Albert Schweitzer

The origins of the nation state and nationalism

The idea of the nation state essentially took hold in all developed countries during the 19th century. The advent of the nationalist nation state seemed to fulfil the deepest desire of civilisation. As a result, national sentiment became an end in itself, freed from the constraints of civilisation, reason and morality.

In reality, the nation state, which is built on this principle, is proving incapable of serving the universal state and embodying it. On the contrary, it denies it and does everything in its power to prevent its development. And all the solemn declarations to the contrary, claiming that it is working towards this goal, that it is fighting for its advent and that it has no other purpose, change nothing.

A national sentiment as unbridled and pushed to the point of absurdity as that which has arisen in Europe in the 19th century has no equivalent in the past, among any people. It is truly something new in the history of humanity, which has required a new word, ‘nationalism.’

The question of the right of a particular people to national existence with its own language and culture, and the question of the borders of the territory to which it is entitled, were addressed and settled during the 19th century in the process of nation-state formation. Only a few specific cases remain unresolved, but these should not pose insurmountable difficulties provided that the parties concerned show themselves to be reasonable.

Two types of difficulties can be distinguished. The first concerns patriotic sentiment as such; the second involves divergent economic or geostrategic interests. It must first be acknowledged that the process of forming nation states could not be completed everywhere in a way that was satisfactory to all, because, by their very nature, it is inevitable that here and there small sections of a people, constituting minorities, and their territories, constituting enclaves, will find themselves incorporated into a state other than that corresponding to their nature or culture.

This often stems from the fact that two or more peoples coexist in a border country; it also happens that part of a people has lived for so long within a nation that it feels deeply attached to it, more so than to its neighbour nation with which it shares the same language and ethnic origin.

It may therefore be impossible to divide territories on either side of a border fairly according to a strict national principle, for a wide variety of reasons. Thus, historical considerations, topographical features (the course of a river, the crest of a mountain) and economic interests ultimately determine the division of territories, which does not respect a very ancient linguistic border. Many peoples have never been autonomous, while others have lost their autonomy over the course of history because they lacked the necessary virtues to preserve it. They have therefore remained minorities, enjoying varying degrees of freedom within larger entities to which the fate of history has subordinated them and where their existence has multiplied the number of enclaves.

It is mainly for overseas countries, which are not yet under the control of the major powers, that the question of dividing up territories according to the economic and geopolitical interests of the moment now arises. The best lands have already been distributed to the colonisers. What remains to be conquered is of no major strategic interest, even in the long term, for the development of any of the powers. National interest cannot therefore be invoked.

Nationalism is not a natural consequence of these situations; rather, it arises from an exaggerated sense of belonging to the nation, and is a psychological phenomenon. Once the nation has been largely formed, the movement of the soul that inspired it does not stop, but enters a condition of growing excitement and generates ideas of grandeur and persecution that then alter its content.

It is according to these ideas that policy will now be decided and that events will take on, as we have seen in recent decades, an excessive dramatic charge. If an economic or territorial advantage is called into question, the sacrosanct rights of the nation are immediately invoked. If a concession is considered, the homeland is immediately believed to be in danger.

Pathologies of nationalism

By its very nature, nationalism consists of a pathological interpretation and transformation of political realities, against a backdrop of megalomaniacal and paranoid ideas, the product of a delusional imagination. And by operating in this way, in mindsets, discourses and actions, nationalism only serves to permanently exacerbate reality.

One people's ideas of greatness become a reality for other peoples, something they have to reckon with and which reinforces their own fears of persecution. They then act in the same way towards their neighbours. This is how an initially imaginary threat becomes a real one. A sick imagination and a certain way to perceive reality form a circle in which increasingly absurd representations and increasingly absurd situations reinforce each other, fatally tilting politics towards absurd actions and coups.

The root cause of this whole process lies in the decline of a civilisation after it has elevated the national idea to the status of a supreme cultural value.

When general ethical principles and values are no longer powerful enough to regulate a sentiment such as love of country, when it is no longer informed by moral reason, it begins to grow and proliferate. As other ideals collapse, the national ideal, the sole survivor, becomes the ideal of ideals; as we allow the assets of civilisation to be lost, nationalism appears to embody all that remains and thus to make up for their absence.

This explains the mentality of our time; all the enthusiasm of which the people are capable is focused on the national idea, with the illusion that it is now the repository of all spiritual values and morality, so that this idea, experienced in a primitive love of country, becomes perverted, exclusive and morbid. The result is that it is impossible to hold a rational discussion with our contemporaries on the question of nationality.

