Liberal Nationalism.

In contemporary political philosophy, the debate between liberalism and communitarianism frequently displays the kind of intellectual sophistication that characterized another famous feud - that between the Hatfields and the McCoys. On one side zealous communitarians castigate liberals for championing rampant individualism to the neglect of such values as loyalty to country and concern for the common good (i.e., liberalism as embodied in the comic-book ravings of Ayn Rand), while on the other die-hard liberals attack communitarians for suggesting that our identities are wholly determined by the communal structures within which we are born and for thereby endorsing a slavish allegiance to the roles which the collective prescribes for us (i.e., communitarianism as a paean to the happy days of feudal hierarchy).

In Liberal Nationalism, Yael Tamir, senior lecturer in philosophy at Tel Aviv University, tries to move the debate beyond the hysterics of such philosophical reductionism by building on the sensible ideals underlying both sides. (Tamir speaks of nationalism rather than communitarianism because she wants to show that recognizing the value of unique national and cultural communities need not result in the chauvinistic fervor of fascism or, to use a contemporary example, ethnic cleansing.) From liberalism she distills the values of autonomy, rational reflection, and choice; from communitarianism she seizes on the importance both of feeling connected to others through life in a community and of loyalty to particular cultural traditions which help give meaning to our lives.

Though these sets of ideas are often seen as being in tension with one another, Tamir points out that they are in fact complementary. After all, our choices are meaningful to us partly because they reflect values which already exist within our culture, while at the same time the distinct identities we carve for ourselves take on added importance because we see them as products of our own agency. But once we recognize that individual well-being requires both a measure of autonomy and a feeling of attachment to a cultural community (a nation, in Tamir's usage), it follows that along with protecting a wide range of personal liberties, the state should also act to ensure the survival of the various cultures to which its members feel committed. In short, concludes Tamir, the list of individual rights must be expanded to include the right to culture.

Having argued for the importance of communal bonds, Tamir then tries to show how this expanded vision of human needs leads to a conception of liberalism which is both more humane and more defensible than that offered by contemporary liberals. More humane, because it demands greater sensitivity to the needs of minority cultures; more defensible, because it explains why liberal states are under greater obligations to help their own citizens than to help outsiders - a position which seems a betrayal of liberalism's avowed commitment to universal and impartial moral principles. Tamir's justification for this position is not entirely convincing, I think, for she appears to assume that just because liberal states feel that they have special obligations to their own citizens, they therefore in fact have such special obligations, though there is no reason to suppose that the latter follows from the former. Nonetheless, it seems likely that a justification of the liberal state's partiality towards its own citizens, if possible at all, would have to proceed in a manner similar to that outlined by Tamir, and one hopes that her argument here will lead liberal states to reexamine their obligations to all citizens of the world, not just those within their borders.

More generally, readers of Liberal Nationalism will also find themselves asking just how much Tamir's argument adds to contemporary conceptions of liberalism. They will likely conclude, I think, that while Tamir is right in arguing that liberal states should pay greater attention to the importance of cultural identification and that those in the dominant culture need to be especially sensitive to minority cultures, the liberal nationalism she offers does not extend in significant ways the bedrock principle of contemporary liberalism, which asserts that the state should remain neutral as to the value of different ways of life and cultures.

Part of the reason that Tamir undervalues the liberal neutrality position, and thus overemphasizes its distance from her own conception of liberal nationalism, is that her overall aim is to infuse the political realm (liberalism) with ideals from the communal realm (nationalism). This assumes, of course, that the political ideals at the core of liberalism are somehow insensitive, or positively hostile, to the values of community. But it is fairer to say, I think, that state neutrality is designed to secure precisely those liberties (e.g., freedom of worship, of assembly, of expression) which are crucial to individuals pursuing distinct cultural identities within communities of their own choosing. By refusing to privilege one culture or way of life over another, the neutral state tries to ensure that citizens are free to define themselves in terms of those cultural communities to which they feel the greatest allegiance. For this reason, the neutral state may well offer the best environment for preserving the kind of cultural pluralism that Tamir cherishes.

In recognizing this truth about the liberalism of state neutrality, however, we see again the inadequacies of those political theories which rest on a simplistic opposition between the individual and the collective. The good life for human beings is marked both by reflective autonomy and by a belief that one is connected to a meaningful community, and no political philosophy that neglects either of these ideals deserves to be taken seriously. The chief merit of Tamir's book is that it goes some way toward demonstrating what a political philosophy incorporating both of these ideals will look like. If, in the final analysis, the position she endorses looks a lot like contemporary liberalism chastened to pay greater attention to the value of community, this similarity should be taken not as a sign that Tamir's proposal is insignificant, but rather as an indication of the continuing relevance of liberal principles to the important social questions of our time.