This paper discusses certain major challenges to the justification of ethical cosmo-politanism`s existence. They can be understood in the context of effects of the global economy on human life and values, due its social imbalances and inequalities. The foremost guiding idea of ethical cosmopolitanism maintains that all humans must be considered to be equal. However, this postulate is questioned in the globalization era.
The author defends a cosmopolitan standpoint and attempts to justify the existence of the principles of global justice in the contemporary globalised world. His discussion involves three steps. Firstly, he discusses the influential conception of T. Nagel which holds that in the contemporary world there are only humanitarian moral duties, not principles of global justice, for such principles would require the existence of political institutions to enforce justice. Next, attention is given to I. Kant and an attempt is made to show that from the moral viewpoint the principles of global justice may exist even without the de facto existence of institutions of global government. Finally, the author analyses in some detail J. Rawls’ The Law of Peoples, which he interprets from a cosmopolitan viewpoint. On the basis of this interpretation Rawls’ conception of the principles of global justice is analysed and at the same time his critique of cosmopolitanism is called into question
The assumption of the paper is a liquidity between sacrum and profanum.. The work done on the body makes bodily practices and rituals the art of body. The body is an altar of our identity, manifestation of Self. The great visibility of this tendency is illustrated in the frame of popular culture, especially in the stream called the culture of transparency. The examples of body modifications’ practices, referred to the Western culture, are recognized as the contemporary new-primitivism (neo-primitive perspective) – the Modern Primitive Movement. The wide cult of the body is commonly known and practiced and its official name is corporeism. There are a various platforms of trainings to relax and strengthen the body, “the work on our body” in lighter form, express body. Probably the most opposite trends and cultural phenomenon can verify our level of tolerance and ability to understand significantly other people. The case of body modification can be the first one. The reason of it can be that the body can be perceived as the most visible open-text of ourselves. A variety of its manifestations can really provoke a huge cosmopolitan debate towards a more aesthetically-directed approach on those forms of practices which are not met too often in one specific culture and which argue with its standard of normality.
This paper deals with the cosmopolitan, Anglophone institution of a youth theatre among Anglophone migrants in the Czech Republic. While Anglophone migrants are privileged due to the English language and its position in the globalized world, all children and young people with migrant parents struggle with establishing their position among their peers, where it is essential to be included. In the Czech context of a homogeneous society, Anglophone teenagers are often considered different and their position in a peer group may be questioned. When the teenagers enjoy the Anglophone, safe environment of the youth theatre, what makes them ‘other’ in the outside world makes them ‘normal’ in the theatre group and strengthens their cosmopolitanism. The homogeneity of Czech society pushes them into more privileged social landscapes.
Nowadays, the primarily philosophical Kantian idea of the cosmopolitan law has in fact been transformed into a dynamic system of international law that still remains quite problematic and in need of further development: for human rights not to be seen as an ideal or even utopia but as a positive law, as jus cogens, erga omnes. This contribution argues for a pragmatic reinterpretation in which Kant’s doctrine is construed as a functional theory of law and state and which shows that Kant becomes important for our times if one renounces speculative and metaphysical justifications. Kant’s theory of law is not a part of his moral philosophy, subordinated to it. There is no need for ethical justifications of the fact that there is law. Why there has to be law follows ex negativo from the same reasons for which the theory of law is a normative theory: the existence of law is grounded in the requirement that people ought to act rationally, even though de facto they frequently do not respond to this “ought”. Since this is not so, there is law, according to Kant, with its “entitlement to coercion”. Kant’s doctrine of law does have an ethical dimension in which it is to be established what law and state should be like – that is, at which values they should aim – but law, in his theory, takes priority over morality in establishing legal cosmopolitan relations.
