## 1. History of Cosmopolitanisms


### 1.1 Greek and Roman Cosmopolitanism




The political culture idealized in the writings of Plato and
Aristotle is not cosmopolitan. In this culture, a man identifies
himself first and foremost as a citizen of a particular polis or city,
and in doing so, he signals which institutions and which body of people
hold his allegiance. He would then be counted on for help in defending
the city from attacks, sustaining its institutions of justice, and
contributing to its common good. In this way, his own pursuit of a good
life is inextricably bound to the fate of the city and to the similar
pursuit carried out by other inhabitants of the city. By contrast, the
good person would not be expected to share with or serve any foreigners
who live outside the city. Any cosmopolitan expectations on a good
Athenian extended only to concern for those foreigners who happen to
reside in Athens.




It would, however, be wrong to assume that Classical Greek thought
was uniformly *anti-cosmopolitan*. Actively excluding foreigners
from any ethical consideration or actively targeting foreigners for
mistreatment goes one step beyond focusing one's service and
concern on compatriots, and in fact, the targeting of
'barbarians' is historically linked with the rise of
panhellenism and not with the more narrow emphasis on the polis. It
would be more accurate to call the Classical emphasis on the polis
*uncosmopolitan*.




Yet even as Plato and Aristotle were writing, other Greeks were
issuing cosmopolitan challenges. Perhaps the most obvious challenges
came from the traveling intellectuals who insisted on the contrast
between the conventional ties of politics and the natural ties of
humanity. Notice, for example, the way Plato has the Sophist Hippias
address the motley crew of Athenians and foreigners present at Callias'
house in Plato's *Protagoras* (337c7-d3):



> Gentlemen present ... I regard you all as kinsmen,
> familiars, and fellow-citizens - by nature and not by
> convention; for like is by nature akin to like, while convention,
> which is a tyrant over human beings, forces many things contrary to
> nature.




Socrates, too, it can be argued, was sensitive to this more
cosmopolitan identification with human beings as such. At least as
Plato characterizes him, Socrates avoids traditional political
engagement as much as he can, in favor of an extraordinary career of
examining himself and others, and he insists that these examinations
are both genuinely political (*Gorg* 521d6-8) and extended to
all, Athenians and foreigners alike (*Apol* 23b4-6, 30a3-7; cf. Eu. 3d5-9). Of course,
Socrates chose not to travel widely, but this decision could well have
been consistent with cosmopolitan ideals, for he may have thought that
his best bet for serving human beings generally lay in staying at
home, on account, ironically, of Athens' superior freedom of speech
(*Gorg* 461e1-3; cf. *Apol* 37c5-e2 and *Meno*
80b4-7). Whether Socrates was self-consciously cosmopolitan in this
way or not, there is no doubt that his ideas accelerated the
development of cosmopolitanism and that he was in later antiquity
embraced as a citizen of the world.




In fact, the first philosopher in
the West to give perfectly explicit expression to cosmopolitanism was
the Socratically inspired Cynic Diogenes in the fourth century BCE. It
is said that "when he was asked where he came from, he replied,
'I am a citizen of the world
[*kosmopolites*]'" (Diogenes Laertius VI 63).
By identifying himself not as a citizen of Sinope but as a citizen of
the world, Diogenes apparently refused to agree that he owed special
service to Sinope and the Sinopeans. So understood, 'I am a
citizen of the cosmos' is a negative claim, and we might wonder
if there is any positive content to the Cynic's world citizenship. The
most natural suggestion would be that a world citizen should serve the
world-state, helping to bring it about in order to enable the later
work of sustaining its institutions and contributing to its common
good. But the historical record does not suggest that Diogenes the
Cynic favored the introduction of a world-state. In fact, the
historical record does not unambiguously provide Diogenes any positive
commitments that we can readily understand as cosmopolitan. The best
we can do to find positive cosmopolitanism in Diogenes is to insist
that the whole Cynic way of life is supposed to be cosmopolitan: by
living in accordance with nature and rejecting what is conventional,
the Cynic sets an example of high-minded virtue for all other human
beings.




A fuller exploration of positively committed philosophical
cosmopolitanism arrives only with the Socratizing and Cynic-influenced
Stoics of the third century CE. These Stoics are fond of saying that
the cosmos is, as it were, a polis, because the cosmos is put in
perfect order by law, which is right reason. They also embrace the
negative implication of their high standards: 
conventional poleis do not, strictly speaking, deserve the name, and human beings who are not wise and virtuous do not count as citizens of the cosmos. But
the Stoics do not believe that living in agreement with the cosmos -
as a (virtuous) citizen of the cosmos - requires maintaining critical distance
from conventional poleis. Rather, as the traces of Chrysippus' *On
Lives* make clear, the Stoics believe that goodness requires
serving other human beings as best one can,
that serving all human beings equally well is impossible, and that the
best service one can give typically requires political engagement. Of
course, the Stoics recognize that political engagement will not be
possible for everyone, and that some people will best be able to help
other human beings as private teachers of virtue rather than as
politicians. But in no case, the Stoics insist, is consideration of
political engagement to be limited to one's own polis. The motivating
idea is, after all, to help human beings as such, and sometimes the
best way to do that is to serve as a teacher or as a political advisor
in some foreign place. In this fashion, the Stoics introduce clear,
practical content to their metaphor of the cosmopolis: a cosmopolitan
considers moving away in order to serve, whereas a non-cosmopolitan
does not.




