forms of affiliation’ and the capacity of detachment, which in turn involves ‘an attempt to transcend partiality, interests, and context: it is an aspiration toward universality and objectivity’ (interestingly, this definition takes her close to epistemological cosmopolitanism).54
Especially important for the present study are works in the fields of conceptual history and philosophical or intellectual history. An outstanding example is Andrea Albrecht’s dissertation on the cosmopolitan discourses in German-speaking countries around 1800. Derek Heater has offered a string of books on cosmopolitan themes, revolving around the theme of world citizenship.55 Simone Zurbuchen’s focus is on the Swiss Enlightenment and the familiar tension between patriotisms and cosmopolitanisms, whereas Francis Cheneval’s seminal study discusses the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism in early European thought up to Kant.56
This book tries to show how contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism could benefit from a deeper historical understanding. In an essay entitled ‘Emancipatory cosmopolitanism’, Jan Nederveen Pieterse states: ‘The relationship between cosmopolitanism and history is less often discussed. But cosmopolitanism that does not acknowledge its lineages and does not examine its positionality is unreflexive, unexamined cosmopolitanism.’ He claims that normative abstraction could be problematic and wants us to ‘bring history back in’.57 By giving depth and texture to the concept of cosmopolitanism, this study attempts to practise the very selfreflexivity which is so central to philosophical discourse. It investigates cosmopolitan theories, their ramifications and developments in modern European history. It does not offer a comprehensive history of cosmopolitanisms or a conceptual history, but focuses on a neglected aspect, namely on the cosmopolitan dimension of international legal theory, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with an emphasis on the eighteenth.58
According to traditional interpretation, the so-called ‘classical’ writers of international law like Vitoria, Grotius, Wolff or Vattel were cosmopolitans. The second chapter examines whether more recent interpretations should be preferred, where these writers are seen (and condemned) as accomplices of European colonialism and exploitation. Unlike some commentators such as Robert Williams or Brett Bowden, I argue for a nuanced assessment. The charge is rather justified in the case of Grotius, who was a lobbyist and ideologue of Dutch colonialism, and Vattel, who followed Locke’s agricultural argument, saw savage peoples as inferior and moved towards legal positivism, which in turn favoured Europeans. However, the indictment does not make sense in terms of Vitoria, Pufendorf or Wolff. Vitoria develops a form of moral cosmopolitanism and hints at legal cosmopolitanism. Pufendorf holds that there are no special rights for Europeans. Wolff presents the first culturally sensitive international legal theory, rejects the civilization or agricultural argument, and foreshadows Kant’s elaborate philosophy with elements of epistemological, moral, political and cultural cosmopolitanisms. As texts are often ambiguous or open to divergent interpretations, even Vattel is a difficult case. If some from Europe and the US used his writings to justify colonialism and imperialism, other passages were quoted by Chinese politicians to criticize imminent British military measures in the 1840s (though to no avail). I propose a rather lenient overall assessment of these authors, and point to the fallacy of another great narrative if a ‘totalizing Western legal discourse’ is constructed.
The third chapter looks at several eighteenth-century British authors. It seems that members of minorities like the Quakers (Penn and Bellers) or members of disadvantaged communities (like Fletcher) were especially liable to develop progressive, pan-European or cosmopolitan schemes. They endorsed various types of moral and political cosmopolitanisms. If they focused on Europe, their Europeanism was pacifist rather than imperialist. Penn in particular did not abandon or dilute his Christian, cosmopolitan attitude when dealing with the Native Americans. If we take a look at other British Enlightenment thinkers, we usually find a clear focus on the modern state, or a state-centred perspective: issues like the defence of religious and political liberties, the revolution of 1688 or the idea of patriotism were the centre of interest, as in Algernon Sidney or Joseph Priestley. If international relations issues were touched upon, the most frequent debates concerned standing armies and militias, the idea of a balance of power, or the fear of military or political hegemony. Hume, Smith, Paine and Bentham offered rather conventional international legal theories, and usually favoured economic cosmopolitanism over more supposedly flaky versions of moral or legal cosmopolitanism.
It is surprising how many contemporary authors seem to believe that Kant almost single-handedly invented or conceptualized modern cosmopolitanism. Daniel Chernilo, for instance, refers to ‘Kant’s pioneering translation of cosmopolitan principles into legal and institutional arrangements’,59 ignoring the work of Wolff, Fletcher and others who simply did not just ‘prepare the ground’ for Kant. According to Walter D. Mignolo, Kant articulated the ‘civilizing global design’ of the ‘cosmopolitan project’.60 I have already expressed my doubts about the so-called cosmopolitan project; I also doubt that Kant deserves a special place in its civilizing global design.
This undue emphasis on Kant is even more surprising as soon as we realize that many contemporary authors reject what Kant probably saw as his main contribution to the discourses on political cosmopolitanism: his qualified endorsement of a world state. Most present-day cosmopolitans vehemently deny that they favour a world state. Many also assert that Kant ‘was against it’. If interpreters read Kant as endorsing a world government, they offer a caricature rather than an apt description. Hedley Bull is an almost classic case in point (see Chapter 5). His misreading has recently been repeated by Michael Walzer:
there is a unified global state, something like Immanuel Kant’s ‘world republic’, with a single set of citizens, identical with the set of adult human beings, all of them possessed of the same rights and obligations. This is the form that maximum centralization would take: each individual, every person in the world, would be connected directly to the center.61
This is a parody of Kant’s ideal (see Chapter 4), and probably also of the plan which would come closest to Walzer’s exaggeration, that of Cloots (see end of Chapter 5).
My starting point in the fourth chapter is a paragraph of the Second Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace, where Kant characterizes the natural lawyers Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattel as leidige Tröster or ‘miserable comforters’. If we look at his arguments that are the basis of his restrained criticism we are led to his cosmopolitan contractualism: Kant takes social contract theory and normative individualism to their logical, cosmopolitan conclusion. The true Kantian legacy is striving for the partial realization of the idea of international right, a world federation with coercive powers. In practical politics, this also includes support and reform of the second best option, a free federation as the surrogate of this idea.
The fifth chapter offers a sketch of late eighteenth-century international legal theory, which seems to have abandoned all cosmopolitan elements. The chapter takes a closer look at certain authors (Vattel, Martini, Moser and Martens), analysing their methodologies and their underlying assumptions. I was particularly interested in what they wrote about the relationship between natural, voluntary and positive law, about the balance of power, about Europe, about peace projects, and about the right to wage war (their justwar theories). These lawyers believed in a common European, Christian culture, in a European society of states that were politically independent but culturally, historically and economically related to each other. They followed a general trend of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when the last traces of cosmopolis and the societas humanis generis were gradually and partly replaced by the ideas of ‘Europe’ and ‘civilization’. They illustrate the transformation of the cosmopolitan discourses to Europeanism. In final sections, I present the fascinating theories of Robert Ward and Anacharsis Cloots. Ward, a qualified normative universalist, holds that Christianity is the true foundation of the law of nations, which has become a historical phenomenon. Cloots’s cosmopolitan republicanism envisions a world republic with departments, but without states.
According to
