you could see that you
have an obligation to repay the loan, rather than spending your money on other things,
and thereby be motivated to meet your obligation to the bank, even without feeling
any loyalty to your bank, even while despising it. In the same way, you might see that
your first obligation is to your country, while wishing it was not – and hence while
failing to be patriotic.
4. Worldly citizens
There are some people who do not have countries of their own, and there are
some people who have countries of their own but do not live in them. I am not
thinking only of people who are stateless or exiled, but also of people who choose to
move, for whatever reason, from one country to another.
14
See, for example, Robert E. Goodin, „What is So Special about Our Fellow
Countrymen?‟ Ethics 98:4 (1988): 663-686. Anna Stilz‟s recent Liberal Loyalty
argues that citizens have an obligation to participate with their compatriots in certain
activities of collective agency, required in order for the liberal state to exist and to
flourish. While Stilz presents her argument as a defense of “loyalty,” it is really about
special obligation. The book contains no suggestion that citizens should fulfill their
obligations out of loyalty to country, rather than out of some other motivation. See
Stilz‟s definition of “loyalty” on p. vii, and the discussions on p. 172 and in ch. 7.
8
Think of a person who moves successively from country to country during her
childhood. She might be born in Oklahoma City but move with her family to Geneva
before she turns three; then she might live for a few years at a time in Hong Kong,
Cape Town, and Paris, before finally taking a job in Reading and, eventually,
becoming a British citizen. If we ask her, “Which country is yours?” she might
honestly say, “No country, really. I was born in America, but I am not really an
American. Geneva, Hong Kong, Cape Town, and Paris all feel, in their own ways,
like home, but I could never claim to be Swiss, or Chinese, or South African, or
French. And while I am happy living in Reading, I come to Britain as an outsider. I do
not have one country that I can consider, above all others, to be mine.”
Someone who grows up in Australia, then moves to America to study and
decides to stay, may continue to identify himself as an Australian, even while taking
up American citizenship, and even while fully embracing his new life in America.
Someone who immigrates to New Zealand from India, and starts a family in his
adopted country, may honestly say, “I will never again live in India; my home is now
in New Zealand. But, while my children are New Zealanders, I will always be Indian.”
It is not possible for people like these to be patriotic citizens. The countries to
whose laws they are subject, to whom they pay taxes, and in which they vote, are not
their countries, in the sense that matters for patriotism. The Australian who moves to
America may never be able to classify himself as an American, still less an American
patriot – even, again, if he becomes formally an American citizen. Even as an
American citizen, making a life in America, his patriotic feelings, if any, may be
directed still at Australia.
Yet, it is obviously possible for people like these to be good citizens. An
immigrant to a new country can follow the country‟s laws and pay her taxes; she can
9
volunteer to help the vulnerable; she can work as an activist; she can take up political
causes; and she can join a political party, stand for office, and strive to achieve justice
within her new country. Immigrants often conduct themselves as perfectly good
citizens, even when they do not have access to patriotic motivation. The good
citizenship of immigrants shows that good non-patriotic citizenship is not only
possible, but common.
Sometimes, an immigrant‟s motivation for acting as a good citizen will be,
even if not genuinely patriotic, pseudo-patriotic. The Indian who moves to New
Zealand may not become a New Zealand patriot, but he may learn to think like a New
Zealand patriot. In his civic activity within New Zealand, think and behave as if he
were a patriotic New Zealander. If that is the characteristic attitude of good citizens of
adopted countries, then it does not stand as an interesting alternative to patriotic
citizenship. But there is another attitude, quite different from the attitudes of the
patriot and the pseudo-patriot, which is commonly found among good citizens of
adopted countries, and that involves a much more complex pattern of commitments.
An immigrant to a new country is likely to form her first attachments not to
the new country itself, but to the particular places and communities within which she
makes her new life. If the Australian immigrant makes his home in New York, for
example, then he may well form an attachment to New York, and come to identify as
a New York local, indeed as a New Yorker, without ever coming to identify as an
American. He may well feel that he is at home in New York, and that he has a bond
with other people from New York, without having any sense that his home also takes
in Dallas, or the Mid-West, or California, just because those places, like New York,
are in America. That he comes to experience New York as a local will not at all
prevent him from experiencing other parts of America as a foreigner.