This content admits of a strict and a more moderate interpretation.
On the strict view, when one considers whether to emigrate, one
recognizes prima facie no special or stronger reason to serve
compatriots than to serve a set of human beings abroad. On the moderate
view, one does introduce into one's deliberations extra reason to serve
compatriots, although one might still, all things considered, make the
best choice by emigrating. The evidence does not permit a decisive
attribution of one or the other of these interpretations to any of the
earliest Stoics. But if we think that Chrysippus was deeply
attracted to the Cynics' rejection of what is merely conventional, then
we will find it easy to think of him as a strict
cosmopolitan.




Things are a bit different for at least some of the Stoics at Rome.
On the one hand, the cosmopolis becomes less demanding. Whereas
Chrysippus limits citizenship in the cosmos to those who in fact live
in agreement with the cosmos and its law, Roman Stoics extend
citizenship to all human beings by virtue of their rationality. On the
other hand, local citizenship becomes more demanding. There is no
doubt that the Stoicism of Cicero's *De Officiis* or of
Seneca's varied corpus explicitly acknowledges obligations to
Rome in addition to obligations to the cosmos. This is a moderate Stoic cosmopolitanism, and empire made the
doctrine very easy for many Romans by identifying the Roman
*patria* with the cosmopolis itself. But neither imperialism
nor a literal interpretation of world citizenship is required for the
philosophical point. The maximally committed cosmopolitan looks around
to determine whom he can best help and how, knowing full well that he
cannot help all people in just the same way, and his decision to help
some people far more than others is justified by cosmopolitan lights
if it is the best he can do to help human beings as such.




Stoic cosmopolitanism in its various guises was enormously persuasive
throughout the Greco-Roman world. In part, this success can be
explained by noting how cosmopolitan the world at that time was.
Alexander the Great's conquests and the subsequent division of his
empire into successor kingdoms sapped local cities of much of their
traditional authority and fostered increased contacts between cities,
and later, the rise of the Roman Empire united the whole of the
Mediterranean under one political power. But it is wrong to say what
has frequently been said, that cosmopolitanism arose as a
*response* to the fall of the polis or to the rise of the Roman
empire. First, the polis' fall has been greatly exaggerated. Under the
successor kingdoms and even - though to a lesser degree -
under Rome, there remained substantial room for important political
engagement locally. Second, and more decisively, the cosmopolitanism
that was so persuasive during the so-called Hellenistic Age and under
the Roman Empire was in fact rooted in intellectual developments that
*predate* Alexander's conquests. Still, there is no doubting
that the empires under which Stoicism developed and flourished made
many people more receptive to the cosmopolitan ideal and thus
contributed greatly to the widespread influence of Stoic
cosmopolitanism.




Nowhere was Stoic cosmopolitanism itself more influential than in
early Christianity. Early Christians took the later Stoic recognition
of two cities as independent sources of obligation and added a twist.
For the Stoics, the citizens of the polis and the citizens of
the cosmopolis do the same work: both aim to improve the
lives of the citizens. The Christians respond to a different call:
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and
unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). On this
view, the local city may have divine authority (*John* 19:11;
cf. *Romans* 13:1,4,7), but the most important work for human
goodness is removed from traditional politics, set aside in a sphere in
which people of all nations can become "fellow-citizens with the
saints" (*Ephesians* 2:20).




This development has two important and long-lasting consequences,
which are canonized by Augustine. First, the cosmopolis again becomes a
community for certain people only. Augustine makes this point most
explicitly by limiting the citizenship in the city of God to those who
love God. All others are relegated to the inferior - though still
universal - earthly city by their love of self. These two cities of
the world, which are doomed to coexist intertwined until the Final
Judgment, divide the world's inhabitants. Second, the work of politics
is severed from the task of building good human lives, lives of
righteousness and justice. While Augustine can stress that this allows
citizens in the city of God to obey local laws concerning "the
necessaries for the maintenance of life," he must also
acknowledge that it sets up a potential conflict over the laws of
religion and the concerns of righteousness and justice (e.g.,
*Civitas Dei* XIX 17).




For hundreds of years to come, debates in political philosophy would
surround the relation between 'temporal' political
authority and the 'eternal Church.' But emphasis on the
cosmopolitan aspect of the Church waned, despite its ideal of a
religious community comprising all humans. In a nutshell, the debate
now opposed the secular and the religious, and not the local and the
cosmopolitan. To be sure, this debate often had cosmopolitan
ramifications, which are clear enough in Dante Alighieri's plea for a
universal monarchy in *De Monarchia* (ca. 1314). But his case
draws from Aristotle and Roman history, not explicitly from the ideal
of a cosmopolis or of world citizenship, and he remains deeply
concerned to adjudicate between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor.



### 1.2 Early Modern and Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism




Cosmopolitanism slowly began to come to the fore again with the
renewed study of more ancient texts, but during the humanist era
cosmopolitanism still remained the exception. Despite the fact that
ancient cosmopolitan sources were well-known and that many humanists
emphasized the essential unity of all religions, they did not develop
this idea in cosmopolitan terms. A few authors, however, most notably
Erasmus of Rotterdam, explicitly drew on ancient cosmopolitanism to
advocate the ideal of a world-wide peace. Emphasizing the unity of
humankind over its division into different states and peoples, by
arguing that humans are destined by Nature to be sociable and live in
harmony, Erasmus pleaded for national and religious tolerance and
regarded like-minded people as his compatriots (*Querela
Pacis*).