Central to Ghosh’s oeuvre is the idea that the nation is a fiction whose boundaries are continuously being reimagined and redrawn. Nationalism creates binary divisions, and projects a kind of “false” history which would buttress its own interest. The ideology of modernity and its various avatars, like Western geographical and ideological expansionism, modernist knowledge production strategies, and racism, create a Manichaean dialectic between the self and its other. Ghosh’s engagement with the frequency of boundary-crossings within and outside India, challenges the essentialist definitions of nations and societies. Ghosh‘s endorsement of the syncretism and humanism that downplay cultural differences explains his antipathy towards nationalism and its divisive epistemology. Despite his celebration of cultural pluralism, an acute sense of the sameness of man across “looking glass borders” and temporal divides underlies his work. Questioning the authoritarian and coercive actions of the postcolonial nation state, Ghosh pines for the Nehruvian utopia of a secularist, democratic national unity which assimilates Indian diversity in a syncretic whole. Based on an ethically conceived solidarity, this feeling of communitarianism would provide an ideal alternative to religious and ethnic chauvinism and “Majoritarianism”, as well as political dispersal and the religious/ethnic violence rampant in contemporary Hindu nationalism. Ghosh distrusts the nationalist political and official discourse of a faceless and dehumanizing statist machinery detached from the actual lives of people. In The Shadow Lines, Ghosh thematizes the migrations of people(s), the importance of connections between the past and the present, the changing status of nation-states, the fluid nature of boundaries, intercultural communication beyond nationalism, the spread of Western modes of production, and encounters between different cultures – all of which are the fallout of globalization.
The theory of aesthetic cosmopolitanism is a part of a new trend in cultural sociology. In recent years, varieties of cosmopolitanism surfaced in cosmopolitanism theory, one such version IS the aesthetic cosmopolitanism. Inspired by the new cosmopolitanism theories, sociologists and philosophers translate the difference between normative cosmopolitanism and “lived” cosmopolitanism into the aesthetic realm, arguing that the aesthetic cosmopolitanism which can be found in the perceptual qualities brought to light by the contemporary artworks is a version of the lived cosmopolitanism accepted by cultural sociology today. Our study will try to shed light on the elusiveness of the notion of sensus communis which lies at the heart of contemporary aesthetic cosmopolitanism.
Abstract. Renewed interest in cosmopolitanism has spread across the humanities and social sciences in recent decades. However, this growth has also carried many of the values underpinning cosmopolitanism as a Kantian ideal, including a denigration of consumption and material relations in favour of a putatively social core. In this article, however, I argue that cosmopolitanism is lived through the relations and politics of materiality and consumerism. Through an investigation of ethnographies of urban poverty in Latin America, cosmopolitanism emerges as a diverse, locally instantiated ideology and identity which diverges from many of the debates circulating in sites of academia. With an emphasis on marginalised communities, I reconsider cosmopolitanism as a series of material identities and relationships that develop within the context of economic and social inequality in both local and global scales.
The paper examines the continuing viability of the critique of methodological nationalism in the context of recent resurgence of nationalist sentiments across western liberal democracies. Using the distinction between first and second modernity, it shows how cosmopolitan social theorising can actually be seen as predictive of some of the effects that nationalist populism has enjoyed in the context of the post-2008 series of crises. The discussion is mostly focused on the challenge the current political dynamics poses to the weak forms of social integration underpinning the project of European supra-national unification.
What is a classic? To what extent are books and book collections endangered goods? What is the role and meaning of literature and translation in times of hardship? In An Unnecessary Woman (2013), Rabih Alameddine addresses these questions, while also indirectly contesting traditional canonical practices based on rigid hierarchies and the logic of national and linguistic purity. Alameddine highlights the violence inscribed in the practices of book selection and canon formation. In doing so, he troubles received notions of the canon, the classics, and especially of world literature, offering an alternative conceptualization of this long-debated category as an intimate, cosmopolitan assemblage of worldly texts.
