Hegel’s Nationalism or Two Hegelian Arguments Against Globalism

Abstract

The conflict between globalism and nationalism is arguably one of the most important political issues of our time. In this article, I argue that Hegel’s mature political philosophy has convincing arguments for recognition-based, non-chauvinistic nationalism and against globalism. I lay out two reasons why Hegel is against dissolving national sovereignty and the establishment of a world state: First of all, he argues that the state provides the highest realization of human self-determination. Therefore, he believes that it is not rational for a people who form a sovereign nation to want to give up their political independence. Second of all, Hegel argues that the state must be conceived of as having individuality, which means that it has the ontological structure of an exclusory being-for-itself: In order for it to be an individual, it must stand in exclusory relations to others of the same kind. In addition to reconstructing Hegel’s critique of globalism, I argue that his brand of nationalism is based on mutual recognition between states, which makes Hegel not a Hobbesian realist but someone who believes that the political sphere is inherently ethical.