Andrew Vincent

ABSTRACTThe argument focuses on a Victorian perception of spiritual crisis and its unanticipated relation to nationalism. This issue is analyzed in the context of the British Idealist movement for whom the roots of the crisis derived largely from a misleading transcendental understanding of religion. The Idealists re-conceptualized religion as immanent within a humanized incarnational understanding of Christ, which was in turn seen to be implicit in the everyday moral conduct of all humans. This latter idea had immediate social implications. Morality is seen to be rooted within institutions aspiring to achieve the common good. In this context, a specific ‘sense’ of nationalism is seen to embody this aspiration to the common good. There is an explicit distinction between forms of nationalism which facilitate, as against those which hinder, the common good. Thus, the Idealist immanent understanding of religion - configured through the common good - forms the intrinsic value substance to a unique understanding of nationalism.

The chapter focuses on nationalism as an ideology. It reviews the largely unresolved debates over the background, genealogy, and development of nationalism, many of which oscillate between primordial, pre-modern, and modernist accounts. It scrutinizes debates over ethnicity, culture, race, self-determination, and democracy, in relation to nationalism; critically appraises the theoretical paradoxes implicit within nationalist argument; and finally turns to an overview of some of the main themes pervading nationalist discourse. These themes are viewed, in themselves, as largely vacuous. What makes them significant is the entry of other thicker ideologies, which carry the nationalist argument forward.