In this article we address the question of individual identity and its place – or rather omission – in contemporary discussions about the cosmopolitan extension of liberalism as the dominant political theory. The article is divided into two parts. In the first part we show that if we consistently emphasise the complementarity of the “inner” and “outer” identity of a person, which is essential to liberalism from its very beginnings, then a fundamental flaw in the liberal cosmopolitan project becomes apparent. This is the underestimation of the indispensability of an unambiguously determined public framework which will fix and enforce liberal principles and values in a comprehensible way. Such a framework for liberalism was always the political community and then, above all, the modern state, in which the liberal identity could then be realised. The discussion in this part of the article prepares the ground for an examination, in the second part, of a dilemma which cosmopolitan liberalism must face. In the second part we argue that the attempt to tackle the given problem presents liberals with the following dilemma: either it is necessary to plead for the institution of a global political authority (a “world state”), or to give up the belief that fundamental liberal principles and values can be realised to a global extent. We show, at the same time, that because of the character and ambitions of the cosmopolitan project, the promise of plural identities and multi-centred law cannot be relied upon. By way of conclusion we then ask what is the price of the realisation of cosmopolitan liberal ideals.
DE
Im vorliegenden Text wird die Frage nach der individuellen Identität und nach deren Platz – bzw. eher deren Vernachlässigung – in der heutigen Diskussion über die kosmopolite Ausbreitung des Liberalismus als dominanter politischer Theorie adressiert. Der Artikel ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Im ersten Teil wird aufgezeigt, dass bei einer konsistenten Betonung der Komplementarität von „innerer“ und „äußerer“ Identität des Menschen, die dem Liberalismus von Beginn an eigen ist, ein grundlegender Mangel des liberalen kosmopolitischen Projekts deutlich wird; konkret handelt es sich dabei um die Unterschätzung der Notwendigkeit eines eindeutig festgelegten öffentlichen Rahmen, in dem die liberalen Grundsätze und Werte auf verständliche Art und Weise fixiert und durchgesetzt werden. Dieser Rahmen war für den Liberalismus stets die politische Gemeinde und in erster Linie der moderne Staat, in dem die liberale Identität erst realisiert werden kann. Die Auslegungen in diesem Teil des Artikels bereiten den Boden für die Analyse des Dilemmas, vor dem der kosmopolite Liberalismus steht, und die im zweiten Teil vorgenommen wird. Hier lautet das Argument, dass die Bemühung um die Lösung des bestehenden Problems den Liberalismus in ein Dilemma bringt: Entweder müsste man für die Einsetzung einer globalen politischen Autorität („Weltstaat“) plädieren, oder aber den Glauben aufgeben, die grundlegenden Prinzipien und Werte des Liberalismus könnten im globalen Maßstab realisiert werden. Gleichfalls wird aufgezeigt, dass man sich angesichts der Natur und der Ambitionen des kosmopolitischen Projekts weder auf die Zusagen pluraler Identitäten verlassen kann, noch auf die Polyzentrität des Rechts. Abschließend wird die Frage nach dem Preis für die Realisierung kosmopoliter liberaler Ideale gestellt.
The word cosmopolitanism is derived from “cosmos” (universe) and “polites” (citi-zen). The cosmopolite is a citizen of the world. The Stoics elaborate on the theme, using the ideas of oikeiosis and sympathy as its basis, thus drawing from their physics. Partic-ularly, Epictetus defends cosmopolitanism on the assumption that man is akin to God, whereas Marcus Aurelius highlights the common possession of mind (νοῦς) and that man is by nature able for communal life. For the Stoics man is a social being who can be perfected only within the society of other human beings. The brotherhood of men is grounded on the indubitable axiom that the human soul is the source of the unique good, which is virtue. The distinctive parameter for creating a community is virtue, which is an objective for everyone but also an inherent and ecumenical capacity.
If Hume is considered cosmopolitan in his ethics at all, he is said to be so through his anti-mercantilist approach to commerce. Prevailing commercial interpretations attribute to Hume a cosmopolitanism that is best described as instrumental and supervenient. I argue that Hume’s principles lead to a cosmopolitan ethic that is more demanding than commercial interpretations recognize. Hume’s cosmopolitanism is more than merely supervenient and its instrumentality is such that cosmopolitan regard becomes inseparable from healthy patriotic concern. I show sympathy and duty, not merely justice, central to Hume’s cosmopolitanism and address how Hume’s moderate cosmopolitanism might be enacted in society. I suggest Hume’s view can contribute to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse, aiding both those forms with which it is consonant and the practical ends of otherwise opposed, Kantian forms.
