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Does anyone have recommendations for reading so that I can introduce myself to and better understand cosmopolitanism, any of its tenets or prominent arguments/debates about it? Or figures/names to know or look for?

I took a class on Imperial Russian history in college, and it may sound silly, but one of the themes was that a lot of officers, especially those who explored the pacific, embraced a cosmopolitan-like worldview. I found it intriguing then but never really looked into it. As a nerd on Russian/Eastern European history I’m also familiar with the pejorative/antisemitic bastardized idea of “cosmopolitanism.” Not interested in junk, I only wish to explore authoritative works or good faith critiques. Thanks!

Hi. This is a rather depressing post. It doesn‘t suggest anything, doesn’t solve any problems nor does it make the situation any better. Although I like the idea of another post to make a cosmopolitanism awareness day.

So.

Humanity has failed. So have international institutions. Global cooperation, principles and ideas have failed.

We live in a world with 57 ongoing armed conflicts. With a world where the United Nations can‘t do anything to stop a war. Heck, the veto right in the UN already gave some countries more power and influence to do their politics. Why not? They can block any UN decision they don‘t like.

We live in a world with a failed international justice system. What‘s a court which has zero power and can‘t punish for not obliging with its orders? And countries can just not join the ICC, that kind of defeats the point of international court.

We live in a world where every government puts their citizens first. We are divided on “us” and “them”. No one really gives a shit about humanity. Patriotism for a piece of land, separated from others by imaginary lines, is praised. Democracies can partner up with dictatorships and other countries with human rights violations, so citizens of democracies live a nice life.

Yes, there are some exceptions. For example, how we fixed the ozone layer. But would countries cooperate if it threatened, let’s say, just Madagascar? I wouldn’t be optimistic.

We live in a world where “our ancestors lived here in the past so we have dibs on that territory” is considered a legitimate argument on an ownership of a piece of land. Again, defined by funny lines on a map.

We’re born too early for this world. I doubt I will see my dreams of a world without any borders come true.

One of the most striking differences between the English Revolution and the revolutions that followed is that the French revolutionaries could draw on the English experience, and the Russian revolutionaries could do the same with the French experience, and so on. But the English Revolution had no antecedents, no real revolutionary ideology: it had no Rousseau, no Marx, only the Protestant interpretation of the Bible. Not that there is no revolutionary potential in the Bible: in the Old Testament the prophets repeatedly denounce the rich and powerful, and in the New Testament Christ does the same, suggesting human equality (it was the Christian idea of equality that sowed the seeds of our modern idea of equality). Not to mention the explosive potential of Protestant doctrine. One of the most revolutionary readings of the Bible at the time was John Milton's defence of both freedom of the press and regicide. It is also true, however, that the English revolutionaries did not know, at least at first, that they were revolutionaries: in reality they were, and considered themselves to be, conservatives who wanted to defend something that already existed (religion, liberty, property) from the absolutist clutches of Charles Stuart. Some conservative theories, however, looked forward to a golden age so distant as to leave ample room for creativity in their interpretation, thus becoming fully revolutionary. The fact is that in order to recapture those good old days, they made a clean break with the past on a cold January day.

The subject of regicide, however, must be analysed separately, but I will have to start from a distance. The doctrine of the two bodies of the king, as expounded by Kantorowicz, held that the sovereign had both a natural and a political body. The origin of this concept could be traced back to the idea of the mystical body of the Church (present in St Paul), a term that referred to the Christian community made up of all the faithful, past, present and future (theologians distinguished between the "corpus verum" of Christ - the host - and the "corpus mysticum", that is, the Church). From Thomas Aquinas onwards, the term "corpus Ecclesiae mysticum" was used and the Church became an autonomous mystical body. Later, the struggle for the investiture led some imperial writers to invoke a "corpus reipublicae" in opposition to the "corpus ecclesiae": in the 13th century, the term "corpus reipublicae mysticum" was used to refer to the mystical body of the state. In this sense, the continuity of the state was guaranteed by the mystical body of the kingdom, which, like the mystical body of the Church, never died. However, in this vision the king was only one part of the political body (although he was considered to be the most important part), and this did not lead directly to the theory of the two bodies of the king as the secular equivalent of the two bodies of Christ: in fact, the analogy fails if one focuses on a certain characteristic: the head of the mystical body of the Church - Christ - was eternal, whereas the king was instead an ordinary mortal.

