The Political Theory of Global Citizenship

April Carter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134701087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the meaning of cosmopolitanism and world citizenship in the history of Western political thought, and in the evolution of international politics since 1500.Providing an invaluable overview of earlier political thought, recent theoretical literature and current debates, this book also discusses recent developments in international politics and transnational protest. It will be of great interest to those specialising in political theory, International Relations and peace/conflict studies. It will also interest those already acting as global citizens.

Part I

Cosmopolitanism and international society between states, 1500–1914

Introduction: Roots of cosmopolitanism in the western tradition

Part I examines the major sources of cosmopolitanism and ideas of world citizenship in the modern western tradition from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. These ideas were held by a small number of intellectuals before 1700. The Enlightenment saw the strongest expression of intellectual cosmopolitanism and commitment to world citizenship, although this was not reflected in the politics between states. During the next century there were contradictory developments: an expansion of popular nationalism, on the one hand, and technological and social trends promoting closer links between governments and peoples, on the other.

This exploration of earlier understandings of cosmopolitanism reveals the different connotations of the idea of world citizenship, which are still relevant today, and also indicates some of its ambiguities. In particular it raises questions about the Eurocentric bias of western universalism, and throws light on the complex relationship between Europe's expanding economic, military and political power in the rest of the world and the evolution of cosmopolitan thought. Both these questions are central in today's debates.

The primary focus is on theoretical understandings of cosmopolitanism, articulated by leading thinkers such as Erasmus and Kant, and the recurring themes in cosmopolitan thought. These themes are: identification with all other human being as equals; belief that we share the earth in common; and commitment to peace and to tolerance of other religions and cultures. They are encapsulated in the concept of world citizenship. Most of these themes are also suggested by the closely linked concept of natural law, which suggests the duties we owe to others, though interpretations of natural law have tended to lead to the concept of just war rather than towards pacifism. By the eighteenth century there was a growing emphasis on the obverse of natural law – natural rights. Natural (or human) rights are also a powerful expression of the values embedded in the concept of world citizenship.

Each chapter sets these ideas briefly within their social and political contexts, in particular the nature of relations between rulers of states and how far an ‘international society’ existed between them. These first three chapters comment also on the development of international law and proposals for various forms of international organization, which can be seen as measures to strengthen a cooperative international society. But international law in its earlier expressions, and in its evolution today, can also have strong cosmopolitan implications by focusing on the rights of individuals and the duty to respect such rights. Part I also explores the development of intellectual, cultural and social movements and organizations across frontiers, facilitated in the nineteenth century through greatly improved communications.

A cosmopolitan consciousness, although prompted by awareness of globalizing social trends, has drawn heavily upon sources within earlier traditions of western thought. One influential source from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries – which has renewed appeal today – was the heritage of Greek and Roman Stoic philosophy, which embodied the idea of world citizenship. The original Stoic concept of the cosmopolis embraced all rational beings, including gods as well as men. But the Stoic legacy to us is its view of the human world. The teaching of the first Stoic thinker, Zeno, is summed up by Plutarch in a well known quotation:

our life should not be based on cities or peoples each with its own view of right or wrong, but we should regard all men as our fellow-countrymen and there should be one life and one order, like that of a single flock on a common pasture feeding together under a common law.¹

A brief discussion of Stoicism, which is relevant to understanding later cosmopolitanism, is therefore appropriate here.

The early Stoics wrote during the Hellenistic period, when the self-governing city states had been undermined by the development of the Macedonian Empire within Greece, creating a sense of moral and political uncertainty. Their attitudes may also have been influenced by the conquests of Alexander the Great, who incorporated many peoples with very different cultures under his rule.² The Stoics were not the only school of philosophy to arise in this period, and their beliefs were criticized by the Sceptics – these two opposing schools of thought were to be revived in the Renaissance, and both have their philosophical counterparts today.³

The Stoics are generally seen as rejecting key elements in earlier classical Greek thought, which distinguished sharply between Greeks and barbarians, and between freemen and slaves. Indeed the earliest Stoic philosophers, Zeno and Chrysippus, were described not as Greek but as Phoenician; and the later Stoic philosopher Epictetus had been a slave. Stoics did not, however, radically challenge the existing social order, which was based on slavery – two of the best-known Roman Stoics were Seneca, an adviser of the Emperor Nero, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.⁴ But it is usually accepted that they did promote an ideal of human equality and brotherhood.⁵ There is also some, inconclusive, evidence that the early Hellenistic Stoic thinkers believed too in the equality of women; and the Roman Musonius Rufus explicitly supported the education of women.⁶

