Trapp’s Trap: Classical Nationalism versus Bounded Rationality

Abstract

How rational are classical nationalist attitudes, and their more recent cousins, populist quasi-nationalist attitudes? This article addresses these questions from the perspectives of instrumental and bounded conceptions of rationality. It demonstrates that on both conceptions pernicious nationalistic attitudes may count as perfectly rational, while remaining clearly irrational in a wider prescriptive sense. The article concludes by pointing to alternative conceptions of rationality and to cosmopolitan remedies for global problems inadequately addressed within nationalistic frameworks.