The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greekwordkosmopolitēs (‘citizen of the world’),has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moraland socio-political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by allcosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless oftheir political affiliation, are (or can and should be) citizens in asingle community. Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision thiscommunity in different ways, some focusing on political institutions,others on moral norms or relationships, and still others focusing onshared markets or forms of cultural expression. In most versions ofcosmopolitanism, the universal community of world citizens functionsas a positive ideal to be cultivated, but a few versions exist inwhich it serves primarily as a ground for denying the existence ofspecial obligations to local forms of politicalorganizations. Versions of cosmopolitanism also vary depending on thenotion of citizenship they employ, including whether they use thenotion of ‘world citizenship’ literally or metaphorically. Thephilosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its challenge tocommonly recognized attachments to fellow-citizens, the local state,parochially shared cultures, and the like.

• 1. History of Cosmopolitanisms
  • 1.1 Greek and Roman Cosmopolitanism
  • 1.2 Early Modern and Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism
  • 1.3 Cosmopolitanism in the 19th and 20th Centuries
• 2. Taxonomy of Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms
• 3. Objections to Cosmopolitanism
  • 3.1 Political cosmopolitanism
  • 3.2 Economic cosmopolitanism
  • 3.3 Moral cosmopolitanism
• Bibliography
  • Historical works
  • On the History of Cosmopolitanism
  • On the Taxonomy of Cosmopolitanisms
  • On Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms, For and Against
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. History of Cosmopolitanisms

1.1 Greek and Roman Cosmopolitanism

The political culture idealized in the writings of Plato andAristotle is not cosmopolitan. In this culture, a man identifieshimself first and foremost as a citizen of a particular polis or city,and in doing so, he signals which institutions and which body of peoplehold his allegiance. He would then be counted on for help in defendingthe city from attacks, sustaining its institutions of justice, andcontributing to its common good. In this way, his own pursuit of a goodlife is inextricably bound to the fate of the city and to the similarpursuit carried out by other inhabitants of the city. By contrast, thegood person would not be expected to share with or serve any foreignerswho live outside the city. Any cosmopolitan expectations on a goodAthenian extended only to concern for those foreigners who happen toreside in Athens.

It would, however, be wrong to assume that Classical Greek thoughtwas uniformlyanti-cosmopolitan. Actively excluding foreignersfrom any ethical consideration or actively targeting foreigners formistreatment goes one step beyond focusing one’s service andconcern on compatriots, and in fact, the targeting of‘barbarians’ is historically linked with the rise ofpanhellenism and not with the more narrow emphasis on the polis. Itwould be more accurate to call the Classical emphasis on the polisuncosmopolitan.

Yet even as Plato and Aristotle were writing, other Greeks wereissuing cosmopolitan challenges. Perhaps the most obvious challengescame from the traveling intellectuals who insisted on the contrastbetween the conventional ties of politics and the natural ties ofhumanity. Notice, for example, the way Plato has the Sophist Hippiasaddress the motley crew of Athenians and foreigners present at Callias’house in Plato’sProtagoras (337c7–d3):

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

Socrates, too, it can be argued, was sensitive to this morecosmopolitan identification with human beings as such. At least asPlato characterizes him, Socrates avoids traditional politicalengagement as much as he can, in favor of an extraordinary career ofexamining himself and others, and he insists that these examinationsare both genuinely political (Gorg 521d6–8) and extended toall, 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 havebeen consistent with cosmopolitan ideals, for he may have thought thathis best bet for serving human beings generally lay in staying athome, on account, ironically, of Athens’ superior freedom of speech(Gorg 461e1–3; cf.Apol 37c5–e2 andMeno80b4–7). Whether Socrates was self-consciously cosmopolitan in thisway or not, there is no doubt that his ideas accelerated thedevelopment of cosmopolitanism and that he was in later antiquityembraced as a citizen of the world.

In fact, the first philosopher inthe West to give perfectly explicit expression to cosmopolitanism wasthe Socratically inspired Cynic Diogenes in the fourth century BCE. Itis said that “when he was asked where he came from, he replied,‘I am a citizen of the world[kosmopolitês]’” (Diogenes Laertius VI 63).By identifying himself not as a citizen of Sinope but as a citizen ofthe world, Diogenes apparently refused to agree that he owed specialservice to Sinope and the Sinopeans. So understood, ‘I am acitizen of the cosmos’ is a negative claim, and we might wonderif there is any positive content to the Cynic’s world citizenship. Themost natural suggestion would be that a world citizen should serve theworld-state, helping to bring it about in order to enable the laterwork of sustaining its institutions and contributing to its commongood. But the historical record does not suggest that Diogenes theCynic favored the introduction of a world-state. In fact, thehistorical record does not unambiguously provide Diogenes any positivecommitments that we can readily understand as cosmopolitan. The bestwe can do to find positive cosmopolitanism in Diogenes is to insistthat the whole Cynic way of life is supposed to be cosmopolitan: byliving in accordance with nature and rejecting what is conventional,the Cynic sets an example of high-minded virtue for all other humanbeings.