The implications of Stoicism for politics were ambiguous. Stoicism is now often understood as an apolitical, individualistic stance of cultivating personal virtue and being resigned to the blows of fate. But it did frequently mean political involvement.⁷ Although the Stoics were not associated with advocating revolutionary social change, they generally sought to alter social attitudes and the way people behaved, and therefore to influence public life. Martha Nussbaum suggests that Seneca's writings On Mercy and On Anger represented ‘an argument in favor of replacing Roman norms of honor and manly aggression with new norms of patience and gentleness’.⁸

Although Stoicism is associated with belief in universal harmony and equality, as a doctrine of philosophers it also tended in its earlier expression to suggest that only an elite of the wise could belong to the cosmopolis – the city of the world. But this distinction between the wise few and great majority was rejected by the Stoic writers of the Roman Republic, who stressed the unity of the human race united by reason.⁹ This tension between elitism and egalitarianism re-emerges in modern western cosmopolitan thought. The Stoic legacy also embodied a certain ambiguity about the connotations of world citizenship. The first Stoic philosophers had been influenced by the Cynics, who coined the term ‘cosmoupolites’, and who probably designated themselves world citizens to denote their independence of any particular city, rather than the unity of humanity. Their views were generally unconventional and anarchistic. Baldry argues that the Cynics did not mean to suggest that cosmopolitanism meant being at home in every city, but rather that ‘the wise man … is a vagabond with no fixed abode’.¹⁰ But other commentators have claimed the Cynics held a more positive view of their relationship both with other human beings and with the natural world.¹¹ It is debatable how far the early Stoics also endorsed a concept of rootlessness, but the Stoic ideal of world citizenship is usually understood as an ideal of human unity. These differing interpretations of world citizenship are embedded in the later history of cosmopolitanism.

Generalizations about Stoicism are open to scholarly dispute. It was a complex doctrine spanning 500 years from Hellenistic Greece through the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Secondly, although some Roman texts survive, Hellenistic Stoicism is only represented by fragments, and knowledge of these depends on the evidence of later, sometimes hostile, authors. There is, moreover, scope for disagreement about actual translation and interpretation of these fragments.¹² But these difficulties do not invalidate the importance of Stoicism in the evolution of the idea of world citizenship. Nor do they affect the fact that Stoic philosophy inspired later thinkers with a belief in cosmopolitanism.

In addition to the concept of world citizenship, Stoicism promoted the tradition of natural law, belief in a set of universal principles applicable to all humanity, which all reasoning beings could understand. Elements of natural law can be traced to earlier Greek thought, but the Stoics elaborated on its role.¹³ Chrysippus, Zeno's successor, claimed that: ‘The natural law is king over everything, divine and human alike … it lays down the standards for right and wrong … .’¹⁴ Indeed, some commentators have suggested that this is the most important Stoic legacy. Schofield, for example, argues that the idea of the cosmopolis was an attempt to retain the image of community and citizenship denuded of its geographical and social base, and can be seen primarily as a bridge between civic patriotism and the idea of natural law.¹⁵ The Stoic concept of natural law, as formulated in particular by Cicero, influenced the development of Roman law and later European law. The concept of natural law was also incorporated into Christian canon law and adopted by the early theorists of international law.¹⁶

A second source of cosmopolitanism inherited by western thought derived from Christianity. Early Christianity had emphasized human equality, often finding converts among slaves and women and ignoring ethnic or political distinctions. Moreover, Christian beliefs and the idea of a universal Church provided a basis for asserting the potential worth of all human beings and a cosmopolitan view of the world. In the Middle Ages, the concept of an overarching Christendom provided a source of unity transcending state borders. In addition, the specific religious and political role of the Papacy inspired early writings that can be seen as precursors of later aspirations to perpetual peace and world government. Dante's De Monarchia, for example, is often cited as a contribution to such ideals. The Reformation was also significant in the development of a Christian humanism. A number of Protestant Christian Churches that emerged then, especially dissenting sects, have been influential in the modern period in promoting belief in human unity. The Quakers, Mennonites and others have also played a prominent part in movements opposing slavery, racial oppression and war.

