Why Do People Die for the Nation?

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to understand why people die for their nation. The author first explains that self-interest must be overridden by emotion to establish a primordial attachment to the state. He then shows how civil religion and its mythology intensifies a person's emotional bond to the state and his desire to die for it. Finally, the author discusses the motivations for dying for the nation outside the context of battle.

From the Paper:

"Dying for the nation is contingent on the existence of nationalism. Before the age of nationalism, nations could exist, but they lacked the psychological conditions that would create a willingness in people to die for them. The rise of nationalism, usually associated with the French Revolution, brought a crucial development. The people fighting in wars now identified with the aims of the war. When nationalism came into existence, civil religion was able to develop and compete with-and sometimes replace-religion as a defining factor of identity and loyalty. Until the modern period, religious identity was more powerful than ethnic identity. Men had previously sacrificed themselves for personal loyalty to a comrade or commander; after the French Revolution, they became willing to die for something much larger and more abstract: A nation. Until the modern period, religious identity was more powerful than ethnic identity."

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