Is it ethically correct to be proud of one's country?

Question

It is a very well known phenomena that people feel pride for the country where they were born and/or live, even though the effect seems to be declining slightly nowadays. Frequently, governments also try to instill a sense of national pride in their citizens in order to motivate them to serve the country.

But is it ethically correct to be proud of one's country?

When people say that they are proud of being a citizen of a country that has an independent jurisdiction, is a democracy and respects its citizens' rights, the obvious question to me is: Can you be proud of something that you did not create?

Answer 1

The answer would depend largely upon the ethical system you are relying upon.

In a consequentialist system, pride of one's country would only be immoral to the extent to which it leads to immoral consequences. It is not difficult to hypothesize that the state of being proud of one's country could influence one's judgments on all sorts of matters (for example, as regards foreign policy) and lead to actions based upon those judgments (war, in the extreme case.)

In a virtue-based ethics (such as Aristotelian ethics), pride may be considered as non-virtuous; in fact, many such systems consider it exactly that. Pride is one of the seven Cardinal Sins in Catholicism, and one of the Five Poisons (Kleśā) of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Note here that it is the pride itself that is the problem, not the fact that one was not involved in the creation of the object of pride.

Answer 2

One can generalize this to the concern of any group one is a member of, either by choice or by fact (family, subculture, neighborhood, locale, country, and sex, race, ethnicity/language, religion, social rank).

To oversimplify, the naive perspectives are

• one is most familiar with one's own culture. It is a natural thing to have pride/shame issues with respect to one's one culture (however large or small).

• lack of pride in one's group may show a lack of fidelity to the group, and the group psychology may consider lack of pride as treachery.

• pride (like power) can be corrupting (I think this is what leads to the idea of pride itself as a bad thing).

• pride of country in 20-21c European culture is associated with the hypertrophic Nazism and Stalinism (and McCarthyism and Segregation in the US), and is therefore considered 'very bad'.

Now, as to ethically 'correct' - I'd go the situationist route and say, depends on which context. If it's them or us, who's being proud. Or rather, no, I think that the difficulty with pride is that it tends to be exclusionary or against those outside of the group.

Answer 3

Like any virtue, as Aristotle would say, patriotism would have its excess and deficit. Excess of patriotism would be hypernationalism and jingoism, and World Wars I and II would argue against this. Deficit of national pride can result in one's nation getting in trouble.

For example, Hitler took huge advantage of the appeasement movement before WWII, when many lined up to support a petition swearing that one would not fight for one's country. Also, the reason for pride in one's nation would be important. In the case of the USA, is it pride in a rather successful constitution based on separation of powers, and pioneership of the notion of popular sovereignty? Or simple jingoism?

Answer 4

Post WWII there was a deliberate effort led by the US to remove national pride from the citizens of European Countries. It was taught in school that the was bad because of what either they did in the case of Germany, Austria and Italy, or had done to them or allowed to do to others. The theory being that doing this would help prevent the leaders like Hitler from creating an empire by conquering their neighbors. Today this is manifest in the EU expecting everyone to believe the same way they do and fits well into the Socialist agenda.

Seeing as we all pay taxes to our country and most of us are able to participate in our countries government process I do not see any reason that being proud of your country would be unethical. In the case of the United States many of us have ancestors that fought in its wars and even were a part of settling North America. Certianly there are things in all countries past that we wish we could do over to correct. But with out those experiences to guide us forward we would be doomed to make those mistakes eventually. I think it is ok to be a proud German, that does not mean that you are proud of the actions of Naxi Germany in the 1930's and 40's.

Answer 5

Yes, you can be proud of things that merely belong to you, even if you had no direct part in their creation. Nathan is also correct in that you can even be proud of something that doesn't belong to you nor that you contributed to in any meaningful way. It's not clear how there would be anything inherently "wrong" with that.

As an aside: Regarding the title question "Is it ethically correct to be proud of one's country?", it's unclear what you mean by "ethically". Are you suggesting that it's not only nonsensical, but morally wrong to have pride in one's own country without having directly contributed to it's success?

I suppose this is somewhat of a subjective question, but I don't think most people would hold such a position. Misplaced pride might be irrational, but it's not immoral unless you adhere to a very strange set of moral standards...

Answer 6

You are asking two separate questions here. First, is it ethical to be proud of one's country? And second, can you be proud of something that you did not create?

The first, as others have mentioned, is dependent on what you use to define your ethics. In most ethical systems, to have pride (which is different from being possessed by hubris) is amoral. If a country is doing something which is ethical, then it is good to be pleased in that country. If a country is doing something unethical, then it is good to be ashamed of it. Most of the time a country, because it is made up of people, is like a person, and is in a much more complicated situation than merely being one or the other.

The second is an entirely different question. You can be proud of things you do not create, but are a part of. I like being a part of my family, and am proud of them for their accomplishments. I may have influenced the way my family is, but I did not create my family. I was merely given the opportunity to be part of it. The same for a club, or a college, or a community. A country is just much larger, and you are a much smaller part of it. But you can still be proud of this collective identity if you so choose, and the ethics of that seem mostly irrelevant to most ethical systems.

In general, however, I do not believe that most people who are proud of their country are applying the kinds of critical analysis that they would of other things. Because a country is such an abstract notion, and a person's idea of something can stray so far from the actual reality of it, I think many people end up with a harmful, blind, and unconditional approval of one's country despite all evidence to the contrary. Like recurring domestic violence between a husband and wife, where one or the other is unable to admit the fault or wrongdoing of the other. People tend to think it is wrong to apply value judgments to something they love, but that kind of detached, uncritical sense of loyalty actually turns out to do more harm than good.

