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CONFERENCE SERIES
COSMOPOLITANISM:
JUSTICE, DEMOCRACY
AND CITIZENSHIP
WITHOUT BORDERS
Contemporary cosmopolitan theories have very different aims and approaches, but all of them try to respond to current developments in the global scene concerning the status of a human being considered as a citizen of the world ("cosmopolitan") and not of a particular state. Most of the criticism against theories of cosmopolitanism, above all the "philosophical" ones, addresses their strong normative character, which characterizes them more as an aspiration, an ideal, without much explanatory potential. Against this criticism, these conferences on cosmopolitanism aim to provide a solid review of the moral presuppositions that found the cosmopolitan theories and situate them in more social, political frames. They aim also to surpass the opposition between "cosmopolitan methodology", that focus on the individual in the global scene, and the "state-centered" and "territorial methodology", that focus on the local scene, combining both. They are supposed to be informed by both theoretical and explanatory approaches, and concerned with issues like racism, nationalism, xenophobia, and problems related to migrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless, displaced persons, ethnical minorities, and indigenous people.
The concept of cosmopolitanism has five main dimensions, that can be found in authors of the most diverse theoretical traditions, and which demand a deep reformulation of state-centered modern theories of justice, democracy and citizenship. The first one is "the cosmopolitan self": critical cosmopolitanism is conceived as a world vision that considers the construction of a "cosmopolitan self" as a question of justice. Political theories that ignore identity issues cannot explain why the universal does not resist nationalism, racism and xenophobia. The second one is “the cosmopolitan democracy”: different to the model of a national democracy constructed by modern political democratic theory, critical cosmopolitan democracy conceives a local political-legal order as fully democratic only if it respects the environment and the human rights of all people of the world regardless of their citizenship. The third one is "the cosmopolitan cross-border citizenship": the concept of critical cosmopolitan citizenship reformulates the modern conception of citizenship and representation for not having a territorial referential and the dimension of authorization. This would explain the practice of cross border associations of individuals, institutionalized or not. The philosopher Etienne Balibar calls it “cosmopolitics” instead of “cosmopolitanism”. The fourth one is "the cosmopolitan law": critical cosmopolitan law reformulates the conceptions of modern international law centered on the state, considering individuals as subjects of international law. This would explain two legal developments: the rights to individual petition on human rights and the individual responsibility in international criminal law. And finally, the fifth one is “the cosmocentrism”: critical cosmocentrism implies a form of ecological consciousness based on the relationship between the self and the cosmos, which would imply a profound revision of modern anthropocentric. These five dimensions of cosmopolitanism will be discussed in the following conferences:
14-15 JUNE and 15-16 SEPTEMBER 2022 FREE REGISTRATION OPEN
These conferences aim to examine the ethical horizon of building a cosmopolitan world view. As formulated in Antiquity, cosmopolitanism is the moral ideal of a universal community of human beings considered apart from their links to particular communities. Cosmopolitanism, in this sense, has as ethical horizon the construction of a cosmopolitan self. But this ideal face within the psyche exclusive private bonds such as nationalism, racism, sexism, and all forms of discrimination implied in identity issues. It is then necessary to analyse the conditions of cosmopolitanism in a context where violence is produced by the imposition of exclusive identities to those considered to belong to a "we" and by the exclusion of all others considered not to belong to it.
16-17 JUNE and 22-23 SEPTEMBER 2022. FREE REGISTRATION OPEN
A democratic state must not wait for the development of a cosmopolitan law outside it. The first goal of cosmopolitanism is the cosmopolitization of local democracy. The democratic government of a group by itself, according to the principle of popular sovereignty, should include the whole of humanity (including future generations) to be truly democratic. What is crucial is that a democracy respects the civil rights of political community members, that it respects the fundamental rights of all those living in their territory and the human rights of all people in the world, regardless of their citizenship. This is the deep sense in which the interrelation between constitutional, international, and cosmopolitan law has to be understood.
27-28 JUNE and 29-30 SEPTEMBER 2022. FREE REGISTRATION OPEN
A key question of cosmopolitanism is how to democratize the global system. How to transpose principles and practices that have been created within the framework of the nation-state into this global system? How to develop new forms of democracy with something other than a territorial foundation? How to go beyond national citizenship if there is no formal cosmopolitan citizenship? Which plausible conception of organization, praxis and historical transformation would then correspond to it? There is no democratic representation in the most influential international organizations and global institutions of governance. On the other hand, there are a number of forms of association in civil society that transcend borders, creating new forms of citizenship - citizenship in network, in contrast to territorial citizenship. Modern political theory conceived the exercise of democratic citizenship and legitimate representation as fully exercised only within the framework of local political institutions, but the theory of justice has been increasingly developing in the last years to conceive new forms of democracy and citizenship beyond the state as well. If the state still makes strong, imposing changes in the global order, in some domains the behaviour of individual actors can decisively shape global politics.
Cosmopolitan law concerns the consecration of the individual as a subject of international law, especially regarding human rights and international criminal law, but also in areas such as minority rights, environmental law and the common heritage of humanity. The notion of international law is considered inappropriate for nominating relations in which the individual becomes the main subject of law: the stake is not an international law governing relations between states, but a cosmopolitan law, which gives an individual a power against the state, or which confers power on international forums against individuals despite their states.
These conferences aim to explore the cosmopolitan dimension of ecological consciousness. This aspect of cosmopolitanism concerns the vision of the universe as a whole, the place that each natural phenomenon occupies in this universe, about the relation of the parts between themselves and with the whole universe. This also implies discussing the place that the human being - as one being among others - occupies in this universe and the consequences of its actions, which can be translated into ecological and environmental concerns, and into an aesthetic question. The concept of cosmopolitanism contains the concept of cosmos. But how to conceive the cosmos (organism, machine, network, system, chaos, set of forces) is a controversial issue. Equally controversial is how to conceive the relation of the human being to the cosmos: the cosmos is for some authors world of nature, "object," of which the human being participates as a natural being among others, and not as "subject". For others, the cosmos is unity between subject and object, and the way we say the world depends on how we think and feel. From these questions arise other controversies about the understanding of our place in the universe.
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