ABSTRACT

Appiah writes that ‘nations matter morally, when they do … for the same reason that football and opera matter – as things desired by autonomous agents, whose autonomous desires we ought to acknowledge … even if we cannot always accede to them’ (Appiah 1996: 28). I understand Appiah to be saying here that if love of country, patriotism for short, figures in our moral reflections at all, it does so principally in sentimental ways registering our desire to identify with our community and compatriots, to acknowledge and nurture our emotional bond with them.1 It is but a small step from this sentimental understanding of patriotism to sports, since sports are nothing if not sentimental vehicles, capable, for instance, of whipping people into an emotional frenzy over the victory of their national team. Indeed, David Miller, in his fine new book On Nationality, makes the connection explicit when he recounts a remark of a friend that ‘he was quite unaware how much importance he attached to being Dutch until a night in June 1988, when the Dutch football team defeated the German team in the European Cup, provoking a mass celebration on the streets of Amsterdam’ (Miller 1995: 14). Miller is of the view that it is emotionally charged events such as these that are necessary to arouse our national sentiments and allegiances.