Two Futures of Cosmopolitanism
Joint Conference of Societas Ethica, the European Society for Research in Ethics, and the British Society for the Study of Christian Ethics. August 23-27, 2006
21 Pages Posted: 8 Mar 2010
Date Written: August 27, 2006
Abstract
What is the future of cosmopolitan ideas? The aim of this paper is to find out what happened to two different variations of cosmopolitan thinking over the course of history. Following the thinking of stoic cosmopolitanism, which went from the Stoics, through Kant, to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, one can say that a global community is both possible and emerging. At the same time, following the thinking of cynic cosmopolitanism, which went from Diogenes, through Fougeret de Montbron, to the French writer Michel Houellebecq, one can say that cosmopolitanism takes away our roots and leaves us helpless as an uprooted tree.
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