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_3 Journal Title: On cosmopolitanism and

>, forgiveness I
,._ Regular
~ Article Author: Derrida, Jacques. Jacques
..C Derrida
,._
2 Article Title: On Cosmopolitanism
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 JACQUES DERRIDA

Translated by Mark Dooley and

Michael Hughes

With a preface by Simon Critchley and

Richard Kearney

On
Cosmopolitanism and
Forgiveness

Londo n a nd New Yo rk
 On Cosmopalltamsm first published 1997 1n French as Cosmopo\1tes de toe s
\ps pays, encore un elfortl
by Ed1t1ons Galilee. 9 rue Linee, 75006 Pans. France

English translation as On Cosmopol1tan1sm hrst published 2001

by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P i,EE

S1multaneously published 1n the USA and Canada

by Routledge
29 West 35th Street. New York, NY 10001

Roul/ed_qe ,s an tmprml of the Taylor & Franos Group

'Cosmopolttes de taus les pays, encore un effort I ©1997 Ed,t1ons Galilee

On Cosmopo\1tanism English translation© 2001 Routledge
On Forgiveness © 2001 Studies 1n Practical Philosophy
Preface© 2001 Simon Critchley and R1cha1d Kearney

Typeset 1n Joa nna by Ref1necatch

Printed and bou nd 1n Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow. Corn wall

All rights reserved No part of 1h1s book may be repr inted or reprod uced 01 utilised ,n
any form or by any electronic. mechanical. or other means. now known or hereafter
invented. including photocopying and record ing, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without perm,ss1on 1n w ritin9 from the publishers

Bnr,sh L1bra1y C,1falogumg m Pub/1c,1/1on Data

A catalogue record for this book 1s available from the Br 1t1sh Library

Library of Congress Ca/alogmg ,n Pub/1ca/1on Data

Derrida. Jacques
[Cosmopol1tes de taus les pays. encore un effort English]
On cosmopol1tan1sm and forgiveness I Jacques Demda
p cm - [Thinking in act1onl
1 Re fugee s 2 Asylurn. Right of 3 lnternat1on al1 sm 4 Forg iveness I Title
II Series
JV6346 D4 7 2001
320 01 1- d c2 1
2001016110

ISBN 0-415-227 11-9 [hbk)

ISBN 0-41 5- 22712 - 7 l pbk]
 Series editors' preface vn

On Cosmopolitanism Part One 1

On Forgiveness Part Two 25

 Part One
On Cosmopolitanism
 On

Cosmopolitanism,

Where have we received the image of cosmopolitanism

from? And what 1s happening to Jt? As for this citizen of the
lll
world, we do not know what the future holds in store for lll
a.,
C
it. One must ask today whether we can still make a legiti- a.,
:::en
mate distmction between the two forms of the metropolis - '-
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the City and the State. Moreover, one is seeking to mquire -0
C
Cl)
if an International Parliament of Writers can still, as its E
~
name seems to suggest, find inspiration m what has been C
2
called, for more than twenty centuries now, cosmopolit- 0
a.
amsm. For is It not the case that cosmopohtanism has some- 0
E
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thmg to do either with all the cities or with all the states 0
(_)

of the world? At a time when the 'end of the city' resonates C

0
as though it were a verdict, at a time when this diagnosis
or prognosis is held by many, how can we still dream
of a novel status for the city, and thus for the 'cities of
refuge', through a renewal of international law? Let us not
anticipate a simple response to such a question. It will be
necessary therefore to proceed otherw ise, par ticularly if one
is tempted to think, as I do, that 'The Charter fo r the Cities of
Refuge' and ' The International Agency for C1ties of Refuge'

