The Cosmopolitan Dream: Withdrawal, Empire and the Church

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism is a reflection on the right relationship of the ethical universal and the political particular. Traditionally it had three characteristic forms: that of Diogenes, which connected the two through the heroic endeavours of the hero of the ethical universal; that of Empire which connected the two through the administration of an imperialist political particular; and that of the Universal Church, which connected the two through a mediating institution of universal conscience. These three forms survive today in the cosmopolitanism of neoliberal globalisation, the cosmopolitanism of Pax Americana, and the cosmopolitanism of the universal human rights regime.