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'Citizen of Nowhere' Or 'The Point Where Circles Intersect'? Impartialist And

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'Citizen of Nowhere' Or 'The Point Where Circles Intersect'? Impartialist And Review of International Studies (2002), 28, 457–478 Copyright © British International Studies Association ‘Citizen of nowhere’ or ‘the point where circles intersect’? Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms TONI ERSKINE* Abstract. Ethical cosmopolitanism is conventionally taken to be a stance that requires an ‘impartialist’ point of view—a perspective above and beyond all particular ties and loyalties. Taking seriously the claims of those critics who counter that morality must have a ‘particularist’ starting-point, this article examines the viability of an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism: ‘embedded cosmopolitanism’. Using moral justifications for patriotism as points of contrast, it presents embedded cosmopolitanism as a position that recognises community membership as being morally constitutive, but challenges the common assumption that communities are necessarily bounded and territorially determinate. Introduction Cosmopolitanism can be understood to mean (at least) two different things. It might be equated with the potential achievement of world government and the global political institutions that would presumably accompany it.1 Alternatively, cosmo- politanism might be thought to entail a universal scope of ethical concern. In other words, it is possible to speak of political or ethical cosmopolitanism, neither of which necessarily entails the other.2 We can assume that when Diogenes the Cynic uttered the frequently cited phrase, ‘I am a citizen of the world’, in the fourth century BC, he had * This essay was presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) 39th Annual Convention, 18–21 March 1998, Minneapolis, USA. I am grateful to Professor Ian Clark and this journal’s anonymous referees for many constructive comments on the argument contained here. This research would not have been possible without the generous support of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Overseas Research Students (ORS) Awards Scheme and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. The opportunity to prepare this paper for publication has been afforded by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. 1 Positions that fall within this understanding of cosmopolitanism often champion the creation of a world state. Such a stance, chronicled by Derek Heater in World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (London: Macmillan, 1996), advocates the elimination of political borders. For a variation on this theme that also treats the notion of world citizenship quite literally, but involves the transformation rather than the elimination of political borders, see Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Köhler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998) and Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). 2 Regarding this statement of their potential mutual exclusivity, I mean two things. First, a system of states need not preclude (and arguably might be conducive to) a transnational scope of ethical concern. Second, a world government would no more ensure global justice or a global scope of ethical concern than does the state entail universal justice within its own borders. 457 458 Toni Erskine the latter meaning in mind.3 Questioning the exclusive moral claims of local affili- ations (along with a good number of social conventions), he pronounced himself a member of the ethical cosmopolis.4 According to an ethical cosmopolitan perspective, moral commitments extend beyond political borders as well as ethnic, ideological, socioeconomic and religious divides. Put in another way, one’s scope of moral concern is coterminous with no particular community or group of communities (other than the community of human individuals worldwide).5 It is on this understanding of cosmo- politanism and its compatibility (or, indeed, incompatibility) with different sources of value that the subsequent discussion will be focused. The idea of ethical cosmopolitanism is both the subject of intense debate and the object of deep mistrust. This is colourfully illustrated in the passionate response to an essay by Martha Nussbaum published in a special issue of the Boston Review in the autumn of 1994. In this essay, a direct rejoinder to a defence of patriotism, Nussbaum enthusiastically champions ‘the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world’.6 Many of her respondents remain unconvinced. As one sceptic counters, ‘cosmopolitanism has a nice, high-minded ring to it, but it is an illusion, and, like all illusions, perilous’. The root of this charge lies in what this critic sees cosmo- politanism as entailing (or, more accurately, neglecting): Above all, what cosmopolitanism obscures, even denies, are the givens of life: parents, ancestors, family, race, religion, heritage, history, culture, tradition, community—and nationality. These are not ‘accidental’ attributes of the individual. They are essential attributes. We do not come into the world as free-floating, autonomous individuals. We come into it complete with all the particular, defining characteristics that go into a fully formed human being . .7 3 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. II, trans. R. D. Hicks (London: Heinemann, 1958), Bk.VI, 63, p. 65. This proclamation has also been attributed to other figures. In World Citizenship and Government, p.6, Heater takes the following passage from Montaigne’s Essays: ‘When someone asked of Socrates of what country he was, he did not reply, “Of Athens”, but “of the world”. His was a fuller and wider imagination; he embraced the whole world as his city, and extended his acquaintance, his society, and his affections to all mankind.’ In ‘Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism’, The Journal of Philosophy, 5 (1997) pp. 1–25 at 5, Martha Nussbaum quotes Marcus Aurelius’s assertion that ‘it makes no difference whether a person lives here or there, provided that wherever he lives, he lives as a citizen of the world’, and attributes Kant’s penchant for this phrase to Aurelius’s influence. 4 As far as flouting social conventions, Diogenes was, among other things, known to reside in a tub. 5 That ethical cosmopolitanism generally is seen to be coterminous (and not merely coextensive) with the community of human individuals is a significant, and often overlooked, qualification. For positions that would characterise this understanding of ethical cosmopolitanism as exclusive, see arguments that one’s scope of ethical concern should extend to non-human animals in, inter alia, Steve F. Sapontzis, ‘Moral Community and Animal Rights’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 22 (1985), pp. 251–7; to all living things in James K. Mishi, ‘The Limits of Moral Community and the Limits of Moral Thought’, Journal of Value Inquiry, 16 (1982), pp. 131–42; and (taking this argument to somewhat bizarre and currently irrelevant lengths), to extra-terrestrials in Donald Scherer, ‘A Disentropic Ethics’, Monist, 71 (1988), pp. 3–32. Moreover, I am referring here to contemporary conceptions of ethical cosmopolitanism. The Stoics would have thought a community of human individuals exclusive for another reason: ethical cosmopolitanism was understood to entail the community of all rational beings, including both humans and gods. (I am grateful to Nicholas Denyer for emphasising this final point.) 6 Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, Boston Review, XIX (October/November 1994), pp. 3–6, at 3. Nussbaum’s essay responds to Richard Rorty’s article, ‘The Unpatriotic Academy’, New York Times, 13 February 1994, p. E15. 7 Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘The Illusions of Cosmopolitanism’, in Joshua Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996), pp. 72–7, at 77. Impartialist and embedded cosmopolitanisms 459 This challenge to cosmopolitanism is motivated by what is perceived to be a flawed, and potentially dangerous, understanding of individual moral agency. According to this criticism, the moral agent of a cosmopolitan ethic is stripped of layer after layer of presumed contingency until there is no ‘self’ left. The rejection of Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan ideal stems from the eschewal of abstraction and impartiality in moral theory. What is under attack, therefore, might be referred to as impartialist cosmopolitanism. Not only does this reaction reflect current movements in contemporary ethical thought, but it should be viewed as having great significance for anyone concerned with exploring ethics, and, specifically, sources of value, within the discipline of International Relations (IR). An important question for both moral philosophers and normative theorists of international relations is how we get from where we are currently standing, steeped in our own immediate circumstances, with our own particular ties and commitments, to concern for those with whom we share neither kinship nor country, neighbour- hood nor nation. One answer to this question is that we must remove ourselves from such particular (and potentially prejudicing) loyalties in order to achieve an inclusive scope of moral consideration. It is this answer that has incited heated disagreement about the very nature of moral agency, judgement and value. Some positions—inter alia ‘communitarian’ political thought and certain streams of feminist theory—reject the notion that morality must aspire to an impartialist world-view and argue instead that morality is ‘embedded’
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