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Recognition and Cosmopolitanism A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX COSMOPOLITANISM AS CRITICAL THEORY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ETHICS, METHODOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANISM Špela Močnik Student Number: 21213521 Qualification: PhD Social and Political Thought Supervisors: Professor Gerard Delanty (Department of Sociology) and Dr Andrew Chitty (Department of Philosophy) Number of Words: 78,196 February 2016 - ii - I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted either in the same or different form to this or any other University for a degree. Signature: - iii - Acknowledgements I am most indebted to my supervisor Professor Gerard Delanty, who consistently supported my PhD endeavours and other research, and whose expert knowledge and attentive guidance contributed enormously to the development of this thesis as well as to the growth of my interest in the topics pursued. Special thanks also to Dr Andrew Chitty whose insightful comments helped me improve my arguments. The research and writing of this project have been made possible by bursaries from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and the State-Funded Scholarship from the Government of the Republic of Slovenia. - iv - ‘Once, years ago, I tried to tell someone whom this book had frightened how I myself sometimes regarded it as a negative, as an empty form, the hollows and depressions of which were all pain, despair and saddest insight but whose cast, were it possible to produce one (like the positive figure obtained with bronzes) might perhaps be happiness, the most definite and certain serenity. Who knows, I ask myself, whether we do not always emerge as it were at the back of the gods, separated from the sublime radiance of their faces by nothing save their own selves, quite close to the expression for which we yearn but standing exactly behind it? Yet what else does this mean except that our face and the face of the gods look out in the same direction and are at one; how then should we approach the gods from the front?’ R. M. Rilke (1946: 264), Letter to L. H., 8 November 1915 - v - University of Sussex Špela Močnik, 21213521 PhD in Social and Political Thought Title of Thesis: Cosmopolitanism as Critical Theory: An Analysis of the Ethics, Methodology and Practice of Critical Cosmopolitanism ABSTRACT osmopolitan thought in recent scholarship is often used in either a prescriptive or C a descriptive manner. It is thus most commonly understood as a research agenda for the prescription of various ethico-political projects or a description of the social and political world beyond national frameworks. In both cases cosmopolitanism seems to be mostly understood as a set of assumptions about the social world. This thesis aims to underline cosmopolitanism’s critical characteristics and its capability to engage with the social world in a critical and therefore transformative manner. There has been relatively scarce scholarship on critical cosmopolitanism, a gap that the thesis closes by focusing on cosmopolitanism’s capacity for critical intervention. In this study, the contribution of cosmopolitanism to critical thought is evaluated and advanced. Possessing an unparalleled ability to understand things and change them in the light of universalism, cosmopolitanism can be explored as a kind of critical theory that has a distinct agenda and normative guidance. In order to achieve this, the thesis looks at a version of critical theory that is in certain respects most akin to cosmopolitanism, that is, Axel Honneth’s critical theory and his theory of recognition, and connects the two in a way that shows both the cosmopolitanism’s possession of critical theory’s main features and its differences from Honneth’s critical theory. It is proposed that cosmopolitanism can be regarded as a critical theory with the concept of recognition as its main framework, but also that it differs from Honneth’s theory in its understanding of world disclosure and holding to more universalist and utopian claims. While cosmopolitanism can be understood as being critical, it can also be used as an enhancement of the existing conceptualisation of recognition relationships through cosmopolitanism’s universalist dimensions. Keywords: cosmopolitanism; critical theory; Axel Honneth; recognition ethics; immanent transcendence; solidarity; hospitality. - vi - TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 What is Missing and How Can Critical Cosmopolitanism Be Enhanced? 