ABSTRACT
Accordingly, the definitions take issue with those nationalist thinkers who presume, on the contrary, an essentialist mode of thinking and who strive to demonstrate immateriality and the eternity of their "nation", in order to justify that it be recognized as a political nation. Nations, Mazzini said, are the product of a divine project. The nation is a particular form of political unit, whose uniqueness should be analyzed in terms of rigorous definitions—without forgetting that every definition is a theory. One of the sources of confusion owes to fact that from the thirteenth century to birth of the modern political nation, contemporaries have designated as "nation" what we today term the ethnie. The nation, as historical reality, must finally be distinguished from nationalism. Nationalism designates claims of ethnies to be recognized as nations, that is, to make the historico-cultural community coincide with the political organization; or the will to power of extant nations to affirm themselves at the expense of others.