A fuller exploration of positively committed philosophicalcosmopolitanism arrives only with the Socratizing and Cynic-influencedStoics of the third century CE. These Stoics are fond of saying thatthe cosmos is, as it were, a polis, because the cosmos is put inperfect order by law, which is right reason. They also embrace thenegative 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. Butthe Stoics do not believe that living in agreement with the cosmos –as a (virtuous) citizen of the cosmos – requires maintaining critical distancefrom conventional poleis. Rather, as the traces of Chrysippus’OnLives make clear, the Stoics believe that goodness requiresserving other human beings as best one can,that serving all human beings equally well is impossible, and that thebest service one can give typically requires political engagement. Ofcourse, the Stoics recognize that political engagement will not bepossible for everyone, and that some people will best be able to helpother human beings as private teachers of virtue rather than aspoliticians. But in no case, the Stoics insist, is consideration ofpolitical engagement to be limited to one’s own polis. The motivatingidea is, after all, to help human beings as such, and sometimes thebest way to do that is to serve as a teacher or as a political advisorin some foreign place. In this fashion, the Stoics introduce clear,practical content to their metaphor of the cosmopolis: a cosmopolitanconsiders moving away in order to serve, whereas a non-cosmopolitandoes not.

This content admits of a strict and a more moderate interpretation.On the strict view, when one considers whether to emigrate, onerecognizes prima facie no special or stronger reason to servecompatriots than to serve a set of human beings abroad. On the moderateview, one does introduce into one’s deliberations extra reason to servecompatriots, although one might still, all things considered, make thebest choice by emigrating. The evidence does not permit a decisiveattribution of one or the other of these interpretations to any of theearliest Stoics. But if we think that Chrysippus was deeplyattracted to the Cynics’ rejection of what is merely conventional, thenwe will find it easy to think of him as a strictcosmopolitan.

Things are a bit different for at least some of the Stoics at Rome.On the one hand, the cosmopolis becomes less demanding. WhereasChrysippus limits citizenship in the cosmos to those who in fact livein agreement with the cosmos and its law, Roman Stoics extendcitizenship to all human beings by virtue of their rationality. On theother hand, local citizenship becomes more demanding. There is nodoubt that the Stoicism of Cicero’sDe Officiis or ofSeneca’s varied corpus explicitly acknowledges obligations toRome in addition to obligations to the cosmos. This is a moderate Stoic cosmopolitanism, and empire made thedoctrine very easy for many Romans by identifying the Romanpatria with the cosmopolis itself. But neither imperialismnor a literal interpretation of world citizenship is required for thephilosophical point. The maximally committed cosmopolitan looks aroundto determine whom he can best help and how, knowing full well that hecannot help all people in just the same way, and his decision to helpsome people far more than others is justified by cosmopolitan lightsif it is the best he can do to help human beings as such.

Stoic cosmopolitanism in its various guises was enormously persuasivethroughout the Greco-Roman world. In part, this success can beexplained by noting how cosmopolitan the world at that time was.Alexander the Great’s conquests and the subsequent division of hisempire into successor kingdoms sapped local cities of much of theirtraditional authority and fostered increased contacts between cities,and later, the rise of the Roman Empire united the whole of theMediterranean under one political power. But it is wrong to say whathas frequently been said, that cosmopolitanism arose as aresponse to the fall of the polis or to the rise of the Romanempire. First, the polis’ fall has been greatly exaggerated. Under thesuccessor kingdoms and even – though to a lesser degree –under Rome, there remained substantial room for important politicalengagement locally. Second, and more decisively, the cosmopolitanismthat was so persuasive during the so-called Hellenistic Age and underthe Roman Empire was in fact rooted in intellectual developments thatpredate Alexander’s conquests. Still, there is no doubtingthat the empires under which Stoicism developed and flourished mademany people more receptive to the cosmopolitan ideal and thuscontributed greatly to the widespread influence of Stoiccosmopolitanism.

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

This development has two important and long-lasting consequences,which are canonized by Augustine. First, the cosmopolis again becomes acommunity for certain people only. Augustine makes this point mostexplicitly by limiting the citizenship in the city of God to those wholove God. All others are relegated to the inferior – though stilluniversal – earthly city by their love of self. These two cities ofthe world, which are doomed to coexist intertwined until the FinalJudgment, divide the world’s inhabitants. Second, the work of politicsis severed from the task of building good human lives, lives ofrighteousness and justice. While Augustine can stress that this allowscitizens in the city of God to obey local laws concerning “thenecessaries for the maintenance of life,” he must alsoacknowledge that it sets up a potential conflict over the laws ofreligion and the concerns of righteousness and justice (e.g.,Civitas Dei XIX 17).

For hundreds of years to come, debates in political philosophy wouldsurround the relation between ‘temporal’ politicalauthority and the ‘eternal Church.’ But emphasis on thecosmopolitan aspect of the Church waned, despite its ideal of areligious community comprising all humans. In a nutshell, the debatenow opposed the secular and the religious, and not the local and thecosmopolitan. To be sure, this debate often had cosmopolitanramifications, which are clear enough in Dante Alighieri’s plea for auniversal monarchy inDe Monarchia (ca. 1314). But his casedraws from Aristotle and Roman history, not explicitly from the idealof a cosmopolis or of world citizenship, and he remains deeplyconcerned 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 therenewed study of more ancient texts, but during the humanist eracosmopolitanism still remained the exception. Despite the fact thatancient cosmopolitan sources were well-known and that many humanistsemphasized the essential unity of all religions, they did not developthis idea in cosmopolitan terms. A few authors, however, most notablyErasmus of Rotterdam, explicitly drew on ancient cosmopolitanism toadvocate the ideal of a world-wide peace. Emphasizing the unity ofhumankind over its division into different states and peoples, byarguing that humans are destined by Nature to be sociable and live inharmony, Erasmus pleaded for national and religious tolerance andregarded like-minded people as his compatriots (QuerelaPacis).

