Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies

2nd edition

Gerard Delanty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351028882
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Cosmopolitanism is about the extension of the moral and political horizons of people, societies, organizations and institutions. Over the past 25 years there has been considerable interest in cosmopolitan thought across the human social sciences.

The second edition of the Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies is an enlarged, revised and updated version of the first edition. It consists of 50 chapters across a broader range of topics in the social and human sciences. Eighteen entirely new chapters cover topics that have become increasingly prominent in cosmopolitan scholarship in recent years, such as sexualities, public space, the Kantian legacy, the commons, internet, generations, care and heritage.

This Second Edition aims to showcase some of the most innovative and promising developments in recent writing in the human and social sciences on cosmopolitanism. Both comprehensive and innovative in the topics covered, the Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies is divided into four sections.

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• Cosmopolitan theory and history with a focus on the classical and contemporary approaches,
• The cultural dimensions of cosmopolitanism,
• The politics of cosmopolitanism,
• World varieties of cosmopolitanism.

There is a strong emphasis in interdisciplinarity, with chapters covering contributions in philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, media studies, international relations. The Handboook 's clear and comprehensive style will appeal to a wide undergraduate and postgraduate audience across the social and human sciences.

Part I
Cosmopolitan theory, history and approaches

1
Kant and cosmopolitan legacies

Garrett W. Brown

The legacy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) on cosmopolitan thought is profound. This is because it would be near impossible to find a discussion within contemporary cosmopolitanism that did not make protracted and direct references to the political philosophy of Kant. Whether one is in agreement with Kant’s cosmopolitan vision or not, his works have undoubtedly had a lasting and deeply penetrating influence on cosmopolitans and anti-cosmopolitans alike. Moreover, the Kantian cosmopolitan legacy has continued to transcend the confines of traditional political philosophy, inspiring scholars in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, development, economics, geography, international relations, law, political science, and sociology.

In light of Kant’s importance within cosmopolitan thought it is fitting that the International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies has a dedicated chapter entirely to Kant’s cosmopolitan vision. Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter is to present some of the key features of Kantian cosmopolitanism as well as to advance and clarify a number of Kant’s positions as they relate to ongoing cosmopolitan criticisms. To do so the chapter is divided into four sections. ‘Kantian cosmopolitanism’ will outline the general moral and legal elements that underwrite Kant’s cosmopolitanism. From this basic vision the section ‘Kant’s anti-imperialist cosmopolitanism’ examines, and then refutes, the claim that Kant’s cosmopolitanism should be understood as promoting a form of imperialism. Building upon this discussion ‘Kantian laws of hospitality and the broadening of public right’ will examine Kant’s laws of hospitality in further detail, illustrating how Kant demands clear protections against imperialism as well as for the protection of visiting strangers, whether as refugees or in attempts to establish mutual relations. Lastly, the chapter ends by reflecting on Kant’s place within contemporary thinking, suggesting that Kantian cosmopolitanism continues to offer meaningful insights, thus remaining heuristically salient for ongoing debates concerning species life and global cohabitation.

Kantian cosmopolitanism

Although the history of cosmopolitan thought has been argued to date as far back as the philosopher Anhnaton in 1526 BC (Harris 1927) there is considerable consensus that history’s most formidable influence upon cosmopolitan thought came from the political philosophy of Kant (Nussbaum 1997). This is because, unlike his predecessors, Kant offered a more nuanced, extended, and practically oriented form of cosmopolitanism, which reached far beyond the existing ethical, religious, and legal ideas of his time.

In its most basic form Kant’s cosmopolitanism concerns itself with delineating the moral, legal, and political conditions required to establish a condition of cosmopolitan right (a condition of justice – mutually consistent external freedom) between all global inhabitants. As Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason, what is required to ground this condition is ‘a constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws which ensure that the freedom of each can coexist with the freedom of all the others’. Establishing a condition of public right, according to Kant, ‘is at all events a necessary idea which must be made the basis of not only the first outline of a political constitution but all laws as well’ (Kant 1900 [3:247]: Appendix).

What Kant is suggesting is that external freedom (independence from being constrained solely by another’s choice) is only fully possible if it is also grounded and mutually recognized under a universal system of law, where one’s freedom ‘can coexist with the freedom of every other’ (Kant 1981 [4:421]: 30). It is only under such a condition of public right that the ‘choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with the universal law of freedom’ (Kant 1996 [6:230]: 24).

