For Love of Country

The civic patriotism tradition is of particular relevance in the present world of divisive provincialisms. Professor Viroli develops the history of this tradition and demonstrates its power as a corrective to such provincialisms with great force and circumstantiality. His recovery and reassertion of this long existing, but now obscured, conception of how loyalty, tradition, love of country, and political belonging ought properly to be understood is ofimmense value.'Professor Clifford Geertz, Princeton, New Jersey, USAWe are all in debt to Viroli for his sympathetic and acute dissection of the patriot tradition, and his thought-provoking reflections on our political shortcomings.‘Times Higher Education SupplementThis book is a learned political sermon ... This study is conducted in an erudite manner ... The great richness of material convincingly establishes that there was a passionate rhetoric of patriotism of the kind Viroli commends.'John Breuilly, University of Birmingham, Nations and Natioalism, Vol. 3, Part 1 - 1997The students of patriotic emotions and arguments will find in Viroli’s book many quotations and discussions of well known and lesser known thinkers on the topic …‘Jean Tournon, Nationalism and Ethic Politics vol.3 no.1,1997

Maurizio Viroli is Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He is the author of From Politics to Reason of State and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the “Well-Ordered Society”.