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Transcending Cosmopolitanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Mogobe Bernard Ramose*
Affiliation:
University of South Africa, South Africa
*
Mogobe Bernard Ramose, University of South Africa, Preller St, Pretoria 0002, South Africa. Email: ramosmb@unisa.ac.za

Abstract

In general, discussion about cosmopolitanism is predicated on the assumption of community either already existing or yet to be realised. A common feature of this assumption is that community represents the boundary of “us” inclusion and exclusion of “the other”. Accordingly, the strife to reach out to “the other” constitutes the quest for the cosmos – order – and its realisation is cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is thus based on the ontology of opposition tending towards synthesis. The thesis defended here is that the ontology of boundary as a coupling point and not a moment of the exclusion of “the other” is a necessary reaffirmation as well as complement of “us”. This ontology, supported by polylogue among the peoples and cultures of our planet, is the means to transcend cosmopolitanism and constitute a planetary human community.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2013

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