Being Cosmopolitan: A Political Approach

What does it mean to be cosmopolitan? Typically, cosmopolitanism is understood as a broad moral orientation, involving some kind of commitment to global moral equality. On this understanding, to be cosmopolitan is simply to evidence that moral orientation oneself. By contrast, Being Cosmopolitan takes up a thoroughly political approach. The focus is on what it might mean, and what it is like, to be political in a distinctly cosmopolitan form. What it means to be cosmopolitan in this thoroughly political sense cannot involve appeal to any particular moral orientation, because politics is about, inter alia, the contestation of such orientations and commitments. Instead, this book offers an account that is based upon the internalization of particular kind of global 'social imaginary', involving the imagination of a global public to which certain issues - or global public affairs - are understood to pertain.

The taking up of this political approach is of significance for the prevailing moral approach. For one thing, many moral cosmopolitans are also themselves possible cosmopolitical actors, and so the elaboration of a political understanding of what it means to be cosmopolitan should act as a spur to the development of a more comprehensive picture of their own subjectivity. More concretely, being cosmopolitan in the political sense has important implications that are not readily observable when concentrating purely upon developing moral cosmopolitan claims. Within which kind of global order is it possible, or comfortable, for a cosmopolitical agent to live? In answer to this question, the book argues against the viability of both a world of self-determining peoples, and of 'pluralist' global visions - both of which are popular with moral cosmopolitan theorists. Furthermore, a focus on cosmopolitical subjectivity can help us to better understand the predicaments of real-world global politics. Not all political cosmopolitans are moral cosmopolitans. Therefore, a world of cosmopolitans is not necessarily any kind of singular 'moral community'. Indeed, as Being Cosmopolitan will endeavour to show, even amongst those who do share the core moral cosmopolitan commitment to the moral equality of all, mutual unintelligibility can arise.