ABSTRACT
Patriotism and cosmopolitanism are often presumed to be mutually exclusive. Kantians are better known as critics than as defenders of patriotism, and they are often charged with being unable to handle agent-relative responsibilities adequately. Civic patriotism is found in the tradition of republicanism. The republican state is regarded as serving the common good of the citizens in the political sense. Trait-Based patriotism may emerge even if one’s country does not have a political system that protects the freedom of those who live in it and one does not regard oneself as a member of any particular nation. Tepid patriotism is trivially compatible with cosmopolitanism, and fanatical patriotism obviously excludes it, but there is ample ground between these two extremes. Patriotism can clearly degenerate into a sectarianism that denies the fundamental equality of all humans and attributes a higher moral standing to compatriots or co-nationals than to other human beings.