Even those who otherwise display logical thinking and ethical sensibilities willingly or instinctively stop thinking and judging rationally when their patriotic feelings are touched. For the modern masses, national ideas have become a taboo that no calm reflection is allowed to shake. It is taken for granted that reason and morality have no place here, and strict respect is demanded for these feelings, which are considered the most sacred of all. Nationalism, in fact, now presents itself as a popular religion.

If in the past the decline of culture did not have such dire consequences as it does today, it was because the national idea had never been elevated to the status of a civilisational value. It remained within the bounds of a simple feeling of attachment to one's country and was not associated with considerations about the meaning of civilisation. The idea that this meaning passed through it and found its fulfilment there was foreign at the time. It was therefore inconceivable, in this frame of mind, that the national idea could replace the ideal of civilisation itself. The state of barbarism that could have taken hold was not then activated and aggravated, as we now see, by the rise of nationalist representations and conceptions of history.

If we understand the pathological nature of nationalism itself, we will pay little attention to a discussion that attempts to determine which people are most responsible for its unstoppable spread.

In fact, the historical task of objectively reconstructing its origins and spread throughout civilisation is impossible at present. It has not always been most powerful where it has been most vocal; it has often been observed that it has progressed most rapidly in a latent stage. On the whole, the disturbances it has caused have been of the same nature everywhere, except that, depending on the circumstances, it has manifested itself more strongly in some peoples than in others.

(The same bacillus appears in different cultures.)

Unity of humanity

Progress in the realisation of the ideas of reason will be correlated with the shaking of the authority of national cultures and the decline of their credit.

Thought guided by reason can only lead to the conception of a single, universal civilisation. The spiritual norms it establishes are addressed to people as citizens of humanity, not as national citizens. However, as members of national communities, they understand that their role is to contribute to the formation of a global civilisation. In this process, the particular talents of these communities will manifest themselves, without harming the unity of civilisation, but rather enhancing it.

The richer the spiritual life of a people, the better it will fit into the melting pot of general civilisation with all its distinctive features. The brighter the colours of the spectrum, the more intense the brightness of the white light that unites them all.

The theory that races and peoples have specific cultures that they must protect does not stand up to either ethnology or historical science.

The first teaches us that racial differences, as they are presented today, simply do not exist. Both historical knowledge and skull measurements show that European peoples, who are bearers of different cultures, are the result of the most astonishing population mixing. None of them reveal any absolutely unique or pure characteristics. Even the common distinction between Latin and Germanic races is unfounded. What we take to be a difference in racial disposition is in fact the product of historically recent events and situations (political regimes, religious affiliations).

The European peoples, heirs to the Greco-Roman world, entered the Middle Ages together and successively experienced, at a rapid pace, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and modern philosophy. Together with their colonial extensions in other parts of the world, they constitute an indivisible unity of civilisation. If cultural differences between them have become increasingly marked and apparent in recent times, this is primarily due to a weakening of civilisation. When the tide goes out, the unevenness and crevices that the flow covered and hid appear on the beach.

Proof that the peoples of world historical civilisation are spiritually related is that they are undergoing the same process of decline.

In the name of the ideas of reason, which lay down the conditions for civilisation and its renewal, national cultures engaged in a process of regeneration and seeking to export their culture will be subjected to uncompromising criticism. For the ideas of reason can only be revived if we are first convinced that our existing concepts and organisations are simply untenable.

The leading thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment must have felt something similar; it was under pressure from necessity that they found within themselves the courage to think and the will to change the world by infusing it with new ideas. If we do not experience a similar dilemma ourselves, either to change or to decline, we will be unable to take up and continue the intellectual work begun by the men of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

But instead, we are repulsed by seeing things as they are and cling with all our might to an optimistic vision of our civilisation.

The murky mixture of optimism and pessimism that pervades the spirit of our age, with the former dominating the latter, is not the result of acquired knowledge about the phenomena of the universe, and in particular the human phenomenon, which would be obvious to any clear-minded person, but rather stems from a deficiency in thinking. It will be overcome to the extent that a will, underlying the ideals of reason, manifests itself among us.

Then the way will be open for an optimistic world view, and we will be able to resume and advance the work of civilisation. But those who know that the formation of such a will is the great task before us cannot but give themselves the right to destroy the semi-ideals contained in masked pessimism.

Their mission is to demolish, without any kind of pity, the old temples, to prepare for the construction of new realities. Any form of understanding and indulgence must give way to the need to realise the absolute impossibility of preserving the current spiritual and political arrangements.

This realisation is a prerequisite for emerging from decadence and for the necessary regeneration.