On Hazony, Burke, and Renan on the (Idea of a) Nation

Back in 2018 Yoram Hazony published The Virtue of Nationalism. In the wake of Brexit and the success of America First it was a timely work. In it Hazony defines a nation as follows:

By a nation, I mean a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language or religious traditions, and a past history of joining together against common enemies—characteristics that permit tribes so united to understand themselves as a community distinct from other such communities that are their neighbors. By a national state, I mean a nation whose disparate tribes have come together under a single standing government, independent of all other governments.

This definition has a number of components. First a nation is itself a union of tribes and the union is not merely ad hoc but presupposes further path dependent commonalities. What’s striking about this characterization is that a nation is intrinsically heterogeneous; its basic components are tribes not (say) individuals or families. While independent, tribes can be allied, con-federated, or can be constitutive of a nation state. As is clear from wider context, this notion of nationhood is inspired by the Hebrew Bible.

In addition, it’s pretty clear that among the three path dependent glues that generate ties of union one is more fundamental than the other two: for only one serves significant function to solve the political problem: to defend the tribes from shared enemies. That is, lurking in this definition of a nation is a further commitment to political loyalties inherited from the past. For without such mutual loyalty on the battlefield a nation would come to an end as an independent union.

I don’t mean to suggest with the previous paragraphs that Hazony is a Schmittian. For, strikingly, for Hazony, neighbors need not be intrinsically categorized as enemies nor friends. In fact, if I remember correctly, in his book Hazony has a tendency to treat nations, which accept inherent limitations on expansion, as significantly less bellicose than empires.

Near the end of chapter 1 of his (2022) Conservatism: A Rediscovery (recall my series of posts on Hazony's book first one here; second; here the third; fourth; fifth on Hazony on Meyer here; on Hazony on Kirk here; and yesterday), Hazony endorses nationalism as one of his “principles” of Conservatism. And he writes, echoing his 2018 view that “This ideal includes a conception of the nation as arising out of diverse tribes, its unity anchored in a common traditional language, law, and religion.” In an accompanying footnote he cites his own 2018 book (inter alia). [UPDATE: SEE FOOTNOTE 1.] Hazony is also quite explicit that this idea of a nation is far removed from rooting it in ideas of race.

Now I noticed that this (2022) presentation involves a subtle change with the earlier view (which makes no mention of ‘law’ as distinct from religious traditions) for it does not include what I deemed the political element (recall fighting shared enemies) in the original conception.

There is more evidence that Hazony shifted his views. Because earlier in the very same first chapter Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Hazony quotes approvingly a definition of the nation offered by Edmund Burke. The passage is from a speech that Hazony cites as “a speech before the House of Commons” dated 7 May 1782. I put it like that because there is some evidence that the speech was never given, but only drafted (Burke, Edmund. Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4. Liberty Fund, 1774, pp. 16-17).

Now, the context of Burke’s 1782 speech is the question of parliamentary reform. And in it, Burke rejects various ‘natural right’ ideas about representation, and in the sentences immediately before the definition of a nation that Hazony quotes, Burke writes (this is not quoted by Hazony):

Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure that property, to Government. They harmonize with each other, and give mutual aid to one another. It is accompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the human mind, presumption. It is a presumption in favour of any settled scheme of government against any untried project, that a nation has long existed and flourished under it. It is a better presumption even of the choice of a nation, far better than any sudden and temporary arrangement by actual election. Because a nation is not an idea only of local extent…[emphasis in original.]

So, the context of Burke’s definition is a flourishing and long existing nation under a relatively long-standing ‘settled’ government. I think that matters for what follows. But I don’t mean to suggest that the definition of a nation that follows presupposes Burke’s view on the authority of long-standing custom.

So with that being said here is Burke’s definition (also as quoted by Hazony):

A nation is not only an idea of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or of one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice. It is a deliberate election of ages and of generations. It is a constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice: It is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. Burke (1782)

Now, what’s important is that here a nation is fundamentally a (relatively abstract) idea. In fact, just like Rousseau contrasts the ‘will of all’ (as an aggregation) with the general will, so Burke contrasts momentary aggregation of particular contingent views on a nation with the enduring and emergent (abstract) idea of a nation. The enduring idea presupposes continuity in space and time (the way a Lockean idea of consciousness presupposes memory of continuity.) The nation is an emergent and fixed idea that is shaped by the enduring features of otherwise local contexts: “peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time.” But as the prior passage shows, this is, itself, made possible, in part, by the existence of a standing government which stabilizes the way otherwise contingent features can shape the idea of a nation.