10
Similarly, the person who lives successively in Oklahoma City, Geneva, Hong
Kong, Cape Town, Paris, and Reading may feel attached to each of these places,
without feeling any independent attachment to America, Switzerland, China, South
Africa, France, or Britain. She may feel that she is coming home when she visits Paris,
without feeling that she is coming home every time she enters France. Speaking
generally, it is common that the immigrant‟s sense of place, and of identification with
particular communities and ways of life, settles not on the new country, but on the
particular parts or aspects of the new country with which she becomes familiar.
A first crucial difference between the patriotic citizen and the immigrant
citizen, as described, is that where the patriot‟s basic attachment is to the country
itself, the immigrant‟s basic attachments are to places and communities within the
country. When someone lives in many countries successively, or grows up in one
country and moves to another, she may yet have a strong sense of place, and a strong
sense of which places do and not feel like home. It is just that “home,” for her, is not
coextensive with a single country.
A further difference between the patriotic citizen and the immigrant citizen is
that the immigrant is much more likely to understand the country as one among many.
As someone who has lived in another country, and whose first experience of the new
country is as an outsider, the immigrant will place the new country in a more worldly
context, seeing its political arrangements, its way of life, and so on, as one way things
could be, but not as a way things can normally be assumed to be. The immigrant
citizen will always have an awareness of how her adopted country is distinct and how
it is idiosyncratic. The patriot is likely to see the world from within the perspective of
her own country. The immigrant, even as she forms attachments to parts and aspects
of the country, is likely also to know how it looks from outside.
11
The kind of citizen I have tried to identify is not a world citizen, but is also not
a patriot. She is, I want to say, a “worldly citizen”: genuinely a citizen of a particular
country, and with particular attachments to places and communities within that
country, but taking upon her country a perspective informed by her knowledge that
that country is not the only one there is.
The immigrant citizen may be a good citizen of her adopted country. Worldly
citizenship can, in principle, be good citizenship. But can it be as good as patriotic
citizenship? Looking at the differences between worldly and patriotic citizenship, is
there a reason to prefer one to the other?
5. Civic motivation
One way to assess a person in her role as citizen is to ask how she is motivated
and what she is prepared to do. Citizens are called upon to perform tasks and make
sacrifices for the good of the community. A good citizen follows the law and pays her
taxes, even when it does not serve her interests. She plays her part in civic life, which
could involve volunteering, running for office, or working as an activist. Under
extreme circumstances, the mark of a good citizen is the willingness to risk her life
and fight for her country.
To some extent, being a good citizen is just a matter of caring for those around
you. To that extent, there is no reason to think that the patriotic citizen or the worldly
citizen will be a better citizen than the other. The Indian who has moved to New
Zealand is not any less likely than a homegrown New Zealander to have a concern for
the vulnerable, to give to charity and volunteer for good causes, to be a parents‟
representative in the management committee of the local school, or, generally, to be
willing to put in an effort to help other people in his community. When it comes to
12
other elements of good citizenship, however, patriotic citizenship may appear to hold
an advantage.
The country is the direct object of a basic loyalty of the patriotic citizen, and it
takes a central place in her self-conception. That some act would advance the
flourishing of her country will always, for the patriot, be a reason to perform it. It will
be possible for the patriot to be moved by the simple thought of doing something for
her country: the thought of acting “for America” or “for France.”
In contrast, the country itself will not play a basic motivational role in the
thinking of the worldly citizen. The Australian living in America, for example, will
not think of himself centrally as American, and will not be moved to do something
just “for America.” Yet, the worldly citizen can still do things that promote the
flourishing of the country, and can still find reason to care about the country, even if
her motivation must be indirect.