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

Still, there are two factors that do sometimes push modern naturallaw theory in a cosmopolitan direction. First, somenatural law theorists assume that nature implanted in humans, inaddition to the tendency to self-preservation,also afellow-feeling, a form of sociability that unites all humans at afundamental level into a kind of world community. The appeal to such ashared human bond was very thin, however, and by no means does itnecessarily lead to cosmopolitanism. In fact, the very notion of anatural sociability was sometimes used instead to legitimate waragainst peoples elsewhere in the world who were said to have violatedthis common bond in an ‘unnatural’ way, or who were easilysaid to have placed themselves outside of the domain of common humanmorality by their ‘barbaric’ customs. Second, early modernnatural law theory was often connected with social contract theory, andalthough most social contract theorists worked out their views mostly,if not solely, for the level of the state and not for that ofinternational relations, the very idea behind social contract theorylends itself for application to this second level. Grotius, Pufendorf,and others did draw out these implications and thereby laid thefoundation for international law. Grotius envisioned a “greatsociety of states” that is bound by a “law ofnations” that holds “between all states” (De IureBelli ac Paci, 1625, Prolegomena par. 17; Pufendorf,De IureNaturae et Gentium, 1672).

The historical context of the philosophical resurgence ofcosmopolitanism during the Enlightenment is made up of many factors:The increasing rise of capitalism and world-wide trade and itstheoretical reflections; the reality of ever expanding empires whosereach extended across the globe; the voyages around the world and theanthropological so-called ‘discoveries’ facilitated throughthese; the renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy; and theemergence of a notion of human rights and a philosophical focus onhuman reason. Many intellectuals of the time regarded their membershipin the transnational ‘republic of letters’ as moresignificant than their membership in the particular political statesthey found themselves in, all the more so because their relationshipwith their government was often strained because of censorship issues.This prepared them to think in terms other than those of states andpeoples and adopt a cosmopolitan perspective. Under the influence ofthe American Revolution, and especially during the first years of theFrench Revolution, cosmopolitanism received its strongest impulse. The1789 declaration of ‘human’ rights had grown out ofcosmopolitan modes of thinking and reinforced them in turn.

In the eighteenth century, the terms ‘cosmopolitanism’and ‘world citizenship’ were often used not as labels fordeterminate philosophical theories, but rather to indicate an attitudeof open-mindedness and impartiality. A cosmopolitan was someone who wasnot subservient to a particular religious or political authority,someone who was not biased by particular loyalties or culturalprejudice. Furthermore, the term was sometimes used to indicate aperson who led an urbane life-style, or who was fond of traveling,cherished a network of international contacts, or felt at homeeverywhere. In this sense theEncyclopédie mentioned that‘cosmopolitan’ was often used to signify a “man of nofixed abode, or a man who is nowhere a stranger.” Thoughphilosophical authors such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Addison,Hume, and Jefferson identified themselves as cosmopolitans in one ormore of these senses, these usages are not of much philosophicalinterest.

Especially in the second half of the century, however, the term wasincreasingly also used to indicate particular philosophicalconvictions. Some authors revived the Cynic tradition. Fougeret deMontbron in his 1753 autobiographical report,Le Cosmopolite,calls himself a cosmopolitan, describes how he travels everywherewithout being committed to anywhere, declaring “All the countriesare the same to me” and “[I am] changing my places ofresidence according to my whim” (p. 130).

Despite the fact that only a few authors committedthemselves to this kind of cosmopolitanism, this was the version thatcritics of cosmopolitanism took as their target. For example, Rousseaucomplains that cosmopolitans “boast that they love everyone[tout le monde, which also means ‘the wholeworld’], to have the right to love no one” (GenevaManuscript version ofThe Social Contract, 158). Johann GeorgSchlosser, in the critical poem ‘Der Kosmopolit’ writes,“It is better to be proud of one’s nation than to havenone,” obviously assuming that cosmopolitanism implies thelatter.

