The Nation as a Speech Community

Tags: Philosophy and Methodology, Political Theory, World History

11/04/2026 Ludwig von Mises

The book’s foundation. Mises argues that nation and nationality are modern concepts belonging to political individualism, and that to understand them you must start from the individual rather than the group. Neither residence nor citizenship makes a man German. What does is the speech community he belongs to—a position he presses to its limits, including the case of children raised by foster parents in another language.

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