Patriotism

Patriotism denotes positive attitudes by a person to their own nation, to its national homeland, its culture, its members, and to its interests. The word is derived from the Latin patria, fatherland, which has a much broader meaning than a geographical territory.

Sources and further reading

General

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• Bar-Tal, Daniel, and Ervin Staub. Patriotism. Wadsworth Publishing: 1999. ISBN 083041410X.
• Blattberg, Charles. From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0198296886.
• Cohen, Joshua, and Martha C. Nussbaum. For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism. Beacon Press: 1996. ISBN 0807043133.
• Primoratz, Igor (ed). Patriotism. Humanity Books: 2002. ISBN 1573929557.
• Paul Gomberg, Patriotism is Like Racism, in Igor Primoratz, ed., Patriotism (Humanity Books, 2002), pp 105-112. ISBN 1573929557.
• Viroli, Maurizio. For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism. Oxford University Press: 1997. ISBN 0198293585.
• Alasdair MacIntyre's essay on patriotism was published as a pamphlet by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Kansas and is available in many university libraries.
• Craig Calhoun Is it Time to Be Postnational?. In Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Minority Rights. Ed. Stephen May, Tariq Modood and Judith Squires. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. pp 231-256. Online at www.ssrc.org.

History:

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• The Second World War by John Keegan (various editions; e.g. Penguin USA 1990, ISBN 014011341X) addresses the intensification of patriotic feeling in Europe during the 19th century, and how it ultimately helped facilitate the First and the Second World Wars. Keegan also vividly describes how Adolf Hitler used accusations of treason to help attain power.

Biology:

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• The quote from Darwin above is from Chapter 5 of his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). The book is available in a number of modern editions (for an inexpensive one: ISBN 1573921769); and also on line at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/index.shtml.
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (various editions, e.g. Oxford Press, 1990, ISBN 0192860925) provides extensive discussion, with examples, of kin selection.
• The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond (various editions, e.g. Perennial, 1990, ISBN 0060984031) discusses the role of biological factors in human behavior, including behaviors characterizable as patriotic.
• http://www.pitt.edu/~inb1/homeopathy.pdf is a skeptical look by a historian at the kin-selection theory of patriotism.