Introduction

In 1792, two centuries before “globalization” became a buzzword, Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch (1746–1812), a well-respected professor at the University of Kiel, argued that the world-wide economic market should be turned into a sphere of free trade. This, he claimed, would raise everyone’s standard of living, enhance individual freedom and general happiness, reduce the role of individual states and their governments, and promote a world-wide peace by establishing lively commerce and brotherhood among all humans on earth. As a step on the path toward this larger goal, he argued, Europeans should introduce a common monetary standard.

Hegewisch is a forgotten figure with a surprisingly interesting version of free-market cosmopolitanism. He was one of the first German-language authors – perhaps even the very first – to engage productively with Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, several years before Smith is usually believed to have entered the German discussion. Criticizing Smith and going beyond him, he developed a distinctive form of free-market cosmopolitanism.

Introduction

Cosmopolitan theories are often criticized for lacking a convincing account of the realizability of the cosmopolitan ideal. Critics assert that in order for this ideal to be realized, humans would need to develop felt attachments to humanity or humans in general, but that the world is too large and humanity too abstract for cosmopolitan attachments to develop. Therefore, they charge, the cosmopolitan ideal is destined to remain a pipe dream.

There are three ways to counter this line of criticism. One response is to admit that the development of the supporting psychological dispositions is unlikely, while insisting, heroically, that we ought to strive for the cosmopolitan ideal nevertheless, because its absolute impossibility cannot be proven. Alternatively, one can present an account of cosmopolitanism that is grounded in human sentiments, building its feasibility into the conception of cosmopolitanism itself, so to speak. Third, one can ground cosmopolitanism in something other than feeling but deny that the ideal is psychologically unlikely or impossible, by offering an account of the likely emergence of the sentiments required for ensuring the practicability of the cosmopolitan ideal.

Introduction

In 1788, shortly after the publication of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant published an essay in which he claimed that people from Africa and India lack a “drive to activity.” Without the mental capacities to be self-motivated and successful in northern climates, they never become anything more than drifters. Kant writes that nature, whose wisdom he praises, discourages the migration of races across the globe by making them ill-equipped to change from one climate zone to another, and “especially [for] the exchange of a warm climate for a cold one” (TPP 8:173). He adds a footnote in which he endorses a pro-slavery text, citing with approval the criticism of a “knowledgeable man” who opposed a proposal to free black slaves on the basis of their incapacity for self-motivated activity (TPP 8:174 n.). They can work, but they cannot make themselves work. Native Americans, he goes on, are a race (or rather, a semi-race) stunted in its development because their ancestors migrated to a different climate before they had fully adapted to their earlier environment. As a result, they are weak, inert, “incapable of any culture,” and they occupy the lowest level of the racial hierarchy that Kant claims to have determined:

Kant’s unstated assumption, made explicit elsewhere, is that “whites” occupy the top level of this hierarchy.

The country of world citizens

According to Immanuel Kant, Germans are model cosmopolitans. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View of 1798 he writes that they are hospitable toward foreigners, they easily recognize the merits of other peoples, they are modest in their dealings with others, and they readily learn foreign languages. Finally, “as cosmopolitans,” they are not passionately bound to their fatherland (ApH 7:317–18). Germany “is the country of world citizens” where strangers feel at home (R 15:590).

This description is remarkable not just for its evocation of an intellectual world that was about to be swept away, in the early nineteenth century, by a wave of nationalism. It also paints a picture of the cosmopolitan that is quite different from the image of the rootless traveler often associated with the term. The cosmopolitans Kant describes here do not fit the stereotype of the individualistic citizens of nowhere, who relish their unattached and unencumbered existence, are self-satisfied with their self-styled identity, pick and choose cultural tidbits from many parts of the world, and regard the more rooted mortals around them with unmistakable condescension.

Introduction

In this final chapter, I address more explicitly the significance of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, as reconstructed in the preceding chapters, for current philosophical discussions. Kant is widely recognized as a key figure, whether in discussions of moral cosmopolitanism or in discussions regarding global justice or international political theory. Leading philosophers turn to Kant, whether they propose to “follow Kant’s lead” (John Rawls) or develop their own argument by contrasting it with Kant’s position. In the preceding chapters, however, I have argued that the interpretation of Kant’s position needs serious revision. In this chapter, I consider in more detail how his role in these debates should be recast in light of these results.

