Humanity, Patriotism, and Global Justice

Introduction

The role of patriotism and patriotic priority in addressing global justice concerns is a source of contention in contemporary political philosophy. Some philosophers argue that nationality, and its corresponding patriotic duties, either do not exist or should not be significant factors when assessing what nations and peoples should do in order to work towards remedying global injustices. In stark contrast to these thinkers, philosophers like David Miller argue that national ties are morally significant and that they must be factored into global justice considerations. 

In this paper, I will first explicate what patriotism is with references to Igor Primoratz’s SEP article on patriotism and sources found in that article. I will then argue that patriotism, and its moral derivative patriotic priority, are morally significant and a moral good with the help of Alasdair MacIntyre’s awareness of the epistemological importance that community and nation have for human moral formation. I will then argue that patriotic priority should be factored into how one determines the obligations nations and peoples have towards global justice efforts by arguing that patriotic duties, and the national ties from which they derive, are grounded in ties between all humanity. I shall accomplish this with the aid of David Miller and his arguments for patriotic priority. I will then explicate an objection to my argument that says that grounding patriotic obligations in more fundamental human moral obligations undermines the significance of patriotic obligations because the more fundamental obligations should take priority in virtue of the fact that they are more fundamental, and therefore ontological “first.” I shall respond to this by arguing that the epistemological importance communities and nations have in the moral formation of their members requires that local obligations take precedence over global obligations. I will then present another objection that says that placing national obligations above global ones is arbitrary because there are a multitude of other communities of which people are a part. I will respond to this by arguing that it is irrelevant that people are part of many communities when determining that national obligations should take precedence over global ones since all that matters in determining which set of obligations should take precedence is which one is epistemologically more fundamental and national obligations are epistemologically more fundamental than global obligations. 

Ultimately, I will argue that patriotic priority exists, is morally significant, and is relevant to global justice concerns since they are grounded in ties which flow from the shared humanity of all.

What is Patriotism and Patriotic Priority?

Firstly, it is important to define what patriotism is in order to discuss its importance and moral implications. A very basic understanding of patriotism would say that it is the love of one’s country and while this captures some of the essential concepts within patriotism, there are details lacking in this barebones conception. A deeper and more comprehensive formulation of patriotism can be found in the work of “Stephen Nathanson” as he “defines patriotism as involving: special affection for one’s own country … a sense of personal identification with the country” a “special concern for the well-being of the country” and a “willingness to sacrifice to promote the country’s good” (Primoratz & Nathanson 33-35). This is a richer explication of what patriotism is as it includes some of the moral implications of patriotism within its analysis and provides us with a good definition with which to work.

With this conceptual framework in place, we can explore what patriotic priority is and how it derives from patriotism. One helpful place to start would be Alasdair MacIntrye’s elucidation of patriotism as he says that “patriotism … is defined in terms of a kind of loyalty to a particular nation which only those possessing that particular nationality can exhibit” (MacIntyre 4). How MacIntyre relates patriotism and nationality is important as it is nationality which enables one to exercise patriotism and so any obligations that can be attributed to patriotism, or can be described as patriotic duties, ultimately come from nationality. This entails that patriotic obligations are particularist in nature which, while it might seem obvious, is still important to note. Now, patriotic priority, if it existed, would be a kind of obligation that has bearing on how one ought to help others and it would have bearing on all of one’s moral obligation. This is because patriotic priority would help to determine which people one’s moral obligations are first ordered towards. However, it would not determine what the obligations, in themselves, are. For example, patriotic priority, if it were real, would not say that it is moral only give food to hungry people who share one’s nationality, rather it would say that one is morally compelled to give food to hungry people who share one’s nationality before they give such aid to people who do not share one’s nationality. In essence, patriotic priority determines the order in which one’s moral obligations are ordered and exercised towards others. 

Does Patriotic Priority Exist?

Now that our definitions are in place, we can adjudicate whether or not patriotic priority exists. One obvious point to consider that provides an affirmative answer to this question is the fact that in the real world, patriotism motivates people to perform moral actions. For example, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many people in the United States offered aid to the people of New Orleans who were affected by this natural disaster because of a sense of patriotic duty and kinship with their fellow Americans. Another example would be how united the country was in the wake of 9/11 since even though only one small part of the country, New York City, was directly affected by the event, it was seen as an attack on the entire United States in large part because of a sense of unity and relatedness that was caused by patriotism. In both these cases, humanitarian efforts and charitable acts performed by Americans were, at least, in part motivated by a sense of patriotic duty. Granted, these cases did not, in themselves, require Americans to place their fellow countrymen and women, in some way, above the citizens of other nations, but the fact that Americans felt a moral obligation to their fellow Americans in virtue of their shared nationality demonstrates that the belief that nationality, and the patriotism which derives from it, has bearing on one’s moral obligations, is an ordinary belief. Moreover, the ordinary belief that nationality affects one’s moral obligations does, indeed, seem to entail that one place their fellow compatriots above foreigners when determining who to aid first because as long as some obligations are ordered towards compatriots in virtue of their shared nationality, then it follows that those obligations, and so at least some obligations, are not ordered towards foreigners in the same way that they are ordered towards compatriots since foreigners do not share one’s nationality. Thus, it seems that, at the very least, patriotic priority is the logical conclusion of an ordinary belief, if not an ordinary belief itself. 

