FULL two decades after the end of the Cold War, stories of nations as supposedly outdated historical categories live on. According to these theses, nation states have no perspective because the future is reserved only for various forms of regional and global integration. The practice, however, stubbornly rejects these neo-Marxist views: nation-states have continued to protect their interests, and ordinary people have increasingly defended their traditions and identities.
Miša Đurković is the translator of this work
This is how the political scientist and philosopher Miša Đurković, the director of the Institute for European Studies, draws the frame of the book by the Israeli political philosopher Joram Hazoni, “The Virtue of Nationalism”, whose translator and author of the talks to the Serbian edition. In many ways, this capital work, which sheds new light on the ingrained stereotypes about nationalism and the nation state, will be promoted today at 7 pm at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade.
Announcing the book (published by Belgrade’s “Clio”), Đurković points out that in the last ten years, many thinkers have openly raised their voices against the insulted quasi-theoretical violence. One of the best offshoots of the rebellion is Professor Hazoni, who with his book published in 2018 calls for a “return to normalcy”.
– Starting from his own Old Testament tradition, Hazoni first reminds us that nations are far older categories, and not allegedly invented constructs that emerged after the French Revolution. He rightly speaks of his Jewish people as a nation of continuity, as other nations can claim for themselves. He defends the idea of a nation and an order of the world in which there are national states that respect and recognize each other, as far more noble and peaceful than the order of empires that pretend to subjugate everything to themselves – explains Đurković.
The most important modern empire for Hazonia is the EU, as it seeks to change the natural order based on the traditional family. Therefore, Hazoni defends his nationalism as legitimate and defines it as a conservative order, opposing it to liberal imperialism.
– It is an interesting thesis that Hitler’s Nazi creation is not an example of a nationalist model, but a classic imperial endeavor derived from the German tradition of living in empires instead of nation-states. Hazoni mentions Serbs in a number of places, putting them in a similar context as his Jews, that is, as people who are being denied the right to their own self-defense and protection of identity – Đurković notes.
QUALITY CONTROVERSIES IN THE WORLD
HAZONIJ’s book experienced a strong reception in the world, but also through quality controversies. Dean of the Faculty of Law Zoran Mirkovic, historian Milos Kovic, Stevan Gajic, from the Institute for European Studies, publisher Zoran Hamovic and translator and author of the discussion Misa Djurkovic will give their opinion on his views at today’s promotion.
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