Cosmopolitanism - Contemporary Cosmopolitan Thinkers

Contemporary Cosmopolitan Thinkers

A number of contemporary theorists propose, directly and indirectly, various ways of becoming or being a cosmopolitan individual.

The Venus Project, a quickly growing international educational organization, created by outstanding multi-disciplinarian specialist Jacque Fresco, is working, among all, on spreading cosmopolitan ideas, transcending all artificial boundaries currently separating people through understanding our interdependence with nature and each other.

Thich Nhat Hanh discusses what he calls "Interbeing" as a way of living one's life in relation to others; "Interbeing" might easily be compared to cosmopolitanism. Nhat Hanh's philosophical beliefs are grounded in the precepts of Buddhist teachings, which involve compassion and understanding to protect and live in harmony with all people, animals, plants, and minerals (88). He further describes what he calls "Mindfulness Training of the Order of Interbeing" as being aware of sufferings created by, but not limited to, the following causes: fanaticism and intolerances that disrupt compassion and living in harmony with others; indoctrination of narrow-minded beliefs; imposition of views; anger; and miscommunication (89-95). Understanding and compassion for others seems to be achieved by the understanding of others' suffering and the root causes of suffering. Therefore, to be responsible is to recognize and understand suffering, which then leads to compassion. It is through this process that others can be recognized as people.

Other theorists, philosophers, and activists contend that recognizing suffering is necessary to end violence. In Scared Sacred, Velcrow Ripper takes a journey to different sites of great suffering that ultimately leads him toward developing compassion. In "The Planet", Paul Gilroy explores how the construction and naturalization of race and the hierarchies produced by difference shape the hatred of others. It is the deconstruction of these ideologies that can lead to the compassion and humanization of others. Thus individual responsibility is being aware of what Judith Butler calls the precariousness of life in self and other; being a cosmopolitan seems to be, above all, a social, ethical enterprise.

In Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Anthony Appiah notices something important about how social ethics seem to operate: Whatever obligation I might have to another, especially a foreign other, that obligation does not supersede the obligations I have to those people most familiar to me. However, as Judith Butler questions, "at what cost do I establish the familiar as the criterion" for valuing others? (Precarious Life 38). If I value the familiar more than the foreign, what are the consequences? Paul Gilroy offers a possible alternative to this emphasis on familiarity arguing that "methodical cultivation of a degree of estrangement from one's own culture and history ... might qualify as essential to a cosmopolitan commitment" (The Planet 67). This estrangement entails a "process of exposure to otherness" in order to foster "the irreducible value of diversity within sameness" (67). Estrangement, therefore, could lead to de-emphasising the familiar in ethics by integrating otherness.

For Gilroy, being cosmopolitan seems to involve both a social, ethical enterprise and a cultural enterprise. In "The Planet", Gilroy describes the cases of Tom Hurndall (80) and Rachel Corrie (81); each seems to exemplify what might be considered Gilroy's figure of the cosmopolitan. Both Hurndall and Corrie removed themselves (geographically) from their home cultures, presumably both physically and mentally estranging themselves from their own cultures and histories. Interestingly, though, Hurndall and Corrie were both killed in 2003 (in separate incidents) and their stories might serve as affirmations of familiarity, rather than models of estrangement. Gilroy’s model of estrangement might actually undermine itself through its examples; this might be construed as a failure of Gilroy’s theory to address the practical difficulties of estranging oneself from the familiar.

Some forms of cosmopolitanism also fail to address the potential for economic colonization by powerful countries over less powerful ones. Frantz Fanon, in “The Wretched of the Earth”, observes that when nations achieved independence from European colonizers, frequently there was no system in place to secure their economic future, and they became "manager for Western enterprise...in practise set up its country as the brothel of Europe" (154). When "third world" nations are drawn into economic partnerships with global capital, ostensibly to improve their national quality of life, often the only ones benefitting from this partnership are well-placed individuals and not the nation itself.

Further, Mahmood Mamdani in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim suggests that the imposition of Western cultural norms, democracy and Christianity to name only two, has historically resulted in nationalist violence; however, Appiah has implied that democracy is a pre-requisite for cosmopolitan intervention in developing nations (Kindness to Strangers 169). Cosmopolitanism, in these instances, appears to be a new form of colonization: the powerful exploit the weak and the weak eventually fight back.

Much of the political thinking of the last two centuries has taken nationalism and the framework of the sovereign nation-state for granted. Now, with the advance of globalization and the increased facility of travel and communication, some thinkers consider that the political system based on the nation-state has become obsolete and that it is time to design a better and more efficient alternative. Jesús Mosterín analyzes how the world political system should be organized in order to maximize individual freedom and individual opportunity. Rejecting as muddled the metaphysical notion of free will, he focuses on political freedom, the absence of coercion or interference by others in personal decisions. Because of the tendencies to violence and aggression that lurk in human nature, some constraint on freedom is necessary for peaceful and fruitful social interaction, but the more freedom we enjoy, the better.

Especially, there is no rational ground for curtailing the cultural freedoms (of language, religion and customs) in the name of the nation, the church or the party. From this point of view, Internet provides a much more attractive model than the nation-state. Neither is there any just reason for restraining the free circulation of people, ideas or goods. Mosterín thinks that the nation-state is incompatible with the full development of freedom, whose blossoming requires the reorganization of the world political system along cosmopolitan lines. He proposes a world without sovereign nation-states, territorially organized in small autonomous but not-sovereign cantonal polities, complemented by strong world organizations. He emphasizes the difference between international institutions, led by representatives of the national governments, and world or universal institutions, with clearly defined aims served by directors selected by their personal qualifications, independently of any national bias or proportion.

Criticizing the abstract nature of most versions of cosmopolitanism, Charles Blattberg has argued that any viable cosmopolitanism must be "rooted," by which he means based upon a "global patriotism."