This real world observation correlates with an epistemological reality which Alasdair MacIntyre investigates in his famous lecture: “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”. This reality is the reality of how essential community and communal living is for proper human moral formation. He begins his lecture by acknowledging that a very popular view of morality, at the time he wrote the paper, is a view of morality which says that “that account to judge from a moral standpoint is to judge impersonally … it is to judge as any rational person would judge, independently of his or her interests, affections and social position … and to act morally is to act in accordance with such impersonal judgments” (MacIntyre 5). This view of morality is one in which morality is wholly universal and makes no exceptions and has no stipulations for particular moral situations. Such a view of morality is a liberal view of morality as, “according to the liberal account of morality where and from whom I learn the principles and precepts of morality are and must be irrelevant both to the question of what the content of morality is and to that of the nature of my commitment to it, as irrelevant as where and from whom I learn the principles and precepts of mathematics are to the content of mathematics and the nature of my commitment to mathematical truths” (MacIntyre 8). MacIntyre thinks that the community in which one learns morality affects the content of the morality one adheres to because moral laws are only ordinarily observed and understood in relation to other human beings. It is more conceivable to think that where one learns mathematical laws does not affect the content of these laws because these laws do not, at least directly, affect how human beings relate to one another. On the other hand, moral laws do, indeed, affect how human beings relate to each other and since the environments in which they learn to relate to other human beings necessarily affects how they interact with others, then these environments will also, necessarily, affect the moral laws which derive from these interactions. Since, these environments which foster human interaction affect the moral laws to which human beings adhere, then it seems that MacIntyre is right that moral laws, at least from an epistemological perspective, derive from the community in which someone is raised and nurtured.

One can see how all of this relates to the virtuous nature of patriotism for MacIntyre because it is not merely one virtue among many, but, rather, is the prerequisite for understanding and growing in all the other virtues. Building off of MacIntyre’s argument, patriotism must be a virtue and morally significant for two reasons. Firstly, it must be a virtue because it is the precondition for one having any understanding of morality at all. Almost in gratitude, one should be patriotic because one would not have knowledge of morality, which is essential for human flourishing, if they were separate from the community in which they were raised. Secondly, and more importantly, patriotism should be conceived of as a virtue because the community in which one learns morality shapes the morality to which one adheres, thus embedding communal obligations within one’s morality itself. These communal obligations intrinsic to one’s morality necessitate that patriotism be a virtue since love of one’s country and community, which is what patriotism is, will be a part of these communal obligations since they are required for the flourishing of the community. Moreover, these obligations can very easily lead someone to place their community in greater importance than other communities, which is the essence of patriotic priority, since their morality derives from that community so they must place their community above others because their moral obligations, at least in some sense, do not relate to communities outside of their particular community. In other words, the very fact that the obligations come from a particular community means that a person in that community will prioritize their community over others because the obligations are, at least primarily, ordered towards other members of their community. Thus, one can see how this view of morality leads to the reality of patriotic priority since the moral laws one believes in are only oriented towards fellow community members. Moreover, one can see how patriotism must be a virtue since failing to fulfill patriotic duties will mean that one is failing to properly follow the moral law to which they adhere.

Relating all of this back to the central question of this section, it seems that patriotic priority does, indeed, exist. MacIntrye seems to be correct when he says that moral laws are, at least epistemologically, contingent on the communities in which we are formed since these laws govern human interaction and the communities in which we are raised shape how we conceive of proper human interaction, while also dictating how members of the community act on an everyday, ground-level basis. Following this, since moral laws, at least epistemically, derive from particular communities, so does patriotic priority because the moral laws we learn are intra-communally ordered and so necessarily confer greater moral importance to community members over foreigners. Since the moral law is real because it really governs human interaction and this law derives from human interaction, and since the moral law is determined on a communal level, which entails that those who follow such law place their fellow community members above non-members, patriotic priority, which simply is the recognition of greater moral value in compatriots than foreigners, must exist.

