A Critical Analysis of Patriotism As an Ethical Concept

One of the chief reasons for the radical disagreement about the morality of patriotism is that there are widely different assumptions as to its nature. It is a sentiment of manifold varieties, and the word patriotism may carry quite different implications to different minds. The first necessary step, then, before one can pass an ethical judgment upon it, is to find out what the core of patriotism is.

This dissertation begins, therefore, by undertaking to determine the nature of patriotism, and with no more of a clue in hand than the one that it is “the love of country” tries, by an inductive investigation of what has actually been called patriotism, to bring together the important facts in which patriotism is manifested. Hence, while the main purpose of the essay is an ethical one, a large portion of it is given to inductive analysis. The first three parts are mainly analytical.