The Cosmopolitan Tradition

A Noble but Flawed Ideal

Martha C. Nussbaum

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780674260399
  9780674052499
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674242975
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

"Profound, beautifully written, and inspiring. It proves that Nussbaum deserves her reputation as one of the greatest modern philosophers."
—Globe and Mail

"At a time of growing national chauvinism, Martha Nussbaum's excellent restatement of the cosmopolitan tradition is a welcome and much-needed contribution…Illuminating and thought-provoking."
—Times Higher Education

The cosmopolitan political tradition in Western thought begins with the Greek Cynic Diogenes, who, when asked where he came from, said he was a citizen of the world. Rather than declare his lineage, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.

Martha Nussbaum pursues this "noble but flawed" vision and confronts its inherent tensions. The insight that politics ought to treat human beings both as equal and as having a worth beyond price is responsible for much that is fine in the modern Western political imagination. Yet given the global prevalence of material want, the conflicting beliefs of a pluralistic society, and the challenge of mass migration and asylum seekers, what political principles should we endorse? The Cosmopolitan Tradition urges us to focus on the humanity we share rather than on what divides us.

"Lucid and accessible…In an age of resurgent nationalism, a study of the idea and ideals of cosmopolitanism is remarkably timely."
—Ryan Patrick Hanley, Journal of the History of Philosophy

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• One. World Citizens
• Two. Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy
• Three. The Worth of Human Dignity: Two Tensions in Stoic Cosmopolitanism
• Four. Grotius: A Society of States and Individuals under Moral Law
• Five. “Mutilated and Deformed”: Adam Smith on the Material Basis of Human Capabilities
• Six. The Tradition and Today’s World: Five Problems
• Seven. From Cosmopolitanism to the Capabilities Approach
• Notes
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index