'On Cosm op olitanism ', translated by Mark Dooley

 which appear on our programme must open themselves up
to something more and other than merely banal arucles in
the literature on international law. They mmt, 1f they are to
succeed m so doing, make an audacious call for a genuine
innovation m the history of the right to asylum or the duty
to hospitality.
The name 'cmes of refuge' appears to be insuibed m gold
letters at the very heart of the constitutlon of the International
Parliament of Writers Ever smce our first meetmg, we have
been calling for the openmg of such refuge c1ties across the
"'"'
Cl)
C world. That, m effect, very much resembles a new cosmo-
Cl)
~
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L.
politics We have undertaken to brmg about the proclamat10n
~ and institution o f numerous and, above all, autonomous 'Cities
"D
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It) of refuge' , each as independent from the o ther and from the
E state as possible, but, nevertheless, allied to each other accord-
"'c
2 ing to forms of solidarity yet to be invented. This invention 1s
0
0. our task, the theoretical or critical reflection 1t involves is
0
E indissociable from the practical iniuatives we have already,
"'
0
u out of a sense of urgency, mitiated and implemented.
C
0
Whether it be the foreigner in general, the immigran t, the
exiled, the deported, the stateless or the displaced person (the
task bemg as much to distinguish prudently between these
categories as is possible), we would ask these new cmes of
refuge to reorient the politics of the state. We would ask them
to transform and reform the modalities of membership by
which the city (cite) belongs to the state, as in a developmg
Europe or in international juridical structures still dommated
by the inviolable rule of state sovereignty - an intangible rule,
or one at least supposed such, which is becoming increas-
ingly precarious and problematic nonetheless. This should no
longer be the ultimate horizon for cities of refuge. Is this
possible?
In committing ourselves thus, in askmg that metropolises
and modest Citles commit themselves m this way , m choosing
for them the name of 'cines of refuge', we have doubtless
meant more than one thing, as was the case for the name
'parliament'. In reviving the traditional meanmg of an expres-
sion and in restoring a memorable heritage to its former
dignity, we have been eager to propose sunultaneously,
beyond the old word, an original concept of hospitality, of
the duty (devoir) of hospitality, and of the right (droit) to
hospitality. What then would such a concept be? How might
H be adapted to the pressmg urgencies which summon

and overwhelm us? How rmght it respond to unprecedented

tragedies and injunctions which serve to constrain and E
.!!!
C
hinder it ? Ill
::
I regret not havmg been present at the mauguration of this 0a.
0
solemn meeting, but permit me, by way of saluting those here E
~
0
present, to evoke at least a vague outhne of this new charter of u
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hospitahty and to sketch, albeit in an overly schematic way, its 0
I..()
principal features . What in effect 1s the context m which we
have proposed this new ethic or this new cosmopolitics of the
cities of refuge? ls it necessary to call to mmd the violence
which rages on a worldwide scale? Is it still necessary to
h1ghhght the fact that such crimes sometimes bear the signa-
ture of state organisanons or of non-state organisanons? Is it
possible to enumerate the mult1phcity of menaces, of acts of
censorship (censure) or of terrorism , of persecutions and of
enslavements in all their forms? The victims of these are
innumerable and nearly always anonymous, but increasingly
 they are what one refers to as mtellectuals, scholars, journal-
ists, and writers - men and women capable of speaking out
( porter une parole) - in a public domain that the new powers
of telecommumcanon render mcreasingly formidable - to
the police forces of all countries. to the religious, political,
economic, and social forces of censorship and repression,
whether they be state-sponsored or not. Let us not proffer an
example, for there are too many; and to cite the best known
would risk sending the anonymous others back mto che dark-
1/) ness (ma!) from which they find It hard to escape, a darkness
1/)
(IJ
C which rs truly the worst and the condition of all others. If we
(IJ
~
2' look to the c1ty, rather than to the state, it is be(ause we have
0
I.J.._ given up hope that the state might create a new image for the
"D
C
ro city. This should be elaborated and mscribed m our Statutes
E one day. Whenever the State is neither the foremost author of,
~
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~ nor the foremost guarantor against the violence which forces
~
0.
0
refugees or exiles to flee, it 1s often powerless to ensure the
E
1/) protection and the liberty of its own otizens before a terrorist
0
0 menace, whether or not it has a religious or nationalist ahbi.
C
0
This is a phenomenon with a long historical sequence, one
which Hannah Arendt has called. ma text which we should
closely scrutimse, 'The Decline of the Nation-State and the
End of the Rights of Man'. 2 Arendt proposes here, in particu-
lar, an analysis of the modern history of minorities, of those
'without a State', the Heimatlosen, of the stateless and homeless.
and of deported and 'displaced persons' . She identifies two
great upheavals, most notably between the two wars:
l First, the progressive abolinon, upon the arrival of
hundreds of thousands of stateless people (I'apatrides), of
a right to asylum which was 'the only right that had ever
figured as a symbol of Human Rights in the domain of mter-
national relations'. Arendt recalls that this right has a 'sacred
history', and that it remains 'the only modern vestige of the
medieval principle of quid est in territorio est de territorio' (p. 280) .
'But'. contmues Arendt, 'although the right to asylum had
continued to exist m a world organised into nation states,
and though it had even, m some individual cases, survived
two world wars, it is still felt to be an anachro nism and a
principle incompatible with the international laws of the
State.' At the ume when Arendt was writing this. circa 1950,
she identified the absence in international charters of the
right to asylum (for example in the Charter of the League of
Nations). Things have doubtless evolved a little since then, as
we shall see m a moment, but further transformations are still
E
necessary. 411
'i:
2 The second upheaval (choc) in Europe was to follow a ~
massive influx (arrivee) of refugees, which necessitated aban- 0Cl..
0
doning the classic recourse to repatriation or naturalisation. E
VI
0
Indeed , we have snll to create a satisfactory substitute for it. In u
C
0
describing at length the effects of these traumas, Arendt has
perhaps identified one of our tasks and, at the very least, the
background to our Charter and of our Statutes (Statuts). She
does not speak of the city, but in the shadow of the two
upheavals (J'onde du double choc) she describes and which she
situates between the two wars, we must today pose new
questions concerning the destiny of cines and the role which
they might play in these unprecedented circumstances.
How can the nght to asylum be redefined and developed
wnhout repatriation and without naturalisanon ? Could the
City, equipped w1th new rights and greater sovereignty, open
 up new horizons of poss1b1hty previously undreamt of by
international state law? For let us not hesnate to declare our
ultimate ambition, what gives meaning to our proiect: our
plea is for what we have decided to call the 'Clty of refuge'.
This is not to suggest that we ought to restore an essentially
classical concept of the city by giving it new attributes and
powers; neither would 1t be simply a matter of endowing the
old subject we call 'the city' w1th new predicates. No. we are
dreaming of another concept, of another set of rights for the
<fl
city, of another politics of the rny. I am aware that this might
<fl
OJ
C appear utopian for a thousand reasons, but at the same time,
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~
2'
as modest as it is, what we have already begun to do proves
0
LL that something of this sort can, from now on, function - and
-0
C
ro this disjointed process cannot be dissociated from the turbu-
E lence which affects, over the lengthy duration of a process,
<fl
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the axioms of international law.
~0
a. Is there thus any hope for cities exercising hospitality if
0
E we recognise with Arendt, as I feel we must, that nowadays
<f1
0
u international law is hmited by treaties between sovereign
C
0
states, and that not even a 'government of the world' would
co
be capable of sortmg things out? Arendt was wntmg of
something the veracity of which still holds today:

