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The task I will take up in this essay is that of explaining how nationalism can be an issue in the social sciences. My explanation is that, while both the social sciences and nationalism are outgrowths of the Enlightenment, they are not wholly consistent with one another, and the issue is how to square them. As long as nationalism was to be an instrument of liberation; and as long as one of the aims of liberation was to set reason free to seek the truth; and as long as one of the aims of the social sciences was the attempt to bring reason to bear on human affairs, to understand rationally the rational animal; the two had to be consistent. But, as they developed, they diverged. The later development of each was to be inconsistent with its earlier form, and, hence, inconsistent with the earlier form of the other. Nationalism in political practice turned loose the forces, not so much of sweet reason, but of fanaticism and domination. The social sciences, in their turn, came to endorse an argument (or pseudo-argument) which was to become the foundation of a new sub-discipline in sociology, called "the sociology of knowledge." This argument seemed to show that the rational animal could never be liberated from his chains, his reason was limited; in particular, that rational argument was no more than propaganda of one sort or another (with some exceptions that render the argument inconsistent, hence, pseudo).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-5424-3_23

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