competing linguistic groups, such that instead of developing fellow feeling differences
will become institutionalised. Mill concedes that there are successful multinational
states, the best example being Switzerland, and he also accepts that geographical
‘intermingling’ can be such that some states must be multinational. But he considers
it preferable that ‘peripheral’ minorities be absorbed by larger nations: a Breton is
better to share ‘the advantages of French protection, and the dignity and prestige
of French power, than to sulk on his own rocks, the half-savage relic of past times’
(Mill, 1991: 431). Similarly, Wales and the Scottish Highlands are better absorbed
into Britain. Today, these remarks seem anachronistic: the emphasis now is on
respecting differences within the nation-state, and ensuring that ‘threatened’
languages such as Breton, Welsh and Scots Gaelic survive. However, the anti-ethnic
basis of Mill’s argument is significant: the ‘admixture’ and ‘blending’ of nationalities
is to the benefit of humanity, because it softens the extremes between people (Mill,
1991: 432). In essence, Mill’s nationalism is ‘assimilationist’ – nations are culturally
hybrid, but the political project must be to create fellow feeling, because this
guarantees the development and reinforcement of individual freedom.
Johann Gottfried von Herder
Herder is a major point of reference within the tradition that takes the nation to
be a pre-modern ethnic community. For this reason it might be thought that he
cannot also be a liberal. Yet, in fact, Herder has been influential among those liberals
who see human beings as necessarily cultural beings. At the heart of culture is
language, and Herder anticipates one of the dominant themes of twentieth-century
philosophy in arguing that human self-consciousness is dependent on language: the
very capacity to think presupposes language. Furthermore, language is necessarily
collective, and while it is possible to identify universal features, languages are
particular; a language is not simply a means by which we name things, but in writing,
reading and speaking a particular language, such as English or German, we locate
ourselves and others in a particular world of emotion and sentiment. (For a modern
application of Herder’s reflections, see Breuilly, 1993: 55–9.)
Herder is attempting to reconcile Enlightenment and Romanticist views of human
nature. Under the influence of the former, Herder argues that to be free, autonomous
agents we need language, but under the influence of the latter, he maintains that
language summons up an emotional world. Herder also attempts to reconcile
progress and tradition: the transmission of culture from one generation to another
involves both the preservation of culture, or tradition, and the confrontation of the
old with the new. This has implications for his understanding of nationalism: since
newness is part of tradition, and can come from outside a culture as a ‘foreign
influence’, nations should not be chauvinistic. However, while Herder distances
himself from extreme nationalism, he also maintains that cultures cannot be
manufactured out of nothing, and that each culture – or nation – has a distinct
character which should be preserved.
While language is one of the most fundamental capacities of human beings, the
roots of political organisation lie in the family, and this is what gives rise to his
organic view of the nation: the nation is not an organism in the sense that there is
a hierarchy of parts, as the metaphor of the human body would imply, but rather
Chapter 12 Nationalism 265