If the immigrant to America has become a local of New York, then he will be
moved to do things that are good for his city and for communities and institutions
within the city. He might, for example, want to support an art gallery, or the arts
generally, in the part of New York in which he lives, and that may move him to take
an interest in the acts and policies of the American government as they relate to the
arts. He may also have certain commitments of principle that lead him to get involved
in local and wider political causes. He might be a libertarian or a socialist; he might
care about animal welfare or capital punishment; he might want to protect wilderness
areas or help underprivileged children get better access to education. As a person who
lives in America and has particularized attachments to things within America, as well
holding general politically salient values and principles, he can find many reasons to
13
do things that are good for America, and indeed to care about America as a political
entity and to want America to do well.
The worldly citizen‟s concern for her country will be derived from other
attachments and commitments, but that does not mean that her concern for her
country will be slight or unreliable. Two crucial points are easily overlooked. First,
the role played by a country and its policies is, for those within the country, farreaching and all-encompassing. Any concerned citizen who has decided to live
permanently in a country, and who has formed attachments and taken on causes
within that country, will have a reason to want the country to flourish politically, even
if her concern for the country is derived, not basic. Second, and most importantly, the
structure of a commitment is not a measure of its strength.
A commitment can be basic, yet weak. Your concern for the fortunes of your
favorite football team may be basic – not derived from any deeper commitments – but
you might nonetheless be only a mildly enthusiastic fan, and not care about your
football team very much. Conversely, a commitment can be derived, yet very strong.
You may have no basic loyalty to your local school, but you might put a great deal of
effort into improving the school, and you might be prepared to fight furiously for its
existence if it comes under threat, because you care about education and you care
about your neighborhood, and because it is the school your children attend. Your
commitment to the school may be derived from your more general commitments and
your commitment to your own children, but that does not prevent your commitment to
the school from being very strong.
I suspect that the conflation of the structure with the strength of political
commitments is a mistake embedded in a great deal of thinking about patriotism and
nationalism. Political philosophers often seem to assume that if we are to have
14
citizens with strong commitments to the state, then we must have people with basic
commitments to the state. But a person can care deeply about the state, not for its own
sake but for its vital connection with the causes to which she has more fundamental
commitments.
Consider the kinds of motivations that a soldier might have in marching off to
war under the flag of his country. He might be moved by thoughts of his country; he
might be prepared to die “for France” or “for America.” Or, he might be moved by
thoughts of smaller things within his country; he might be prepared to die in defense
of his family and his city and the life he loves. Or, he might fight for principles; he
might be prepared to die for freedom or democracy or the fight against fascism. The
first of these is the distinctive motive of the patriot, but the others make perfect sense,
and can be very powerful. You do not need to be patriot to be prepared to make even
the most significant of sacrifices in defense of a county.
6. Civic judgment
It is one thing to be motivated to help your country flourish, and another to
make the judgments and choices that actually help your country flourish. Part of what
it is to be a good citizen is to make considered, judicious, community-minded
decisions about such questions as how to vote, which policies to support, when to
disobey a law, and when and how to exert influence on elected representatives. A
person who cares greatly about the health of his country, but who suffers from
misinformation or exhibits completely misguided values, will not act as a citizen
should. So another way to assess a person in her role as citizen is to ask about the
quality of her judgment, as it relates to her performance in that role.
15
To exercise good civic judgment, a citizen must be informed about the state of
her country, and about what actions and policies will have what outcomes. She must
also have right-minded values, so that the actions she performs and policies she
supports are those that will indeed make her country better. On both scores, the civic
judgment of a person will be of greater quality if she has an understanding of what is
special about her country. Good civic judgment arises partially from an appreciation
of the values and ways of life by which a country is characterized.
A worldly citizen has local knowledge and an appreciation of local values.
The judgments of the worldly citizen will be informed by a desire to protect what is
good in what she finds around her. The immigrant to America who lives in New York
can make judgments as a New Yorker, even if not as an American; the immigrant to
New Zealand can take a political interest arising from his intimate acquaintance with
certain places and communities within New Zealand. In that respect, the judgments of
the worldly citizen are similar to the judgments of the patriotic citizen. In other
respects, they are likely to be better.
