Nations and Norms
It is here taken as given that norms have a history. In the present context this means denying that nationalism has always been a potentiality of discourse. Rather, it is a restricted phenomenon both conceptually and historically. Conceptually, nationalism is distinct from both patriotism or local attachment and xenophobia or distrust of others.1 Historically, nationalism has its genesis at the end of the eighteenth century. This historical restriction is of course a commonplace and is expressed, for example, in the opening sentence of Kedourie's book, "Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century."2 But, to repeat, the aim of this paper is to examine this normative doctrine at a metatheoretical level. The argument of the paper can be stated in a skeletal form as follows. For a nation to be self-governing requires that it be conceptualized as having a self, as having an identity. This identity is established through two complementary components: one, differentiation from others or specificity and, two, continuity or temporality. The normative basis of nationalism is therefore grounded in the attribution of prescriptive value to the specific and the temporal. The content of the paper is an examination of this interpretation, by way of contrast, briefly outlining the hitherto dominant paradigm of political value, namely, universalism, before I Cf. E. Kamenka, "Political Nationalism: The Evolution of an Idea" in Nationalism, ed.