Scholarly definitions of nationalism often characterize the nation as the supreme object of loyalty (a ‘jealous god’). Such restrictive definitions are unwise because they needlessly exclude a wide range of pro-national beliefs and practices. Demonstrating this, however, is harder than often thought, because the close linkage between nation and jurisdiction seems to entail a prioritization of national attachment over other identities. More pluralist accounts of nationhood, such as those of Margaret Moore or Charles Taylor, only partially resolve this dilemma, which requires consideration of the ultimate sacrifices entailed by war and conscription. Yet these cases of ultimate sacrifice should be understood not as endemic to nationhood alone but to all forms of strong communal attachment, when faced with existential threat. As it is this threat, rather than nationhood per se, that drives nationalism to take absolute forms, restrictive definitions may justifiably be rejected.

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A shared concern with the nature of moral agency in modernity makes George Grant a useful interlocutor for Charles Taylor. Taylor sees human agency as constituted by moral affirmations, as given in the process he calls “strong evaluation.” He examines the “moral sources,” including reason, nature, and God, that inform the modern identity, explaining “technological society” in light of these affirmations. Grant’s analysis of technology shares much with Taylor’s, but underlines the irreducibility of technological civilization’s “will to mastery” to any of Taylor’s moral goods. This “will” is a distinctive and constitutive affirmation of modern agents (akin to a Taylorian “source”); but it is fundamentally amoral and, indeed, corrosive of morality. Reading Grant thus offers an important corrective to Taylor’s historical account of affirmation in modernity, while challenging his theory of identity as necessarily constituted by moral goods.

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