First, the worldly citizen, who understands the country as one among many,
will be better able to see what is good and bad about the country, and where that
places the country in relation to the rest of the world. She is less likely than the patriot
to want to classify all values she finds around her as “American values,” for example,
and hence more likely to see how far those values really extend, within and outside
the country, where they really come from, and to what changes they are susceptible.
To that extent, the worldly citizen is likely to make superior judgments about what
should be changed about the country and how change could be achieved.
Second, the worldly citizen will not face a temptation to oversimplify her
country, or to overreach in her judgments about what her country is and how it should
16
be. A patriot requires a conception of her country as a basic object of loyalty; she
needs to have a picture of the thing about which she has a fundamental concern.
People really, however, are immediately acquainted with only some aspects of their
own countries. Most of us have no intimate knowledge of the lives of most of our
compatriots. An American who grows up in New York should not presume to have
any special inside knowledge of life in rural Arkansas, just because Arkansas is in
America, any more than should the person who moves to New York from Australia.
But the patriot needs – or will at least be tempted – to make judgments on the basis of
generalizations about her country, because she needs to represent her country to
herself as a country distinct from others, set apart by certain specified characteristics
and values, so that it can then be the focus of a non-derived loyalty. That is a kind of
distortion of judgment to which the worldly citizen, who need make no pretense to
knowing about a whole country, need not be subject.
Third, the worldly citizen‟s civic judgment will not be entwined with her view
of herself. Patriotic identification with country is often of a kind that produces pride
or shame; the patriot‟s esteem for his country is related to his self-esteem. As a result,
the patriot is likely to hold on to a particular picture of his country, and to feel that if
that picture is under attack then he is under attack too. When your self-esteem is
invested in something, it is often more difficult to see that thing as it really is.
Compared to the patriot, the worldly citizen has one fewer obstacle to taking a cleareyed view of her country – of how her country is and of how it could change – and
hence one more advantage over the patriot when it comes to making judgments that
will help the country improve and flourish. 15
15
See Amy Gutmann, „Civic Minimalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Patriotism: Where
does Democratic Education Stand in Relation to Each?‟ in Stephen Macedo and Yael
Tamir (eds.) Moral and Political Education (New York University Press, 2002) pp.
17
Consider again the person who lives in several countries, then settles in
Reading. Imagine that during her time in Reading, Britain faces a referendum on
whether or not it should become a republic. For any British citizen, the decision raises
questions about how Britain would be different if it were no longer a monarchy, and
questions about what would be the best form for any new British republic to take. The
immigrant‟s experience as someone who has lived in Britain under a monarchy, and
also in various other countries under other political systems, will enable her to reach
especially well informed answers to these questions. She is likely to have a relatively
clear-eyed view of what would happen to Britain as a result of any given change to its
present system of government. In deciding how to vote in the referendum, she will be
informed by an understanding of the community and culture she finds around her,
without imagining that what she knows about Britain is representative of Britain as a
whole.
For a British patriot, the question of whether Britain should become a republic
is likely to raise further, more personal issues. The patriot is likely to worry about
how “Britishness” would fare, if the monarchy were or were not overthrown, and to
worry about what a change in the British state would mean for his conception of
himself. He may be swayed by intimations that for Britain to become a republic
would be for Britain to admit that it was wrong – and perhaps that the French were
right – all along. From the other side, he may feel the force of suggestions that the
British people would be growing up – and by extension, that he himself would be
23-57. Gutmann offers a view in many respects similar to mine, and to which I am
indebted. She emphasizes the importance of students‟ learning about their own
country by placing it in the wider world. (See especially pp. 44-53.) She says,
however, that to learn about the various lifestyles and cultures within one‟s country,
as distinct from those overseas, is to “learn about oneself” (p. 52). Her model of civic
education then imports elements of the patriotic identification of self with country,
and the accompanying distortions of civic judgment.