Answer 7

Perhaps what people call "pride for the country" is actually a type of Enthusiasm:

Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. Johnson's Dictionary, the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, defines enthusiasm as "a vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication." In current English vernacular the word simply means intense enjoyment, interest, or approval.

Originally, an enthusiast was a person possessed by a god. Applied by the Greeks to manifestations of divine possession, by Apollo (as in the case of the Pythia), or by Dionysus (as in the case of the Bacchantes and Maenads), the term enthusiasm was also used in a transferred or figurative sense. Socrates taught that the inspiration of poets is a form of enthusiasm.

Its uses were confined to a belief in religious inspiration, or to intense religious fervour or emotion. Thus, a Syrian sect of the 4th century was known as the Enthusiasts. They believed that "by perpetual prayer, ascetic practices and contemplation, man could become inspired by the Holy Spirit, in spite of the ruling evil spirit, which the fall had given to him". From their belief in the efficacy of prayer, they were also known as Euchites.

I suspect that enthusiasm might be neither ethical nor unethical (though some might argue that it's better to be individualist, conversely others argue that's it's better to be socialist).

Instead perhaps it's the consequence of the enthusiasm, i.e. what you do with it or as a consequence of it, that's ethical or not; for example:

• If you think, "I live in a just society, therefore I too will try to live justly", that might be ethical.
• Conversely, "I live in a rich society, therefore I too will win at any cost", that might be unethical.

Answer 8

Your nation is your wider family so you should be proud of them

Your general goodwill to all must have a hierarchy and priorities as the Scripture says: So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all, but especially to those who belong to the family of the faith.

There is you, your physical family, your faith family, your civil family, etc. all of which are yours and so your responsibility

Answer 9

The answer is yes, one can be proud of something they did not create...such as pride in one's country.

I am not exactly sure as to why having pride in one's country would qualify as an ethical question. Pride in one's country, is not necessarily a bad thing, though excessive pride in one's country-(i.e. boastfulness, bellicosity, ancestral worship, xenophobia, pan-ethnocentricity, jingoism and ultra-nationalism), is distinguishable from ordinary pride in one's country and can collapse into an immoral abyss....(as History has taught us time and again).

One of the most well known (and dangerous) examples of excessive pride in one's country, has been the centuries old vilification of "the other"...the classic, "Us versus them", the deliberate stoking of ethnic, religious and cultural differences between majority and minority populations within historically homogenous countries and cultures. These less than honorable (and even loathsome) characteristics often typify a citizen who tends to be excessively proud of their country/(and or kin), versus the average, ordinary citizen, who tends to have a more generically rooted pride of his or her ancestral family and the contributions his or her kin have made to the history of the world-(and perhaps even during the present-day).

The proud, everyday citizen of a country will wave his or her flag on his or her land....(and never beyond his or her land). However, the excessively proud citizen-(as described above), will also wave his or her flag or his or her land, while simultaneously attempting to desecrate the plurality of flag(s) that look different from his or her flag on his or her land.....or.....wave his or her flag on another country's land(s), thereby replacing the flag(s) of the country's original inhabitants.

It is the actions and aims of the latter that should raise ethical eyebrows......and not the actions and aims of the former.

Answer 10

Emotions like pride or shame are not subject to ethics, you do not break rules by feeling them. Psychologically, it is possible to feel pride and shame about plenty of things we had no control over, our gender, race, religion, family, address, handicap, ...

This is more about psychology, and the social status of ourselves within a peer group, towards other groups and within society at large. Feeling either pride or shame, both would indicate some psychological disturbance of social status.

And those disturbances might be unethical, like being racist against non-white immigrants can lead to pride about being not one of them, which might be expressed as pride about ones own country. Or being subject to racist abuse by others can lead to pride as an emotional counter-weight. Being labelled "white trash" can lead to pride as a counter-weight, too.

So it's likely that a lot of such pride or shame in mere group membership is a result of unethical thoughts or behaviors of oneself or others. But that does not make the emotion itself unethical.

Answer 11

I would guess you would need to ground the manifestation of "proud". The golden mean would advocate that there is nothing wrong ethically, as long as that pride does not manifest in such ways as nationalism or chauvanism. Patriotism, a pride of one's people, doesn't belittle others, focuses on citizenship (ethical consideration). Nationalism is often associated with a target against a group to form bonds, whereas chauvism (from the french general) uplifts one's nation to always be superior. Assuming the ethics is found in the judgment belying expression, it depends on the form.

Answer 12

How do you define ethicly correct? You would have to understand how your choices and actions were allowed within your country,politicly. Do you understand how to be proud of this according to the ethics as you my understand them? Freedom of liberty, this is what canadians and americans should be proud of. But we are being wittled down to lossing this by giant government forces of statism and subjective policys. To be ethicly proud of are country we have to gain back the peaples control of goverenment so we can create what to be proud of this is what we started from. I am proud of what we still have but it could be altered back to individual freedom of choice; freedom of speach; freedom of trade; and the right to attain your own property without interferance on what you can do with it. Is it ethicly correct to be proud of your country? Too but ethics and country and politics together i would feel a little guilty, to be proud at this moment in time, but as a group of peaple as one yes i am proud.