contrary to the best -1ntent1oned humanitarian attempts to

obtain new declaration s of human rights from 1nterna t1 onal
organ 1sat1on s. 1t should be understood that this idea
transcends the present sphere of mternat10nal law which stilt
operates m terms of reciprocal agreements and treaties
between sovereign states; and. for th e time being, a sphere
that 1s above the nations doe s not exist. Furthermore, this
 dilemma would by no means be el1m1nated by the
3
establishment of a ·world government

It would be necessary to expand upon and refine what she

says of groups and individuals who, between the two wars,
lost all status - not only their citizenship but even the title of
'stateless people' We would also have to re-evaluate , in this
regard, in Europe and elsewhere, the respective roles of States,
Unions, Federations or State Confederations on the one hand,
and of citie,; on the other. If the name and the identity of
something like the city still has a meaning, could it, when
dealing with the related questions of hospitality and refuge,
elevate itself above nation-states or at least free itself from
them (s'affranchu), in order to become, to coin a phrase ma
new and novel way, a free nty (une ville franche)? Under the E
exemption itself (en general)' the statutes of immunity or "'
·2
exemption occasionally had attached to them, as m the case of "'
~
0
Cl.
the right to asylum, certain places (diplomatic or religious) to 0

which one could retreat in order to escape from the threat of ~

0
u
injm,tice. C
C)
Such might be the magnitude of our task, a theoretical task
indissociable from its political implementation (mise en reuvre)
- a task which is all the more imperative given that the situ-
ation 1s becoming ever more bleak with each passing day. As
the figures show, the right to political asylum is less and less
respected both in France and in Europe. Lately, there has been
talk of a 'dark year for asylum seekers in France'.4 Because of
such understandable despondency, the number of applica-
tions for pohucal asylum has been regularly diminishing.
In fact, OFPRA (The French Office for the Protection of
 Refugees and the Stateless) toughened lls criteria and spec-
tacularly reduced the number of refugees afforded asylum
status The number of those whose apphcanon for asylum
has, I might add, continued to rise throughout the 1980s and
smce the begmnmg of the 1990s.
Since the Revolution, France has had a certam tendency to
portray itself as being more open to polincal refugees in contra-
distinction to other European countries, but the motives
behmd such a policy of opening up to the foreigner have,
Ill
Ill
however, never been 'ethical' stncto sensu - in the sense of the
Cl)
C
Cl) moral law or the law of the land (sejour) - (ethos) , or, indeed,
~
°'
..... the law of hospitality. The comparative drop 111 the birth
0
u..
-0
rate m France since the middle of the eighteenth century
C