Early modern natural law theory might seem a likely candidate for
spawning philosophical cosmopolitanism. Its secularizing tendencies and
the widespread individualist view among its defenders that all humans
share certain fundamental characteristics would seem to suggest a point
of unification for humankind as a whole. However, according to many
early modern theorists, what all individuals share is a fundamental
striving for self-preservation, and the universality of this striving
does not amount to a fundamental bond that unites (or should unite) all
humans in a universal community.




Still, there are two factors that do sometimes push modern natural
law theory in a cosmopolitan direction. First, some
natural law theorists assume that nature implanted in humans, in
addition to the tendency to self-preservation, *also* a
fellow-feeling, a form of sociability that unites all humans at a
fundamental level into a kind of world community. The appeal to such a
shared human bond was very thin, however, and by no means does it
necessarily lead to cosmopolitanism. In fact, the very notion of a
natural sociability was sometimes used instead to legitimate war
against peoples elsewhere in the world who were said to have violated
this common bond in an 'unnatural' way, or who were easily
said to have placed themselves outside of the domain of common human
morality by their 'barbaric' customs. Second, early modern
natural law theory was often connected with social contract theory, and
although most social contract theorists worked out their views mostly,
if not solely, for the level of the state and not for that of
international relations, the very idea behind social contract theory
lends itself for application to this second level. Grotius, Pufendorf,
and others did draw out these implications and thereby laid the
foundation for international law. Grotius envisioned a "great
society of states" that is bound by a "law of
nations" that holds "between all states" (*De Iure
Belli ac Paci*, 1625, Prolegomena par. 17; Pufendorf, *De Iure
Naturae et Gentium*, 1672).




The historical context of the philosophical resurgence of
cosmopolitanism during the Enlightenment is made up of many factors:
The increasing rise of capitalism and world-wide trade and its
theoretical reflections; the reality of ever expanding empires whose
reach extended across the globe; the voyages around the world and the
anthropological so-called 'discoveries' facilitated through
these; the renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy; and the
emergence of a notion of human rights and a philosophical focus on
human reason. Many intellectuals of the time regarded their membership
in the transnational 'republic of letters' as more
significant than their membership in the particular political states
they found themselves in, all the more so because their relationship
with their government was often strained because of censorship issues.
This prepared them to think in terms other than those of states and
peoples and adopt a cosmopolitan perspective. Under the influence of
the American Revolution, and especially during the first years of the
French Revolution, cosmopolitanism received its strongest impulse. The
1789 declaration of 'human' rights had grown out of
cosmopolitan modes of thinking and reinforced them in turn.




In the eighteenth century, the terms 'cosmopolitanism'
and 'world citizenship' were often used not as labels for
determinate philosophical theories, but rather to indicate an attitude
of open-mindedness and impartiality. A cosmopolitan was someone who was
not subservient to a particular religious or political authority,
someone who was not biased by particular loyalties or cultural
prejudice. Furthermore, the term was sometimes used to indicate a
person who led an urbane life-style, or who was fond of traveling,
cherished a network of international contacts, or felt at home
everywhere. In this sense the *Encyclopedie* mentioned that
'cosmopolitan' was often used to signify a "man of no
fixed abode, or a man who is nowhere a stranger." Though
philosophical authors such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Addison,
Hume, and Jefferson identified themselves as cosmopolitans in one or
more of these senses, these usages are not of much philosophical
interest.




Especially in the second half of the century, however, the term was
increasingly also used to indicate particular philosophical
convictions. Some authors revived the Cynic tradition. Fougeret de
Montbron in his 1753 autobiographical report, *Le Cosmopolite*,
calls himself a cosmopolitan, describes how he travels everywhere
without being committed to anywhere, declaring "All the countries
are the same to me" and "[I am] changing my places of
residence according to my whim" (p. 130).




Despite the fact that only a few authors committed
themselves to this kind of cosmopolitanism, this was the version that
critics of cosmopolitanism took as their target. For example, Rousseau
complains that cosmopolitans "boast that they love everyone
[*tout le monde*, which also means 'the whole
world'], to have the right to love no one" (Geneva
Manuscript version of *The Social Contract,* 158). Johann Georg
Schlosser, in the critical poem 'Der Kosmopolit' writes,
"It is better to be proud of one's nation than to have
none," obviously assuming that cosmopolitanism implies the
latter.




Yet most eighteenth-century defenders of cosmopolitanism did not
recognize their own view in these critical descriptions. They
understood cosmopolitanism not as a form of ultra-individualism, but
rather, drawing on the Stoic tradition, as implying the positive moral
ideal of a universal human community, and they did not regard this
ideal as inimical to more particular attachments. 
Some, like the German author Christoph Martin Wieland, stayed quite
close to Stoic views. Others developed a cosmopolitan moral theory that
was distinctively new. According to Kant, all rational beings are
members in a single moral community. They are analogous to citizens in
the political (republican) sense in that they share the characteristics
of freedom, equality, and independence, and that they live under their own laws. Their common laws, however, are the laws of morality, grounded
in reason. Early utilitarian cosmopolitans like Jeremy Bentham, by
contrast, defended their cosmopolitanism by pointing to the
"common and equal utility of all nations." Moral
cosmopolitanism could be grounded in human reason, or in some other
characteristic universally shared among humans (and in some cases other
kinds of beings) such as the capacity to experience pleasure or pain, a
moral sense, or the aesthetic imagination. Moral cosmopolitans regarded
all humans as 'brothers' - an analogy with which they aimed to indicate the fundamental
equality of rank of all humans, which precluded slavery, colonial
exploitation, feudal hierarchy, and tutelage of various sorts. As the term 'brothers' indicates, however, this does not mean that their own thought was always free from bias and inconsistency. Indeed, numerous authors combined their moral cosmopolitanism with a defense of the superiority of men over women, or that of "whites" over other "races." A notable example is Kant, who defended European colonialism before he became very critical of it in the mid 1790s (Kleingeld 2014), and who never gave up the view that women were inferior to men in morally relevant respects.