Yet most eighteenth-century defenders of cosmopolitanism did notrecognize their own view in these critical descriptions. Theyunderstood cosmopolitanism not as a form of ultra-individualism, butrather, drawing on the Stoic tradition, as implying the positive moralideal of a universal human community, and they did not regard thisideal as inimical to more particular attachments. Some, like the German author Christoph Martin Wieland, stayed quiteclose to Stoic views. Others developed a cosmopolitan moral theory thatwas distinctively new. According to Kant, all rational beings aremembers in a single moral community. They are analogous to citizens inthe political (republican) sense in that they share the characteristicsof freedom, equality, and independence, and that they live under their own laws. Their common laws, however, are the laws of morality, groundedin reason. Early utilitarian cosmopolitans like Jeremy Bentham, bycontrast, defended their cosmopolitanism by pointing to the“common and equal utility of all nations.” Moralcosmopolitanism could be grounded in human reason, or in some othercharacteristic universally shared among humans (and in some cases otherkinds of beings) such as the capacity to experience pleasure or pain, amoral sense, or the aesthetic imagination. Moral cosmopolitans regardedall humans as ‘brothers’ – an analogy with which they aimed to indicate the fundamentalequality of rank of all humans, which precluded slavery, colonialexploitation, 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 theoryabout international relations. The most radical of eighteenth-centurypolitical cosmopolitans was no doubt Anacharsis Cloots (Jean-Baptistedu Val-de-Grace, baron de Cloots, 1755–1794). Cloots advocated theabolition of all existing states and the establishment of a singleworld state under which all human individuals would be directlysubsumed. His arguments drew first of all on the general structure ofsocial contract theory. If it is in the general interest for everyoneto submit to the authority of a state that enforces laws that providesecurity, then this argument applies world-wide and justifies theestablishment of a world-wide “republic of unitedindividuals,” not a plurality of states that find themselves inthe state of nature vis-à-vis each other. Second, he argues thatsovereignty should reside with the people, and that the concept ofsovereignty itself, because it involves indivisibility, implies thatthere can be but one sovereign body in the world, namely, the humanrace as a whole (La république universelle ou adresse auxtyrannicides, 1792;Bases constitutionelles de larépublique du genre humain, 1793).

Most other political cosmopolitans did not go as far asCloots. Immanuel Kant, most famously, advocated a much weaker form ofinternational legal order, namely, that of a ‘league ofnations.’ InToward Perpetual Peace (1795) Kant arguesthat true and world-wide peace is possible only when states organizethemselves internally according to ‘republican’principles, when they organize themselves externally in a voluntaryleague for the sake of keeping peace, and when they respect the humanrights not only of their citizens but also of foreigners. He arguesthat the league of states should not have coercive military powersbecause that would violate the internal sovereignty of states.

Some critics argued in response that Kant’s position wasinconsistent, because on their view, the only way to fully overcomethe state of nature among states was for the latter to enter into afederative union with coercive powers. The early Fichte transformedthe concept of sovereignty in the process, by conceiving it aslayered, and this enabled them to argue that states ought to transferpart of their sovereignty to the federal level, but only that partthat concerns their external relations to other states, whileretaining the sovereignty of the states concerning their internalaffairs. Romantic authors, on the other hand, felt that the idealstate should not have to involve coercion at all, and hence also thatthe cosmopolitan ideal should be that of a world-wide republic of‘fraternal’ non-authoritarian republics (the youngFriedrich Schlegel).

Especially the first objection has been repeated ever since, butmore recent interpretations have questioned its legitimacy (Kleingeld2004, 2012), arguing that Kant can also be read as advocating theloose league as a first step on the road toward a federation withcoercive powers. Because joining this stronger form of federationshould be a voluntary decision on the part of the peoples involved, tohonor their political autonomy, the strong federation is not a matterof coercive international right. On this interpretation, Kant’sdefense of the loose league is much more consistent.

Kant also introduced the concept of “cosmopolitan law,” suggesting athird sphere of public law – in addition to constitutional lawand international law – in which both states and individualshave rights, and where individuals have these rights as “citizens ofthe earth” rather than as citizens of particular states.

In addition to moral and political forms of cosmopolitanism, thereemerged an economic form of cosmopolitan theory. The freer tradeadvocated by eighteenth-century anti-mercantilists, especially AdamSmith, was developed further into the ideal of a global free market byDietrich Hermann Hegewisch (Kleingeld 2012). His ideal was a world inwhich tariffs and other restrictions on foreign trade are abolished, aworld in which the market, not the government, takes care of the needsof the people. Against mercantilism, he argued that it is moreadvantageous for everyone involved if a nation imports those goodswhich are more expensive to produce domestically, and that theabolition of protectionism would benefit everyone. If other stateswere to gain from their exports, they would reach a higher standard ofliving and become even better trading partners, because they couldthen import more, too. Moreover, on Hegewisch’s view, after trade willhave been liberalized world-wide, the importance of nationalgovernments will diminish dramatically. As national governments aremostly focused on the national economy and defense, he argued, theirfuture role will be at most auxiliary. The freer the global marketbecomes, 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 inthe subsequent two centuries. First, in the nineteenth century,economic globalization provoked fierce reactions. Marx and Engels tagcosmopolitanism as an ideological reflection of capitalism. Theyregard market capitalism as inherently expansive, breaking the boundsof the nation-state system, as evidenced by the fact that productionand consumption had become attuned to faraway lands. In their hands,the word ‘cosmopolitan’ is tied to the effects ofcapitalist globalization, including especially the bourgeois ideologywhich legitimizes ‘free’ trade in terms of the freedomof individuals and mutual benefit, although this very capitalist orderis the cause of the misery of millions, indeed the cause of the veryexistence of the proletariat. At the same time, however, Marx andEngels also hold that the proletariat in every country sharesessential features and has common interests, and the Communistmovement aims to convince proletarians everywhere of these commoninterests. Most famously, theCommunist Manifesto ends withthe call, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” This,combined with the ideal of the class-less society and the expectedwithering away of the states after the revolution, implies a form ofcosmopolitanism of its own.