It was easy to separate the individual king from the state, but the same could not be said of the dynasty, the crown or the royal dignity. Another aspect that assimilated the royal dignity to Christ was the sacredness of kings, represented by the anointing with holy oil (the word "Christ" comes from the Greek χριστός, itself a translation of the Hebrew māshīah, and both words mean "anointed"), which was capable of changing the nature of the one who received it, making him a person by nature and a person by grace. With regard to this ritual, it should also be remembered that, as Marc Bloch has written, the French and English monarchs had the privilege of chrism, a blessed oil mixed with balm, originally reserved only for bishops (the other kings of European states had to make do with consecrated oil), a rite that played a role in the belief that the supposedly thaumaturgical power of the sovereign's miraculous touch should be attributed to it and that it came - ultimately - from God himself. In any case, the rite ceased to be practised as a result of religious and political upheavals.

Now I come to the point: In his essay "Regicide and Revolution", Michael Walzer puts forward the hypothesis that the English and French revolutions were aimed at eliminating not only the king's mortal body but also his political body, since it would have been possible to proclaim the end of the monarchy if and only if not only the king, seen as a "natural body", but above all the king, seen as a political incarnation, had been killed, (Cases of monarchs being assassinated by palace conspiracies were not uncommon, so much so that the fact that monarchs were killed could be considered a monarchical constant - but this did not affect the people's faith in the person of the king, which was easily transferred from the deceased monarch to the living one). Cromwell's iconic "We will cut off his head with the crown on it" and Saint-Just's "This man must reign or die!" could be interpreted in this way: a public regicide is therefore radically different from a conspiratorial regicide (but also from an anarchist attack). Now, as we have said, the French could draw on the English experience (Saint-Just cited the Cromwellian precedent to defend the need to execute Louis Capet), but the English had no precedent to draw on (even if Milton had prophetically observed that theirs would be a precedent). The Commonwealth had many flaws, it's true, but it paved the way for subsequent revolutions.

Indeed, the English Revolution had a strong lineage. First of all, the American revolutionaries had drawn on the English experience, at least initially, because of the similarity of their struggle. But its legacy was also felt in Europe. Some theories have attempted to trace a direct line of descent between the Puritans and the Jacobins, since, apart from beheading monarchs, they have much in common: both insisted, albeit with different nuances and methods, on the need to suppress vice and promote virtue, and to encourage an austere rather than a dissolute lifestyle. It is true that there are important differences, including the fact that the Puritans had radical ideas in the religious sphere but not necessarily in the political sphere, whereas the Jacobins were radical in both spheres (Robespierre, for example, had argued in favour of the election of bishops by the people: since they are established for the happiness of the people, it follows that it is the people themselves who must appoint them).

But if we want to understand the degree of ideological affinity between the Puritans and the Jacobins, we cannot ignore Rousseau, the spiritual and philosophical father of the Jacobins in general and of Robespierre in particular: educated as a Calvinist, the young Jean-Jacques converted to Catholicism at the age of sixteen (in 1728), then changed his mind and returned to Calvinism in 1754. It is not only Calvinism that we need to look to in order to understand Rousseau's connection with English republicanism: Rousseau counted Algernon Sidney (whose ideas would influence the Americans and earn him the admiration of Robespierre) among his intellectual ancestors alongside Machiavelli, and said that this heroic English citizen thought like him. Moreover, the French experience was not limited to the Jacobins: at the beginning of the Revolution, Milton's polemical works were translated by the monarchist Mirabeau.

