陳建強的動向研究所

The romance of the nation-state. By David Luban Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol.9, No. 4, Summer, 1980,392-297.

The rights of security and subsistence, with which I was concerned, are necessary for the enjoyment of any other rights at all；no one can do without them. Basic rights, therefore are universal. They are no respecters of political boundaries, and require a universalist politics to implement them, even when this means breaching the wall of state sovereignity.p.392

…cosmopolitan theories have been criticized by appealing to the ideology of nationalism…Attack the state, and you attack the soul of its people. The cosmopolitan vision of humanity is really a flattering universalism, a philosopher’s conceit. As Herder says,” Every nation has its own core of happiness just as every sphere has its center of  gravity!...Philosopher in a northern valley, with the infant’s scales of your century in your hand, do you know better than Providence?” p.392

The violence of modern nationalism and its indifference to basic human rights arises, I believe, from the conviction that the only right which matters politically is the right to a unified nation-state. Its picture of the nation-state ,however, is a myth. It emphasizes a nation’s commonality, affinity, shared language and traditions and history, …called “unanimity of mind.” The picture glosses over intramural class conflict, turmoil, violence, and repression; these it represents as the reflection of inscrutable process akin to national destiny. This view I shall call the Romance of the Nation-State. In place of respect for people it sets respect for people; in place of universalism, relativism. p.393

What disturbs me about…is…that “the only global community is …a community of nations, not of humanity”; and that the main moral principle of international politics is “pluralism”: respect for the integrity of nations and their states; in particular, respect for their right to choose political forms which from our point of view are morally deficient.p.393

…making pluralism the overriding value is incompatible from the outset with a theory that grants universal human rights.p.396

Repression is itself an attempt to restrict, or rather, to eliminate the political process. It subjects politics to the essentially apolitical technology of violence, the “great unequalizer.”p.397