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Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Liberal Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2022

KEI HIRUTA Open the ORCID record for KEI HIRUTA [Opens in a new window]
KEI HIRUTA*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
*
Kei Hiruta Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, kei.hiruta@aias.au.dk; Lecturer, Graduate School of Global Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan, kei.hiruta@tufs.ac.jp.
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Abstract

Discussing An Outline of a Theory of Civilization by the Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi, this essay shows how theorists of liberal nationalism might draw on “non-Western” theoretical resources to enrich their normative ideas and better appreciate their own tradition. I argue that Fukuzawa’s work represents an alternative strand of liberal nationalism that complements its mainstream counterpart pioneered by David Miller, Yael Tamir, and others. More specifically, I argue that Fukuzawa’s contributions help us reconsider three central claims made by his more mainstream peers: (1) cosmopolitanism poses the most important threat to liberal nationalism, (2) the strength of liberal nationalism lies in its perceptiveness about ordinary people’s sense of national belonging, and (3) liberal nationalism emerged in mid-nineteenth-century Europe and spread elsewhere in the age of decolonization. In so doing, I show how the current “comparative turn” in political theory can benefit a specific debate—on liberal nationalism—within the discipline.

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Type
Research Article
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American Political Science Review , Volume 117 , Issue 3 , August 2023 , pp. 940 - 952
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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