If it is true that the English experience influenced the American and French revolutions, then it is also possible to believe that the subsequent movements influenced by these two revolutions were also in some way indebted to the English experience. Giuseppe Mazzini, for example, one of the fathers of the modern principle of nationality, was influenced by Jacobinism (the first programme of the Young Italy he founded had Jacobin connotations: it also called for the suppression of the highest ranks of the clergy, since it identified God with the people and with the very principle of human progress) and later by the English Chartists, who - as far as I can remember - appreciated both Cromwell and Robespierre. On the other hand, it is curious that Mazzini, in one of his first speeches as triumvir of the Roman Republic (founded in 1849 after the Pope's flight from Rome), quoted a phrase attributed to Cromwell - "trust in God and keep your powder dry" - to explain what attitude he thought the newborn Republic should adopt in order to survive. It is true that the quote concerns methodology rather than ideas, but I wonder if it might not be linked to Mazzini's friendship with Carlyle, whose admiration for Cromwell is well known.

Mazzinian ideals also provided a basis for the various national independence movements in Europe and elsewhere (including the Irish Fenians, if I'm not mistaken). Mazzinian thought influenced the rest of the world, including the founders of the League of Nations, Wilson and Lloyd George (who acknowledged Mazzini as one of the fathers of that vision), and the revolutionaries Sun Yat Sen and Gandhi. Gandhi, moreover, drew not only on Indian tradition but also on the American experience (symbolically, he dissolved grains of salt in tea while a guest at the American embassy). The method developed by Gandhi would also return to America thanks to Martin Luther King, who admired Gandhi. It is also possible that many of the non-violent revolutions were inspired by Gandhi. Other Indian independence activists, on the other hand, had Milton among their readings, if I remember correctly. But how many other revolutions in the world have drawn on the English, French or American experience? Lenin himself had in mind the figures of Cromwell and Robespierre (and, if I remember correctly, Trotsky had compared Lenin positively to Cromwell): even the revolutions inspired by the Russian one belong to this genealogy.

I will return to Carlyle's Cromwell for a moment to explore another aspect. The great and fascinating American revolutionary John Brown - an evangelical Christian, deeply influenced by the Puritan faith of his upbringing, and believing himself to be an instrument of God raised up to deal the death blow to American slavery - counted Cromwell as one of his heroes. It is possible that Brown modelled himself on the Cromwell described by Headley, who - in a sense recycling Carlyle for the masses - described Cromwell as an ancestor of the American Revolution. John Brown was later admired by Malcolm X. But Cromwell's influence did not stop there. Antonia Fraser tells us that a century ago James Waylen, who had been Thomas Carlyle's secretary, visited the United States to try to trace any descendants of Cromwell. He found no blood descendants, but discovered something equally interesting. It was not unusual for the Cromwells he had come into contact with through advertisements to be of the "coloured race" (his words, he was a son of his time): they were in fact the descendants of slaves who, at the time of emancipation, had been able to choose their surnames and had chosen to be Cromwells! Waylen, a Victorian, had called this "innocent ambition", but today we could see it as a touching and radical tribute.

The European Union itself comes from this family tree, not only because of Mazzini's Europeanism and the constant references to the American experience, but also because the Ventotene Manifesto has a Jacobin vein: Ernesto Rossi, one of the fathers of the European federalist movement, along with Altiero Spinelli and Eugenio Colorni, had defined himself as a Jacobin (and - already during the First World War - had explained Mazzini's thought to his soldiers). The European Parliament (the first supranational parliament in history) can count the English Revolution among its ancestors in the struggle of the European federalists for the democratisation of European unity. Spinelli, on the other hand, held his first Europeanist conference "under the protective gaze of a large portrait of Cromwell", but in this case it was a coincidence that he was hosted by the Waldensians (who had been saved from the massacre in Piedmont in 1655 precisely thanks to Cromwell, through an intervention that some historians define as "the first humanitarian intervention in history"). The beheading of Charles Stuart also had a global impact, and I am not just talking about Louis XVI: it helped to establish the precedent that heads of state are accountable to the law and to their people. This principle, which the English revolutionaries helped to affirm, has led to the existence of the International Criminal Court and war crimes tribunals.