Now, unlike Hazony (2018), Burke in 1782 does not treat tribes as the fundamental components of a nation. While I do not want to claim that for Burke without a long-settled government there wouldn’t be a nation as an enduring idea, I do think he believes that an enduring kind of ‘people’ is presupposed. This becomes clear in the immediately following conclusion of the paragraph:

It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices—for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right. [emphasis added]

Now, part of the implied contrast in Burke’s speech is between an idea of an enduring (and emergent) nation as elect with the idea of an election of a particular parliament that purports to represent (while denying the franchise to nearly everyone). By contrast Burke maintains, “The House of Commons is a legislative body corporate by prescription, not made upon any given theory [of representation], but existing prescriptively—just like the rest [of the British constitution].”

Be that as it may, I sincerely doubt that Hazony’s (2018) view of what a nation is can easily be reconciled with Burke’s 1782 view that he cites approvingly in (2022). I don’t think Hazony misses this because his use for Burke’s view is considerably narrower than Burke’s own definition. Rather, he wants to claim just two fairly minimal things:

1. “Like his predecessors in the English [sic!] conservative tradition [and in contrast to Locke], Burke places the nation at the center of his understanding of politics, regarding it as a community projected both backward and forward in time.”

2. “Burke’s concern to understand the circumstances and dispositions of a people over a period of centuries makes him a historical empiricist”

Let’s grant this to Hazony. All I observe, then, based on the foregoing is that within the Anglo conservative tradition, Hazony’s own conception of the nation (as it evolves between 2018 and 2022) is not the only possible way to go.

I could have stopped here. But Burke’s treatment of a nation in 1782 foreshadows (by way of partial contrast) in an interesting way the famous (1882) definition of Renan (recall this post and some of my subsequent digressions). While Renan has noxious views on race, I don’t think these enter into his view of nationhood. I want to use his views to reveal another important distinction between Hazony and Burke.

Renan’s definition also treats the nation as an emergent (abstract) idea, one that is the effect of a daily plebiscite; it is rooted in the ongoing practice of each of us to consent and thereby enact (and discover!) nationhood—precisely what Burke wishes to deny! I quote the concluding passage from Renan:

A nation is therefore a great solidarity constituted by the feeling of sacrifices made and those that one is still disposed to make. It presupposes a past but is reiterated in the present by a tangible fact: consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation’s existence is (please excuse the metaphor) a daily plebiscite [un plébiscite de tous les jours], just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life. Yes, I know, that is less metaphysical than divine right and less brutal than so-called law of history. In the scheme of ideas with which I present you, a nation has no more right than a king to say to a province: “You belong to me, I am taking you.” For us, a province is its inhabitants and, if anyone in this affair has the right to be consulted, it is the inhabitant. A nation never has a true interest in annexing or holding territory that does not wish to be annexed or held. The vow of nations is the sole legitimate criterion and that to which it is necessary to constantly return.—Translated by Ethan Rundell (1882) “What is a Nation?” Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? at the

In fact, anticipating Hazony, Renan’s view is explicitly a rejection of the nation as vehicle for empire. While Renan’s view of a nation as the effect of a daily plebiscite is conceptually fairly close to what Hume calls a ‘convention’ (which has — much to my surprise — rather strong roots in Locke’s views on convention), not unlike Hazony for Renan it is characteristic of a nation to be motivated through a common past (perhaps, as J.S. Mill would argue, from a feeling of mutual sympathy) to acts of solidarity and mutual sacrifice.

In Renan no less than in Hazony, then, defeat in battle would create an existential question about continued adherence to the nation. But in Renan (again anticipating Hazony), and unlike Burke, no pre-existing standing government is required for the idea of nationhood to endure. While they differ sharply about underlying social ontology of nations, in Hazony and Renan the nation can, thus, lead a rich, virtual existence absent a settled government.* I doubt Burke would agree.+

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1. UPDATE: So, it turns out I did not remember Hazony’s (2022) Conservatism all that accurately. In chapter 3 he writes

   “By a nation, then, we mean a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language, law, or religious tradition, and a past history of joining together against common enemies and to pursue common endeavors—characteristics that permit tribes united in this way to recognize themselves as a nation distinct from the other nations that are their neighbors. By a national state, we mean a nation whose disparate tribes have come together under a single standing government, independent of all other governments.” (Conservatism, pp. 90-91).

   This is pretty close to his 2018 view. So, the body of the text is not quite right. Hazony’s official views did not change much between 2018 and 2022. Rather, the position in chapter 1 is ecumenical toward Burke’s. I thank Hazony for alerting me to this.

*For Hazony that is true if the tribes that give rise to a nation persist.

+Although I grant there are passages where Burke speaks of nations without settled government.