Most over-rated modern-day dogma

[grumbler]

Nationalism.
In today's world its just silly.

You think nationalism is a modern day dogma noone challenges? 

Yes. Most people just accept it wholesale.

Disagree. Nationalism is a fringe movement, which is why parties like the BNP aren't in government - in fact, they aren't even in Parliament!

[grumbler]

Hmmm, not sure I understand the question.

I think humans have a natural tendency to divide their world up into their tribe and the other tribe(s). I think these constructs are generally pretty artificial - if your question is do I believe that there exists some "natural" construct that exists outside what humans create, certainly not. But I suspect maybe that isn't really what you are asking....?

So all issues of identity are "artificial" in that they are made up by people?  I don't disagree with that, though I don't see the utility of the adjective "artificial" if it is all artificial.  If it was a throwaway word and not intended to convey any important distinction, then I don't have an issue at all.

[Oexmelin]

Now I haven't studied this period as closely as some here, probably, so I will welcome cogent arguments to the contrary. We will always have "us vs them", but it seems to me that the movement in the American Revolution and the early French Revolution, was toward citizenship that was based on what you were willing to work (and fight) for, not on birth, religion, or what language you spoke. Nationalism was a move to subvert this concept into one of blind loyalty to the nation-state.

There always was a tension between what was a people's "genius", its characteristics derived from things that were deemed very hard to change (such as history, habits, etc.) and the power of voluntary association to an ideal. Witness the late 18th c. attempts are rewriting the history of France by making the nobles the Frank "parasites" over the virtuous gallo-romans. Colonialism contributed to the debate by the emergence of more "hardwired" racial categories which would plague both American and French revolutions -- some things could never change, like the capacity for rational thought denied alternatively denied to women, blacks, poors. Commerce, on the other hand, suggested that forces existed that could tie men regardless of their origins - at once a seducing and threatening prospect. That it could be seducing is usually seen as a truism today. But it also seemed threatening because it could dissolve any sort of ideal in greed: merchants knew no other loyalty than their self-interest.

The universalist aim of the Revolutions (I would argue that the French's was more pronounced) stimulated a broadening of politics, but the tensions of "historicity", i.e., the understanding that the revolutions were either product of, or needed foundations in, specific societies, remained strong. War would in turn exacerbate those.

[Maximus]

Nationalism way preceded the Enlightenment - most historians date it to the last third of the Hundred Years War or so.

Interesting. Thanks

Disagree. Nationalism is a fringe movement, which is why parties like the BNP aren't in government - in fact, they aren't even in Parliament!

Is not the fact that for most people "nation" is a synonym for "country", a symptom of widespread (albeit unconscious) nationalism?

[Oexmelin]

I would be reluctant to ascribe the term "nationalism" to the kind of sense of belonging, or of community, which manifests itself during the Hundred Years War, and would not consider its birth during the Middle Ages as consensual amongst historians either.

[Razgovory]

I would be reluctant to ascribe the term "nationalism" to the kind of sense of belonging, or of community, which manifests itself during the Hundred Years War, and would not consider its birth during the Middle Ages as consensual amongst historians either.

I would as well.  Religion seemed to be primary glue that held people together in Europe at the time.  I would ascribe Nationalism as a Post-Westphalia thing.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Objectivism
Neo Conservatism

and pretty much every other ism out there.

[Razgovory]

Objectivism
Neo Conservatism

and pretty much every other ism out there.

Even Idealism?  Or Cynicism?

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Objectivism
Neo Conservatism

and pretty much every other ism out there.

Even Idealism?  Or Cynicism?

sure, sometimes people take those isms beyond reasonableness also, It's easy to get caught up in ideals of any kind, and to put all your stock in them. Moderation in all things is my motto (that I try and fail to follow, but I try)

[The Minsky Moment]

Nationalism way preceded the Enlightenment - most historians date it to the last third of the Hundred Years War or so.

?
It is more typical for it to be placed in the late18th/early 19th centuries.  Kedourie, Gellner, and Anderson all put it roughly during the period: Anderson back in the 1770s; Gellner deeper in the 19th, Kedourie somewhere in between.

I think one would be hard pressed to find examples of nationalism as an ideology as early as the 15th century.  .

[The Brain]

Define nationalism.

[Eddie Teach]

sure, sometimes people take those isms beyond reasonableness also, It's easy to get caught up in ideals of any kind, and to put all your stock in them. Moderation in all things is my motto (that I try and fail to follow, but I try)

Pragmatism?

[The Minsky Moment]

Define nationalism.

Gellner defines it as the principle that the state and the national unit should coincide.  Another way to phrase it is the belief that the area of sovereign control of the state should (as a prescriptive matter) be coincident with the area of common ethno-cultural identity.  This of course presupposes clear notions of ethnicity and culture.

[grumbler]

Is not the fact that for most people "nation" is a synonym for "country", a symptom of widespread (albeit unconscious) nationalism?

The nation isn't the country, though, it is the people.  The fact that national and state boundaries didn't coincide was the cause of any number of wars.  I distinguish between patriotism and nationalism; the former is attachment to a country, the latter to a people.

[grumbler]

?
It is more typical for it to be placed in the late18th/early 19th centuries.  Kedourie, Gellner, and Anderson all put it roughly during the period: Anderson back in the 1770s; Gellner deeper in the 19th, Kedourie somewhere in between.

I think one would be hard pressed to find examples of nationalism as an ideology as early as the 15th century. 

Nationalism as a conscious ideology was certainly not present before the Enlightenment, but you can certainly see its stirrings during the Hundred Years War.  The abandonment of French as the language of the English upper class during the HYW was a consequence, IMO, with its identification as the language of "them."  I am not arguing that the HYW was a nationalist conflict, I am arguing that nationalism started to stir its head during the HYW, and that, while its various ideologies were not articulated until the 18th century (or later, perhaps), it wasn't itself a product of the Enlightenment.