The Importance and Nature of Patriotic Priority and Global Justice

Therefore, since it is clear why we should think patriotic priority exists, we now can move on from the previous section and discuss how patriotic priority is relevant to discussions of global justice.

The first place to begin will be examining how patriotic priority manifests itself on the national level since we have only been discussing patriotic priority in the abstract. A great aid to look toward in this pursuit is David Miller as he understands that national ties are natural; that is, they derive from human nature. He begins by saying that “national identities are valid sources of personal identity” as “someone who sees it as part of their identity that they belong to this or that nation is not simply the victim of an illusion … nor is it irrational to want to have that identity protected against outside forces that threaten to destroy or erode it” (Miller 410). As he says, “it is no more dubious to see yourself as French, say, and to want to remain so than to see yourself as a Catholic” (Miller 410). The reason that national identity is a perfectly normal and legitimate form of personal identity is because it is natural, in the sense that it flows from human nature. This is because one’s nation, following MacIntyre, is an important community in which someone is morally formed, and since someone cannot acquire their moral understanding apart from their community, this community must be seen as essential to human nature since human beings are also, by nature, moral agents. 

This understanding relates to Miller’s second point, which is that “nations are ethical communities” (Miller 410). Miller plainly says that “we owe special obligations to those we regard as our compatriots, and we are justified in making sacrifices on their behalf that we would not make for outsiders” (Miller 410). Even though this is precisely the point I am trying to argue, he brings up a good point that “it is legitimate” for nations “to create institutions such as welfare states that provide goods and services only to fellow nationals, even though those outside the nation may stand in greater need of those same goods and services” (Miller 410). One would be hard pressed to find someone who thinks that it is somehow immoral for national governments to only offer certain benefits to its citizens while not offering those same benefits to non-citizens. This fact seems to bolster the idea argued earlier, which is that it is a common and ordinary belief that nationality is morally relevant. This common belief is important to acknowledge since it motivates people to act morally and since it motivates people to act morally, this belief should be seen as reflecting the moral reality of patriotic priority. The more important point here is that these national institutions derive from human nature since they derive from particular communities, consisting of particular human beings, which gives their actions a moral quality to them as these actions are done in accordance with the norms of human interaction in that community. Such norms can be referred to as the moral law. This is important because it gives the moral actions of these institutions ontological support since they are grounded in the most important moral ground: human nature. 

Given that such national actions seem to be morally legitimate, the proper relationship between patriotic priority and global justice must be discussed. One might be concerned that so fervently arguing for patriotic priority would entail that nations do not have any global obligations, thus meaning that they have no reason to be concerned about issues that go beyond their nation’s borders. Such a case would render the hope for global justice inviable. However, this worry loses grounding once one understands the ultimate grounding of morality: the shared humanity of all.

Despite having argued for the importance of patriotic priority, I do acknowledge that there are moral obligations that transcend the moral obligations which derive from one’s community. This is because all moral obligations derive from shared humanity because moral laws are laws that govern human interaction, and even though these laws may be epistemically acquired through a particular community, they are, nevertheless, metaphysically grounded in the reality of human nature. The aforementioned reality results in all moral obligations, whether they be particular or universal, ultimately being grounded in the shared humanity of all. Thus, all entities which claim to be moral obligations must find their root in this fundamental grounding. Luckily, patriotic obligations, of which patriotic priority is a unique manifestation, derive from human nature because any knowledge of the moral law comes from one’s community, in this case one’s nation. Even though the moral law one learns from their community will have some obligations that are particular to one’s community, most of the obligations will still have a relation to human beings in general since underneath the particular humans their morality is primarily ordered towards is a general notion of human being.

One might object to placing one’s fellow compatriots on a higher moral plane because the moral law from which patriotic priority derives is grounded in the shared humanity of all human beings. Since this is the case, the people or persons towards which one’s moral obligations are first ordered should be determined by their proximity to the most fundamental ground of moral obligations, which is the level of humanity. This is the case, one could argue, because more fundamental obligations are ontologically “first,” so to speak, and since they are ontologically “first,” they should also be morally “first.” Given this, rather than supporting patriotic priority, the fact that patriotic ties, and the moral obligations which flow from them, are ultimately grounded in the shared humanity of all actually undermines viewing one’s fellow compatriots as the first recipients of their moral obligations since these obligations is ontologically derivative of the moral obligations which come from the shares humanity of all people, a grounding which, by its very nature, transcends nationality. Thus, it seems that the most fundamental grounding of morality seems to provide one with reason to reject patriotic priority rather than providing someone a buttressing support to affirm it.