Debates about global capitalism and about an international workers’movement have persisted. Frequently economic cosmopolitanism can befound in the advocacy of open markets, in the tradition from Adam Smithto Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Communist versions ofcosmopolitanism also developed further, although the Leninist-Stalinisttradition kept using ‘cosmopolitan’ itself as a derogatoryterm.

The second inheritance from eighteenth century cosmopolitanism isfound in the two centuries’ worth of attempts to create peace. It hasoften been noted that there are parallels between Kant’s peaceproposal inToward Perpetual Peace and the structure of theLeague of Nations as it existed in the early part of the 20th centuryas well as the structure of the current United Nations, although itshould also be pointed out that essential features of Kant’s plan werenot 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 aninnovative form of cosmopolitanism, going much beyond Kant’sconception of ‘cosmopolitan law.’ The ICC itselfrepresents an extension of the long trend, in international law, to doaway with the principle of the absolute subjection of individuals tothe state and strengthen the status of individuals. Individuals arenow the bearers of certain rights under international law, and theycan be held responsible for crimes under international law in waysthat cut through the shield of state sovereignty.

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

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

Most past cosmopolitan authors did not fully live up to the literalinterpretation of their cosmopolitan theories, and one can findmisogynist, racist, nationalist, sectarian, or class-based biases andinconsistencies in their accounts. These shortcomings have often beenused as arguments against cosmopolitanism, but they are not as easilyused for that purpose as it may seem. Because the universalistpotential in the discourse of ‘world citizenship’ canitself be used as a basis for exposing these shortcomings asproblematic, one should say that they stem from too little, rather thantoo much, cosmopolitanism.

2. Taxonomy of Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms

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

The most common cosmopolitanism –moral cosmopolitanism– does not always call itself such. But just as ancientcosmopolitanism was fundamentally a ‘moral’ commitment tohelping human beings as such, much contemporary moral philosophyinsists on the duty to aid foreigners who are starving or otherwisesuffering, or at least on the duty to respect and promote basic humanrights and justice.  One can here distinguish between strict andmoderate forms of cosmopolitanism. Thestrict cosmopolitansin 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), butalways with the claim that the duty to provide aid neither getsweighed against any extra duty to help locals or compatriots norincreases in strength when locals or compatriots are inquestion. Among these strict cosmopolitans some will say that it ispermissible, at least in some situations, to concentrate one’scharitable efforts on one’s compatriots, while others deny this– their position will depend on the details of their moraltheory. Other philosophers whom we may callmoderatecosmopolitans (including, e.g., Scheffler) acknowledge thecosmopolitan scope of a duty to provide aid, but insist that we alsohave special duties to compatriots. Among the moderate cosmopolitans,many further distinctions can be drawn, depending on the reasons thatare admitted for recognizing special responsibilities to compatriotsand depending on how the special responsibilities are balanced withthe cosmopolitan duties to human beings generally.

Moral cosmopolitanism has sometimes led topoliticalcosmopolitanism. Again, we can draw useful distinctions among thepolitical cosmopolitans. Some advocate a centralized world state, somefavor a federal system with a comprehensive global body of limitedcoercive power, some would prefer international political institutionsthat are limited in scope and focus on particular concerns (e.g., warcrimes, environmental preservation), and some defend a differentalternative altogether. Prominent philosophical discussions ofinternational political arrangements have recently clustered aroundthe heirs of Kant (e.g., Habermas, Rawls, Beitz, and Pogge) and aroundadvocates 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 thedebate over political cosmopolitanism, on the role of states. In theirview, a genuinely cosmopolitan theory should address the needs andinterests of human individuals directly – as worldcitizens – instead of indirectly, as state citizens, that is viatheir membership in particular states. What is needed instead is atheory that focuses not merely on the moral duties of individuals oron the political relations among states, but on the justice of socialinstitutions world-wide and the measures required to attain it. This‘cosmopolitan’ position in the debate overglobaldistributive justice, is especially critical of what they see asJohn Rawls’ privileging of the interests of states over those ofindividuals, in hisTheory of Justice as well as in hissubsequentLaw of Peoples. In order to establish principlesof global justice, Rawls should have applied his famous thoughtexperiment of the ‘original position’ at the global levelof all human individuals, they charge, instead of arguing, as Rawlsdoes, for a second original position, one that involvesrepresentatives of all ‘peoples’. The debate between Rawlsand his cosmopolitan critics points to the issue of the proper roleand status of states: are they indispensable instruments in thepursuit of justice (ideally embodying the principle of the democraticself-determination of peoples), or are they rather inimical to it,because they entrench state interests at the expense of individuals inneed?