In the Areopagitica, Milton had declared that the English had been chosen by God to create a new Reformation within the Protestant Reformation already underway. Since I am not a Christian, I cannot subscribe to this vision, and since I am not English, it would be very strange for me to support the nationalism of others in this way. I could, in fact, situate such a vision within an inspiring Mazzinian vision, according to which each people (as well as each individual) has been endowed by God with a specific mission - which constitutes its individuality (in this specific case, its nationality) - the fulfilment of which is necessary for the development of a wider civil community (to the point that Mazzini affirmed that the fatherland could disappear if each man were able to reflect in his own conscience the moral law of humanity). For Mazzini, the idea of humanity, the living Word of God, is not the description of an aggregate formed by all human beings, but a normative idea capable of pointing the way towards the creation of a single society inhabited by all human beings.

In this sense, I could see something true in what Milton affirmed, without recognising a special birthright for the English, also because for Milton himself to be able to read in the Bible the defence of freedom of the press, it was necessary for the Protestant Reformation to break with the papacy and, even before that, with those early Christians who were persecuted also and above all for political reasons: in a rather tolerant world like the Roman one, it was the cult of the emperor that held the empire together. The fact that the Christians refused to do this and paid for it with their lives was a revolutionary act (after all, our political idea of equality derives from the Christian idea of the equality of all souls before God). In general, since the time of Antigone, faith has often been a way of escaping despotism: faith has an intrinsic revolutionary potential that it loses when it becomes institutionalised (but I know I'm digressing).

Nevertheless, it remains true that the revolutionaries of the time lit a modern spark that was difficult to extinguish and from which a fire was born. In a sense, it would be reasonable to believe that almost all the revolutions that followed 1649, with all their contradictions, are "daughters" of Cromwell ("warts and all"), a line as numerous as the stars. So it's not true that it didn't work, on the contrary, it worked very well, just not in the way one would have expected: after all, neither Oliver nor his other contemporaries would have been surprised by the idea that the Lord works in mysterious ways and that the consequences of men's actions are not always what the protagonists expect. In practice, we are all living in an ongoing revolutionary process, a process that first broke with the tradition of the past in January 1649, a process that awaits only our contribution. Perhaps even Milton himself imagined something similar when he imagined that the people of England would carry to other lands a plant of more beneficial qualities and nobler growth than that which Triptolemus (who is said to have travelled across Greece in a chariot drawn by winged dragons at the behest of Demeter to teach the Greeks the art of agriculture) carried from region to region. It may not have happened as he imagined, but something certainly did.

Anyone down to be in a group chat for people who share cosmopolitan views? I feel like we are here but we are scattered and I want to meet people that are fun to be around and value each other for their personalities. The idea is that no matter where the country goes or what happens we stick together and help each other out and build eachother up

is there a discord server for people to discuss and learn about cosmopolitanism?

