nation, and which many Muslims feel between Islam as a universal community of
believers and the nations to which they belong. There is another implication of
communitarianism that was not pursued to the same degree within that debate, but
which has been a topic of discussion within the broader justice debate:
communitarianism implies that it is legitimate to show partiality towards members
of ‘our community’, which in this case means the nation.
Thomas Nagel makes a distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral
reasons for action, and correspondingly between two attitudes we can adopt to our
lives: partiality and impartiality (Nagel, 1991: 10–20). You can view your life as
special to you or you can view your life as ‘just one among many’. Emerging from
these two standpoints are the two kinds of reasons (or motivations). A parent is
acting partially – to be more precise, is acting from agent-relative reasons – when
he shows a concern for his children which he does not bestow on other people’s
children. His justification is that they are hischildren, meaning that the identity of
the children is of central importance. Their identity as hischildren explains his
partiality towards them. Let us assume the parent is very wealthy, such that his
partiality results in significant material benefits for his children. But let us also
assume that he has egalitarian beliefs: he thinks that all children should get a ‘fair
deal’, and that means that he as a rich person should pay high levels of tax in order
to fund an extensive and effective education system. Insofar as he is motivated by
concern for all children in accepting as legitimate high taxes he is acting from agent-
neutral reasons: other parent’s children are of equal value to his own. Nagel thinks
that there is an ineliminable conflict between partiality and impartiality, but – and
this is the interesting point – each presupposes the other (1991: 14). When a parent
shows partiality to his children he is necessarily committed to the view that ‘(all)
parents should show special concern for their children’. In reverse, impartiality
implies partiality. This mutual implication of partiality and impartiality clarifies but
does not resolve the tension between the two standpoints.
We have taken the parent–child relationship as one example, but Nagel argues
that the tension manifests itself across the social and political field. Nationalists –
of all types – must assume that membership of a nation implies the legitimacy of
agent-relative reasons: you can show special concern for yourcompatriots. This
suggests a lesser concern for members of other nations, even if partiality entails
impartiality, meaning that you have to accept ‘multiple partialities’: a French
person’s partiality towards other French people commits them to accepting that a
Japanese person is ‘entitled’ to show partiality towards fellow Japanese. As suggested
above this does not resolve the conflict: at most it might commit members of rich
countries to avoid exploiting poorer ones. It does not commit the rich nations to
significant redistribution of resources. One response is to reject partiality altogether
and argue for global impartiality. In other words, there is nothing special – that is,
morally significant – about our compatriots. Within the justice debate this position
is termed ‘cosmopolitanism’ and we explore it in more detail in Chapter 22 (Global
Justice). Since the concern in this chapter is with nationalism we will focus on the
opposing position: particularism, the ‘particular’ here being the nation.
David Miller, in his book On Nationality, offers what he terms a discriminating
defence of nationalism. He suggests that it is possible to ‘acknowledge the claims
of national identity without succumbing to an unthinking nationalism which simply
tells us to follow the feelings of our blood’ (Miller, 1995: 183–4). He endorses the270 Part 2 Classical ideologies