"' has generally permitted her to be more liberal in matters

E
~
C
of immigration for obvious economic reasons: when the
~ economy 1s doing well, and workers are needed, one tends
0
0..
0 not to be overly particular when trying to sort out political
E
Ill
0
and economic motivations. This was especially true m the
u
C 1960s, when an economic boom resulted in a greater need
0
C)
for unrrugrant workers. It is also worth noting that the right
to asylum has only recently become a specifically juridical
concept (definitwnelle) and a positive juridical concept,
despite the fact that its spun was already present in the French
Consutution . The Constitution of I 946 granted the nght to
asylum only to those characterised as persons persecuted
because of their 'act10n in the name ofliberty'. Even though Jt
subscn bed to the Geneva Convention in 19 S l . it is o nly in
19 S4 that France was forced to broaden its defimtion of a
political refugee to encompass all persons forced mto exile
because 'their lives or their liberties are found to be under
threat by reason of their race, religion, or political opinions'.
Considerably broadened, it is true, but very recent neverthe-
less Even the Geneva Convention was itself very hmited in the
manner in which it could be applied, and even at that we are
still a long way from the idea of cosmopolitanism as defined
in Kant's famous text on the right to (droit de) umversal hospi-
tality, the limits and restrictions of which I shall recall in JUSt a
moment. The Geneva Convention of 19 51, which obliged
France to improve its asylum laws, could only direct itself to
'events in Europe prior to 195 I '. Much later, at the end of the
1960s, precisely at the time when there were signs of the
beginmng of a process which has dramatically deteriorated
today, the area, place, and dates specified by the Geneva
Convention (that is, the events m Europe prior to 195 I) were
E
Ill
enhanced by a particular protocol added to this convention 'i:
in New York in 1967, and eventually extended to cover .~
0Q,
events occurring beyond Europe after l 9 S I . (These are the 0
E
developments which Hannah Arendt could neither have Ill
0
u
known about nor evoked when she was writing her text C
0
sometime around 1950.)
There is still a considerable gap separating the great and
generous principles of the right to asylum inherited from the
Enlightenment thinkers and from the French Revolution and,
on the other hand, the historical reality or the effective
implementation (mise en mivre) of these principles. It is con-
trolled, curbed, and monitored by implacable juridical restric-
nons; it is overseen by what the preface of a book on The Crisis
of the Right to Asylum m Fronce refers to as a 'mean-minded'
Juridical tradition.s In truth, if the JUridical tradinon remains
'mean-minded' and restrictive, it is because it is under the
 control of the demographico-economk mtere<;t - that 1s, the
interest of the nation-state that regulates asylum. Refugee
status ought not to be conflated with the status of an immi-
grant. not even of a pohtical immigrant. It has happened that a
recogmnon of refugee status. be It political or economic, has
only come mto effect long after entry into France. We shall
have to maintain a close eye on these sometimes subtle dis-
tinctions between types of status. especially since the d1ffer-
ence between the economJC and the political now appears
<11
<11 more problematic than ever.
(l)
C
(l) Both to the right and to the left. French polincians speak
>
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0
of 'the control of imrn1grauon' . This forms part of the
LL
-0 compulsory rhetoric of electoral programmes. Now, as Luc
C
<U
Legoux notes, the expression 'immigration control' means
E
!!! that asylum will be granted only to those who cannot expect
C
2 the shghtest economic benefit upon immigranon The
0
a.
0 absurdity of this condition 1s manifestly apparent: how can a
E
"'
0
purely political refugee claim to have been truly welcomed
u
C mto a new settlement without that entailing some form of
0
economic gain? He will of course have to work, for each
N
individual seeking refuge cannot simply be placed m the care
of the host country. This gives rise to an important con-
sideration which our conventions will have to address: how
can the hosts (hates) and guests of cities of refuge be helped
to recreate, through work and creative activity, a livmg and
durable network m new places and occas1onally m a new
