The Nature of Political Theory

202 The Nature of Political Theory

but rather modified and ‘shored up’ in more secure, immanent, and conventional
settings.

Notes

1. Contemporary theoretical writings on nationalism are usually premised upon a twofold
   classification—insular bellicose and liberal variants. John Plamenatz’s work is particularly
   apposite here as one of the unwitting prime movers of liberal nationalism, although he
   merely reflects Hans Kohn’s earlier classification, see Kohn (1945), Plamenatz (1976, 23ff.).
   This section on nationalism has been synthesized from a number of my writings, that is,
   Vincent (1995, 1997a,b, 2001b, 2002).


2. There is possibly a scholarly conceit lurking here, namely, that only sound theoretical
   positions can have political effect. The reverse might well be the case.


3. The only caveat to enter here is that untheoretical does not necessarily mean irrational, in
   the same sense that the non-rational may not be irrational.


4. For MacCormick, churches, trade unions, political parties, schools, universities, and even
   supranational groups ‘can have a like significance to human beings in just the same way
   as can nations’, MacCormick (1982: 251–2). MacCormick confesses that he is very much
   against the notion of ranking such loyalties. It is but a step from ranking nationalism
   against other loyalties to ranking nations themselves, which he finds intolerable.


5. MacCormick also thinks that ‘liberty in a free country requires schemes of redistribution,
   welfare provision and educational support’, see MacCormick (1990: 15; see also Tamir
   1993: 16–17).


6. He remarks elsewhere that ‘some form of democratic self-determination has to be con-
   sidered both justifiable and valuable...Some form of collective self-constitution, some
   kindofactiveparticipationinshapingandsustainingtheinstitutionsofsocialorcommunal
   government whose aim is to advance liberty and autonomy, seems to be a necessary part
   of the whole ensemble of conditions in which the autonomy of the contextual individual
   could be genuinely constituted and upheld’, see MacCormick (1990: 15).


7. Where nation and state do not coincide, Miller distinguishes ethnicity and nationalism.
   One can thus have a nation with multiple ethnic groups within it. For Miller, we are thus
   saved from the problem of giving every ethnic group a state, see Miller (1994: 156).


8. Although the final upshot of its theoretical approach is, in a way, still benignly liberal.


9. As Salkever puts it ‘The theory of human good aids practice by serving as a basis for drawing
   out and criticising presuppositions about human needs that are implicit in particular
   political institutions and policies. These presuppositions are open to critical evaluation
   because of the objectivity and commensurability of human goods’, Salkever (1990: 7).


10. With my own proviso again that this is not abandoning foundationalism, but rather
    ‘shoring it up’ from within immanent conventionalist foundations.


11. Salkever disagrees with MacIntyre here. He sees Aristotle as putting forward a non-
    determinist non-metaphysical biology, see Salkever (1990: 73).


12. Namely, ‘by attempting to re-enter the intellectual world we have lost’; Skinner continues
    that ‘With the rise of classical utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, and with the use of
    utilitarian principles to underpin so much of the liberal state in the century following, the
    theory of free states fell increasingly into disrepute, and eventually slipped almost wholly
    out of sight’, Skinner (1998: x and 96).