"Explain to me what a nation is? It will always be a vague definition based on felt identity, because can someone who doesn't consider themselves Polish belong to that nation? It's true, cosmopolitanism isn't fully logical because it's an even vaguer theory, but it's just a counter to nationalism, and that's why I support it. Believing that some mystical bonds connect you to a nation whose members may never meet, and if they did, they might even hate each other, is logical—okay, I can tolerate that. But if you want me to practice the belief that I have some magical bond with a nation, represented by the state, that it's not just a territory administered by a certain institution but an organization I'm obligated to dedicate my life, fate, health to, simply because I speak a certain language and was born here, then please don't be surprised if it's not a religion I want to devote myself to; if I knew there would be war, I would leave the country myself. Because if a nation is a social community, why doesn't a Pole become German upon crossing the border and moving to Germany but remains Polish, if it depended on belonging to a state, it should be severed, but it still persists, independent of coexisting with the state. Equally, one could assume that culturally and linguistically, Canadians, Americans, and Britons are the same nation because they share a common language, especially in the age of globalization where the flow of information is no longer dependent on distance, yet there is still a distinction, they are considered different nations, why? Jews didn't have a common language, but they had religion, they were expelled from their country, they remained exiled for millennia, wandering all over the world, so there was no attachment to the lost land, only to the idea of a homeland territory. Even the region doesn't determine nationality, throughout most of history, people in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth identified as locals, a resident of Silesia in the 16th century was heavily influenced by Germanization, and one who lived next to Ruthenians was under the influence of Eastern culture, Russian, so identity is not something static? No, it is constantly shaping and evolving over time. And the Swiss, speaking three languages, treating their Canton as the most important country, still identify with Switzerland, even though they might not understand each other immediately during a conversation, but they identify with the same nation. All examples, even if they are exceptions, contain information that there is a relationship between them, making them nations all the time, so I come to the conclusion that nationality is a very complex matter (at least in my opinion) and variability over time allows for the evolution of relations between societies. In the case of reaching an agreement, remember that there is the Polish diaspora with which you can mostly communicate, not always, because there are also assimilated groups, but often with fresh immigrants you can get along, there is also the English language. That's why I consider the phrase "fatherland is primarily the nation" to be a very subjective, almost mystical thing, since demonstrating belonging to a nation in a practical way, not subject to inquiries of intent, is almost impossible, which makes the whole sentence lose its meaning. Reading the news on the internet reminded me of today's relations between Russians and Ukrainians. Literally, Russians should now have no mercy for Ukrainians "They intercepted conversations of Russian soldiers. "I no longer have any mercy in me," where mothers of Russian soldiers write to their sons — "Are you sure they are human? They are not human." And just before the war, Putin spoke of the unity of both Russian and Ukrainian nations, so why can Russians think that Little Russians can be considered non-humans, "because they are traitors of our Great Russian homeland, and traitors must be punished!" And just before 1990, the three sisters were one Soviet nation, if you asked a resident of Kharkov from that time whether it is possible that his son would fight to the death with a resident of Moscow, he would laugh and consider it impossible, you will say that he is Ukrainian, only the problem is that the inhabitants of eastern Ukraine are mostly Russians who were settled here after the conquest of these territories by the Tsar after the destruction of the Crimean Khanate and the expulsion of the Ottoman Turks from there, Stalin expelled the Crimean Tatars to the depths of Russia for collaboration with the Nazi Germans during the war, so the Tatars should return to Crimea after the collapse of the USSR or stay in the territory where they were settled? Each of these options contradicts one of the foundational elements of nationality, people carry nations and their culture within them. Why do I mention these examples and previous ones from obscure history, to emphasize the fact that nations enter into relationships with each other, they can move, merge, and divide. And the number of nations changes over time, just as Italians did not exist in Roman times, so Italians may cease to exist in the future, because what will prevent the descendants of Italians from making such a change? Do I despise patriotism if it is understood in such a way that nations do not interact with each other, that there is a constant form within a nation enduring over time, possessing a universal value unique to it that other nations cannot possess, then yes, because to me it's a blind belief of our present times in which we have been entangled, if you understand patriotism as responsibility, caring for the local homeland, important only because you belong to it, despite knowing that others might consider another homeland important, then no, I don't despise such patriotism, I respect it, love for the small homeland, for the homeland. However, we know that people move and leave their places of residence sometimes by force and sometimes voluntarily, I admit that I am not a good person and capable of being a faithful person, when once I went to the scrapyard with a friend, we heard a dog, then we both ran away, as I was faster, I was able to escape sooner, it turned out that the dog was behind the fence, and my buddy came back much later than me, then I felt uneasy about whether I could be faithful to my friend in such a moment next time, or if I would leave him behind in the future and give in to the instinct to flee, on the one hand, I was encouraged to drink vodka and despite the pressure, I kept refusing all the time, so you never fully know a person. Why am I dwelling on this, scratching this topic, because I think it would be best if the process of uniting nations went in one direction towards increasing unity, I don't want multi-culti and a melting pot of cultures, dude, in a world where everyone is mixed with everything, there is chaos and emptiness, nothing makes sense or has its place. I don't believe that a Bhutanese, Senegalese, Brazilian, and Pole will one day immediately become one nation, because that's absurd, impossible today, but I mean to make ourselves aware that we don't have to see ourselves as separated from each other, it's always best seen at the border, even the Polish and Czech one, where the borderland understands two languages and cultures, combines the style and features of two nations living next to each other, so deep in the country of unity, you won't get along without understanding its language, but you can exchange individual words and doubts about the transparency of their actions, the complicated electoral system, lack of loyalty to the voters, the Union's interests only read as an organization, and corruption scandals. Of course, I deny supporting institutions in this form, the sense in this is that Europe has common foundations, from the Romans (legislation) and Italianisms in languages, from the Greeks architecture, myths, topoi, European philosophy, and of course our common link between nations, Christianity and its morality with theology, whether you look at Churches, Books, the way Europeans think, there are no smaller differences here than within the nations themselves, as if they drew from similar sources, for me, this is enough evidence that there is a form of connection between European nations allowing the traditional conservative European values to exist. The world will never be fully united because it is too diverse, but we can try to bring it closer to its unity, and that's why, due to historical processes, although a few years ago I was a nationalist, I stand on the side of bringing nations closer together than moving them apart."

