Imperfect Cosmopolis

In current debates, the term "cosmopolitanism" often remains quite vague and leads to sweeping generalizations. this book looks at the notion from a decidedly historical perspective, trying to give depth and texture to the concept.

A long neglected concept in the field of international relations and political theory, hospitality provides a new framework for analysing many of the challenges in world politics today, from the search for peaceable relations between states to asylum and refugee crises.

The friend, the enemy, the stranger, the refugee or deportee, and the survivor. In singular and provocative fashion, Gregg Lambert’s Philosophy after Friendship introduces us to the key social personae that have populated modern political philosophy. Drawing on the philosophies of Deleuze and Derrida, as well as the work of Indo-European linguist Émile Benveniste, Lambert constructs a genealogy to demonstrate how political thought has been structured by the emergence of such “conceptual personae.” At the center of Philosophy after Friendship is the persona of the friend, together with the idea of friendship, on which the democratic ideals of consensus, fraternity, and equality are based. Lambert argues that the vitality of this conceptual persona, originated by the Greeks, has been exhausted by centuries of war. In fact, we might today be witnessing the overturning of an earlier philosophical idealism that saw friendship as the destination of the political and, in its place, the emergence of a nonphilosophical understanding that has set perpetual war as the ultimate ground from which future thinking of the political must depart. In his Conclusion, Lambert proposes a truly “postwar philosophy” that takes as its first principle the idea of perpetual peace, which would require nothing less than a complete reevaluation of the goals of any future political philosophy, if not the meaning of philosophy itself.

Kant’s omnipresence in contemporary cosmopolitan discourses contrasts with the fact that little is known about the historical origins and the systematic status of his cosmopolitan theory. This study argues that Kant’s cosmopolitanism should be understood as embedded and dynamic. Inspired by Rousseau, Kant developed a form of cosmopolitanism rooted in a modified form of republican patriotism. In contrast to static forms of cosmopolitanism, Kant conceived the tensions between embedded, local attachments and cosmopolitan obligations in dynamic terms. He posited duties to develop a cosmopolitan disposition (Gesinnung), to establish common laws or cosmopolitan institutions, and to found and promote legal, moral, and religious communities which reform themselves in a way that they can pass the test of cosmopolitan universality. This is the cornerstone of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, and the key concept is the vocation (Bestimmung) of the individual as well as of the human species. Since realizing or at least approaching this vocation is a long-term, arduous, and slow process, Kant turns to the pedagogical implications of this cosmopolitan project and spells them out in his later writings. This book uncovers Kant’s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy.

Helen Abbott examines the verse and prose poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé, together with their critical writings, to address how their attitudes towards the performance practice of poetry influenced the future of both poetry and music. Abbott considers the meaning of 'voice' in terms of rhetoric, the human body, exchange, and music, showing that Baudelaire and Mallarmé exploit the complexity and instability of voice to propose a new aesthetic situating poetry between conversation and music.

This is the first book dedicated to a systematic exploration of Kant's position on colonialism. Bringing together a team of leading scholars in both the history of political thought and normative theory, the chapters in the volume seek to place Kant's thoughts on colonialism in historical context, examine the tensions that the assessment of colonialism produces in Kant's work, and evaluate the relevance of these reflections for current debates on global justice and the relation of Western political thinking to other parts of the world.

This is the first comprehensive account of Kant's cosmopolitanism, highlighting its moral, political, legal, economic, cultural and psychological aspects. Contrasting Kant's views with those of his German contemporaries and relating them to current debates, Pauline Kleingeld sheds new light on texts that have been hitherto neglected or underestimated. In clear and carefully argued discussions, she shows that Kant's philosophical cosmopolitanism underwent a radical transformation in the mid 1790s and that the resulting theory is philosophically stronger than is usually thought. Using the work of figures such as Fichte, Cloots, Forster, Hegewisch, Wieland and Novalis, Kleingeld analyses Kant's arguments regarding the relationship between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, the importance of states, the ideal of an international federation, cultural pluralism, race, global economic justice and the psychological feasibility of the cosmopolitan ideal. In doing so, she reveals a broad spectrum of positions in cosmopolitan theory that are relevant to current discussions of cosmopolitanism.

This book examines the history of cosmopolitanism from its origins in the ancient world up to its use in Kantian political philosophy. Taking the idea of ‘common property of the land’ as a starting point, the author makes the original case that attention to this concept is needed to properly understand the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship. Offering a reconstruction of cosmopolitanism from an interdisciplinary point of view, Toward Kantian Cosmopolitanism shows how the concept sits at the intersection between philosophical debates, legal realities and the origins of the construction of the discipline of international law. Essential reading for all researchers and advances students of cosmopolitanism, political philosophy and the history of international law, it broadens the current understanding of the concept of cosmopolitanism and reflects on cosmopolitan studies from a historical and philosophical point of view.