Modern investigation concepts of Patriotism in the foreign scientific research
Authors: Shyrokov Serhii 
Published: February 2020

The phenomenon of patriotism has accompanied humanity since ancient times. Its versatility strikes the imagination. Patriotism is defined intuitively and theoretically as «amor patria» (lat) – «love to the motherland». Even in its general form, this definition raises many questions, ranging from the gulf between direct and literary translations to the correctness of involving the concept of love to define it. This most general description characterizes the phenomenon in terms of attitude, but a closer examination requires a greater degree of details.

Modern concepts of the study of the manifestations of patriotism in the Western scientific literature occupy a very important place in the fairway of the formation of political morality, which leads the civilized world to progress in the triumph of public moral values, recognizing the limitations of the real world, but not allowing these obstacles to impede such movement. It is believed that the phenomenon of patriotism in the modern world now plays an important role in reflecting on the rights and responsibilities of policymaking, but this may not always be the case, given the controversial view that further development of liberal democracy may weaken the manifestations of this phenomenon.

Each of the concepts is implemented in one of the individual dimensions: vertical or horizontal. The vertical dimension is responsible for the relations between the subject and the object of patriotism, while the horizontal dimension is responsible for the relations between the subjects. They distinguish a «pre-political» vertical dimension, where the focus is on the culture, language, history and traditions of motherland or political community and «political», where the central principles and fundamental values of the state are central to loyalty. The horizontal dimension of patriotism has redistributive and substantive aspects. The essence of the redistributive aspect is the priority given to compatriots in comparison with other persons. The latter has two versions: absolute, which implies that compatriots always have priority over others; and a relative one, in which priority is given under certain conditions. Both dimensions have two degrees – extreme and moderate. Extreme concepts are characterized by unconditional loyalty to the object of patriotism, exceptional attachment to it, and unconditional priority given to compatriots in the distributive aspect.

The discussion is free from pathos and propaganda and focuses more on the philosophical and sociological aspects of this issue.

In the domestic scientific space, discourse is mainly focused on the educational aspects of pedagogy, the formation of appropriate personality traits, where the term «patriotism» mainly and primarily expresses sacrifice for something and a sense of duty; in contrast, in the Western scientific tradition the term tends to be more committed to some principles and ideals. According to the author, these differences are due to the Soviet heritage not yet overcome in the ideological use of the manifestations of this phenomenon.