Varieties of cosmopolitanism: cultural, constitutional, (radical) democratic – and social?

The idea of cosmopolitanism has exercised political philosophy again for the past generation. After the revival of political philosophy as a theory of justice by John Rawls (1971), the question what the scope of principels of justice should be was posed. The core features of cosmopolitan approaches amount to the moral claim that each individual needs to be considered with equal moral worth re-gardless of any contingent social, ethnic or other features. Cosmopolitanism has emerged as the theoretical alternative to a nation-state centered approach to political philosophy and principles of justice (Beitz 1979). This paper details varieties of contemporary cosmopolitan approaches and serves two aims: First, I lay out a variety of alternative cosmopolitan approaches. I engage with three alternatives, which I call cultural, constitutional and radical-democratic cosmopolitanism. Second, this paper makes plau-sible that even the varieties of cultural, constitutional, and democratic cosmopolitanism are not enough to develop a social account of cosmopolitanism. This desideratum will be sketched with an alternative Hegelian account of cosmopolitanism. The varieties of cosmopolitan approaches provide more democratically active account of cosmopolitanism. Waldron and Appiah exemplify cultural approaches to cosmopolitanism. In their respective contri-butions both philosophers approach cosmopolitanism as personal behavior in late-modern societies. Waldron’s engagement with cosmopolitanism takes various shapes (Waldron 1991; 2000; 2003; 2017). But what I want to distill from the legal philosophers’ perspective is how he sees cosmopolitanism as a cultural lifestyle in late-modern, multicultural cities and societies (Waldron 2000). In combination with Appiah’s view of cosmopolitanism as a cultural ethics of personality the cultural view presents a picture of ethical behaviors for individuals in contemporary societies (Appiah 2006) . Appiah and Waldron present the advantage to conceptualize their cultural approach as culturalization of cosmo-politanism. Benhabib and Habermas exemplify what I deem to be a constitutional cosmopolitanism. Even though Habermas remains highly indebted to the Kantian project of cosmopolitan right, his theoretical out-look transcends the Kantian bias to a certain degree. In his indispensable contributions to political theory, Habermas has developed a discourse theory of democracy and justice (Habermas 1996). Ha-bermas argues for an active imagination of the “postnational constellation” and for a deepening of European democratic integration (Habermas 1998; 2001; 2011). Habermas argues throughout that a constitutionalization of democratic norms beyond the nation-state is necessary. In a similar vein Seyla Benhabib forcefully argues that “cosmopolitan norms” were emerging in reaction to the mass atrocities of the twentieth century (Benhabib 2006). Both authors transcend the Kantian bias because they view the constitutionalization of cosmopolitanism as political processes concerning citizens in their life-worlds. Balibar and James D. Ingram exemplify a (radical-)democratic approach to cosmopolitanism. Balibar invites us to rethink the basics of politics, democracy, and universalism. His interventions are wide-ranging but a common thread is a democratization of cosmopolitanism (Balibar 2002; 2004; 2012; 2018). Ingram’s contribution to cosmopolitanism lies in the politicization and democratization of cosmopolitan theory. By referring to the tradition of radical democracy, Ingram conceptualizes radi-cal cosmopolitics as a politicization and universalization of norms from below (Ingram 2013; 2016).