Cynic cosmopolitanism
| Author | Jason Dockstader |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885118781905 |
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
Cynic cosmopolitanism
Jason Dockstader
University College Cork, Ireland
Abstract
Recently, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a bold anti-cosmopolitan claim:
‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t
understand what citizenship means’. Given that many have never found nationalism
particularly appealing, some have been moved to become citizens of the world after
hearing these lines. But how is one to become a cosmopolitan? The answer is found in
the history of philosophy. Cosmopolitanism has taken many forms. There are moral,
political, legal, economic and cultural cosmopolitanisms. A form that has not received
much attention is therapeutic cosmopolitanism. The focus of this form is on how being
a world-citizen entails certain health benefits. I argue that therapeutic cosmopolitanism
is both the original and best way of being a world-citizen. To do so, I summarize the
present taxonomy of cosmopolitanisms and show how therapeutic cosmopolitanism
contrasts with these options. I use classical Cynicism as the primary example of thera-
peutic cosmopolitanism. Instead of the universalist humanism and supranational com-
munitarianism that characterizes cosmopolitan options, Cynic cosmopolitanism
employs extreme naturalism. I show how being a Cynic cosmopolitan is the preferable
way of rejecting nationalists of all stripes.
Keywords
Cosmopolitanism, cynicism, Diogenes the cynic, gunk, humanism, nationalism
Cosmopolitanisms
Definitions of cosmopolitanism usually involve some combination of universalism,
humanism and communitarianism. Universalism, in this context, is the sense that
something is applicable to all humans. Humanism is the view that humans contain
special and intrinsic value. Communitarianism is the idea that the special and
intrinsic value of humans is best expressed in terms of their membership of some
community. In a definition of cosmopolitanism, that community is all humans.
Most definitions emphasize certain features all humans are thought to share,
with such features being the basis for the recognition of membership in a universal
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(2) 272–289
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885118781905
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Corresponding author:
Jason Dockstader, University College Cork, 4 Elderwood, College Road, Cork, Ireland.
Email: j.dockstader@ucc.ie
community. For example, Pauline Kleingeld and Eric Brown (2014) define cosmo-
politanism as the view that ‘all human beings, regardless of their political affili-
ation, are (or can and should be) citizens in a single community’. Elsewhere,
Kleingeld says that cosmopolitanism is the idea that ‘all human beings share cer-
tain essential features that unite or should unite them in a global order that tran-
scends national borders and warrants their designation as ‘‘citizens of the world’’’
(Kleingeld, 1999: 505). What distinguishes different forms of cosmopolitanism is
the common feature human beings are thought to share and the kind of community
they form on the basis of that common feature. Borrowing a distinction from
Jonathan Schaffer’s (2016) discussion of different types of metaphysical monism,
we can say that the common human feature is the target of a cosmopolitanism,
while the community formed on the basis of that feature is the unit with which the
target is counted. There is thus a cosmopolitanism relative to a target and a unit,
where cosmopolitanism for target tcounted by unit uis the view that tcounted by u
is a universal human community. The different kinds of cosmopolitanism amount
to different kinds of universal human communities. These different communities
are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As we will see, one kind of cosmopolitanism
can include elements of other kinds. Some kinds of cosmopolitanism require
aspects of others in order to complete their view of what constitutes a universal
human community. Many cosmopolitanisms overlap. We will go through the
different kinds of cosmopolitanism in order to see how therapeutic, and then
Cynic, cosmopolitanism constitutes a unique and, I will argue, superior form of
the view.
The predominant form of cosmopolitanism is moral cosmopolitanism.
Historically, moral cosmopolitanism is most clearly found in the works of the
Stoics and Kant. With the Stoics, the essential trait of humans that makes them
members of a universal community is their capacity for reason. Human reason is
the portion found in the human soul of a universal divine reason the Stoics
regarded as God, the whole world or cosmos, and its naturally lawful order
(Diogenes Laertius (DL) 7.137; Hicks, 1925: 241). Human reason is the moral
capacity to understand what one ought to do, how one should live and what is
owed to others. Virtue is reason activated, the identification of one’s soul with the
divine law that permeates the cosmos. It is the act of making moral choices that
correspond to this natural law. It tells us to treat all humans as equally capable of
reasoning and virtue, as equally worthy of dignity and respect. According to
Cicero, ‘we are all constrained by one and the same law of nature, and if this is
true, then we are certainly forbidden by the law of nature from acting violently
against another person’ (Cicero, De Officis 3.27; Griffin and Atkins, 1991: 110). No
distinction of locale, class, tribe or nation is morally significant here. What matters
is fellow humanity defined as moral, rational, lawful and free. By being capable of
reason and virtue – of following the divine, natural law – and thus sharing equal
moral worth, humans are a part of a universal community, citizens of a pantheist
city of God. Humans are all fellow citizens of a divine, moral cosmopolis. Plutarch
says that ‘we should regard all human beings as our fellow demesmen and fellow
citizens, and there should be one way of life and one order’ (Plutarch, De Alex Fort.
Dockstader 273
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