Some cosmopolitans developed their view into a political theory
about international relations. The most radical of eighteenth-century
political cosmopolitans was no doubt Anacharsis Cloots (Jean-Baptiste
du Val-de-Grace, baron de Cloots, 1755-1794). Cloots advocated the
abolition of all existing states and the establishment of a single
world state under which all human individuals would be directly
subsumed. His arguments drew first of all on the general structure of
social contract theory. If it is in the general interest for everyone
to submit to the authority of a state that enforces laws that provide
security, then this argument applies world-wide and justifies the
establishment of a world-wide "republic of united
individuals," not a plurality of states that find themselves in
the state of nature vis-a-vis each other. Second, he argues that
sovereignty should reside with the people, and that the concept of
sovereignty itself, because it involves indivisibility, implies that
there can be but one sovereign body in the world, namely, the human
race as a whole (*La republique universelle ou adresse aux
tyrannicides,* 1792; *Bases constitutionelles de la
republique du genre humain,* 1793).


Most other political cosmopolitans did not go as far as
Cloots. Immanuel Kant, most famously, advocated a much weaker form of
international legal order, namely, that of a 'league of
nations.' In *Toward Perpetual Peace* (1795) Kant argues
that true and world-wide peace is possible only when states organize
themselves internally according to 'republican'
principles, when they organize themselves externally in a voluntary
league for the sake of keeping peace, and when they respect the human
rights not only of their citizens but also of foreigners. He argues
that the league of states should not have coercive military powers
because that would violate the internal sovereignty of states. 


Some critics argued in response that Kant's position was
inconsistent, because on their view, the only way to fully overcome
the state of nature among states was for the latter to enter into a
federative union with coercive powers. The early Fichte transformed
the concept of sovereignty in the process, by conceiving it as
layered, and this enabled them to argue that states ought to transfer
part of their sovereignty to the federal level, but only that part
that concerns their external relations to other states, while
retaining the sovereignty of the states concerning their internal
affairs. Romantic authors, on the other hand, felt that the ideal
state should not have to involve coercion at all, and hence also that
the cosmopolitan ideal should be that of a world-wide republic of
'fraternal' non-authoritarian republics (the young
Friedrich Schlegel).


Especially the first objection has been repeated ever since, but
more recent interpretations have questioned its legitimacy (Kleingeld
2004, 2012), arguing that Kant can also be read as advocating the
loose league as a first step on the road toward a federation with
coercive powers. Because joining this stronger form of federation
should be a voluntary decision on the part of the peoples involved, to
honor their political autonomy, the strong federation is not a matter
of coercive international right. On this interpretation, Kant's
defense of the loose league is much more consistent. 




Kant also introduced the concept of "cosmopolitan law," suggesting a
third sphere of public law - in addition to constitutional law
and international law - in which both states and individuals
have rights, and where individuals have these rights as "citizens of
the earth" rather than as citizens of particular states.


In addition to moral and political forms of cosmopolitanism, there
emerged an economic form of cosmopolitan theory. The freer trade
advocated by eighteenth-century anti-mercantilists, especially Adam
Smith, was developed further into the ideal of a global free market by
Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch (Kleingeld 2012). His ideal was a world in
which tariffs and other restrictions on foreign trade are abolished, a
world in which the market, not the government, takes care of the needs
of the people. Against mercantilism, he argued that it is more
advantageous for everyone involved if a nation imports those goods
which are more expensive to produce domestically, and that the
abolition of protectionism would benefit everyone. If other states
were to gain from their exports, they would reach a higher standard of
living and become even better trading partners, because they could
then import more, too. Moreover, on Hegewisch's view, after trade will
have been liberalized world-wide, the importance of national
governments will diminish dramatically. As national governments are
mostly focused on the national economy and defense, he argued, their
future role will be at most auxiliary. The freer the global market
becomes, the more the role of the states will become negligible.


### 1.3 Cosmopolitanism in the 19th and 20th Centuries


Enlightenment cosmopolitanism continued to be a source of debate in
the subsequent two centuries. First, in the nineteenth century,
economic globalization provoked fierce reactions. Marx and Engels tag
cosmopolitanism as an ideological reflection of capitalism. They
regard market capitalism as inherently expansive, breaking the bounds
of the nation-state system, as evidenced by the fact that production
and consumption had become attuned to faraway lands. In their hands,
the word 'cosmopolitan' is tied to the effects of
capitalist globalization, including especially the bourgeois ideology
which legitimizes 'free' trade in terms of the freedom
of individuals and mutual benefit, although this very capitalist order
is the cause of the misery of millions, indeed the cause of the very
existence of the proletariat. At the same time, however, Marx and
Engels also hold that the proletariat in every country shares
essential features and has common interests, and the Communist
movement aims to convince proletarians everywhere of these common
interests. Most famously, the *Communist Manifesto* ends with
the call, "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" This,
combined with the ideal of the class-less society and the expected
withering away of the states after the revolution, implies a form of
cosmopolitanism of its own.




