Ethical Conceptualization Of Citizenship

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ETHICS AND POLITICS TERM PAPER “Mankind, whether a religious or humanistic ideal, implies a common sharing of responsibility.” Hannah Arendt This term paper seeks to delve into the question of ethics inherent in the conceptualization of citizenship. Political theorists Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau grappled with the issue of identifying the grounds to justify membership in political space. This question of ascertaining who is a citizen becomes important in the context of increase in migration, nationalist sentiment and rising demands of recognition of statehood. In the light of an increasingly interconnected global world, how are liberal democratic states to decide who is to be included in the political community? Should conception of citizenship…show more content…
This stems from the paradox inherent in the process of globalization that has reduced distances and brought people form far off lands closer than ever before and it’s believed that borders have become porous and boundaries seem to be waning away resulting in the state taking a backseat from its role as the organizational culmination of man’s innate social existential instincts. An ethical conceptualization of citizenship is possible when we acknowledge that state is here to stay and its role in the life of individual has become ever more important. Citizenship is a two way street comprising of give and take. Everybody in a democratic state is ingrained with a sense of belonging and they fulfill their obligations towards state by virtue of being entitled to political membership of state. Popular sovereignty forms the core of citizenship. In liberal theory all citizens are regarded as free and equal persons when located as citizens. However, there is an effort to homogenize individuals and ascertain a common conception of public good and this is realized through the nation-state. This becomes a cultural necessity in the wake of increase in globality that induces cultural anxieties in people and a sense of homogenized identity instilling a sense of fear about the loss of one’s…show more content…
She asserted that the state is an enterprise of power that is essentially a legal institution open to citizens of any nationality residing on its territory. It ensures protection of rights of men. It is the supreme protector of law which guarantees man his rights as a man, citizen and as a national. Of these only the first two are primary rights and the rights of national are derivative and relative in their source and manifestation due to its premise on time, history and universal becoming and is thus a manner of being a man unlike the primary rights which are means of becoming a man. Nation is constituted by historical conscience and has intrinsic value attached to one’s soil and labor where history has left its deep imprints and is therefore closed with its acclaim to birth rights. A nation thus perceives outsiders as aliens and despises migration. This identification of state with nation leads to confusion of the Rights of Men with rights of nationals. Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism argued that: Humanity, which for the eighteenth century, in Kantian terminology was no more than a regulative idea, has today become an inescapable fact. This new situation in which “humanity”
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