This two-part text addresses the question of individual identity and its place – or rather its omission – in contemporary discussions of the cosmopolitan extension of liberalism as the dominant political theory. In the first part we showed that when systematic notice is taken of the complementarity of “inner” and “outer” identity – an integral part of liberalism from its very beginnings – then the public framework, which transparently establishes and enforces liberal principles and values, clearly stands out as indispensable. This framework was always, for liberalism, the political community and then, above all, the modern state, in which only now liberal identity can be realised. In the second part of the article, we look more closely at a problem which is facing cosmopolitan liberalism on account of the aforementioned facts: that is, the need to join the question of identity with an institutional programme guaranteeing the public framework for its formation. It is argued that the attempt to solve this problem presents liberals with a dilemma: either it is necessary to appeal for the institution of a global political authority (a “world state”), or it is necessary to let go of the belief that the basic liberal principles and values can be realised at the global level. It is also shown that, in view of the character and ambitions of the cosmopolitan project, one cannot rely on the promise of plural identities or on the multiple polarity of law. In conclusion, we then pose the question of the price of realising cosmopolitan liberal ideals.
DE
Im vorliegenden in zwei Teile gegliederten Text wird die Frage nach der individuellen Identität und nach deren Platz – bzw. eher deren Vernachlässigung – in der heutigen Diskussion über die kosmopolite Ausbreitung des Liberalismus als dominanter politischer Theorie adressiert. Im ersten Teil wurde aufgezeigt, dass bei einer konsistenten Betonung der Komplementarität von „innerer“ und „äußerer“ Identität des Menschen, die dem Liberalismus von Beginn an eigen ist, die Notwendigkeit eines eindeutig festgelegten öffentlichen Rahmens, in dem die liberalen Grundsätze und Werte auf verständliche Art und Weise fixiert und durchgesetzt werden, deutlich wird. Dieser Rahmen war für den Liberalismus stets die politische Gemeinde und in erster Linie der moderne Staat, in dem die liberale Identität erst realisiert werden kann. Im vorliegenden zweiten Teil des Artikels befassen wir uns eingehen mit dem Problem, vor denen infolge der o. g. Tatsachen heute der kosmopolite Liberalismus steht – nämlich vor der Notwenidigkeit, die Frage der Identität mit dem institutionellen Plan zu verbinden, der den öffentlichen Rahmen der Formung von Identität darstellt. Dabei schlussfolgern wir, dass die Bemühung um eine Lösung dieses Problems den Liberalen vor ein Dilemma stellt: Entweder muss für die Einrichtung einer globalen politischen Autorität („Weltstaat“) plädiert werden, oder es ist auf den Glauben zu verzichten, dass die liberalen Grundprinzipien im globalen Maßstab durchgesetzt werden könnten. Gleichfall zeigen wir auf, dass angesichts des Wesens und der Ambitionen des kosmopolitischen Projekts weder auf eine Zusage pluraler Identitäten noch auf eine Zusage der Polyzentrität des Rechts Verlass ist. Abschließend stellen wir die Frage nach dem Preis für die Realisierung kosmopoliter liberaler Ideale.
Andrea Levy’s Small Island captures the immigrant’s experience in cosmopolitan London. In this novel, she showcases the fact that contrary to its claims to be accommodating to this diversity, the values upheld make no room for difference as they are strictly Eurocentric. The characters who through their colonial experience and education have been misled to believe that they are part of the British Empire are presented here faced with the shock of discovery that once in England, they are ascribed the second class position. This paper intends to interrogate the claim to cosmopolitanism. This is done through an engagement with postcolonial critique which conceptualizes the power relations between the colonizers and the colonized. The main argument of this discussion is that although the London of Andrea Levy’s Small Island accommodates individuals from a variety of racial, national, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they are never given the chance to experience any form of social integration.