Furthermore, there has been a good deal of debateovercultural cosmopolitanism, with disputes overmulticulturalism in educational curricula and with resurgentnationalisms. The cosmopolitan position in thesedisputes rejects exclusive attachments to a particular culture. So onthe one hand, the cosmopolitan encourages cultural diversity andappreciates a multicultural mélange, and on the other hand, thecosmopolitan rejects a strong nationalism. In staking out theseclaims, the cosmopolitan must be wary about very strong ‘rightsto culture,’ respecting the rights of minority cultures whilerebuffing the right to unconditional nationalself-determination. Hence, recent advocates of ‘liberalnationalism’ (e.g., Margalit and Raz, Tamir) or of the rights ofminority cultures (e.g., Kymlicka) generally seem to beanti-cosmopolitan. But the cosmopolitan’s wariness towards very strongrights to culture and towards national self-determination need not begrounded in a wholesale skepticism about the importance of particularcultural attachments. Cosmopolitanism can acknowledge the importanceof (at least some kinds of) cultural attachments for the good humanlife (at least within certain limits), while denying that this impliesthat a person’s cultural identity should be defined by any bounded orhomogeneous subset of the cultural resources available in the world(e.g., Waldron).

Economic cosmopolitanism is perhaps less often defendedamong philosophers and more often among economists (e.g., Hayek,Friedman) and certain politicians, especially in the richer countriesof this world. It is the view that one ought to cultivate a singleglobal economic market with free trade and minimal politicalinvolvement. It tends to be criticized rather than advanced byphilosophical cosmopolitans, as many of them regard it as at least apartial cause of the problem of vast international economic inequality.These debates about the desirability of a fully globalized market haveintensified in recent years, as a result of the end of the Cold War andthe increasing reach of the market economy.

3. Objections to Cosmopolitanism

One of the most common objections to cosmopolitanism attacks a positionthat is in fact made of straw. Often it is said that cosmopolitanism ismeaningless without the context of a world–state or thatcosmopolitanism necessarily involves the commitment to a world state.These claims are historically uninformed, because cosmopolitanism as aconcept arose in the first instance as a metaphor for a way of life andnot in literal guise. Ever since, there have been cosmopolitans who donot touch on the issue of international political organization, and ofthose who do, very few defend the ideal of a world–state. Furthermore,even those cosmopolitans who do favor a world-state tend to supportsomething more sophisticated that cannot be dismissed out of hand, such as athin 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 ofteninternal 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 tocosmopolitanism itself, and they come in two main forms. The first calls into questionthe possibility of realizing the cosmopolitan ideal, while the secondqueries its desirability. We discuss these two challenges to thedifferent forms of cosmopolitanism in turn.

3.1 Political cosmopolitanism

It is often argued that it is impossible to change the current systemof states and to form a world–state or a global federation ofstates. This claim is hard to maintain, however, in the face of theexistence of the United Nations, the existence of states with morethan a billion people of heterogeneous backgrounds, and the experiencewith the United States and the European Union. So in order to be takenseriously, the objection must instead be that it is impossible to formagood state or federation of that magnitude, i.e., that itis impossible to realize or even approximate the cosmopolitan ideal ina way that makes it worth pursuing and that does not carry prohibitiverisks. Here political cosmopolitans disagree among themselves. On oneend of the spectrum we find those who argue in favor of a strongworld-state, on the other end we find the defenders of a loose andvoluntary federation, or a different system altogether.

The defenders of the loose, voluntary and noncoercive federation warnthat a world-state easily becomes despotic without there being anycompeting 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 naturebetween states, or the only way to bring about internationaldistributive justice (Nielsen, Cabrera). Other authors have argued that the focus amongmany political cosmopolitans on only these two alternatives overlooksa third cosmopolitan position, and that a concern for human rights should lead one to focusinstead on institutional reform that disperses sovereignty vertically,rather than concentrating it in all-encompassing internationalinstitutions. On this view, peace, democracy, prosperity, and theenvironment would be better served by a system in which the politicalallegiance and loyalties of persons are widely dispersed over a numberof political units of various sizes, without any one unit beingdominant and thus occupying the traditional role of the state(Pogge).

Of the objections brought up by non- or anti-cosmopolitans, twodeserve special mention. First, some authors argue that the (partial orwhole) surrender of state sovereignty required by the cosmopolitanscheme is an undue violation of the principle of the autonomy of statesor the principle of democratic self-determination of their citizens.Second, so-called ‘realists’ argue that states are in aHobbesian state of nature as far as the relations among them areconcerned, and that it is as inappropriate as it is futile to subjectstates to normative constraints. To these objections cosmopolitans havevarious kinds of response, ranging from developing their alternativenormative theory (e.g., by arguing that global democracy increasesrather than diminishes the democratic control of individual worldcitizens) to pointing out, as has been done at least since Grotius,that states have good reasons even on Hobbesian grounds to submit tocertain forms of international legal arrangements.

3.2 Economic cosmopolitanism

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

Critics of the economic cosmopolitan ideal have also started toemphasize another way in which capitalism bears the seeds of its owndestruction within itself, namely, insofar as it is said to lead to aglobal environmental disaster that might spell the end of the humanspecies, or in any event the end of capitalism as we know it. Theeffects of excessive consumption (in some parts of the world) and theexploitation of nature would make the earth inhospitable to futurehuman generations.

Even if one does not think that these first two problems are soserious as to make economic cosmopolitanism unviable, they can stillmake it seemundesirable in the eyes of those who areconcerned with poverty, environmental destruction, and the impact of climate change.

