Abstract
This chapter explains why the concept of cosmopolitanism as moral egalitarianism is problematic and unsuitable for the academic debate. Unlike other critics of the concept, the problem is not seen in the inclusiveness and low thresholds of the concept but in its ambiguous use. Instead of calling for the abolition of the term, however, the argument suggests reserving it for a narrower concept.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2008, Miller formulates a similar critique and classifies his own nationalist position as cosmopolitan (Miller, 2008, p. 28). He emphasises that cosmopolitanism as moral egalitarianism is so uncontroversial that it “is almost platitudinous” (Miller, 2008, p. 27). In On Global Justice (2012b), Risse makes the same claim. Drawing on Pogge’s definition, he argues that cosmopolitanism as moral egalitarianism does not capture the crucial point of present debates on global justice. Cosmopolitanism “has outlived its usefulness for matters of distributive justice. We have learned the basic cosmopolitan lesson: moral equality is an essential part of any credible theory of global justice” (Risse, 2012b, p. 10). Like Blake, he therefore pleads for a retirement of the term, namely “to stop using that term in debates about distributive justice ” (Risse, 2012b, p. 10). Since in his article Blake engages more substantially with the issue while Risse and Miller only briefly state their worries with the term, the following sections concentrate on Blake’s arguments.
- 2.
Rawls, for example, makes a strong commitment to moral egalitarianism when he states that “natural duties […] hold between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships; they obtain between all as equal moral persons” (Rawls, 1999, p. 99).
- 3.
Blake does not refer to Miller’s National Responsibility and Global Justice (2008) where Miller dedicates a full chapter on positioning himself within the cosmopolitan debate, identifying himself as a weak cosmopolitan.
- 4.
Similarly, Risse claims: “We live on a cosmopolitan plateau. But we should conduct the philosophical debate about global justice in […] more nuanced terms” (Risse, 2012a, p. 98).
- 5.
Note that Miller is not a defender of the claim. He merely raises it as a possible objection which he rejects (Miller, 2008, p. 30).
- 6.
Arbitrarily, here, means that no justification is given for the exclusion of the claims.
- 7.
A justification for the exclusion of particular claims from moral consideration is, for example, that they are not significantly affected by the consequences of a decision of a person or an institution. This is a common argument among political philosophers (Pogge, 1992, p. 52, 67; Satz, 1999, p. 71; Barry, 2010, pp. 101–102). Caney extends the argument by pointing out that the mere fact of being affected is insufficient for equal consideration. Rather, he argues that some specification is needed. According to him, the right to being considered in just decision-making only arises if the individual’s exercise of basic rights is affected (Caney, 2005, p. 163). What distinguishes these considerations from non-cosmopolitan reasoning is that, initially, all claims are considered in order to decide which claims have relevance in a particular situation. No claim is ignored without being considered first.
- 8.
Even Kant, who is often portrayed as a (if not the) founder of liberalism and whose ideas clearly influence broad strands of contemporary political thought, limits equal moral status to adult males. While citizenship, for example, should not depend on birth, it is still obvious to him that it should be reserved for adult men, for example, Kant (1970, p. 78).
- 9.
This argument has been developed in a conversation with Peri Roberts.
- 10.
Similarly, the Kantian focus on the capacity of reason (prominently stated, e.g. in his writings An Answer to the Question: “What is Englightenment?”; On the common saying: “This may be true in theory but it does not apply in practice” as well as in Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose) as the commonly shared property justifying moral value can be challenged based on the moral egalitarian standard. When Nussbaum (2006, p. 14) criticises this strand of thought for not adequately taking into account the moral concern of mentally disabled people, she challenges theories based on Kantian reasoning for not adhering to the moral egalitarian standard they claim to recognise.
- 11.
Full quote: “The label, I will suggest, now obscures more than it enlightens. It does so because it takes a multi-vectored debate amongst people who agree that individuals ought to be regarded as morally equal, and describes it as equivalent to an earlier debate between moral egalitarians and their opponents. The two are not the same, though, and we only make things more difficult for ourselves by viewing the former through the distinctions developed for the latter” (Blake, 2013, p. 36).
- 12.
Within the debate, cosmopolitan moral theory is often referred to as moderate, mild, thin, or weak cosmopolitanism whereas cosmopolitan political morality is referred to as strong, extreme, radical, or thick cosmopolitanism. Since this is a key distinction, the analysis of their exact meaning and application is subject to the subsequent chapters of Part II, which examines the content of the cosmopolitan political morality.
- 13.
Goodin suggests that the special duties people have towards their compatriots should be seen as “‘distributed general duties’” (Goodin, 1988, p. 678). Thus, our general duties (which are incomplete because they cannot be fulfilled by a single person) are distributed in a way that they become complete duties. Responsibility is assigned to particular agents who have special duties towards particular others (i.e. their fellow countrymen). These special duties, however, are derived from general duties (Goodin, 1988, p. 679) and if an actor, that is, a state fails to fulfil its duties, the obligations become general again. The argument can thus be understood as the solution to a collective action problem. The general obligations are met if every agent with assigned responsibility fulfils his special duties. Ladwig refers to this sort of “defence of a society of states” as “moral division of labour” (Ladwig, 2013, p. 9).
- 14.
It needs to be noted that O’Neill sees the value of states as purely instrumental. However, according to her approach, questions of justice arise only where agents find themselves in circumstances of justice. She explicitly refuses the idea that all individuals have rights which must be respected by everyone or, according to her obligation-based terminology, that all individuals have obligations towards everybody else (O’Neill, 1994, pp. 80–82).
- 15.
- 16.
Sangiovanni , for example, positions himself in the cosmopolitan camp drawing on Pogge’s definition while his reciprocity principle rather seems at odds with cosmopolitan intuitions (Sangiovanni, 2007, p. 3). Such a position does not classify as cosmopolitanism according to the new concept of cosmopolitanism which is developed in Part II and defended in Part III. I come back to Sangiovanni’s argument in Sect. 6.1.
- 17.
Note that cosmopolitanism has not only been connoted positively: “The cosmopolitan ideal, they will say, embodies all the worst aspects of classic liberalism—atomism, abstraction, alienation from one’s roots, vacuity of commitment, indeterminacy of character, and ambivalence towards the good. […] It is no accident that these terms [hybrid, impurity, hotchpotch, mélange], which so accurately describe the cosmopolitan ideal, are fraught with negative and cautionary connotations” (Waldron, 1997, p. 102).
- 18.
If Blake disagreed with this reasoning, he would have to request the retirement of the term moral egalitarianism as well.
- 19.
Here, I agree with Ypi who, in her reply to Blake, claims that “[t]hose who help themselves to the view to illustrate how cosmopolitanism is no longer appropriate or distinctive because it can be made to fit a number of different philosophical commitments should refrain from doing so. The fact that they can help themselves to the view may reveal less about the confusions of cosmopolitanism and more about the confusion of their principles” (Ypi, 2013, p. 78).
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Müller, B.E. (2022). The Problems of the Standard Definition of Cosmopolitanism. In: Cosmopolitanism as Nonrelationism. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83457-9_3
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