Table Of ContentCosmopolitics and the Emergence of a Future
Also by Gary Banham
KANT AND THE ENDS OF AESTHETICS
KANT’S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL IMAGINATION
HUSSERL AND THE LOGIC OF EXPERIENCE (editorr)
EVIL SPIRITS: Nihilism and the Fate of Modernity (Co-edited with Charlie Blake)
Also by Diane Morgan
NIHILISM NOW: “Monsters of Energy” (Co-edited with Keith Ansell Pearson)
KANT TROUBLE: Obscurities of the Enlightened
Cosmopolitics and
the Emergence of a Future
Edited by
Diane Morgan
and
Gary Banham
Editorial matter,selection,introductions © Diane Morgan and Gary Banham
2007;all remaining chapters © respective authors 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-230-00152-7
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Cosmopolitics and the emergence of a future / edited by Diane Morgan and
Gary Banham.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:Cosmopolitics:law and right / Gary Banham – ConcateNations:
globalization in a Spinozist context / Yves Citton – Cosmopolitic and its Sadian
discontents / Meredith Evans – Nationalist cosmopolitics in the 19th century /
Daniel Malachuk – The cosmo-body-politic / Jill Marsden – Goethe’s “Enhanced
praxis”and the emergence of a cosmopolitical future / Diane Morgan – Kant’s
logic of political transformation / Paula Keating – Human rights and public
accountability in H.G.Well’s Functional state / John S.Partington – Imagination
and reason:an ethics of interpretation for a cosmopolitan age / David Rose –
Towards a cosmopolitics of heterogeneity / Lasse Thomassen.
1.Cosmopolitanism.I.Morgan,Diane.II.Banham,Gary,1965–
JZ1308b.C69 2007
306—dc22 2006049326
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
Contents
Outline of the Book vii
Notes on Contributors xi
Introduction: Cosmopolitics and Modernity xiii
Gary Banham
Introduction: Parts and Wholes – Kant, Communications,
Communities and Cosmopolitics 1
Diane Morgan
Part I Kant and Cosmopolitics
1 Kant’s Logic of Political Transformation 15
Paula Keating
2 Cosmopolitics: Law and Right 25
Gary Banham
3 Imagination and Reason: An Ethics of Interpretation for a
Cosmopolitan Age 40
David Rose
Part II Other Varieties of Cosmopolitics
4 Cosmopolitics and Its Sadian Discontents 69
Meredith Evans
5 ‘ConcateNations’: Globalisation in a Spinozist Context 91
Yves Citton
6 The Cosmo-Body-Politic 118
Jill Marsden
Part III Cosmopolitics, Its Boundaries and Limits
7 Nationalist Cosmopolitics in the Nineteenth Century 139
Daniel S. Malachuk
v
vi Contents
8 Human Rights and Public Accountability in
H. G. Wells’ Functional World State 163
John S. Partington
9 Towards a Cosmopolitics of Heterogeneity: Borders,
Communities and Refugees in Angelopoulos’ Balkan Trilogy 191
Lasse Thomassen
Part IV Revisiting Kant
10 Soul and Cosmos in Kant: A Commentary on
‘Two Things Fill the Mind…’ 213
Howard Caygill
11 Goethe’s ‘Enhanced Praxis’ and the Emergence of a
Cosmopolitical Future 235
Diane Morgan
Index 256
Outline of the Book
Cosmopolitics and the Emergence of a Futureis set out in four parts, the first
of which concentrates on the Kantian provenance of cosmopolitics. The
first chapter, by Paula Keating, looks at the relationship between Kant’s
account of political revolution and the models of revolution that are
embedded in the structure of his thought. Seminal in respect of the lat-
ter are the role of Ideas in Kant’s thinking, and it is to these that Keating
looks for a type of ‘metaphysics of morals’ that advances from Kant’s
own.
In contrast, Gary Banham looks at the relationship between Kant’s
reflections on the topic of perpetual peace and the response to these
reflections provided by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas sets out an ambi-
tious reconstruction both of Kant’s original thought and of its applica-
tion to contemporary situations. Banham’s chapter presents a respectful
commentary on this reconstruction that situates the ways in which this
reconstruction does and does not improve on Kant’s original project.
David Rose’s chapter also engages with the territory of Kantian think-
ing, but in a way which differs from the approach of Keating or Banham.
Opening the relationship between imagination and reason to renewed
interrogation, Rose sets out some suspicions for the understanding of
practical philosophy by means of reason. Drawing on the notion of
imagination, partly in Kantian terms and partly outside of them, Rose
appeals for an understanding of cosmopolitics that has a hermeneutical
and dialogic flavour. Using the work of Vico, Rose suggests a new type of
relationship between liberal principles of reason and hermeneutic
appeals to interpretative protocols, opening en routea possible different
transmission of Kant.
Part II turns to explorations of material diversity that complicate the
question of cosmopolitics in ways which differ from the Kantian consider-
ations informing the pieces of Part I. Meredith Evans’ article takes seriously
the Marquis de Sade’s original version of republicanism. Deftly combining
Sade’s challenge to the more orthodox Enlightenment accounts with
reflections on Derrida’s late writings on cosmopolitics, Evans sets the polit-
ical regime of desire alongside formal political theory to produce a rich
response to the situation of cosmopolitical reflection today.
