4. Cosmopolitanism and What Is “Secret”: Two Sides of Enlightened Ideas Concerning World Citizenship

4. Cosmopolitanism and what is “Secret”: Two Sides of Enlightened Ideas concerning World Citizenship Andreas Önnerfors This chapter investigates the links between cosmopolitanism and secrecy. According to the classical definition of the German histo- rian Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), the secret and the public constitute a major dichotomy of the Enlightenment.1 Koselleck claims that within the ‘secret’, private spheres of Enlightenment significant elements of the forthcoming secular modernization of society were already being practiced. Secret societies, clubs, draw- ing rooms and coffeehouses thus constitute the vanguard of bourgeois emancipation during the 18th century. This secrecy was nec- essary in order to prepare for the revolution of public engagement and the creation of a public sphere of discourse. In my chapter, I try to trace the roots of enlightened ideas on world citizenship back to the normative foundations of freemasonry that were formulated in the 1720s and 1730s. Freemasonry saw itself as an heir to an esoteric tradition: the ideology and symbolic practice of it is said to have been communicated at all times and in all cultures, and its symbolic language was said to be universally comprehensible. The organization spread transnationally; within the ideal of the brotherhood is a universal solidarity. Fifty years later, on the eve of the French Revolution, the potential link be- 1 On the relationship between what is secret and publicity, see Reinhart Kosel- leck, Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Freiburg i. Br. 1959, 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), pp. 49– 81. 65 tween cosmopolitanism and secrecy was discussed in a totally different public surrounding. Claims were made that cosmopolitanism is not a secret, and that it is not possible to organize it formally like, for instance, a secret society. The texts investigated seem to prove Koselleck’s theory. The public debate can claim a public accessibility of a concept. Within freemasonry, cosmopolitan ideas were formulated and practiced very early on, but these ideas were a part of a joint European socia- bility that remained closed for those who were not initiated into it, whereas five decades later the field was open for public delibera- tion, with cosmopolitanism now occupying a political dimension in the liberation process of the bourgeois. Freemasonry and its cosmopolitan values The political discourse of the 17th century was dominated by an aggressive dichotomy between the two branches of West European Christian belief, Catholicism and Protestantism. During the nego- tiations that led to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, however, theo- ries of natural law had an important impact upon the concepts of European space that were predominant at least until the Vienna Congress in 1815. One basic element of political theory was the European territorial state, with its right of self-determination and independence. Along with that line of ideas, it had to be explained intellectually how and why European states could differ from each other. Self-determination becomes explanatory only when it is based upon difference, and difference (to make any distinction between the qualities of the One and the significant Other) is a key element of identity and identification. Unlike such concepts and ideas, counter-concepts evolved during the age of Enlightenment, all containing the basic ingredient similarity, or rather egalité. Their general idea was that human be- ings without difference are receptive to one all-embracing moral message, and that many branches of religions and philosophies lead back to one single and uncorrupted source of knowledge of the true divine, prisca teologia. In 1717, four freemason lodges in London 66 announced the establishment of a Grand Lodge. The organizational and ideological roots of freemasonry in Europe, prior to that event are not clear, but could date back to the 17th century or even ear- lier. In 1723, the Presbyterian minister James Anderson (1679– 1739) published a book of constitutions, which was a mythical history of freemasonry as well as detailing its rules and regulations. The Constitutions can be regarded as a construction of a mythical and heroic past, as a narrative that construes a consistent history back to the childhood of man, as it stresses that this knowledge was passed on in all traditions and times, codified within the symbolic language of freemasonry. One of the last paragraphs reads: In short, it would require many large Volumes to contain the many splendid Instances of the mighty Influence of Masonry from the Creation, in every Age, and in every Nation, as could be collected from Historians and Travellers […]2 Le monde entier n’est qu’une grande république… – Ramsay’s 1736 ‘Oration’ If the early concepts of autonomous territorial states are based upon mutual excluding qualities, the concept of