The moral foundations underpinning Kant’s concern with establishing this condition of external freedom and public right derive from two of his more notable contributions to moral philosophy. The first of these Kantian contributions begins with deployment of his transcendental deduction and the assumption that humans have the ability for freewill. According to Kant it is impossible to empirically prove whether or not freewill truly exists. For Kant, what is more important is whether freewill can be understood to exist transcendentally. Through a method of deduction, Kant suggests that humans often make judgments claiming that someone ought to have acted in a certain way, or, that someone should have behaved differently. By making such demands in our everyday practice, humans already make a series of assumptions about people having the ability to have done something otherwise, thus, that they have a level of freewill available to them to make or not to make a moral decision. As Kant furthers, if humans are not free to determine the imperative force behind moral values (as a world without freewill would intimate), then morality no longer represents a self-imposed moral duty, but a coerced determinant that no longer requires appeals to morality. This is troubling for Kant, since the capacity to self-legislate is a priori the power to be a moral being and, as a result, must be understood to represent the ultimate source of human dignity. As Kant argues, by acting in accordance with moral principles prescribed by one’s own reason, humans assert their independence from an empirically determined world of coercion and, in doing so, establish what is distinctively human and unique about our nature.

However, Kant also understands that if moral choice is what makes us distinctively human, then those moral choices will also stand in relation to the free choices of other humans. If this is so, argues Kant, then to uphold freewill as the ultimate source of human dignity will also require that one’s freedom is also universally valid in relation to the external freedom of all others. This is true both internally in regards to a condition of domestic public right, but also in regards to relations between states and peoples (international and cosmopolitan public right). In understanding that humans should not submit to a morality outside them, Kant demands that humans must always be understood as co-legislating members of a universal kingdom of ends.

To state differently, since everyone has the capacity to be moral lawgivers, it is therefore rational to treat others with basic moral respect, to understand their capacity for freewill, and to behave with a corresponding awareness of our universal human dignity. It is from this underwriting notion of universal validity that Kant posits his categorical imperative, which insists that we should ‘act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (Kant 1981 [4:421]: 30). In respect for the dignity of moral choice, Kant further derives from this maxim that we should ‘act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, and never only as a means’ (Kant 1981 [4:429]: 36). Kant stresses the importance of this imperative as the foundation of law and politics when he argues that it represents ‘an original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity’ (Kant 1981 [4:421]: 30).

It is because external freedom requires co-legislation within a universal kingdom of ends that Kant thus maintains the judicial need for a cosmopolitan constitution that can allow ‘the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws which ensure that the freedom of each can coexist with the freedom of all the others’. As stated previously, Kant holds that establishing this condition of public right ‘is at all events a necessary idea which must be made the basis of not only the first outline of a political constitution but all laws as well’ (Kant 1900 [3:247]: Appendix).

Although Kant provides the moral groundings for why a condition of cosmopolitan right is ‘necessary’, he also suggests that establishing this cosmopolitan condition does not need to rely on these ‘motives of morality’ alone, since there are also persistent rational and practical incentives embedded within existing global relations (Kant 1970d [8:368]: 114). For Kant, the motivational basis for cosmopolitan right is premised on many of the similar empirical justifications commonly highlighted by contemporary cosmopolitans as they pertain to globalization. Like many contemporary cosmopolitans, Kant argues that the world has become increasingly interconnected where human interaction is no longer unavoidable and where a ‘violation of right in one part of the world is felt everywhere’ (Kant 1970d [8:360]: 107). Kant suggests that due to the profound empirical and moral implications of global interconnectedness and interdependency, and its potential to harm mutually consistent public right, the ‘greatest problem for the human species… is that of attaining a civil society, which can administer justice universally’ (Kant 1970a [8:28]: 51). What is required in the immediate sense, according to Kant, is the creation of mutually consistent international and cosmopolitan principles ‘which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing the human race nearer and nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution’ (Kant 1970d [8:360–1]: 108).

As a transitional mechanism Kant claims that the legal grounding for cosmopolitan public right should to be applied through a tripartite system of interlocking and mutually reinforcing laws (Brown 2009). In the first instance this was to be fostered and expanded through a voluntary pacific federation (foedus pacificum) of like-minded republican states and peoples who are dedicated to the establishment of a more rightful condition under cosmopolitan law. This tripartite matrix of cosmopolitan law would codify public right into domestic law/domestic right (laws between citizens), international law/international right (laws between states and other political units), and the creation of cosmopolitan law/cosmopolitan right (laws between states and individuals, especially non-citizens, including laws between private individuals).