language ? This d1stmction between the economic and the
political is not, therefore, merely abstract or gratmtous: H
is truly hypocntical and perverse; it makes It virtually
impossible ever to grant political asylum and even, in a
sense, to apply the law, for 111 its implementanon it would
depend entirely on opportunistic considerations , occasionally
electoral and pohncal, which, m the last analysis, become
a matter for the police, of real or imaginary security issues,
of demography. and of the market. The discourse on the
refugee, asylum or hospitahty, thus risks becoming nothing
but pure rhetoncal alibis As Legoux notes, 'what tends to
render the asylum laws m France ineffectual for the people of
poor countn es 15 the result of a particular concepnon of
asylum, one with a long and complex history. and one which
is becoming ever more stringent' .6
This tendency to obstruct is extremely common, not to
Europe in general (supposing that one had ever been able to
speak of 'Europe ' in general), but to the countries of the
E
UI
European Union; it is a price that is oftentimes paid as a 'i:
consequence of the Schengen Agreement - the accords of "'
:t:
0Q.
which, Jacques Clurac declared, have not been, up to now at 0
E
least, implemented in full by France At a time when we claim Ill
0
(.)
to be lifting internal borders, we proceed to bolt the external C
0
borders of the European Un10n tightly. Asylum-seekers knock
successively on each of the doo rs of the European Un10n
states and end up being repelled at each one of them. Under
the pretext of combating economic immigrants purporting to
be exiles from political persecution, the states reiecc applica-
tions for the nght to asylum more often than ever. Even when
they do not do so in the form of an explicit and reasoned
(motivee) juridical response, they often leave it to their police
to enforce the law; one could cite the case of a Kurd to whom
a French tribunal had officially granted the right to asylum,
but who was nevertheless deported to Turkey by the police
 without a single protest. As in the case of many other
examples, notably those to do Wlth 'violations of hospitality',
whereby those who had allegedly harboured political sus-
pects were increasingly charged or indicted, one has to be
mindful of the profound problem of the role and status of the
police, of, m the first in!,tance, border police, but also of a
pohce without borders, without deterrnmable hm1t, who
from then on become all-pervasive and elusive, as Benjamin
noted in Critique of Violence just after the First World War.
<fl
<fl The police become omnipresent and spectral in the so-
ClJ
C
ClJ called civilised states once they undertake to make the law,
>
~
0
instead of simply contentmg themselves with applying it and
u.
-0 seemg that it is observed. This fact becomes clearer than ever
C
Ill in an age of new teletechnologies. As BenJamm has already
E
<fl
C
reminded us, in such an age pohce violence is both ·face-
~0 less' and 'formless'. and is thus beyond all accountability.
a..
0 Nowhere is this v10lence, as such, to be found; m the nvihsed
E
ti)
0
states, the spectre of its ghostly apparition extends itself
u
C limitlessly It must be understood, of course, that we are con-
0
cerned here with developing neither an unjust nor a utopian
discourse of !,Uspicion of the funct10n of the pohce, espeoally
m their fight against tho!:.e crimes which do fall within theu
jurisdiction (such as terrorism, drug-trafficking, and the
acuviues of mafias of all kmds). We are simply quesuoning
the hmits of police jurisdiction and the conditions in which it
operates. particularly as far as foreigners are concerned.
With respect to new pohce powers (national or inter-
national). one is touching here on one of the most serio us
questions of law that a future elaboration of our charter for
the cities of refuge would have to develop and inscribe
throughout the course of an mtermmable struggle: it will be
necessary to restrict the legal powers and scope of the police
by giving them a purely administrative role under the stnct
control and regulation of certain political authorities, who
will see to it that human rights and a more broadly defined
right to asylum are respected .
Hannah Arendt, in the spirit of Benjamin, had already
highlighted the new and increased powers afforded to the
modern pohce to handle refugees. She did so after making
a remark about anonymity and fame which we should ,
particularly m an International Parliament of Writers, take
seriously·

