ABSTRACT
This Chapter explores the various ways in which these two fundamental discourses of nation and gender are linked. It focuses on three important philosophers whose works most clearly reflect broader patterns and widely-held assumptions, namely, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The chapter introduces the concepts of nation and nation-state, referring to theoretical aspects of modernisation. It analyses the relationship between 'state' and 'nation' within the model of the nation-state. The chapter shows how the conception of gender differences entered into the construction of this relation, and how, in turn, the rise of the nation-state contributed decisively to the formation, deepening and stabilisation of the polarisation of stereotypical gender characteristics, specific kinds of personhood embodied by women and men. It deals with the relationship between one's own nation and foreign nations, a relationship which has also been described according to the dichotomising ideology of gender differences.
