My research on cosmopolitanism started only when I found the resources to confront the fear of a new grand narrative. I could finally address the criticisms and questions that were stopping me from having a cosmopolitan position within political theory, such as how should we conceive of cosmopolitanism after the scepticism towards the grand narratives of modern ideologies? Can cosmopolitanism avoid being a new grand narrative? How can one justify cosmopolitan values without falling back on certain conceptions of a fixed human nature or a shared system of belief? What does it mean to be cosmopolitan today, given the plurality of the interpretative standpoints in the contemporary world? How should a cosmopolitan project look in the alleged post-metaphysical and post-universalistic theoretical framework? My invaluable resources in confronting these questions and many potential criticisms were the concepts of ‘permanent questioning’, ‘living in problematicity’ and ‘shaken solidarities’ advanced by Jan Patočka, in which I identified a minimalist framework for conceiving a non-totalising cosmopolitan theory.

‘PERMANENT QUESTIONING’ OF THE EASTERN EUROPEAN DISSIDENCE

Jan Patočka (1907–77) was a Czech philosopher, considered the most important and influential thinker from Eastern Europe of the twentieth century. He studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger, in the 1930s, and his phenomenological approach, which was his main contribution to philosophy, is understood as a continuation, development and critique of what he considered to be un-thought by his masters. After the Second World War, he refused to join the Communist Party and was banned from academia, except for a few years after the Prague Spring of 1968. In 1977, he founded and was one of the spokespersons of Charta 77, a human rights movement in Czechoslovakia. In this context, Patočka was arrested by authorities. He died after a prolonged interrogation by the secret police. His death suggests an analogy to the fate of Socrates, because Patočka lent to the Charter the sense that it was led by a figure committed to truth (Tucker 2000: 3; Falk 2003: 242). The influence of Patočka and, through him, of philosophy on Václav Havel, on the Chartists, on the Czechoslovak dissidence, and on the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in general is considered to be decisive (Tucker 2000: 3–5; Falk 2003: 242–7).