A Criticism of Edmund Burke’s Conception of Patriotism

This paper draws on scholarship examining Edmund Burke’s emotionalism in order to conceptualize his understand - ing of patriotism, and to understand how it hangs together with other dimensions of his political and aesthetic thought. More substantively, the paper takes the further step of engaging w...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Juan Espíndola
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2014
Country:México
Institution:Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Repository:Redalyc-UNAM
OAI Identifier:oai:redalyc.org:323033018005
Online Access:https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=323033018005
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Filosofía
emotions
patriotism
Edmund Burke
Jürgen Habermas
Description
Summary:This paper draws on scholarship examining Edmund Burke’s emotionalism in order to conceptualize his understand - ing of patriotism, and to understand how it hangs together with other dimensions of his political and aesthetic thought. More substantively, the paper takes the further step of engaging with recent accounts of patriotism in order to criticize Burke’s patrio - tism. According to sympathetic views of Burke’s patriotism, and the theory of emotions that underlies it, the latter has resourc - es to ground a cosmopolitanism of a particular kind. The paper contests these views by highlighting the affinities of Burkean patriotism to some objectionable forms of patriotism, such as Alasdair MacIntyre’s version of it, and its incompatibility with less objectionable forms, such as Jürgen Habermas’s.