Stanisław Ossowski o patriotyzmie i kosmopolityzmie

Abstract

The author believes that the relations between the individual and the society are of the greatest dilemmas of social life. Depending on how we understand the society, there emerge two contradictory attitudes of patriotism and cosmopolitism against he background of those relations. Patriotism, apart from the love to motherland, does not reject universal human ideals. Cosmopolitism, on the contrary, does not recognize motherland. These notions are contradictory. S. Ossowski analyses patriotism first of all as a psychological phenomenon. It consists in a specific relationship of the person with the homeland, which is not free of certain metaphysics. Cosmopolitans are radical, they consider love to the homeland an illusion. The whole earth should the homeland for everybody, and the whole humanity - the nation. It is only its prosperity that can assure the prosperity for all individuals.