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growing up – if they were to cast the monarchy aside and replace it with a republic.
All of these issues are distractions. They steer the British patriot away from making a
constructive and informed judgment about what is best for his country.
In many ways, then, a patriotic attachment to country can be an impediment to
a person‟s judgment in her role as citizen. This is one respect, then, in which the
worldly citizen can be expected to be not just as good a citizen as the patriot, but
better.
7. Achievability
Whatever else may be true of patriotic citizenship, it is achievable. Patriotism
is so common as to seem natural, and we appear to know much about how to cultivate
patriotism among citizens, especially through the education system. For all the
attractions of worldly citizenship, it might not look like a model of citizenship that we
could hope to be widely manifested. Most citizens, after all, are not immigrants, and if
worldly citizenship is only available to immigrant citizens, then it can hardly be
presented as a true alternative to patriotic citizenship. A further question to ask in
assessing worldly citizenship, then, is whether we could realistically hope to have
worldly citizenship for all.
I have introduced worldly citizenship by way of the perspective of the good
immigrant citizen, but there is nothing about that perspective that makes it available
only to immigrants. The perspective of the worldly citizen has three relevant features.
The first is an appreciation for the local, particular places and communities with
which she is immediately acquainted. The second is an understanding of and
commitment to general principles of justice and compassion. The third is a sense of
how her country of citizenship fits into the wider world.
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There is nothing artificial about the first feature of worldly citizenship; it
requires simply a proper appreciation for what you find around you. The second
feature of worldly citizenship, involving understanding of general principles, is
perhaps difficult to cultivate, but it is an essential aspect of good citizenship however
understood; even a good patriotic citizen must have a sense of what makes for a just
society and of how we ought to treat our fellow humans. A more significant challenge
is presented by the third feature, involving knowledge of other countries and of how
the citizen‟s own country might be viewed from the outside. It might be difficult to
see how this aspect of worldly citizenship could be manifested in someone who has
only ever lived in one place.
The best response to the challenge, I think, is not to downplay the difficulty of
having people learn about other countries and see how their own country looks from
the outside, but rather to emphasize the artificiality of patriotic education, and by
extension of the perspective of the patriotic citizen. It is easy to forget how inventive
we must be in order to present a country in a manner that encourages people to
identify with it, and to take it as an object of a basic loyalty. 16 It takes active
intervention to cultivate patriotism. We must tell stories in particular ways; we must
decide what to make part of the country‟s narrative; we must decide what are to be the
country‟s defining symbols and qualities; we must encourage patriotic activities, like
singing the anthem and saluting the flag. This is not just a matter of making a person
recognize and embrace his own true self, but is instead a matter of having a person
identify with things quite distant from his own experience. What an Australian patriot
sees as “Australian” will go well beyond what he finds in his own life and what he
16
Sigal Ben-Porath‟s case for teaching patriotism in „Civic virtue out of necessity‟
rests partly on the claim that patriotism is a “moral reality” that arises whether we
want it to or not; see especially p. 49.
20
finds immediately around him, and will have little to do with the lives and
circumstances of many of his fellow Australians. There is nothing more natural about
causing a child growing up in New York to identify with the Wild West than there is
about causing him to understand how America‟s political system is like and unlike the
political systems in various other countries.
Having people come to see their country in a certain way is always a
constructive process, never just a matter of leaving people as they are. It always
requires people to be taken beyond the local and the familiar. There is a genuine
choice to be made about how we encourage the citizen to imagine his country. Do we
encourage the citizen to identify closely with the country, and to accept a picture of it
and his relationship with it that makes him most likely to take it as an object of a basic
loyalty – and thereby cultivate patriotic citizenship? Or do we encourage the citizen to
understand the country as one that has a special significance for him and the things he
cares about, but that is ultimately one country among many – and thereby cultivate
worldly citizenship?
It is possible that humans are naturally primed to be patriotic, but not to be
worldly. It is possible that we will always have more success in encouraging people to
be patriotic citizens than in encouraging people to be worldly citizens. But who can
know? We should not imagine that the matter is settled. Certainly, it is not as simple
as saying, “People have a need for identity and will always attach themselves to what
they know, so people will naturally become patriotic”; that claim rests on an overly
simplified conception of patriotism.
