On the Multiple Levels and Forms of the Nation

Abstract: Focusing on the unification of the natural evolution and cultural progress of the “human community”, this paper reveals the historical evolution of the multiple levels and forms of tribe, race, ethnicity, nations, and the human nation. This kind of genealogy discussion is to analyze the complex relationships among the multiple levels and forms of various nations in modernity and the nation. The initial mode of the nation is formed by the transition from clans to tribes, that is, from a single kin community to the construction of an imaginary we community rooted in but also beyond the kin family. We need to place races under the nexus of nations, ethnicities, and the human nation. Encountering racism, the race is no longer just a neutral concept to describe a nation. Ethnic groups are the result of the sublation of races, and they are also the necessary mediators from race to nation. The emergence of nations indicates that the human community has acquired a diversity of living modes and cultures, reminding us to avoid the racialization and politicization of ethnicities. The concept of nation sublates the various substance forms of ethnicities, and this concept also brings ethnicities into modernity within the framework of multiple levels and forms. The relationship between identifications of the nation and self-awareness of ethnicities constitutes national practices in modernity. The image of the Nation initially had a pejorative connotation due to its association with ethnic groups, and then gradually improved its image because of its signified transformation toward nation. In the process of the evolution of the nation, substantial nation will eventually be replaced by the human nation, which is a general level and form of nation. The human nation is not a historical medium of nations, but the end.