The most important contribution of Christian philosophy to modern cosmopolitanism was, however, in incorporating and transmitting the universalist elements in classical Greek and Roman thought. Thomas Aquinas, for example, looked to the objective reason embodied in natural law to cover that part of humanity who did not embrace the Christian faith. Later Catholic philosophers at the beginning of the modern period elaborated the theory of just war and laid the bases of international law.

Some aspects of the medieval world were more conducive to cosmopolitan attitudes than the modern period in Europe. European Christendom was united by one faith (despite the distinction between the Roman and Byzantine Churches and a period of political rivalry between opposing popes), and there were overlapping religious and political jurisdictions between Church and king. There were also strong bonds uniting people across political borders. Peter Kropotkin celebrated the role of trade guilds and brotherhoods in creating solidarity, giving aid in case of illness, and defending their members as well as pursuing their craft and promoting commerce.¹⁷ Paul Ghils finds the precursors of today's international nongovernmental organizations in the transnational religious orders. He also notes that in the Islamic world between the ninth and fourteenth centuries the role of transnational orders and brotherhoods acted ‘as a counterweight to princely authority’.¹⁸ But this premodern kind of social order, rooted in religion and based on princely rule, is ideologically and socially quite remote from the highly technological world in which cosmopolitanism is now being developed.

In the medieval period, despite the intolerance generated by Christian crusades against Islam, there was a significant exchange of ideas between the Islamic and Christian world. Islamic scholars made their Christian counterparts aware of the classical Greek heritage that had been lost to them, and Islamic thinkers (themselves drawing on the Greeks) influenced developments in Christian philosophy. Europe also drew on the superior mathematical, scientific and medical skills of Islamic civilization.

But Christians and Muslims frequently fought for power over the European continent. As the Ottoman Empire swept westward, starting in the 1300s, the Turks were seen as the major threat to Christian civilization, at least until the second unsuccessful siege of Vienna in the seventeenth century finally halted their advance. Religious belief could therefore easily become allied to power politics and to fear and hatred of alien cultures and beliefs.

The Stoic belief in human brotherhood, repudiation of cruelty and oppression, and advocacy of benevolence and charity provided a basis for the Renaissance rediscovery of cosmopolitan ideas in a classical, as opposed to a theological, tradition. The Renaissance humanists frequently drew upon both Cicero and Seneca to reject the sectarian intolerance associated with religious conflicts.

1 Citizens of Christendom or of the world?

Cosmopolitanism within an emerging state system

The emerging cosmopolitanism in Europe at the beginning of the modern age articulated some of the key themes associated with world citizenship to this day: rejection of war and systematic cruelty, desire to make friends across frontiers and identification with people from other cultures and countries as fellow human beings. Cosmopolitanism also took the form of a number of proposals for creating international organizations to secure lasting peace. Emeric Crucé, author of such a proposal, wrote in 1625:

How pleasant it would be to see men travel freely across frontiers and communicate with one another without any scruples whatsoever as to nation, ceremonies, or other such formalities, as if the earth were, as it is in truth, a common city for all.¹

Since this is the period which saw the ideal of a common Christian community under the Papacy destroyed by bitter religious wars, there is at first sight a certain irony in focusing on cosmopolitan legacies. Moreover, a clearly demarcated system of states emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Jean Bodin, often credited with first articulating clearly the concept of state sovereignty, published The Six Books of the Republic in 1576. N...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Cosmopolitanism and international society between states, 1500–1914
• 1 Citizens of Christendom or of the world? Cosmopolitanism within an emerging state system
• 2 Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and world citizenship
• 3 Internationalism, cosmopolitanism and challenges to them, 1815–1914
• Part II Interpretations of transnational citizenship in practice
• 4 Global civil society Acting as global citizens
• 5 Global or multinational citizens? Refugees and migrants
• 6 European citizenship Bridge or barrier to global citizenship?
• Part III Global citizenship today Theoretical and political issues
• 7 Global citizenship in contemporary political thought
• 8 Global citizenship and global governance Perspectives in international relations theory
• 9 Cultural diversity, feminism and postmodernism Challenges to global cosmopolitanism?
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index