Klassiek stelt men de Verlichting gelijk aan universalisme, de rede tegenover nationalisme met focus op het lokale, tradities, collectiviteit. Hans Cohn brengt daar zware nuances in aan. Hij zoomt ook in op gespannen relatie tussen bepaalde conservatieven en nationalisme: ' At the same time, nationalism was eschewed by classical conservatism (but not for the reasons that liberals eschewed nationalism). Classical conservatives like Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria was weary of romantic nationalism because his nation (the Austrian Empire) was multi-ethnic composed of: Czechs, Austrians, Hungarians, Croats, and many, many other notable ethnic groups (Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, etc.). In addition, romantic nationalism threatened the agrarian order from which classical conservatism was premised and built upon—the primary reason why classical conservatism lamented the rise of nationalism."
Ook het klassieke tijdsschema stelt hij in vraag waarbij nationalisme als een louter 19de eeuws fenomeen wordt gezien: " By the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, England had become the first “nation” in the modern sense of the term. Having overcome the bounds of absolutism, and having reached a sense of common peoplehood, modern nationalism had been established. In continental Europe, however, the transition would be defined by strife and a far more consequential, eighteenth century, revolution "
Cohn ziet nationalisme en de Verlichting met elkaar verweven: " in the eighteenth century the free personality emerged in all fields of human activity –political, cultural and economic. But this new order posited the grave problem of how to reconcile the liberty of the individual with the exigencies of social integration, how to subject man to a law which could no longer claim the authority of an absolute lawgiver outside and above men. In this situation nationalism was to become a tie binding the autonomous individual into the partnership of a community.”
Cohn wijst fijntjes op tegenstellingen tussen de conservatieve positie en nationalisme ondermeer door de figuur van JJ Rousseau, vaak veracht door conservatieven maar cruciaal voor nationalisten. In welke mate zien jullie jezelf als conservatieven noodzakelijk ook als nationalist.
Cohn voert Jefferson op als het toonbeeld van de Verlichting die niet tegenstrijdig was met nationalisme. "Jefferson was the “founding father” of American nationalism, which made the United States the only nation to be founded by a true man of the Enlightenment." Zoals hij het stelt: “Thus, over a long life which stretched from the zenith of Voltaire’s influence to that of the Restoration and the Holy Alliance, the American apostle preserved his faith in the Enlightenment and its universal blessings. In the fifty years from July 4, 1776, to Jefferson’s death on July 4, 1826, what had been a promise and intention had become the firm foundation of the American republic.”
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