ABSTRACT
Nationalists typically claim that the nation is the community which above all gives meaning and value to our lives and defines who we are as individuals, giving us a duty to be loyal to our nation and responsible for the well-being of others who belong to it. For the sake of their nation nationalists make political demands which can have profound effects not only on the politics of states but also on the international world. Nationalism is a force to be reckoned with in any account of what world developments are possible or likely. But it is also something to which a political philosopher must pay attention. For nationalists are claiming that their loyalty and their demands are justified from a moral and rational point of view, and thus they are providing a particular answer to the questions: what is the best way of reconciling individual freedom with social order? what is a just international world?
