Multiculturalism: A tradition of political thought that liberal nationalists can use

Abstract

Copyright © 2020 The Author. When confronted with a scholar of Tamir's distinction, one is reminded not of Tamir's teacher, Isaiah Berlin, but of a thinker with whom Berlin disagreed. This is Hannah Arendt, as she taught that the vita activa had, for too long, been defined in opposition to the vita contempliva, yet the two are not opposed. Tamir illustrates this as her first book, Liberal Nationalism, helped to create the contemporary forms of a liberal doctrine that we now call “liberal nationalism,” and she was an Israeli cabinet minister. Her new book, Why Nationalism, reflects her ability to combine theory and practice as she offers a range of moral and prudential insights when showing why contemporary forms of nationalism emerged and how we should react politically to them. I agree with much of the book, but I will discuss three areas of disagreement.