On\y fame w1\l eventually an swer the repeat ed complaint of

refugees of all social strat a that ·nobody here knows who I E
14
am·, and 111s true that the chance s of the famous refugee
·c
are improved iu st as a dog with a name has a better cha nce
-~"'
0a.
0
to survive than a st ray dog who 1s Ju st a dog in general E
14
0
The nation - state. inca pable of providing a law for tho se who u
C
had lost the protec tion of a national government, transferred 0

the whole matter to the police This was the first time th e
police in Western Europe had rece ived authori ty to act on its
own, to rule directly over people, in one sphere of publi c life 1t
was no longer an instr ument to carry out and enforce the law.
but had become a ruling authority independent of
governmen t an d m1nist r1es
Ip 2871

We know only too well that today this problem is more seri-
ous than ever, and we could provide much evidence to this
effect. A movement protesting against the charge of what has
 been called for some time now 'violanons of hospitality' has
been growing in France; certain organisations have taken
control of it, and, more widely, the press has become its
mouthpiece. A proposal of 'Toubon-law', ID the spult and
beyond of the laws known as 'Pasqua'. has now come on
to the agenda. Under examination ID the parliamentary
assemblies, in the National Assembly and m the Senate, is a
proposal to treat as acts of terronsm , or as 'participation in a
criminal conspiracy', all hospitality accorded to 'foreigners'
"'"' whose 'papers are not in order', or those simply 'without
<l)
C:
<l) papers' . This project, in effect, makes even m ore dracoruan
~
1:' article 21 of the famous edict of 2 November 1945, which
&
"'O had already cited as a 'cnminal act' all help given to foreigners
C
ro
whose papers were not ID order. Hence, what was a criminal
E
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C
act is now in danger of becoming an 'act of terronsm ·.
~ Moreover, it appears that this plan is in direct contravennon
0
a.
0 of the Schengen accords (ratified by France) - which permit
E
<ll
0 a co nviction of someone for giving help to a foreigner
u
C 'without papers' only if it can be proved that this person
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denved financial profit from such assistance.
We have doubtless chosen the term 'city of refuge' because,
for quite specific historical reasons, n commands our respect ,
and also out of respect for those who cultivate an 'ethic of
hospitality' . 'To cultivate an ethic of hospitality' - is such an
expression not tautologous? Despite all the tensions or con-
tradictions which disungmsh it, and despite all the perver-
sions that can befall it, one cannot speak of cultivating an ethic
of hospitality. Hospnality is culture itself and not simply one
ethic amongst others Insofar as it has to do with the ethos, that
is, the residence, one's home, the familiar place of dwelling.
inasmuch as it 1s a manner of being there, the manner in
which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our
own or as foreigners, ethics 1s hospitality; ethics 1s so thoroughly
coextensive w1th the expenence of hospitality. But for this
very reason, and because being at home with oneself (l'etre-soi
cha soi - l'ipse1te meme - the other withm oneself) supposes a
reception or inclusion of the other which one seeks to
appropnate, control, and master according to different
modalities of violence, there is a history of hospitality, an
always possible perversion of the law of hospitality (which can
appear unconditional) , and of the laws which come to limit
and condition it in us inscription as a law. It 1s from within
this history that I would like to select, in a very tentative and
preliminary way, some reference pomts which are of great E
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significance to us here. ·c
First, what we have been calling the city of refuge. tt seems "'
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to me, bridges several traduions or several moments in West- 0
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ern, European, or para-European trad1tions. We shall recog- Ill
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nise in the Hebraic tradition, on the one hand, those cines C
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which would welcome and protect those innocents who
sought refuge from what the texts of that time call 'bloody
vengeance' . This urban right to immunity and to hospitality
was rigorously and Juridically developed and the text m
which it first emerged was, w1thout doubt, the Book of
Numbers: 7 God ordered Moses to institute cities which
would be, according to the very letter of the Bible itself. 'cities
of refuge' or 'asylum', and to begin with there would be 'six
cities of refuge', in particular for the 'resident ahen, or tem-
porary settler'. Two beautiful texts in French have been
devoted to this Hebraic tradition of the city of refuge, and I
 would hke to recall here that, from one generation to the
other, both authors of these essays are philosophers associated
wuh Strasbourg, with this generous border city, this emi-
nently European my, the capital city of Europe, and the first
of our refuge cities. I am speaking here of the meditations by
Emmanuel Levinas in 'The Cities o f Refuge' ['Les Villes-
refuges' , in L'Au-dda du verset (Mmuit, 198 2), p. 51], and
by Daniel Payot in Refuge Cities [Des villes-refuges, Temoignage et
espacement (Ed. de I' Aube, 1992), especially pp. 6 Sff.J.
'1)
'1) In the medieval tradition, on the ocher hand. one can iden-
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determine the laws of hospitality , the articles of predeter-
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to condmon the Great Law of Hospitality - an unconditional
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Law, both smgular and universal, which ordered that the
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borders be open co each and every one, to every other, co all
