Cosmopolitanism in Kant and Rawls

Cosmopolitanism has recently become one of the most important issues dis¬cussed in the liberal political philosophy together with the problem of social justice which is now considered on a global scale. In Kant’s political writings the cosmopolitan attitude can be explained on the ground of his rationalistic philosophical approach. Rawls, who in The Law of Peoples rejects the idea of global citizenship and global justice, shares with Kant the vision of just international political order. I shall argue that Rawls’ attitude towards cosmopolitanism is similar to Kant’s; and within the framework of a polemic with Martha Nussbaum’s interpretation of Kantian cosmopolitanism as an ethical idea, I shall focus on Kant’s political thought as a source of inspiration for Rawls. Just as in the days of Kant, so now this attitude has been confronted with the growth of patriotic or even nationalist political movements which are motivated by the emotional factors. Thus, Nussbaum is right when she stresses that we cannot entirely neglect emotions and eliminate them from our theories of politics and society. I will conclude then from this discussion on the nature of cosmopolitanism that the originality of the Rawlsian and Kantian standpoints lies in (a) their ability to discern both rational and, to some extent, emotional factors which shape the life of contemporary societies and are the source of political change; and (b) that they both combine idealistic and rationalistic political theories with a pragmatic as¬sessment of political reality.