4 Aims, Methodology and Contribution of the Thesis 6 Structure of the Thesis 8 1 SITUATING THE IDEA OF CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANISM 13 1.1 Cosmopolitanism and Its Critical Characteristics 14 1.2 Critical Cosmopolitanism: A Review 19 1.3 The Future of Possibility 26 Conclusion 29 2 THE CONCEPTUAL SOURCES OF CRITICAL THEORY AND ITS METHODOLOGY 31 2.1 The Origins of Immanent Critical Theory: An Overview of Early Critical Theory 32 2.2 Critical Theory’s Architectonic Structure 37 2.3 Immanent Critique and Immanent Transcendence: The Future is Always Already in the Present 42 2.3.1 Immanent Critique 42 2.3.2 Immanent Transcendence 44 2.4 Critical Theory’s Methodology 46 2.4.1 Application of Methodology 49 Conclusion 52 3 ELEMENTS AND METHODOLOGY OF AXEL HONNETH’S CRITICAL THEORY 54 3.1 Social Philosophy as the Core of Critical Theory 54 3.2 Historical and Normative Underpinnings 58 3.3 Social and Ontological Elements 61 3.4 Political Aspects 65 3.5 Honneth’s Methodological Approach 68 Conclusion 71 4 IMMANENT TRANSCENDENCE IN COSMOPOLITANISM 73 4.1 Transcendence and Immanent Transcendence in Philosophical and Sociological Texts 74 4.2 This-Worldly Immanent Transcendence 77 4.3 Immanent Transcendence in Cosmopolitanism 82 4.3.1 Dialogical Immanent Transcendence in Cosmopolitanism 85 4.3.2 Disclosing Immanent Transcendence in Cosmopolitanism 87 4.3.3 Self-Transcendence in Cosmopolitanism 88 Conclusion 91 - vii - 5 RECOGNITION AND COSMOPOLITANISM 93 5.1 Honneth’s Conception of Recognition 95 5.1.1 Self-Confidence and Love 96 5.1.2 Self-Respect and Rights 97 5.1.3 Self-Esteem and Solidarity 98 5.2 Globalising Recognition 100 5.3 Recognition and Cosmopolitanism 102 Conclusion 110 6 THE NORMATIVE FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANISM: TOWARDS THE CONCEPT OF COSMOPOLITAN SOLIDARITY 112 6.1 Good or Ethical Life in Recognition Theory 114 6.2 Critical Cosmopolitanism’s Ethics 118 6.2.1 Mediations and Moderation 120 6.2.2 Judgement and the Common World 121 6.2.3 Relationality and Singularity 124 6.3 The Concept of Cosmopolitan Solidarity 127 Conclusion 136 7 CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANISM’S UTOPIANISM AND WORLD- DISCLOSING CRITIQUE 137 7.1 Sociological and Critical Concepts of Utopia 138 7.2 World-Disclosure, Utopianism, and the Future-Orientation of Critical Theory 141 7.3 Possibility Rather Than Validity: An Enlarged and Pluralistic Conception of Reason 147 7.4 Cosmopolitanism and Utopia 152 Conclusion 154 8 HOSPITALITY: CRITICAL COSMOPOLITANISM’S CRITIQUE AND A WAY FORWARD 157 8.1 Problem Disclosure and Object Constitution: Hospitality’s Contradictions 158 8.2 Diagnostic Reconstruction and Explanatory Critique 160 8.2.1 Immanent Reconstructive Critique 162 8.2.2 Transcendental Reconstructive Critique 163 8.2.3 Explanatory Critique 167 8.3 Elements of Critical Cosmopolitanism Revisited 169 Conclusion 174 CONCLUSION 176 Limitations of the Study and Implications For Future Research 182 Cosmopolitan Hope in a Non-Cosmopolitan World 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 - 1 - Introduction INTRODUCTION Cosmopolitans don’t insist that everyone become cosmopolitan’, wrote Kwame ‘ Anthony Appiah (2006a) in an essay just before his book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006b) was published. What he meant by this is that cosmopolitanism is not and should not be an all-encompassing and omniscient theory that holds all the answers. As much as cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitans are able to prescribe their remedies, they must also be able to learn from strangers and change themselves and their beliefs accordingly. I believe that this latter component is often missing in the more conventional understanding of cosmopolitanisms. In normative or political conceptions, cosmopolitanism often lacks a critical stance that embraces receptivity, which is a prerequisite for being open to other suggestions but also challenging our self- understanding. Similarly, Delanty and He (2008) argue that cosmopolitan theory in social science is normally either too normative and thus empirically exclusive, or completely empirical without any connection to the normative. A turn to critical cosmopolitanism is needed in order to resist and overturn this dualism and show that cosmopolitanism can act as a critical theory that combines the two. In this way we can avoid provincialisation of our world as much as of our minds. The term cosmopolitanism is an ancient Greek term (kosmopolites) that designates a distinct being and acting in the world as a citizen of the world. This meaning of cosmopolitanism is, however, only one of the meanings since the latter naturally changed as different historic occurrences have influenced cosmopolitanism’s raison d’être.1 The Stoics, for instance, understood it as a declaration of people’s simultaneous existence in two worlds, the local on the one hand and ‘truly great and truly common’ on the other (Held, 2005: 10). Despite this, they thought that our moral commitments are owed to humanity rather than immediate locality: ‘Allegiance is owed, first and foremost, to the moral realm of all humanity, not to the contingent groups of nation, ethnicity or class’ (Held, 2005: 10).
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