Charles Bartovich

Hello. Do you want to become a part of the cosmopolitan association? then you should contact us! we are a friendly community united by one idea. We are waiting for you.Cosmopolitism The Cosmopolitan community https://t.me/kosmopolitismo1

Anyone aged 18-27 from nyc wanna start a group chat for fellow cosmopolitan people?

Climate change, global heating, ecological degradation, nuclear proliferation, trade wars, global blocs, wars in the Middle East, and in geo-strategic Ukraine, and a the looming threat of Taiwan, global rising levels of unplayable debt, deadly and Devastating pandemics, global health crisis, global legal inequalities, hunger and poverty, unstable levels of immigration, Cyber warfare, and dangerous technologies, education polarization, and global ignorance to all of these issues, as well as irrational denial, and elitist irresponsibility. We are truly in an age where our collective actions will determine our collective fate… the challenges humanity, and all life on earth face on this is beyond the capabilities of any one nation, nor League of Nations. In so far as the movement of cosmopolitanism is concerned, I personally don’t think that the current organization are going far enough: they aren’t seeking state power, nor are they formally uniting with each other and consolidating or merging their organization with other like minded organizations like the UN and the Red Cross, and other NGO’s that may not directly be involved in the cosmopolitanism movement, but when analyzed critically, interests converge …. Nor have I seen a marketing campaign to publicize a book or a bunch of books but importantly one book that embodies this idea, and the philosophy behind it, as well as the political pragmatic approach to achieving such a state: a political philosophy that is hailed by academics as being the future, a source of hope in these trying times, and a direction to believe in, as though it were the ultimate destiny of humanity, which I believe it is, unless we go extinct beforehand. A book to persuade and ‘free’ public opinion from the cave (a reference to Plato’s allegory the cave). However, without state power or importantly the consent of the public, this idea will smoulder on the margins of society. We must organize, and create a international party, we must create a universal league or body, an organization like a government, in the sense that there are leaders, treasury officials, officials who are elected by party members, it must take the shape of a government. Moreover, We must have personal In every country, who will get into government power, and they can sign into law, a act that transfers powers to this new state, in transaction for this new states benefits! Dm to discourse.

Is nationalism foolish? What do you think?

According to most other sources related to cosmopolitanism I have found, it has not only been about equal moral worth, but also that all human beings should be members of a single community? That is especially my reason for coming here, since I believe that while the idea of a united earth might be a pipe dream, it's at least a good one.

Hey all! I just started reading Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism and I'm wondering if you guys can recommend me entry-level literatures about cosmopolitanism. Be it books or academic papers, I'm open to any suggestion. TIA!

Could someone recommend me a couple of sociological/ political/ philosophical works dealing with the topic of anti-patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Both old and contemporary. I would be very grateful.