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0 havmg to identify who they are or whence they came. (It
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was provided by the churches so as to secure immumcy or
survival for refugees, and by virtue of which they risked
becoming enclaves; and also auctoritas, which allowed kings or
lords to shield their guests (hotes) from all those in pursuit; or,
what occurred between the warring Italian cities when one
became a place of refuge for the exiled, the refugee, and those
banished from another city; and we who are remmded of
writers in this context can call to mind a certain story about
Dante, bamshed from Florence and then welcomed, it would
seem, at Ravenna.)
Finally , at this juncture, we could identify the cosmo-
politan (cosmopolitique) tradition common to a certain Greek
stoicism and a Pauline Christianity, of which the inheritors
were the figures of the Enlightenment, and to wh1eh Kant will
doubtlessly have given the most rigorous philosophical
formulation m his famous Definitive Arucle m View of Perpetual
Peace: 'The law of cosmopoluanism must be restricted to the
cond1t1ons of universal hosp1tahty.' This 1s not the place to
analyse this remarkable Article, or its immense histoncal con-
text, which has been excised from this text without trace. It
was Cicero who was to bequeath a certain Stoic cosmo-
pohtamsm. Pauline Chrisuamty revived, radicalised and liter-
ally 'poliucised' the primary injunctions of all the Abrahamic
rehgions, smce, for example, the 'Opemng of the Gates of
Israel' - which had, however, specified the restrictive condi- E
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tions of hospitalny so as to ensure the 'safety' or ·security' of
the 'strong city' (26, 2). Saint Paul gives to these appeals or to
these d1etats their modern names. These are also theologico-
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polincal names, since they explicitly designate citizenship or Ill
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world co-cinzenship: 'no longer foreigners nor menc in a C
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foreign land, but fellow-citizens with God's people, member~
of God's ho usehold' (Ephesians II. 19-20). In this sentence,
'foreigners' (xeno1) is also translated by guests (hospites); and
'metic ' - but see also 'immigrants', for 'paro1koi' - designates
as much the neighbour, from a point of view which is
important to us here, as the foreigner without poliucal nghts
in another city or country. I am modifying and mixing several
translations, including that of Chouraqui, but tt will be neces-
sary to analyse closely the political stakes and the theological
implicanons of these quesnons of semantics; Grosjean-
Leturmy's translation, in the Pleiade Library, for example,
 could literally announce the space of wh at we are interpreting
as the 'city of refuge'. But chat is precisely what I would like to
begin putting mto question here - i.e., the sernlansed version
of such Paulme cosmopohtanism · ·And so therefore, you
are no longer foreigners abroad (xeno1, hospices), you are
fellow-cltizens of the Saints, you belong to the House of God'
(sympolitm ton hag1on kai 01ke101 tou theou; CJVes sane to rum, et domestici
Dei).
When , in the spirit of the Enlightenment thinkers from
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law o f cosmopolitanism , he does not restnct it 'to the condi-
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en tions o f universal hospitality' only. He places on 1t two limits
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w hich doubtless situate a place of reflecuon and perhaps of
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!!! Kant seem s at first to extend the cosmopolitan law to
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encompass universal hospitality without limit. Such is the condi-
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and inalienable. In the case of natural law, one can recognise
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within it features of a secularised theological heritage. All
human creatures, all finite beings endowed with reason , have
received, in equal proportion, 'common possession of the
surface of the earth'. No one can in principle, therefore, legit-
imately appropriate for himself the aforement10ned surface
(as such , as a surface-are.a) and withhold access to another man.
If Kant takes great care to specify that this good or common
place covers 'the surface of the earth', it is doubtless so as not
to exclude any point of the world or of a sphencal and finite
globe (globalisation), from which an infinite dispersion
remains unposs1ble; but lt is above all to expel from lt what is
erected, constructed, or what sets itself up above the soil: habitat, cul-
ture, insntut1on, State, etc. All this, even the soil upon which ll
lies, is no longer soil pure and simple, and, even 1f founded on
the earth. must no t be uncondit1onally accessible to all
comers. Thanks to this strictly delimited condition (which is
nothing other than the mstltution of hmit as a border, nanon,
State, public or political space), Kant can deduce two con-
sequences and inscribe two other paradigms upon which it
would be in our mterest to reflect tomorrow.
I First of all he excluded hospitality as a nght of residence
(Gastrecht); he hmits it to the right of visitation (Besuchsrecht). The
right of residence must be made the object of a particular
treaty between states. Kant defines thus the conditions that we E
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would have to interpret carefully m order to know how we c
should proceed: ~
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We are speaking here. as 1n the previou s articles, not of E
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philanthropy. but of righ t, and in th is sphere hosp1tal1ty (.)
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s1gn1 fies the claim of a st ranger entering foreign territory to 0