As a means for cosmopolitical expansion Kant suggests that this cosmopolitan legal matrix might develop from ‘one powerful and enlightened nation… a republic’ [of public right]… and that this could ‘provide a focal point for federal association among other states’ (Kant 1970d [8:356]: 104). Kant goes on to suggest that other states could ‘join up with the first one, thus securing the freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind’ (ibid.). Moreover, the empirical dynamics of globalization, which are rooted within the political and economic structures of the international system, furnish opportunities for normative reflectivity that provides the impetus for states, even against their immediate self-interest, toward producing this potential ‘concord among men’ (Kant 1970d [8:360–1]: 108; Brown 2009). As Kant suggests, this reflective logic can rely solely on practical realities of mutual interest in trade and security, which if not addressed, can ‘provide the occasion for troubles in one place on the globe to be felt all over’ (Kant 1996 [6:352]: 121).

It is in relation to minimizing the costs of these potential harms that Kant believes that ‘the first articles of alliance’ will be those associated with trade and security and it is from this impetus that cosmopolitanism is not only motivationally possible, but also empirically and normatively necessary. In other words, what Kant is suggesting is that any state constitution and civil order, no matter how internally coherent and stable, cannot be fully secure unless its external relationships with other states are also mutually secure and that this can only be done through meaningful political cooperation and the acceptance of a genuine system of public right between states and peoples.

Therefore, for Kant, international stability and the health of a state’s own civil order is inextricably interconnected. Because of this Kant puts forward ‘wherever in the world there is a threat… [states] will be motivated to prevent it by mediation’ (Kant 1970d [8:368]: 114). It is through this mediation, and the continued promotion of a tripartite system public right, from which Kant suggests states will increasingly reduce wars of insecurity, moving ever slowly, incrementally, toward what he famously labeled a condition of perpetual peace (Doyle 1983).

Kant’s anti-imperialist cosmopolitanism

At first glance Kant’s cosmopolitan vision seems rather ideal. This is because it is hard to intuitively argue against its most basic premise, namely, the creation of a copasetic world of mutually respectful cohabitation. However, critics of Kant and cosmopolitanism do not share this view. They have often suggested that Kant’s vision actually obscures an insidious form of power and dominance by dressing it up in universalist clothes. According to critics, Kant’s cosmopolitanism actually gives license to an authoritarian ‘nightmarish hegemony’ associated with the eventual establishment of a world government (Wight 1987: 226), which is inherently racist (Bernasconi 2011), and which is implicitly Eurocentric, culturally insensitive, and fundamentally imperialist in nature (Tully 2008).

In many ways these critiques have not done justice to Kant’s more mature articulation of cosmopolitanism nor do they offer him any leeway to have changed his position in the later years of his life. Yet, there are explanations for why confusion and contention exist. This is because many of Kant’s ideas are at times in opposition to each other and there are a number of cases where Kant’s ideas remain underdeveloped or ambiguous in comparison to other aspects of his work. This is compounded by the fact that Kant’s cosmopolitan writings came toward the very end of his life, with Kant himself proclaiming that he was unable to fully complete his thoughts, while also encouraging his readers to finish his cosmopolitan project for him (Kant 1970d [8:385]: 128). It is in this spirit that it is useful to respond to three of Kant’s most serious criticisms. Doing so not only helps to refute these charges against him, but also helps to refine and explore the complexities of Kant’s broader cosmopolitan vision.

As briefly outlined above, a lasting critique of Kant’s legacy argues that a cosmopolitan condition of public right would ultimately require enforcement from a state-like entity with the final authority to mitigate any violations of public right. If instituted along these lines, this legal structure would eliminate our existing understanding of state sovereignty and national self-determination, thus creating a homogeneous and hegemonic world-state from which there would be no escape from its unifying tyranny. As Hedley Bull has written, Kantian ‘imperatives enjoin not coexistence and cooperation among states but rather the overthrow of the system of states and its replacement by a cosmopolitan society’ (Bull 1977: 25). Some Kantian scholars have also endorsed a similar interpretation, maintaining that the Kantian ideal theory requires individuals to live under common civil laws of a cosmopolitan republic and that Kant’s final idea of federation was merely his second best ideal (Laberge 1998).

Although Kant scholars remain divided on whether Kant should or should not have advocated for a world-state, there is general consensus that Kant ultimately argues against the formation of a world-state, opting instead for what he called a foedus pacificum (pacific federation). Furthermore, Kant is clear that the federation is to be a voluntary, progressively expanding association of free and independent states (Kant 1970d [8:354]: 102). As the exegetical evidence supports, Kant also dismissed a world-state as dangerous to external freedom and expressed concerns about its unbridled despotism. As Kant proclaimed,

such a [world] state is in turn even more dangerous to freedom, for it may lead to fearful despotism… distrust must force...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface to the second edition
• Introduction: the field of cosmopolitanism studies
• PART I Cosmopolitan theory, history and approaches
• PART II Cosmopolitan cultures
• PART III Cosmopolitics
• PART IV World varieties of cosmopolitanism
• Index