Notes

Johann Fichte
Definition of Nation: People who share the same roots-ancestor, culture, and language - form a nation.
Potential Bias: He believed that a shared identity was the most important factor.
Connection between people: Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. (German philosopher)

Ernest Renan
Definition of Nation: Believed that a nation begins with shared roots but has something more needed - people’s soul.
Potential Bias: begins with shared roots but that something more is needed — the people’s soul.
Connection between people: A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle . . . To have common glories in the past and to have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more — these are the essential conditions for being a people. (French philosopher)


Benedict Anderson
Definition of Nation: A nation is a community that is imagined.
Potential Bias: It is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.
Connection between people: [The nation] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them. (Irish professor)