DeepDyve eBooks - A Philosophy of Nationhood and the Modern Self

Introduction

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 3 –16

[Nations are valuable to us because of the way they organise social life and allow us to participate in shared traditions and practices that are also constitutive to many political communities. The shared cultural heritage of national communities allows us to celebrate diversity while being at...

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Defining ‘The Nation’

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 17 –39

[In this chapter, I try to answer a basic question: ‘What sort of thing is the nation?’. It is therefore a question not about the particular features or the sociological status of nationalism, but about the fundamental political ontology of nationhood. I attempt to show that even within the...

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Nationhood and Its Critics

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 41 –54

[This chapter examines the limited nature in which nationhood has featured in contemporary political theory and proposes this narrow view of the nation haunts current debates on the subject. Critics of nationality as a philosophical category perceive it as both a conceptually and a normatively...

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The Genealogy of the Modern Self

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 57 –73

[Throughout the course of this chapter, I investigate the transformations of the concept of the self from antiquity (Plato, Aristotle) to modernity (Descartes, Locke, Kant). This discussion shows that the modern self is characterised by the tension between its passive/non-reflective and...

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Individual Autonomy and Belonging

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 75 –92

[This chapter further explores the tension within the modern self, which I laid out in Chap. 4, by focusing on its implications on how we understand our relationship with the world and others. Specifically, I look at the concepts of authorship and autonomy, which are at the heart of democratic...

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Why Politics Cannot Be Universal

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 93 –108

[Chapter 5 probes the limits of political universalism. Our political dilemmas, problems and interests do not come from a void of an original position, but can only be recognised thanks to the common language and practices that define our being together. Politics is not merely the administration...

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Constructing Political Subjectivity: Agency and Nationhood

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 111 –125

[In this chapter, I defend what I call a comprehensive view of the nation. It is an attempt to go beyond the limited capacity in which the concept of the nation seems to be present within mainstream contemporary (predominantly liberal) political theory. Having established that the modern self is...

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The Ethics of Political Membership: Cosmopolitanism vs. Nationalism

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 127 –149

[Having shown in Chap. 6 that nations can be seen as key to promoting individual autonomy, I argue in this last chapter that this does not lead us to a tribal understanding of politics. Nationalism does not have to restrict our recognition of autonomy of others to our fellow nationals. In fact,...

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‘Self’ Under Scrutiny. On ‘Post-national’ Thought

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 151 –168

[In the final chapter of part 3 of the book, I address those thinkers to whom the very categories of self and subjectivity are problematic at best. Concepts of sovereignty, identity and citizenship are continuously undermined by the technological and socio-economical process which we call...

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Conclusion: ‘National Humanity’

Rozynek, Michal

Pages: 169 –173

[This short final chapter summarises the findings of the book and explores the wider implications of my view of nationhood. In particular, I argue that (1) the boundedness of the modern ‘self’ shapes the way we perceive political community; and (2) that while global identities are increasingly...

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A Philosophy of Nationhood and the Modern Self

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A Philosophy of Nationhood and the Modern Self

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