Cosmopolitanism: Could the Idea of 'Cosmopolities' Still Work?

The idea of cosmopolitanism is based on the simple assumption that we are all citizens of one big world community. The assumptions of this idea may be various. The basis of our belief that we are part of one whole may be the thesis about species unity (Locke) or common rationality (Marcus Aurelius). The author of the most mature concept of political cosmopolitanism is, of course, Immanuel Kant. As part of this Workshop, we will consider whether, and if so to what extent, the idea of cosmopolitanism is still relevant today. Can the idea of cosmopolitanism be, as Kant wanted, the basis of the international order, and does the contemporary international community even refer to some kind of unity? We can indicate two international order sources, relying on the so-called vertical and horizontal arrangements. On the vertical axis, international order is simply a consequence of the existence of political structures at state level. Just as we organise collective life within the state, there is a need to organise it at the level of relations between nations. In a sense, an example of such thinking is the contractarian attempt to bring the social contract to the international level. The Workshop will consider the second type of arrangement, along the horizontal axis. In the idea of cosmopolitanism, we refer directly to the elements that could constitute the international community in a way that ignores lower organisational forms. Kant's version of cosmopolitanism is based directly on the belief that all people have a certain common subjectivity resulting from the community of the species, which, in its turn, assumes the existence of certain common features that we can indicate in various aspects of the human condition. To better explain the differences between these two perspectives, it can be mentioned that from the legal standpoint, the source of international order may also be twofold: on the one hand, international order may be introduced by the so-called law of nations which is an extended version of the view of international relations from the point of view of the interest of a given state; on the other hand, however, international order can be traced back to cosmopolitan law, under which we define the international order as starting directly from a certain basis constituting the source of the existence of a global community. One could argue that conceiving of international order along the vertical axis is unreliable, because it always presupposes the primacy of the interest of a given state community; horizontal or cosmopolitan thinking, by contrast, is an attempt to establish one human community in a manner independent of the interests of given states and, thus, offers a stronger and, in many respects, more logical point of reference.