Debates about global capitalism and about an international workers'
movement have persisted. Frequently economic cosmopolitanism can be
found in the advocacy of open markets, in the tradition from Adam Smith
to Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Communist versions of
cosmopolitanism also developed further, although the Leninist-Stalinist
tradition kept using 'cosmopolitan' itself as a derogatory
term.




The second inheritance from eighteenth century cosmopolitanism is
found in the two centuries' worth of attempts to create peace. It has
often been noted that there are parallels between Kant's peace
proposal in *Toward Perpetual Peace* and the structure of the
League of Nations as it existed in the early part of the 20th century
as well as the structure of the current United Nations, although it
should also be pointed out that essential features of Kant's plan were
not implemented, such as the abolition of standing armies. After the end of the cold war, discussion about the most appropriate world order to promote global peace resurged, just as it did after the first and second world wars.




The International Criminal Court should be mentioned here as an
innovative form of cosmopolitanism, going much beyond Kant's
conception of 'cosmopolitan law.' The ICC itself
represents an extension of the long trend, in international law, to do
away with the principle of the absolute subjection of individuals to
the state and strengthen the status of individuals. Individuals are
now the bearers of certain rights under international law, and they
can be held responsible for crimes under international law in ways
that cut through the shield of state sovereignty.




Third, moral philosophers and moralists in the wake of
eighteenth-century cosmopolitanisms have insisted that we human beings
have a duty to aid fellow humans in need, regardless of their
citizenship status. There is a history of international relief efforts
(International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, famine relief
organizations, and the like) in the name of the reduction of human
suffering and without regard to the nationality of those affected.




In addition, because cosmopolitan duty is not restricted to duties of
beneficence but also requires justice and respect, cosmopolitan values
and principles have often been invoked as a motivation to oppose
slavery and apartheid, and to advocate the emancipation of women.




Most past cosmopolitan authors did not fully live up to the literal
interpretation of their cosmopolitan theories, and one can find
misogynist, racist, nationalist, sectarian, or class-based biases and
inconsistencies in their accounts. These shortcomings have often been
used as arguments against cosmopolitanism, but they are not as easily
used for that purpose as it may seem. Because the universalist
potential in the discourse of 'world citizenship' can
itself be used as a basis for exposing these shortcomings as
problematic, one should say that they stem from too little, rather than
too much, cosmopolitanism.


## 2. Taxonomy of Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms




Even this brief glance backwards reveals a wide variety of views that
can be called cosmopolitan. Every cosmopolitan argues for some
community among all human beings, regardless of social and political
affiliation. For some, what should be shared is simply moral
community, which means only that living a good human life requires
serving the universal community by helping human beings as such,
perhaps by promoting the realization of justice and the guarantee of
human rights. Others conceptualize the universal community in terms
of political institutions to be shared by all, in terms of cultural
expressions that can be shared or appreciated by all, or in terms of
economic markets that should be open to all. 




The most common cosmopolitanism - *moral* cosmopolitanism
- does not always call itself such. But just as ancient
cosmopolitanism was fundamentally a 'moral' commitment to
helping human beings as such, much contemporary moral philosophy
insists on the duty to aid foreigners who are starving or otherwise
suffering, or at least on the duty to respect and promote basic human
rights and justice.  One can here distinguish between strict and
moderate forms of cosmopolitanism. The *strict* cosmopolitans
in this sphere operate sometimes from utilitarian assumptions (e.g.,
Singer, Unger), sometimes from Kantian assumptions (e.g., O'Neill),
and sometimes from more ancient assumptions (e.g., Nussbaum), but
always with the claim that the duty to provide aid neither gets
weighed against any extra duty to help locals or compatriots nor
increases in strength when locals or compatriots are in
question. Among these strict cosmopolitans some will say that it is
permissible, at least in some situations, to concentrate one's
charitable efforts on one's compatriots, while others deny this
- their position will depend on the details of their moral
theory. Other philosophers whom we may call *moderate*
cosmopolitans (including, e.g., Scheffler) acknowledge the
cosmopolitan scope of a duty to provide aid, but insist that we also
have special duties to compatriots. Among the moderate cosmopolitans,
many further distinctions can be drawn, depending on the reasons that
are admitted for recognizing special responsibilities to compatriots
and depending on how the special responsibilities are balanced with
the cosmopolitan duties to human beings generally.




Moral cosmopolitanism has sometimes led to *political*
cosmopolitanism. Again, we can draw useful distinctions among the
political cosmopolitans. Some advocate a centralized world state, some
favor a federal system with a comprehensive global body of limited
coercive power, some would prefer international political institutions
that are limited in scope and focus on particular concerns (e.g., war
crimes, environmental preservation), and some defend a different
alternative altogether. Prominent philosophical discussions of
international political arrangements have recently clustered around
the heirs of Kant (e.g., Habermas, Rawls, Beitz, and Pogge) and around
advocates of 'cosmopolitan democracy' (e.g., Held) or
'republican cosmopolitanism' (Bohman 2001, Laborde 2010, Pettit 2010, 2016).




