What is a Nation?
Listen on Apple Podcasts  |  Listen on Spotify  |  Listen on other platforms What is a Nation? What is the difference between a people and a nation? In this podcast, Marc Barnes and Alex Denley discuss Ernest Renan's influential lecture "What is a nation?". Renan argues that a nation is not formed by common descent, language, religion, or geography. Rather, a nation is a spiritual principle that requires sacrifice, and a forgetting of the past. Marc and Alex discuss Renan's definition of a nation and how it formed the development of nation states in the modern period. Registration is open for New Polity Conference 2025 ! Ernest Renan's lecture can be found here : Check out Marc's essay " National Forgetting " Subscribe to New Polity Magazine ! Join the conversation on our Discord