freemasonry implies a mutual integration of mankind under a joint ideological roof. This cosmopolitan approach becomes perfectly clear in an oration held at a lodge meeting in Paris in 1736 by the Scottish nobleman André Michel de Ramsay (1686–1743). Like Anderson, in his Discours he dates the origin of freemasonry back to pre-historical and biblical times. But Ramsay links the narration about the Temple of Solo- mon from the Book of Kings in the Old Testament with the Chival- ric Orders of the Crusades. Scotland was the cradle of modern freemasonry, Ramsay claimed, and its true secrets were kept there. But it is rather surprising that cosmopolitan ideas were formulated in the context of a society that is regarded as one of the most secre- 2 Quotation from the 1734 Benjamin Franklin edition of the Constitutions of the Free-Masons, accessible online, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/ 25/, p. 41f. 67 tive, mysterious and even esoteric during the Enlightenment. Where is the connection between cosmopolitanism and secrecy? Did secrecy pave the way for the later popularity of cosmopolitanism among European elites? First of all, Ramsay rejects the ability of political rulers to establish enduring institutions for the benefit of mankind as a whole: Lycurgus, Solon, Numa and all the other political legislators never could make their institutions last long; however wise their laws may have been, they could not spread to all countries and through- out the centuries. As they only had in view victories and conquests, military violence and the raising of one people above another, they could not become universal, nor could they suit the genius and the interests of all nations, they were not founded on philanthropy. Ill- understood love of one’s homeland, carried to excess, would often destroy in these warlike republics the general love of mankind.3 To use a modern term, good governance, in Ramsay’s view, is comprised of long-lasting institutions, wise laws, and order that are spread to all countries, and survive from generation to generation. The focus of good governance occurs on a global scale, involving universalism and an attempt to fit the genius and interest of all nations. To establish good governance requires moral qualities, philanthropy, and a general love of mankind. A ‘failed state’ is based on military aggression, the violent expansion of its territory, a striv- ing for hegemony, and an ill-understood patriotism. In Ramsay’s view, each nation has its own genius and its own interests. How- ever, in the subsequent part of the text it becomes perfectly clear that these differences do not constitute a definite dividing line: 3 André Michel de Ramsay, ms 1213 Bibliotheque Municipale de Toulouse, in Georges Lamoine (ed.), Discours prononcé à la réception des Francs-Maçons (Toulouse: Éd SNES, 1999), pp. 38–45. The translation into English quoted is Georges Lamoine, ‘The Chevalier de Ramsay’s Oration 1736–37’, Ars Quatuor Coronatum, Vol. 114 (2002), pp. 230–233. For a free French version of the text, see also: http://misraim.free.fr/textes/discours_Ramsay.pdf#search=%22%22 André%20Michel%20de%20Ramsay%22%22 and http://www.freemasons- freemasonry.com/bernheimfr.html for a selection of brilliant texts on Ramsay and his oration. 68 Men are not essentially distinguished by the difference of the lan- guages they speak, of the clothes they wear, of the countries they occupy, or the dignities with which they are adorned. The whole world is but a vast republic, each nation of which is but a family, and each particular person but a child.4 The idea of a global republic is combined with the metaphor of the particular nation as a human subject – or rather, in this case, a collective subject, a family. ‘Personification of the state’, write the authors of Organising European Space (2003), ‘is a basic metaphor, which guides our thinking about international relations’.5 Each individual is regarded as a child of the national family. Thus, there seem only to be three levels when moving from the local to the global: the individual, the collective, and the universal collective. Ramsay goes on that it ‘was to revive and take up again these ancient maxims borrowed from nature’ that freemasonry was estab- lished. The goal is to unite men of an enlightened mind so that the interest of the Fraternity becomes that of mankind, where all nations can borrow sound knowledge, and where all the subjects of the different kingdoms may conspire without envy [the French original has “conspirer sans jalousie”, however “conspire” has a rather negative connotation in English, perhaps “cooperate with the same spirit” would fit better], live without discord and cherish one another without renouncing one’s homeland.6 Ramsay is of the opinion that the ‘ancient maxims’ of philanthropic cosmopolitanism are based upon ‘nature’ (a typical figure in the context of the debate on natural law and human rights of the pe- riod) and that they have declined or even disappeared.

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