A number of theorists have objected to the focus, in much of the
debate over political cosmopolitanism, on the role of states. In their
view, a genuinely cosmopolitan theory should address the needs and
interests of human individuals directly - as world
citizens - instead of indirectly, as state citizens, that is via
their membership in particular states. What is needed instead is a
theory that focuses not merely on the moral duties of individuals or
on the political relations among states, but on the justice of social
institutions world-wide and the measures required to attain it. This
'cosmopolitan' position in the debate over *global
distributive justice*, is especially critical of what they see as
John Rawls' privileging of the interests of states over those of
individuals, in his *Theory of Justice* as well as in his
subsequent *Law of Peoples*. In order to establish principles
of global justice, Rawls should have applied his famous thought
experiment of the 'original position' at the global level
of all human individuals, they charge, instead of arguing, as Rawls
does, for a second original position, one that involves
representatives of all 'peoples'. The debate between Rawls
and his cosmopolitan critics points to the issue of the proper role
and status of states: are they indispensable instruments in the
pursuit of justice (ideally embodying the principle of the democratic
self-determination of peoples), or are they rather inimical to it,
because they entrench state interests at the expense of individuals in
need?




Furthermore, there has been a good deal of debate
over *cultural* cosmopolitanism, with disputes over
multiculturalism in educational curricula and with resurgent
nationalisms. The cosmopolitan position in these
disputes rejects exclusive attachments to a particular culture. So on
the one hand, the cosmopolitan encourages cultural diversity and
appreciates a multicultural melange, and on the other hand, the
cosmopolitan rejects a strong nationalism. In staking out these
claims, the cosmopolitan must be wary about very strong 'rights
to culture,' respecting the rights of minority cultures while
rebuffing the right to unconditional national
self-determination. Hence, recent advocates of 'liberal
nationalism' (e.g., Margalit and Raz, Tamir) or of the rights of
minority cultures (e.g., Kymlicka) generally seem to be
anti-cosmopolitan. But the cosmopolitan's wariness towards very strong
rights to culture and towards national self-determination need not be
grounded in a wholesale skepticism about the importance of particular
cultural attachments. Cosmopolitanism can acknowledge the importance
of (at least some kinds of) cultural attachments for the good human
life (at least within certain limits), while denying that this implies
that a person's cultural identity should be defined by any bounded or
homogeneous subset of the cultural resources available in the world
(e.g., Waldron).



*Economic* cosmopolitanism is perhaps less often defended
among philosophers and more often among economists (e.g., Hayek,
Friedman) and certain politicians, especially in the richer countries
of this world. It is the view that one ought to cultivate a single
global economic market with free trade and minimal political
involvement. It tends to be criticized rather than advanced by
philosophical cosmopolitans, as many of them regard it as at least a
partial cause of the problem of vast international economic inequality.
These debates about the desirability of a fully globalized market have
intensified in recent years, as a result of the end of the Cold War and
the increasing reach of the market economy.


## 3. Objections to Cosmopolitanism




One of the most common objections to cosmopolitanism attacks a position
that is in fact made of straw. Often it is said that cosmopolitanism is
meaningless without the context of a world-state or that
cosmopolitanism necessarily involves the commitment to a world state.
These claims are historically uninformed, because cosmopolitanism as a
concept arose in the first instance as a metaphor for a way of life and
not in literal guise. Ever since, there have been cosmopolitans who do
not touch on the issue of international political organization, and of
those who do, very few defend the ideal of a world-state. Furthermore,
even those cosmopolitans who do favor a world-state tend to support
something more sophisticated that cannot be dismissed out of hand, such as a
thin conception of world government with layered sovereignty. 


Another common objection to cosmopolitanism associates it with imperialism, colonialism, and paternalism. Some cosmopolitans, despite taking themselves to be opposed to imperialism, colonialism, and paternalism, are charged with focusing too narrowly on the responsibilities (and perspectives) of the affluent while conceiving of those living in poverty mainly as the passive recipients of their "aid." Such focus indeed shows little sensitivity to questions of epistemic justice and to the wide range of perspectives that merit being taken seriously (Flikschuh 2017). These charges are often *internal* to cosmopolitanism, however, as they do not so much call into question the cosmopolitan ideal itself as reject certain limited instantiations of it. Cosmopolitans can and do examine the entitlements of those living in poverty (Caney 2015) and argue in favor of poor-led social movements (Deveaux 2018) and alternative forms of cosmopolitanism "from below" (Bailey 2017). Others point to the relevance, for cosmopolitan theorizing, of poverty-driven labor migration and migrant activism as acts of world citizenship (Caraus and Paris 2018).




There are, however, serious and philosophically interesting challenges to
cosmopolitanism itself, and they come in two main forms. The first calls into question
the possibility of realizing the cosmopolitan ideal, while the second
queries its desirability. We discuss these two challenges to the
different forms of cosmopolitanism in turn.


### 3.1 Political cosmopolitanism




It is often argued that it is impossible to change the current system
of states and to form a world-state or a global federation of
states. This claim is hard to maintain, however, in the face of the
existence of the United Nations, the existence of states with more
than a billion people of heterogeneous backgrounds, and the experience
with the United States and the European Union. So in order to be taken
seriously, the objection must instead be that it is impossible to form
a *good* state or federation of that magnitude, i.e., that it
is impossible to realize or even approximate the cosmopolitan ideal in
a way that makes it worth pursuing and that does not carry prohibitive
risks. Here political cosmopolitans disagree among themselves. On one
end of the spectrum we find those who argue in favor of a strong
world-state, on the other end we find the defenders of a loose and
voluntary federation, or a different system altogether.