Despite the apparent force of this ontological appeal, this objection fails because it forgets the epistemological importance of the community in determining one’s moral obligations towards others. Harkening back to MacIntyre, the community is absolutely epistemologically central for the acquisition of moral knowledge. Without the community, one cannot abstract, from reason alone, the moral law like one can with mathematical laws because a central part of learning morality is habituation within the moral law. Such habituation is necessary for apprehending the moral law since this law governs human interaction so if one has no human interaction, they cannot learn this law. Moreover, this habituation will result in community members adhering to a particular moral law since the community of which they are apart will have particular needs and circumstances which will affect the dictates of the moral law of that community. This moral law is, indeed, real. Just because a certain moral law is particular to a community and, thus, has particular moral stipulations does not mean that the law lacks ontological support. One can know that these moral laws have reality because they derive human nature, as was argued above.

 Relating all of this to the more fundamental issue, the ontological reality of the fundamentality of shared humanity does not entail that one’s moral law This objection essentially denies communities a kind of causal efficacy in shaping the moral law of the community, which is absurd because the particularities of a certain community’s moral law are, indeed, present even though those particularities are not present at the most fundamental level. One cannot infer from the absence of an obligation at the most fundamental of morality, that such an obligation is absent at a derivative level of morality. Such an idea, again, denies the real role communities play in affecting the moral law that governs that community and to which community members adhere, but this is absurd as communities must play such a role since each community is by definition particular and so, almost by definition, will have particular moral obligations that other communities do not have. More importantly, the moral laws of these communities will have recipients which not every community has. Given this, since the moral law people learn has obligations whose first recipients are fellow community members, these are the people to which these obligations are first owed because the moral law they understand dictates that this is the case.

Another objection would argue that it is arbitrary to say that national obligations should take precedence over global obligations because people belong to many different communities and learn the moral law from several communities. Indeed, why would one say that national obligations should be that important for an individual to adhere to when there are many other more local communities that they are a part of to which they have much stronger ties. It seems that these local obligations should take priority over national obligations since local communities have a greater role in the moral formation of the human person. Given this, it seems that national obligations could be unimportant since one could argue that local obligations take priority and then global obligations follow after since the nation may be so removed from the person that it has no influence on the moral formation of the person.

This objection is correct that local moral obligations should take precedence over national obligations, but this does not mean that national obligations should not take precedence over global obligations. This is because one’s moral obligations are determined by the level of epistemic influence a community has on an individual in their moral formation so while local communities, like towns and cities, have more influence over an individual’s moral formation than the nation does, the nation still has more influence over an individual’s moral formation than the globe does. This entails national obligations should take precedence over global obligations because the nation has greater epistemological importance in the moral formation of a person than the globe does.

Conclusion

In this essay, I have discussed the nature and reality of patriotism and patriotic priority. I have also explored how these notions are relevant to global justice issues. is a source of contention in contemporary political philosophy. In this paper, I began by providing definitions of patriotism and patriotic priority. I did this with references to Igor Primoratz’s SEP article on patriotism, and his sources for that article, along with some notions from Alasdair MacIntyre. I then argued that patriotism, and its moral derivative patriotic priority, are morally significant and a moral good with the help of Alasdair MacIntyre’s article “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”. I then argued that patriotic priority should be factored into how one determines the obligations nations and peoples have towards global justice efforts by arguing that patriotic duties, and the national ties from which they derive, are, in the final analysis, grounded in the shared humanity of all people. I was able to do this with the assistance of David Miller and his arguments for patriotic priority. I then developed an objection to my argument that said that grounding patriotic obligations in more fundamental human moral obligations undermines the significance of patriotic obligations because the more fundamental obligations should take priority in virtue of the fact that they are more fundamental. I responded to this by arguing that subsidiarity, which also flows from human nature, requires that local obligations take precedence over global obligations because of the epistemic importance communities have in the moral formation of the human person. The ultimate purpose of this essay was to argue that patriotism and patriotic priority are morally significant and relevant to problems that pertain to global justice since they are grounded in ties which flow from the universal shared humanity of human beings. I hope that my essay has fruitfully contributed to the debate around patriotic priority and global justice and has properly demonstrated that while the two are compatible, patriotic priority requires that people must attend to the needs of their fellow compatriots before attending to the needs of foreigners. 

Works Cited

MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” The Lindley Lecture, The University of Kansas, 26 Mar. 1984, pp. 3–20., https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315248943-9. 

Miller, David. “On Nationality.” Symposium, 1995, pp. 409–421., https://doi.org/10.1086/233801.

Nathanson, Stephen. “Patriotism, Morality, and Peace.” Choice Reviews Online, vol. 31, no. 03, 1993, https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.31-1793.

Primoratz, Igor. “Patriotism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 16 Dec. 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/patriotism/.