1As a participant in an early phase of that project, I was made vividly aware that the project, as initially conceived, 2 proposed an inward-looking task, bounded by the borders of the nation, rather than considering ties of obligation and commitment that join America to the rest of the world. Rorty’s piece responds to and defends Sheldon Hackney’s recent call for a “national conversation” to discuss American identity. He nowhere considers the possibility of a more international basis for political emotion and concern. Rorty seems to hold that the primary alternative to a politics based on patriotism and national identity is what he calls a “politics of difference,” one based on internal divisions among America’s ethnic, racial, religious, and other sub-groups. In a by now well-known op-ed piece in The New York Times (13 February 1994), philosopher Richard Rorty urges Americans, especially the American left, not to disdain patriotism as a value, and indeed to give central importance to “the emotion of national pride” and “a sense of shared national identity.” Rorty argues that we cannot even criticize ourselves well unless we also “rejoice” in our American identity and define ourselves fundamentally in terms of that identity. It is motivated, as well, by the renewal of appeals to the nation, and national pride, in some recent discussions of American character and American education.
My articulation of these issues is motivated, in part, by my experience working on international quality-of-life issues in an institute for development economics connected with the United Nations. These goals, I shall argue, would be better served by an ideal that is in any case more adequate to our situation in the contemporary world, namely the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world. I believe, with Tagore and his character Nikhil, that this emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve-for example, the goal of national unity in devotion to worthy moral ideals of justice and equality.
To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.’Īmericans have frequently supported the principle of Bande Mataram, giving the fact of being American a special salience in moral and political deliberation, and pride in a specifically American identity and a specifically American citizenship a special power among the motivations to political action. ‘I am willing,’ he said, ‘to serve my country but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. Only he had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of Bande Mataram. The slogan of the movement is Bande Mataram, “Hail Motherland.” Bimala complains that her husband, the cosmopolitan Hindu landlord Nikhil, is cool in his devotion to the cause:Īnd yet it was not that my husband refused to support Swadeshi, or was in any way against the Cause. In Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, The Home and the World, the young wife Bimala, entranced by the patriotic rhetoric of her husband’s friend Sandip, becomes an eager devotee of the Swadeshi movement, which has organized a boycott of foreign goods. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes the Cynic The seller will arrange the return pick up for these items.įor seller-fulfilled items from Sports collectibles and Entertainment collectibles categories, the sellers need to be informed of the damage / defect within 10 days of delivery.When anyone asked him where he came from, he said, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ These items are not eligible for self-return.
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