Martha Nussbaum Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Veit Bader

Critical Essay by Veit Bader

SOURCE: Bader, Veit. “For Love of Country.” Political Theory 27, no. 3 (June 1999): 379-97.

In the following essay, Bader compares For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, by Nussbaum, with For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism, by Maurizio Viroli.

Nationalism and patriotism seem to gain momentum in our times of globalization and decreasing importance of the (nation-)state. Likewise, multiculturalism is becoming predominant while real differences of ethnic cultures are decreasing globally as well as inside traditionally multiethnic states such as the United States. Among the growing stream of publications concerning nationalism or cosmopolitanism, two recent American books deserve special attention. For Love of Country (edited by Joshua Cohen) contains Martha Nussbaum's essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” which first appeared in the Boston Review (October/November 1994) together with eleven of the twenty-nine replies she originally provoked and five new contributions, all “debating the limits of...
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