8. Worldly citizenship and cosmopolitanism
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It is obvious, upon reflection, that good non-patriotic citizenship is possible,
and indeed common. That is demonstrated by the existence of good citizenship among
immigrants. The good citizenship of immigrants, I have tried to show, is
characteristically of a genuinely different kind from the good citizenship of patriots; it
is “worldly citizenship.” In some respects it is preferable to patriotic citizenship, and
it is, at least in principle, available to everybody. It follows that those of us who think
patriotism inherently flawed should not be rushed to the conclusion that patriotism is
needed anyway, because it is needed for good citizenship.
At the beginning of the paper, I introduced the idea of worldly citizenship by
contrast not just with patriotic citizenship, but also with cosmopolitanism. Unlike the
worldly citizen, I said, the cosmopolitan has no attachment to anything more
particular than the whole of the world, or the whole of humanity. That construal of
cosmopolitanism, however, is really just a (dialectically useful) parody. Nobody could
ever have, or want to have, attachments to no particular places or communities at all.
The worldly citizen is not a citizen of the world, but the perspective of the
worldly citizen is, in one respect, recognizably cosmopolitan. While the worldly
citizen need not claim to know the whole world, or even especially to care about the
whole world, her view of herself and her country of citizenship is crucially informed
by her awareness that the whole world is out there. She does not assume that what is
found within one country is thereby “hers,” and that what is found in other countries
is not. She has her own home, and her own places and her own communities, but she
is, in one respect, open to the world, able to see herself and her attachments from an
outside point of view.
Cosmopolitanism can look silly and presumptuous when we imagine the
cosmopolitan as someone who sees the whole world as his home. You might love
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Paris as much as Sydney, but if you really want to assert that you are equally at home
wherever you are in the world – whether in Paris or Sydney or the street markets of
Morocco or the slums of Rio de Janeiro or the mountain villages of the Hindu Kush –
then you are either deluded or a liar. A less silly version of the cosmopolitan is
someone who recognizes herself to be just one person in the world; who sees the
world in terms of lines of similarity and difference that do not follow state and
cultural boundaries; who is aware that most of the world is, for her, foreign and
unknowable, but also that foreign and unknowable people are humans like her; and
who has some idea of how she must appear to people from elsewhere, as well as of
how they appear to her. So imagined, I think, the cosmopolitan shares much with the
worldly citizen. 17
In that connection, let me finish with a final point in favor of the worldly
citizenship, and the related version of cosmopolitanism. In encouraging someone to
be patriotic, you will probably encourage her to have beliefs and a self-conception
that are, in the end, deluded. When the patriot takes her country as an object of basic
loyalty, picturing it as a distinct entity with a distinguishing narrative and purpose and
set of defining characteristics, she is almost certain to see her country, and the rest of
the world, wrongly. In contrast, when the worldly citizen sees her own local places
and communities as special and important, but as placed in a much larger world, she
sees them as they really are.
The same is true of the respective evaluative dispositions of the patriot and
worldly citizen. In the end, what justifies an act is never that it is good “for country.”
The country should not be fetishized; it should not be treated as though it matters for
its own sake, over and above the people and causes it serves. A citizen who values the
17
See Kwame Anthony Appiah‟s description of “rooted cosmopolitanism,” in The
Ethics of Identity (Princeton University Press, 2005), ch. 6.
23
country for its role in serving principles of justice and compassion, and for its
importance in protecting and advancing the flourishing of the smaller places and
communities for which she cares, ascribes to the country the kind of value that a
country really has. 18
18
This paper was originally presented at a conference on patriotism held at Dartmouth
College in 2009. I am very grateful for comments received from attendees at the
conference, especially Michelle Clarke, Thomas J. Donahue, and William Galston. I
am also grateful for helpful comments from Gillian Brock, and from two referees.
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