Three issues of current debate stand out here. First, Kant’s defense of patriotism as a duty, which is ignored in the literature, offers a compelling response to the persistent objection that Kantian moral theory is unable to give an account of the special obligations that citizens have toward their own states. Kant delivers just such an account. Moreover, as I argue below, moral cosmopolitanism indeed requires an account of the role and scope of special obligations – paradoxical though this may sound.

Cloots’ challenge

Between 1791 and 1793, a man who had named himself Anacharsis Cloots (1755–94) and who was a high-ranking Jacobin in revolutionary France, published several books in which he argued that the social contract tradition, by its own logic, should lead one to defend world-state cosmopolitanism. Cloots ardently defended social contract theory and did not mean this argument as a reductio ad absurdum. On the contrary, he regarded the unquestioned acceptance of a world with a plurality of states as an old prejudice. He formulated a challenge: “The prejudices spring from such deep roots that no one has even thought of asking: Why is there more than one state?” (RU 166).

Cloots advocates the establishment of a republic of the united individuals of the world. He argues, on the basis of the 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” and central ideas of social contract theory, that the only consistent political theory requires that there be only one state, a “universal republic” in which all humans would be citizens. Social contract theory justifies the establishment of states with coercive authority in terms of the (actual or hypothetical) agreement of individuals, and it regards the protection of their freedom and human rights as a good reason for individuals to subject themselves to state authority. Without the state, individuals would live in the “state of nature,” a condition in which they cannot be secure against violence by others. Taking this idea one step further than most social contract theorists, Cloots argues that establishing a plurality of states merely shifts the state of nature to the international realm. The human rights and interests of individuals are not adequately protected in a multi-state world, because no matter how well their state secures them internally, they are still threatened insofar as this state exists in a condition of war externally (an international state of nature). Hence the only real solution is the establishment of a universal republic of human beings of the world – “world citizenship” in the most literal sense.

Introduction

Eighteenth-century merchants of the Dutch East India Company doing business with Japan had to stay on a tiny artificial island in the Nagasaki bay called Dejima, the size of two soccer fields. There was a bridge to the mainland that could be crossed only by a very select group of Japanese officials, interpreters, and prostitutes, all of whom stood under the strict oversight of the shogunate. Except for a yearly visit to the shogun, the Dutch were not allowed on the mainland. During part of the 1790s, the Japanese allowed only one Dutch ship per year. These arrangements actually represented an exceptionally privileged status for the Dutch traders. They were the only Europeans who were allowed any contact with Japan at all.

In Europe, there was debate over the question whether the Japanese had a right to close their country to foreigners in this way, or whether foreigners had a right to enter territories abroad. Kant defends the Japanese policy. He discusses the matter in his treatment of what he terms “cosmopolitan right,” where he also discusses other questions regarding the interaction between states and foreign individuals and groups. What, for example, if someone cannot help entering another country? If, say, shipwreck victims wash ashore on a foreign beach, do they have a right to be tolerated on the soil? And what if a group of individuals still lives in the state of nature, do states (such as the European colonial powers) have a right to take possession of their territories and bring them into a civil condition?

Introduction

In 1772 a group of Göttingen University students with literary aspirations and a shared admiration for the ancient Germanic tribes came together – first under an oak tree, then in a room richly decorated with oak branches. They toasted the death of Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), who was one of the most influential German authors at that time. They tore his books to pieces, danced on the pages, and then burned the shreds together with a portrait of the much-hated Wieland.

What had Wieland done? The group accused him of admiring ancient Greek and Roman literature. They saw him as the symbol of the degeneration of the German soul: he was too rationalist, too focused on literary style, and too frivolous – he even wrote texts that were intended to be comical. He was not deep, not serious enough. The group insisted that German authors should let themselves be inspired by the Germanic past and treat more worthy subjects such as fatherland, feeling, virtue, and great heroic deeds, which could then form the basis for genuine Germanic bard songs.