PL
Small Island (pol. Wysepka), autorstwa Andrei Levy, przedstawia losy imigrantów w kosmopolitycznym Londynie. Jednym z głównych problemów powieści jest ukazanie rozdźwięku między deklarowaną otwartością i tolerancją a rzeczywistością, w której na stosunek do inności rzutują silnie zakorzenione eurocentryczne schematy myślenia. Niniejszy artykuł, posługując się narzędziami krytyki postkolonialnej, konceptualizującej problem relacji między kolonizatorami i kolonizowanymi, analizuje na przykładzie ukazanego w powieści Londynu, skomplikowane problemy kulturowe, narodowe, rasowe byłego imperium kolonialnego.
This paper seeks to reframe the debates on cosmopolitanism and mobile cosmopolitan subjects by focusing its analysis on a multidimensional character of sociospatial relations. In particular, it critically engages with these works which too often see subjects as social categories and distinguish cosmopolitans from others, and which are silent about how people relate to space. The paper makes use of the study of mobile professionals working an international organization belonging to the United Nation family of organizations and argues that mobility in space creates a condition for emerging of sites of diversity and of new spatial imaginaries. It asks how these two aspects are related to each other. While the first aspect is addressed in the empirical studies, the paper makes a claim that cosmopolitanism is about challenging the latent spatial imaginaries and creating alternative geographies. Grounding this claim in empirical research, the paper complements the theoretical works on normative cosmopolitanism.
The travelling idea of toleranceAs an idea, “tolerance” belongs to a category of notions that can be seen as a subjective phenomenon in the sense that the underlying semantics of its assumptions are greatly varied and variable. Tolerance is a travelling idea exactly because of this primary reason, for which the practice of verbalising tolerance influences the way it is being understood. Tolerance always forms a relation with a wide palette of similar notions, which decide on its particular semantic understanding. These include for example the notions of universality, relativity and cosmopolitism. Against this background, the difference between tolerance in theory (subjective) and tolerance in practice (objective, pragmatic) also becomes evident.The paper presents several important episodes from the specific journey of tolerance-as-an-idea in the history of European culture – beginning with the Ottoman Empire and ending with modern disputes on the status of tolerance in liberal democracies. Wędrująca idea tolerancjiTolerancja należy do tych idei, które można traktować jako zjawisko podmiotowe w tym sensie, że semantyka założeń, leżąca u podstaw jego rozumienia, jest bardzo zróżnicowana i zmienna. Tolerancja jest ideą podróżującą w czasie i przestrzeni właśnie z tego podstawowego powodu, że sposób jej werbalizacji decyduje każdorazowo o sposobie, w jaki rozumie się to pojęcie. Tolerancja zawsze wchodzi w związki z całą paletą pokrewnych pojęć, w ramach których tworzy się konkretna semantyka tej idei. To m.in. pojęcia uniwersalności, relatywności i kosmopolityzmu. Na tym tle dobrze widać także różnicę między tolerancją w sensie teoretycznym (podmiotową) a tolerancją praktyczną (przedmiotową, pragmatyczną).Artykuł przedstawia kilka najważniejszych epizodów wędrówki tolerancji-jako-idei w historii kultury europejskiej – począwszy od Imperium Osmańskiego, a skończywszy na dzisiejszych sporach o status tolerancji w demokracjach liberalnych.
