A Criticism of Edmund Burke’s Conception of Patriotism

Abstract

This paper draws on scholarship examining Edmund Burke’s emotionalism in order to conceptualize his understanding of patriotism, and to understand how it hangs together with other dimensions of his political and aesthetic thought. More substantively, the paper takes the further step of engaging with recent accounts of patriotism in order to criticize Burke’s patriotism. According to sympathetic views of Burke’s patriotism, and the theory of emotions that underlies it, the latter has resources to ground a cosmopolitanism of a particular kind. The paper contests these views by highlighting the affinities of Burkean patriotism to some objectionable forms of patriotism, such as Alasdair MacIntyre’s version of it, and its incompatibility with less objectionable forms, such as Jürgen Habermas’s.

Keywords

• Edmund Burke
• patriotismo
• emociones
• Jürgen Habermas.