Minutes Lecture 1: The History of Cosmopolitan – From the Stoics

via Kant to Marx

As mentioned in the introductory lecture, the history of cosmopolitan goes back to the Stoics
and Cynics. The Stoics and Cynics consider the entire “cosmos” and all human beings that
inhabit it to be subject to reason. According to this assumption one could argue that there is a
first “proto-enlightenment” here.
The city (polis) in ancient Greece is organized along republican lines. Interestingly enough,
there is only a chosen part of the population who is able to decide important matters and have
a say in the affairs of the polis (excluded are women, children, and slaves). Strangers who
speak differently are considered to be foreigners or barbarians (doing things in another matter
as expected by the polis). Until the Panhellenism these problems weren’t too grave but with
the spread of the own and the exchange with other cultures cosmopolitan began to rise.
The philosophy of the Stoics is actually geared towards help and serving other human beings
as best as one can. According to this moral “code”, a clash comes to exist between a very far-
ranging form of morality to everyone who lives in the cosmos and the practicality where such
morality can take hold and where it can be served best. Therefore, the question of sameness
vs. alterity arises: Who qualifies? Who is being offered help? According to the Stoic “code” it
should actually be for everyone. Therefore, it’s nice to be Cosmopolitan and almost heroic.
But what if Cosmopolitans encounter Non-Cosmopolitans who don’t share the same ideas of
the universality of reasons? What happens then?
The picture changes with the political philosophy of the Enlightenment. As Hobbs argues, the
state of every human being is that of a war all against all (state of nature). Rousseau, however,
argues that we have to leave this natural state and have to become more civilized. According
to Kant, who shared Hobbes’ assumption of a warlike status, mankind has to free itself from
this state of war (war seems to be omnipresent in his mind, whereas Europe is torn apart by
conflict). In his study “Perpetual Peace” these kinds of paragraphs are found very often at this
time (although very critical and almost revolutionary).
His approach is to transcend the nation state which is based on the assumption that a state has
the same rights as a single person (as a reasonable being). Whether states are reasonable
beings is at stake. Obviously, states don’t behave like rational human beings and are at their
throat the whole time. As a consequence, Kant denounces standing armies and argues that a
national credit system which supports waging wars needs to be abolished if there is to be
perpetual peace.
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Kant further argues that every civil constitution of every state should be Republican (and not
democratic) and without interference of one another (very important to his idea of a league of
nations). One has to understand his distinction between the forms of government. The forms
of a state can be divided either according to the people who possess sovereign power
(monarch, nobility, or the people) or to the mode of administration exercised over the people
(autocracy, democracy, republicanism, despotism). Furthermore, two steps of division can be
used to call the (1) form of sovereignty and the (2) government. Even if there should be any
democracies which might work, that doesn’t allow any conclusion of this form to be
legitimate.
When Kant talks about the idea of history from a cosmopolitan point of view, he presumes a
certain kind of telos, a linearity of development which is characterized by rationality. One
first step to achieve this rationality is the constitution of states. States are there to overcome
the state of nature which existed before the so-called “common”. The question, however, is if
states act as individuals, although this first step of rationalizing the sociability of the human
being has been achieved, and the state of war just continues on a level of states, does this
theology still work?
One would think that civilized people would hasten all the more to escape from such a
condition. Kant seems to always point back to the savages, whereas we ought to be better. But
if we look around, we haven’t been better at all. So, the war all against all has been taken to
the state level. The idea of a teleological development of humankind implies a gradual
development from the savage state of nature towards a more regulated, rational form of life.
Since European governments chose to take the natural state onto the next level, his theory
begins to crumble. He, therefore, feels forced to evoke cannibalism as the only difference
between savages and “us”. But insofar states behave like individuals, the solution for Kant is
clear: to establish a continuously growing state consisting of various nations (of the world).
Similar to Hobbs’ Leviathan there would have to be someone in charge as a super-vital
executive order to keep and enforce the laws if they should be broken (a republican
monarchy).
Hospitality grants the stranger a right to stay within a certain territory without becoming a
subject to the territory (this means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when
he arrives in the land of another). Originally, going back to the attitudes of the “savages”,
earth was a common possession and not splitted up to 85 percent in smaller possessions
(which isn’t suited for his concept of hospitality). Things have not been approved but have
been turned to the worse. Even for Kant, cosmopolitanism is a “millennial” concept of a

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historical and kind of an end-state of his approach. Even with a political and rational order in
life the unsocial sociability is always around and in men. It seems like men himself strive
toward rational perfection, but is it their nature? What is men’s nature? What is the human
nature? Is it our nature not to strive, or because it is part of nature to strive, we strive as well?
Kant’s state can only be overcome through the establishment of a league of nations, in which
the smallest nation could expect security and justice. Even if the level of states is achieved
and even if we achieve the next level of the league of nations, what still is intact, is the very
antagonism that drives history. Otherwise, history would stop and the millennium point would
be reached.
Romantism is much more focused on the past and enlightenment is much more focused on the
future.
The Communist Manifesto: Marx’ concept of cosmopolitanism is that human history is the
“history of class struggles”. So, it is basically the bourgeoisie that drives history and drives
this “cosmopolitanisation” and economy to a new limit. After all, it was the bourgeoisie who
came up with idea of a national state. There was nothing inherent in monarchic or aristocratic
thinking. On the one hand the bourgeoisie has created the nation state as such, but on the other
hand that same bourgeoisie is always transcending the national framework (inventor and
transcendent). What becomes clear, is that bourgeois cosmopolitanism is a privilege of the
bourgeois class: they create a world after their own image of the nation.