Intersezioni | 2023 | N. 1

Ideas about national character recur frequently in everyday discourse. In dealing with them, it is good to keep a critical eye on them and to maintain an appropriate distance from the falsifications of denigrating propaganda, which also makes use of such concepts. Building on Max Weber, Jaspers made it clear that the national character never identifies a species, but a «type». Types are theoretical constructs with no real referents, but which can nonetheless capture a significant aspect of reality, from which a theoretical or literary discourse can be constructed. We are therefore not surprised by the relative persistence of this theme, which offers the historian of ideas a wealth of material for reflection, with a view to renewing the discipline and enabling it to capture the dynamism, rather than the fixity, of ideas in the history of thought and culture.

Beginning with Polybius’ digression on the character of the Arcadians, the article analyzes the theme of geographical determinism, and the dialectic between nature and culture in a small number of cases. The survey deals with ancient (Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius), modern (Machiavelli) and contemporary (Rudolph von Scala) authors.

In recent scholarship, the Book of Splendor (Sefer ha-Zohar), the masterpiece of Castilian Jewish mysticism, has been considered the result of a literary movement, whose goal was to enhance a «spiritual Renaissance of the Jewish religion». In this regard, scholars have suggested a parallel with the Italian Renaissance. This intuition has been further developed through comparisons between Dante’s and Saint Francis’ ideals of reform, and those of the Jewish Castilian masters. My article will discuss these perspectives, showing how the drive that led to the creation of the Zohar has prompted both a development of original elements of the character of Judaism, and a resurfacing of its traditional identarian values – two contrasting attitudes, which Jewish mysticism has been able to combine.

In mid seventeenth-century London, a new fashion arose: writing the characters of nations. Over the course of 40 years, this fashion went through three different trends. The essence of a place was firstly determined through a series of rhetorical figures (in characters of the Low Countries, France, Italy and Spain), secondly through eye-witness observation (in characters of England and Maryland) and thirdly through demographic statistics (in a political anatomy of Ireland). These rival approaches gave rise to an extensive debate, as much about epistemology as about style, with individual character-writers each fighting to present their method of determining the nature of a nation as the right approach. Where national character is first expressed in the form of satire, by the end of the century, it has transformed into a social science, with little room left for the rhetorical aspiration to inform as well as delight.

Kant’s remarks on his fellow countrymen are scattered over several writings, from the Pre-Critical Observations to his latest publications. During this period, Kant modified his ideas about the nature of the German character quite profoundly. In Anthropology, he finally ascribed to the Germans a «phlegmatic» and «intellectual» temperament. Firm and tenacious in the pursuit of their goals, they are exempt from strong emotional upheavals. Such an attitude, he believes, makes them uniquely open to other peoples. Disdaining any instinctive «national arrogance», the Germans are «cosmopolitan» and «enlightened». Accordingly, Kant refers to Germany as «the land of world citizens». Its citizens ideally embody both the commitment to a cosmopolitan constitution and the sense of patriotism.

The essay investigates Cuoco’s idea of the history of Italy as the place for the feasible formation of a national «conscience», through which to bring out the geo-anthropological characteristics and the traditions that act as physical causes and moral causes on the factors of the community. Focusing on the objective and persistent elements, Cuoco shows, particularly in the relationship with the ancient world, that if natural and geographical history is one of the criteria on which to base historical reconstruction and understand the characteristics of peoples, it must be combine with the mythical, fable-like and symbolic elements, thematized through the use of Vico’s language and fixed thanks to the identification of «poetic characters».

Sections 1 and 2 of the paper analyze the 18th- and 19th- century discourse on national characters, highlighting its duplicity: the discourse developed on the historical-political level with regard to the European populations, while it involved the anthropological terrain when it concerned the «savage» peoples of the colonies. Section 3 shows how, during the second half of the 19th century, the anthropological perspective took over; and how, increasingly homogeneous, the discourse on national characters has taken on an increasingly marked naturalistic figure. Probably due to the radicalization of international, social and political conflicts, this change took place with particular vigor in the discursive framework of new forms of knowledge united by fear and aversion for the masses and crowds.

This article surveys the dispute on national identity in the United States beginning with the political turmoil of the 1960s, when the Protestant ethic was shaken and the culture wars started. Four sets of texts are examined. The first is the neoconservative» journal The Public Interest until the early 1980s, including a coda on political scientist Samuel Huntington. The second set, spanning the Reagan years, concerns the free-market economists of various prestige and ability who combined their attack on statism with a re-affirmation of Americans’ independence, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship. The third set of texts addresses liberals’ search for a third way between extreme multiculturalism and outmoded, nostalgic portrayals. Finally, a sample of historiography is considered.