Cosmopolitanism and The Right to be Legal: The Practical Poverty of Concepts (original) (raw)
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2014
OURS IS an age of globalization in which our nation is not only the country in which we are born, grow up, and live, but also the entire earth itself; in which "each of us dwells, in effect, in two communitiesthe local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration that 'is truly great and truly common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our nation by the sun'" (Nussbaum, 1997, 6). It is one in which, in Kant's words, "The peoples of the earth has thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the earth is felt all over it [the earth]" (Kant, 1972, 142). Ours is an age in which concepts such as basic human rights and crimes against humanity are among those that express most characteristically the spirit of the time. In short, ours is an age of cosmopolitanism. The ideal of cosmopolitanism is that the time will dawn when "the first form of moral affiliation for the citizen should be her affiliation with rational humanity" (Nussbaum, 1997, 5); an important legal norm on the earth is the norm of humanity. Cosmopolitanism affirms the Kantian motto: out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight can be built. It rekindles the light of the Confucian ideal of Tian Xia Gui Ren (天下歸仁)-that is, the world will be united by the norm of humanity. As Thomas Pogge indicates, like all other "isms", cosmopolitanism represents an intellectual position. Notwithstanding, cosmopolitanism is more than "an attitude of enlightened morality that does not place 'love of country' ahead of 'love of mankind'" or "a normative philosophy for carrying the universalistic norms of discourse ethics beyond the confines of the nation-state" (Benhabib, 2006, 17-8). It embodies the enlightening and liberating force of global justice in our time. It evolves an enduring reality of global humanity in our time whose footsteps we hear in the rolling thunder of globalization, the advancing storm of modernization and the heavy rain of democratization. It betokens a supreme horizon of timeless truth that stares at us, challenges us, and drives us in our time. The liberating energy and potency of cosmopolitanism and global humanity is comprehensive, multi-faced, and of full-range. Metaphysically, the titillating vision of our cosmopolitan citizenship presses us hard with the question of our metaphysical identity. It invites us to revise our concept of metaphysical substance and essence. It reminds us of the truth that our humanity identity is not only part of our practical identity, but also part of our metaphysical identitythat is, part of our metaphysical self. It renews the question of the universal human nature. Humanism may be merely a discredited brand-name in Western philosophy today. Yet, the ideal of cosmopolitanism reminds us of the truth that not only there is such a thing called "humanity", but also it is part of our metaphysical identity. It is the formal essence of
Cosmopolitanism and the Question of Universalism
This chapter offers a reassessment of what I consider is cosmopolitanism's most vexing issue: its interconnections with the question of universalism. It argues that thinking in cosmopolitan terms compels us to favour a universalistic orientation and that cosmopolitanism's intellectual core lies in how it is able to handle the challenge of having to offer some kind of universalistic claim while, at the same time, it must remain aware of the difficulties involved in so doing. The relationships between cosmopolitanism and universalism are then best understood when the latter is seen as a key analytical presupposition rather than an externally imposed normative outcome of cosmopolitan approaches. The chapter starts with the argument of the 'problematic centrality' of universalism in cosmopolitan thinking as a way of reconsidering the four most common charges against cosmopolitan universalism: the problem of its 'original locale', of 'stability', of 'reification' and of 'idealism'. Section II deals with the first two of these charges and explicates how universalism is not an 'endogenous Western development' and also that, right from their inception, universalistic arguments were already having to offer explanations about sociohistorical variation and normative disagreement. Section III then deals with the charges of reification and idealism and addresses them by looking at Kant's cosmopolitan and moral thinking. It is in Kant's decided proceduralisation of universalism, on the one hand, and his view of how moral universalism is compatible with the all too real egotistic motivations of individuals, on the other, that a universalistic orientation renews itself and remains a fundamental resource for contemporary cosmopolitan thinking. * As ever, my deep thanks to Robert Fine and Aldo Mascareño for extremely useful comments. This article is part of a wider research project into the relationship between social theory and natural law that is partly funded by the Chilean Council for Science and Technology (Grant 1080213).
Notes on the Fundamental Unity of Humankind
Culture and Dialogue
The argument claims the vital importance of the idea of the fundamental unity of humankind for any intercultural philosophy, and succinctly traces the trajectory of this idea – and its denials – in the Western and the African traditions of philosophical and empirical research. The conclusion considers the present-day challenges towards this idea’s implementation – timely as it is, yet apparently impotent in the face of mounting global violence.
Cosmopolitanism and Globalisation A project of collectivity
However uncertain I may be and may remain as to whether we can hope for anything better for mankind, this uncertainty cannot detract from the maxim I have adopted, or from the necessity of assuming for practical purposes that human progress is possible. This hope for better times to come, without which an earnest desire to do something useful for the common good would never have inspired the human heart, has always influenced the activities of right-thinking people." -Immanuel Kant, Theory and Practice, p. 89
European Journal of Social Theory, 2007
This article re-assesses classical social theory's relationship with cosmopolitanism. It begins by briefly reconstructing the universalistic thrust that is core to cosmopolitanism and then argues that the rise of classical social theory is marked by the tension of how to retain, but in a renovated form, cosmopolitanism's original universalism. On the one hand, as the heir of the tradition of the Enlightenment, classical social theory remains fully committed to cosmopolitanism's universalism. On the other, however, it needed to rejuvenate that commitment to universalism so that it could work without the normative burden that its traditional natural law elements now represented in the modern context. The article then argues that, in the cases of Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, they all started to differentiate the claim to universalism into three different realms: (1) the normative idea of a single modern society that encompasses the whole of humanity;