ABSTRACT
Unlike most other political doctrines, nationalism lacks a founding father whose ideas have served as inspiration and model for his successors. There is no nationalist equivalent of liberalism's John Locke, conservatism's Edmund Burke, or communism's Karl Marx. It is, however, possible to trace the intellectual origins of nationalist doctrine in the reactions of several late-eighteenth century writers to the universalistic assumptions of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. To put this reaction into perspective, it will be helpful to give a brief indication of the nature of some of these assumptions, in so far as they relate to politics.