The defenders of the loose, voluntary and noncoercive federation warn
that a world-state easily becomes despotic without there being any
competing power left to break the hold of despotism (Rawls).
Defenders of the world-state reply that a stronger form of federation,
or even merger, is the only way to truly exit the state of nature
between states, or the only way to bring about international
distributive justice (Nielsen, Cabrera). Other authors have argued that the focus among
many political cosmopolitans on only these two alternatives overlooks
a third cosmopolitan position, and that a concern for human rights should lead one to focus
instead on institutional reform that disperses sovereignty vertically,
rather than concentrating it in all-encompassing international
institutions. On this view, peace, democracy, prosperity, and the
environment would be better served by a system in which the political
allegiance and loyalties of persons are widely dispersed over a number
of political units of various sizes, without any one unit being
dominant and thus occupying the traditional role of the state
(Pogge).




Of the objections brought up by non- or anti-cosmopolitans, two
deserve special mention. First, some authors argue that the (partial or
whole) surrender of state sovereignty required by the cosmopolitan
scheme is an undue violation of the principle of the autonomy of states
or the principle of democratic self-determination of their citizens.
Second, so-called 'realists' argue that states are in a
Hobbesian state of nature as far as the relations among them are
concerned, and that it is as inappropriate as it is futile to subject
states to normative constraints. To these objections cosmopolitans have
various kinds of response, ranging from developing their alternative
normative theory (e.g., by arguing that global democracy increases
rather than diminishes the democratic control of individual world
citizens) to pointing out, as has been done at least since Grotius,
that states have good reasons even on Hobbesian grounds to submit to
certain forms of international legal arrangements.


### 3.2 Economic cosmopolitanism




Various arguments have been used to show that economic cosmopolitanism
is not a viable option. Marx and later Marxists have argued that
capitalism is self-destructive in the long run, because the
exploitation, alienation, and poverty that it inflicts on the
proletariat will provoke a world-wide revolution that will bring about
the end of capitalism. In the twentieth century, when nationalist
tendencies proved to be stronger (or in any case more easily mobilized)
than international solidarity, and when the position of workers was
strengthened to the point of making them unwilling to risk a
revolution, this forced the left to reconsider this view. 




Critics of the economic cosmopolitan ideal have also started to
emphasize another way in which capitalism bears the seeds of its own
destruction within itself, namely, insofar as it is said to lead to a
global environmental disaster that might spell the end of the human
species, or in any event the end of capitalism as we know it. The
effects of excessive consumption (in some parts of the world) and the
exploitation of nature would make the earth inhospitable to future
human generations.




Even if one does not think that these first two problems are so
serious as to make economic cosmopolitanism unviable, they can still
make it seem *undesirable* in the eyes of those who are
concerned with poverty, environmental destruction, and the impact of climate change.




Moreover, there are several other concerns that lead critics to
regard economic cosmopolitanism as undesirable. First among these is
the lack of effective democratic control by the vast majority of the
world's population, as large multinationals are able to impose demands
on states that are in a weak economic position and their populations,
demands that they cannot reasonably refuse to meet, although this does
not mean that they meet them fully voluntarily. This concerns, for
example, labor conditions or the use of raw materials in developing countries.




Second, economic cosmopolitans are accused of failing to pay attention
to a number of probable side-effects of a global free market. In
particular, they are criticized for neglecting or downplaying issues
such as (a) the vast inequality of wealth and extreme poverty without
there being any reliable mechanism to provide relief, if they reduce
the role of political institutions (b) the presupposition of
large-scale migration or re-schooling when jobs disappear in one area
(the loss of ties to friends and family, language, culture, etc., and
the monetary costs of moving or re-tooling), (c) the lack of a
guarantee that there will be a sufficient supply of living-wage jobs
for all world citizens (especially given increasing automation. They
are similarly accused of failing to take seriously the fact that there
might be circumstances under which it would be profitable for some
states to be protectionist or wage war, such as wars about markets or
raw materials and energy (e.g., oil).


### 3.3 Moral cosmopolitanism




Another version of the criticism that cosmopolitanism is impossible
targets the psychological assumptions of moral cosmopolitanism. Here
it is said that human beings must have stronger attachments toward
members of their own state or nation, and that attempts to disperse
attachments to fellow-citizens in order to honor a moral community
with human beings as such will undermine our psychological
functioning. If this is a *viability* claim and not simply
a *desirability* claim, then it must be supposed that moral
cosmopolitanism would literally leave large numbers of people unable
to function. So it is claimed that people need a particular sense of
national identity in order to be agents, and that a particular sense
of national identity requires attachment to particular others
perceived to have a similar identity. But this does not seem to be
true as an empirical generalization. The cosmopolitan does not need to
deny that some people do happen to have the need for national
allegiance, so long as it is true that not all people do; and insofar
as some people do, the strict cosmopolitan will say that perhaps it
does not need to be that way and that cosmopolitan education might
lead to a different result. The historical record gives even the
strict cosmopolitan some cause for cheer, as human psychology and the
forms of political organization have proven to be quite plastic. 




In fact, some cosmopolitans have adopted a developmental psychology
according to which patriotism is a step on the way to cosmopolitanism:
as human individuals mature they develop ever wider loyalties and
allegiances, starting with attachments to their caregivers and ending
with allegiance to humanity at large. These different attachments are
not necessarily in competition with each other. Just as loyalty to
one's family need not be an obstacle for state citizens, so loyalty to
one's state need not be a problem for cosmopolitans. Thus,
cosmopolitanism is regarded as an extension of a developmental process
that also includes the development of patriotism. This claim is just
as much in need of empirical support, however, as the opposite claim
discussed in the previous paragraph.