Moreover, there are several other concerns that lead critics toregard economic cosmopolitanism as undesirable. First among these isthe lack of effective democratic control by the vast majority of theworld’s population, as large multinationals are able to impose demandson states that are in a weak economic position and their populations,demands that they cannot reasonably refuse to meet, although this doesnot mean that they meet them fully voluntarily. This concerns, forexample, labor conditions or the use of raw materials in developing countries.

Second, economic cosmopolitans are accused of failing to pay attentionto a number of probable side-effects of a global free market. Inparticular, they are criticized for neglecting or downplaying issuessuch as (a) the vast inequality of wealth and extreme poverty withoutthere being any reliable mechanism to provide relief, if they reducethe role of political institutions (b) the presupposition oflarge-scale migration or re-schooling when jobs disappear in one area(the loss of ties to friends and family, language, culture, etc., andthe monetary costs of moving or re-tooling), (c) the lack of aguarantee that there will be a sufficient supply of living-wage jobsfor all world citizens (especially given increasing automation. Theyare similarly accused of failing to take seriously the fact that theremight be circumstances under which it would be profitable for somestates to be protectionist or wage war, such as wars about markets orraw materials and energy (e.g., oil).

3.3 Moral cosmopolitanism

Another version of the criticism that cosmopolitanism is impossibletargets the psychological assumptions of moral cosmopolitanism. Hereit is said that human beings must have stronger attachments towardmembers of their own state or nation, and that attempts to disperseattachments to fellow-citizens in order to honor a moral communitywith human beings as such will undermine our psychologicalfunctioning. If this is aviability claim and not simplyadesirability claim, then it must be supposed that moralcosmopolitanism would literally leave large numbers of people unableto function. So it is claimed that people need a particular sense ofnational identity in order to be agents, and that a particular senseof national identity requires attachment to particular othersperceived to have a similar identity. But this does not seem to betrue as an empirical generalization. The cosmopolitan does not need todeny that some people do happen to have the need for nationalallegiance, so long as it is true that not all people do; and insofaras some people do, the strict cosmopolitan will say that perhaps itdoes not need to be that way and that cosmopolitan education mightlead to a different result. The historical record gives even thestrict cosmopolitan some cause for cheer, as human psychology and theforms of political organization have proven to be quite plastic.

In fact, some cosmopolitans have adopted a developmental psychologyaccording to which patriotism is a step on the way to cosmopolitanism:as human individuals mature they develop ever wider loyalties andallegiances, starting with attachments to their caregivers and endingwith allegiance to humanity at large. These different attachments arenot necessarily in competition with each other. Just as loyalty toone’s family need not be an obstacle for state citizens, so loyalty toone’s state need not be a problem for cosmopolitans. Thus,cosmopolitanism is regarded as an extension of a developmental processthat also includes the development of patriotism. This claim is justas much in need of empirical support, however, as the opposite claimdiscussed in the previous paragraph.

Often, though, the critic’s arguments about psychologicalpossibility are actually run together withdesirabilityclaims. The critic says that the elimination of a special motivatingattachment to fellow-citizens is not possible, but the critic meansthat the elimination of special motivating attachments tofellow-citizens will make a certain desirable form of political lifeimpossible. To respond to this sort of argument, the cosmopolitan hastwo routes open. First, she can deny the claim itself. Perhaps theviability of politics as usual depends not upon certain beliefs thatfellow-citizens deserve more of one’s service, but upon commitments tothe polity itself. If strictly cosmopolitan patriotism is apossibility, it lives in a commitment to a universal set of principlesembodied in a particular political constitution and a particular set ofpolitical institutions. If such commitment is enough for desirablepolitics, then the anti-cosmopolitan is disarmed. But second, thecosmopolitan can of course also deny the value of the form of politicallife that is posited as desirable. At this point, moral commitments runover into a discussion of political theory.

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

This last criticism can be developed further, however, and tailoredspecifically to target the strict cosmopolitan. If the strictcosmopolitan can justify only some forms of service to fellow-citizens,under some conditions, it might be said that she is blind to othermorally required forms or conditions of service to fellow-citizens. Atthis point, the critic offers reasons why a person has specialobligations to compatriots, which are missed by the strictcosmopolitan. Many critics who introduce these reasons are themselvesmoderate cosmopolitans, wishing to demonstrate that there are specialobligations to fellow-citizens in addition to general duties to thecommunity of all human beings. But if these reasons are demandingenough, then there may be no room left for any community with all humanbeings, and so these objections to strict cosmopolitanism can alsoprovide some impetus toward an anti-cosmopolitan stance. Because thereare several such reasons that are frequently proposed, there are, ineffect, several objections to the strictly cosmopolitan position, andthey should be considered one-by-one.