be treated by its owner withou t host1 l1ty The latter may send N

him away again. 1f this can be done withou t causing his

death. but. so long as he conducts himself peaceably, he
must not be treated as an enem y_ It 1s not a rig ht to be tr eated
as a gue st to which the str anger can lay claim - a special
fnendly com pact on his behalf would be required to make
him for a given tim e an ac tual inmate - but he has a righ t of
v1s1tat 1on This righ t to present themselves to society belong s
to all mank ind in virtue of ou r common right of possession on
the surface of the earth on which, as 111s a globe, we canno t
 be in fi nitely scattered, and m ust 1n the end reconcile
ourselves to existen ce side by side at th e same time,
originally no one 1nd1v1dual had more rig ht tha n another to
l ive in any one particular spot '

It 1s this limitation on the right of residence, a~ that which is

to be made dependent on treaties between states, that per-
haps. amongst other things. is what remams for us debatable.
2 By the same token, m defining hospitality in all its rigour
as a law (which counts m this respect as progress), Kant
"'<fl<1J assigns to it conditions which make it dependent on state
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residence. Hospitahty signifies here the public nature (public,te) of
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This is of great consequence, particularly for the ' violations of
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as in the time of Kant.
All these questions rernam obscure and difficult and we
must neither conceal them from ourselves nor, for a moment,
imagine ourselves to have mastered them. It is a question of
knowing how to transform and improve the law, and of
knowing if this improvement is possible within an historical
space which takes place between the Law of an unconditional
hospnality, offered a prion to every other, to all newcomers.
whoever they may be, and the conditional laws of a right to hospi-
tality, without which The unconditional Law of hosp1tahty
would be in danger of remaining a pious and uresponsible
desire, without form and without potency, and of even bemg
perverted at any moment.
Experience and expenmentauon thus. Our experience of c1ties of
refuge then will not only be that which cannot wait, but
somethmg which calls for an urgent response, a just response,
more just in any case than the existing law. An immediate
response to crime, to violence, and to persecution. I also
imagine the experience of cities of refuge as giving rise to a
place (heu) for refl.ecuon - for reflection on the quesuons of
asylum and hospitality - and for a new o rder o f law and
a democracy to come to be put to the test (experimentation) .
Being on the threshold of these cities, of these new cines that
would be som ethmg other than 'new cities', a certain idea of
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cosmopolitanism, on other, has not yet arrived, perhaps. ·c,a
- If it has (indeed) arrived ... ~
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NOTES i;:
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I I would hke co acknowledge che a~s1scance of Mark Raftery-Skehan w ith
th1, translan on
2 Hannah Arendt, The Ongms of Tolohtonamsm (London George Allen and
Unwm Ltd, 19 67), pp 267- 302
3 lb1d. , p 28 5 J.D ·s l!ahcs.
4 See Lr Monde, 27 February 1996 See aho Luc Legoux, La Crm d'os1lc
pohuqur en Frona (Centre franyi1s sur la populauon ec le de11eloppemenc
(CEPED) )
5 Ibid , p. XVI
6 Ibid., p. xvui.
7 Number, XXXV 9- 32 Cf I Chronicle~ 6 . 4 2, 52. where che expres~1on
'Cities of rduge' reappears, and also Jo,hua 20 1-9 'if they adnnc hun
 mto the rny, they will grant hun a place where he may hve as one of
themselves', Revised English Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford and Cambndge,
1989), p. 199
8 In Immanuel Kant, Ptrpcrual Ptocc A Ph1losoph1cal Essay, trans M. Campbell
Smnh (New York & London , Garland P11bhsh111g, Inc.. 1972),
pp.137- 138 .

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