DEFYING POPULISM: IN DEFENCE OF COSMOPOLITANISM

The word ‘cosmopolitan’ conjures an image of jet-setting elitists with little regard for their fellow citizens. In fact, cosmopolitans are idealists whose values are an antidote to nationalism and populism.

Cosmopolitanism gets plenty of bad press nowadays. “Cosmopolitan” is often paired with “elites”, as in the cosmopolitan elites who sip cappuccino in the morning and pinot noir at night, jet around to places like Davos, and enjoy big gains from the digital revolution.

Once upon a time, anti-cosmopolitanism was code for anti-Semitism. Nowadays, cosmopolitans are former UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s “citizens of nowhere”: a foil for the noble citizens of somewhere who remain firmly rooted in the communities supposedly under attack by the globalization promoted by heartless cosmopolitans.

There is just one problem with this narrative: it is deeply misleading. And, for political reasons, that confusion matters.

As the philosopher Martha Nussbaum reminds us in her fascinating new book The Cosmopolitan Tradition, asked where he came from, Diogenes the Cynic answered with a single word: kosmopolités, meaning “a citizen of the world.”

Diogenes was Greek, but refused to define himself by his lineage or position of prominence. And by calling himself a citizen, Nussbaum emphasizes, Diogenes opened up “the possibility of a politics, or a moral approach to politics, that focuses on the humanity that we share rather than the marks of local origin, status, class, and gender that divide us”.

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Πηγή: balkaninsight.com