The first narrow objection to strict cosmopolitanism is that itneglects the obligations of reciprocity. According to this argument, wehave obligations to give benefits in return for benefits received, andwe receive benefits from our fellow-citizens. The best strictlycosmopolitan response to this argument will insist on a distinctionbetween the state and fellow-citizens and will question exactly whoprovides which benefits and what is owed in return. On grounds ofreciprocity the state may be owed certain things – cooperativeobedience – and these things may in fact generally benefitfellow-citizens. But the state is not owed these thingsbecause one owes the fellow-citizens benefits. One does notappropriately signal gratitude for benefits received from the state by,say, giving more to local charities than to charities abroad becausecharity like this does not address the full agent responsible for thebenefits one has received, and does not even seem to be the sort ofthing that is commensurate with the benefits received. In assessingthis exchange of arguments, there are some significantly difficultquestions to answer concerning exactly how the receipt of benefitsobliges one to make a return.

A second objection to strict moral cosmopolitanism gives contractariangrounds for our obligations to fellow-citizens. Because actualagreements to prioritize fellow-citizens as beneficiaries aredifficult to find, the contractarians generally rely upon an implicitagreement that expresses the interests or values of thefellow-citizens themselves. So the contractarian argument turns onidentifying interests or values that obligate fellow-citizens tobenefit each other. Perhaps, then, it will be argued that citizenshave deep interests in what a successful civil society and state canoffer them, and that these interests commit the citizens to animplicit agreement to benefit fellow-citizens. The strict cosmopolitanwill reply to such an argument with skepticism about what is requiredfor the civil society. Why is more than cooperative obedience requiredby our interests in what a successful state and civil society canprovide? Surely some citizens have to dedicate themselves to workingon behalf of this particular society, but why can they not do so onthe grounds that this is the best way to benefit human beings as such?Perhaps an intermediate position here is the (Kantian) view that it ismorally necessary to establish just democratic states and that justdemocratic states need some special commitment on the part of theircitizens in order to function as democracies, a special commitmentthat goes beyond mere cooperative obedience but that can still bedefended in universalist cosmopolitan terms. For given thatdemocracies require this special commitment as a condition of theirpossibility, it would be incoherent to promote justice in general bypromoting 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 benefitfellow-citizens appeals to what David Miller has called‘relational facts.’ Here the general thought is thatcertain relationships are constituted by reciprocal obligations: onecannot be a friend or a brother without having certainfriendship-obligations or sibling-obligations, respectively. Iffellow-citizenship is like these other relations, then we would seem tohave special obligations to fellow-citizens. But this argument, whichcan be found in Cicero’sDe Officiis, depends upon ourintuitions that fellow-citizenship is like friendship or brotherhoodand that friendship and brotherhood do come with special obligations,and both intuitions require more argument. Frequently, these argumentsappeal 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 israised by the disputes between cosmopolitans of various stripes andtheir critics. As the world becomes a smaller place through increasedsocial, political, and economic contacts, these disputes and the issuesthey raise will only become more pressing.

Bibliography

Historical works

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On the History of Cosmopolitanism

• Baldry, H.C., 1965,The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• –––, forthcoming,StoicCosmopolitanism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Konstan, David, 2009, “Cosmopolitan Traditions,”inA Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, RyanK. Balot (ed.), Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
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• –––, 1996, “Cynic Cosmopolitanism,”inThe Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and ItsLegacy, R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé(eds.), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,pp. 105–120.
• –––, 2000, “The Cynics,” inTheCambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought,Christopher Rowe and Malcolm Schofield (eds.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 415–434.
• Nussbaum, Martha C., 2002, “Kant and StoicCosmopolitanism,”Journal of Political Philosophy, 5:1–25.
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On the Taxonomy of Cosmopolitanisms

• Kleingeld, Pauline, 1999, “Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanismin Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,”Journal of the Historyof Ideas, 60: 505–524.
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On Contemporary Cosmopolitanisms, For and Against

• Appiah, Kwame A., 2006,Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World ofStrangers, New York: W.W. Norton.
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• –––, 2004,Democracy across Borders: FromDêmos to Dêmoi, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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• Brock, Gillian, 2009,Global Justice: A CosmopolitanAccount, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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• Brown, Garrett Wallace, and David Held (eds.), 2010,TheCosmopolitanism Reader, Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Cabrera, Luis, 2004,Political Theory of Global Justice: ACosmopolitan Case for the World State, London: Routledge.
• Caney, Simon, 2005,Justice Beyond Borders: A Global PoliticalTheory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Caraus, Tamara, and Elena Paris (eds.), 2018,Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance: A Radical Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, New York: Routledge.
• Cheah, Pheng, and Bruce Robbins (eds.), 1998,Cosmopolitics:Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press.
• Couture, Jocelyne, et al. (eds.), 1996,Rethinking Nationalism,Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Special Volume 22.
• De Greiff, Pablo, and Ciaran Cronin (eds.), 2002,Global Justice andTransnational Politics: Essays on the Moral and Political Challengesof Globalization, Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Deveaux, Monique, 2018, “Poor-Led Social Movements and Global Justice,”Political Theory 46: 698–725.
• Flikschuh, Katrin, 2017,What is Orientation in Global Thinking? A Kantian Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Laborde, Cécile, 2010, “Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch,”European Journal of Political Theory 9:48–69.
• Goodin, R.E., 1985,Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of OurSocial Responsibilities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1988, “What is So Special about Our FellowCountrymen?”Ethics, 98: 663–687.
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• –––, 2006,The Divided West, CiaranCronin (trans.), Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Hayden, Patrick, 2005,Cosmopolitan Global Politics, Aldershot:Ashgate.
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