The author of the article writes about the identity of Odessa as about the kind of local identity that manifests itself in the historical context. He researches the individual examples of the local cultural specificity, appealing to the thoughts of authoritative writers and scientists. Odessa’s identity was formed through the influences of different factors, some of which were even contradictory. This gave rise to its uniqueness. It is characterised by liminality, independence (autonomy), cosmopolitanism. But it is important to understand that those influences were not equal, and their effects were often used for creating the ideological doctrines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the presented research, the author reveals the formative mechanisms of some stereotypical images that the concept of identity consists of. These mechanisms express open or hidden Russian imperial strategy of colonisation. That is why the eff orts to glorify the local and specific are questionable. In this context, the well-known Odessa cosmopolitanism is often explained. But sometimes it is incorrect to understand it as the effect of the historical process of assimilation by the national, linguistic, or religious denominational groups which took place in the city during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article is also about the discrimination against the culture of the national minorities, who in the so-called Odessa myth are represented in a fragmentary and incomplete way. Ukrainian element was also discriminated against. This may seem paradoxical, as Odessa and the Black Sea region are a natural part of the Ukrainian cultural space.
We read The Odyssey as a lesson in “goodwill”. This is an indispensable concept, because it allows us to overcome the limitations resulting from the assumptions made by Carl Schmitt when he made the distinction between friends and ene-mies the original experience of the world. The “Greekness” of the attitude of goodwill, whose deficit has painfully affected us in Europe, consists in a reli-giousness transformed by the lesson of enlightenment, which in a secular world means the conviction that wisdom and the ability to survive, often granted to Homer’s protagonists by gods who are in conflict, may now be given to us through those who come to us from a world which is not ours. Since it is an alien that allows us to find out what we are like, it is worth cultivating the tradition of “hospitality”, which Derrida gives a new dimension seen from the point of view of contemporary migratory movements.
W teorii politycznej istnieje wiele różnych wersji projektu demokracji kosmopolitycznej (cosmopolitan democracy). Wariant proponowany przez Davida Helda, wspólnie z Daniele Archibugi, sprowadza się do założenia, iż ważne cele można osiągnąć jedynie przez rozszerzenie i rozwój demokracji w skali globalnej. Demokracja musi przekroczyć granice pojedynczych państw i domagać się uznania na poziomie globalnym. Held i Archibugi nie opowiadają się za końcem państw narodowych. Jednak inaczej niż w przypadku wielu światowych projektów federalistycznych, kosmopolityczna demokracja ma na celu poprawić zarządzanie ludzkimi sprawami na poziomie planetarnym, nie tyle zastępując istniejące państwa, co dając więcej władzy istniejącym instytucjom oraz kreując nowe.
EN
David Held is a theorist of political change and one of the most frequently cited theorists of globalization and cosmopolitanism . He created the paradigm of the modern age, which ended the era of the modern state, formed on the basis of the classic principles. Current globalization, as the Held stressed, is equipped with the characteristics of a distinct system. When describing it, Held uses such references as: spontaneous order, political emergence, self-organization. He reflects the phenomenon by such characters as: transnational interconnectedness, complex webs, networks of relations, evolving structure, process of structuration and stratification, dynamic global structure, patterns of inequality and hierarchy, patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Everything in the scope of the flow and interaction between the following actors: communities, states, international institutions, NGOs, multinational corporations - together forming global order. This phenomenon of globalization of policy means not only global interdependence but also reterritorialisation (new conditions of borders), deterritorialization (removal of the existing borders ), resulting in internationalization, transnationalization and institutionalization. The globalization of policy must lead to a change of transnational consciousness. It must stimulate the cosmopolitan sense of collectiveness and a sense of community across boundaries. Cosmopolitan means the same as for all, isomorphic, unifying, corresponding to the whole. Held is considered among the advocates of cosmopolitan democracy. He incorporate cosmopolitanism in the political sphere and believes that cosmopolitan ethics contributes to improving the standards of democracy. Contrary to international law, a cosmopolitan approach justifies giving the rights and obligations from the fact of being a citizen of earth, and not a particular state. Cosmpolitanism do not destroy national cultures but teaches respect for all of them. Global problems existing in extremely interconnected world can not be solved by one country. Held sees the need for institutions to solve of transnational problems and mitigate antagonisms in the international community that comes from particularistic approach. Concept of global governance is certainly not a scientific whim, but the result of real needs.
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