Yves Citton, in contrast, concerns himself with the location of
Spinozist thought in response to the narratives of globalisation. Setting
vii
viii Outline of the Book
out from a reflection on the conditions of early modern philosophical
thought, he contrasts Hobbes’ political theory with Spinoza’s, provid-
ing en route a sense of how, from early on, economic liberalism was
faced with emancipatory challenges whose force and urgency have not
diminished.
Jill Marsden’s chapter on the cosmo-body-politic concentrates on how
Daniel Schreber’s reflections on his mental illness provide a way of
thinking the integration of the human with the extra-human. This
exploration of the cosmic positioning of reflection connects Schreber
with the Nietzschean investigation of the ‘will to power’. Marsden’s
reflection on organs and bodies presents an alternative to conventional
philosophy that provides a vista on politics quite different even from
that of Evans, at the same time indicating a conception of the cosmic
that rivals the alternatives set out by Diane Morgan and Howard Caygill
in Part IV.
Part III introduces three key topics which influence the shape, dimen-
sion and limits of cosmopolitical thinking. These are the nation, the
world state and displaced persons. Daniel S. Malachuk reactivates an
often-overlooked version of nineteenth-century nationalism, one which
scuppers the oversimplified opposition between an affiliation to a par-
ticular nation and a wider allegiance to humanity conceived of as a
whole. He thereby refloats the notion of a ‘nationalist cosmopoli-
tanism’. This interesting term could provide a more fertile and sympa-
thetic ground for understanding recently emerged nation-states in, and
on the edge of, ‘New Europe’ than the usual disdain for nationalism as
irrational backwardness. However, it also implies limits and obligations
which would have to restrain an unbridled and unprincipled patriotism.
John S. Partington gives us a clear exposition of H. G. Wells’ blueprint
for a world state which endorses and upholds human rights. In his
1904/5 A Modern Utopia, Wells had already made clear that, for him, the
future will be global and that, in his eyes, individual nation-states will
necessarily be superseded by the one world state. Wells would thus
disagree with the views of Mazzini, Eliot, Whitman and Renan explored
by Malachuk. His endorsement of a world state also provides a counter-
point to Kant’s views on the subject. Kant rejected the idea of a world
republic or of a world monarchy in favour of a ‘federation of free states’.
His fear would seem to have been thatany sort of global state would lead
to despotism because of absolute rule being in the hands of so few. He
also perceived a global system as necessarily imposing a monolithic iden-
tity on all, thereby crushing the invigorating differences between peo-
ples that he thought so important. In contrast, Wells provides a different
Outline of the Book ix
account of the world state, one which presents it not as petrifyingly
‘perfect and static’ but instead as ‘imperfect and dynamic’. Whilst
acknowledging the unequal perfectibility of humans, the world state –
as outlined by Partington – is to contribute to establishing basic equal
rights among humans.
Whereas Malachuk explores certain nineteenth-century thinkers’
negotiation of the intersection between national and cosmopolitical
belongingness, and Partington explores Wells’ replacement of national
frontiers by the limitless world state, Lasse Thomassen continues with
the topic of boundaries in his consideration of displaced persons.
Drawing on the films of Theo Angelopoulos and the writings of Derrida,
he explores the urgently contemporary topic of the xenitis (someone
who is a stranger everywhere). In a world characterised by massive
migratory movements and almost 20 million refugees, asylum seekers
and displaced persons, Thomassen provides us with a timely analysis of
those who are constitutionally heterogeneous. Moving beyond a politics
of assimilation, he opts for a more radical form of politics, a cosmoopolitics,
which not only renders visible the contingency and historical processes
sealed up within the apparently delimited community or nation-state,
but also puts into question the very site of the divide between those who
belong and those who do not – that is, the opposition between an inside
and an outside. Thomassen leaves us with the challenge of rethinking
the home in a way that is neither nostalgic nor incompatible with the
idea of a journey.
Part IV returns us to Kant. Both Howard Caygill and Diane Morgan
examine the implications of his sustained attempts, from the early writ-
ings through to the late works, to think the human within ‘the entire
span of nature’ wherein ‘all is tied together’ and ‘all members [are]
related to one another’. Caygill demonstrates how Kant’s conception of
the cosmos (as plural, dynamic, expanding and contracting) is inter-
twined with his understanding of human physiology. Consequently,
rather than the ‘starry heavens’ representing a beautiful certainty which
confirms the centrality of the self-righteous human, it becomes clear
that Kant’s notion of humans and their place in the universe is indisso-
ciably bound with cosmic matter(s) whose sublime beginnings and ends
remain elusive and challenging. A possible cosmopolitical conclusion to
be drawn from Kant’s enquiries is that it is incumbent on humans to
think about the world in ways which are non-anthropocentrically con-
ceived and which recognise that life is universally interactive.
The principle of ‘interactive global growth’ also informs Morgan’s
reading of Kant via Goethe. For Goethe, Kant was a source of inspiration