Often, though, the critic's arguments about psychological
possibility are actually run together with *desirability*
claims. The critic says that the elimination of a special motivating
attachment to fellow-citizens is not possible, but the critic means
that the elimination of special motivating attachments to
fellow-citizens will make a certain desirable form of political life
impossible. To respond to this sort of argument, the cosmopolitan has
two routes open. First, she can deny the claim itself. Perhaps the
viability of politics as usual depends not upon certain beliefs that
fellow-citizens deserve more of one's service, but upon commitments to
the polity itself. If strictly cosmopolitan patriotism is a
possibility, it lives in a commitment to a universal set of principles
embodied in a particular political constitution and a particular set of
political institutions. If such commitment is enough for desirable
politics, then the anti-cosmopolitan is disarmed. But second, the
cosmopolitan can of course also deny the value of the form of political
life that is posited as desirable. At this point, moral commitments run
over into a discussion of political theory.




Occasionally it is said that cosmopolitans are treasonous or at least
unreliable citizens. But many recognizably cosmopolitan theses (that
is, the moderate ones) are consistent with loyalty to fellow-citizens,
and even the strictest cosmopolitan can justify some forms of service
to fellow-citizens when they are an optimal way to promote justice or
to do good for human beings (who might happen to be
fellow-citizens).




This last criticism can be developed further, however, and tailored
specifically to target the strict cosmopolitan. If the strict
cosmopolitan can justify only some forms of service to fellow-citizens,
under some conditions, it might be said that she is blind to other
morally required forms or conditions of service to fellow-citizens. At
this point, the critic offers reasons why a person has special
obligations to compatriots, which are missed by the strict
cosmopolitan. Many critics who introduce these reasons are themselves
moderate cosmopolitans, wishing to demonstrate that there are special
obligations to fellow-citizens in addition to general duties to the
community of all human beings. But if these reasons are demanding
enough, then there may be no room left for any community with all human
beings, and so these objections to strict cosmopolitanism can also
provide some impetus toward an anti-cosmopolitan stance. Because there
are several such reasons that are frequently proposed, there are, in
effect, several objections to the strictly cosmopolitan position, and
they should be considered one-by-one.




The first narrow objection to strict cosmopolitanism is that it
neglects the obligations of reciprocity. According to this argument, we
have obligations to give benefits in return for benefits received, and
we receive benefits from our fellow-citizens. The best strictly
cosmopolitan response to this argument will insist on a distinction
between the state and fellow-citizens and will question exactly who
provides which benefits and what is owed in return. On grounds of
reciprocity the state may be owed certain things - cooperative
obedience - and these things may in fact generally benefit
fellow-citizens. But the state is not owed these things
*because* one owes the fellow-citizens benefits. One does not
appropriately signal gratitude for benefits received from the state by,
say, giving more to local charities than to charities abroad because
charity like this does not address the full agent responsible for the
benefits one has received, and does not even seem to be the sort of
thing that is commensurate with the benefits received. In assessing
this exchange of arguments, there are some significantly difficult
questions to answer concerning exactly how the receipt of benefits
obliges one to make a return.




A second objection to strict moral cosmopolitanism gives contractarian
grounds for our obligations to fellow-citizens. Because actual
agreements to prioritize fellow-citizens as beneficiaries are
difficult to find, the contractarians generally rely upon an implicit
agreement that expresses the interests or values of the
fellow-citizens themselves. So the contractarian argument turns on
identifying interests or values that obligate fellow-citizens to
benefit each other. Perhaps, then, it will be argued that citizens
have deep interests in what a successful civil society and state can
offer them, and that these interests commit the citizens to an
implicit agreement to benefit fellow-citizens. The strict cosmopolitan
will reply to such an argument with skepticism about what is required
for the civil society. Why is more than cooperative obedience required
by our interests in what a successful state and civil society can
provide? Surely some citizens have to dedicate themselves to working
on behalf of this particular society, but why can they not do so on
the grounds that this is the best way to benefit human beings as such?
Perhaps an intermediate position here is the (Kantian) view that it is
morally necessary to establish just democratic states and that just
democratic states need some special commitment on the part of their
citizens in order to function as democracies, a special commitment
that goes beyond mere cooperative obedience but that can still be
defended in universalist cosmopolitan terms. For given that
democracies require this special commitment as a condition of their
possibility, it would be incoherent to promote justice in general by
promoting just democracies while rejecting, as a matter of principle,
that which is required for just democracies to function.




The final argument for recognizing obligations to benefit
fellow-citizens appeals to what David Miller has called
'relational facts.' Here the general thought is that
certain relationships are constituted by reciprocal obligations: one
cannot be a friend or a brother without having certain
friendship-obligations or sibling-obligations, respectively. If
fellow-citizenship is like these other relations, then we would seem to
have special obligations to fellow-citizens. But this argument, which
can be found in Cicero's *De Officiis*, depends upon our
intuitions that fellow-citizenship is like friendship or brotherhood
and that friendship and brotherhood do come with special obligations,
and both intuitions require more argument. Frequently, these arguments
appeal to alleged facts about human nature or about human psychology,
but these appeals generally raise still further questions.




In sum, a range of interesting and difficult philosophical issues is
raised by the disputes between cosmopolitans of various stripes and
their critics. As the world becomes a smaller place through increased
social, political, and economic contacts, these disputes and the issues
they raise will only become more pressing.