Abstract
This article sets out the case for a mutual cross-fertilisation of normative cosmopolitan thought and the field of comparative political theory. Its argument is that both are useful to the other if their primary claims are warranted. Comparative political theory needs coherence about what distinguishes its enterprise and makes it truly comparative across traditions and normative cosmopolitanism needs transcultural validation of its normative ideal of human community and moral universality. The cosmopolitan agenda exploring comparative views of inclusion and exclusion and universality in the context of a global harm principle provides the field in which the necessary cross fertilisation can occur.
Introduction
This article addresses two audiences which have to date been largely autonomous of each other – normative cosmopolitan political theory and comparative political theory (CPT). 1 Recent interventions suggest that the study of CPT is moving into a new phase characterised by a shift from ‘scholastic’ to engaged political theorising. While passing no judgment on the scholastic approach, this article aims to make a further engagement with the idea of a normatively engaged CPT. Normative cosmopolitan theory is oriented towards a defense of the moral unity of humankind and exploration of the possible political expressions of that unity. CPT is largely oriented towards an expansion of the canon of political theory to include ‘non’ Western sources, that is those outside the usual Western canon, in order to more accurately reflect the diversity of political thought in the world, and provide greater resources for political theorising in the age of globalisation. The compatibility of these two orientations seems obvious when juxtaposed in this way and yet, to date, there has been little dialogue or engagement between the two (with one or two exceptions discussed here). This article seeks to identify reasons for bringing these two sub-disciplines together and to propose a research agenda under which the encounter may proceed. The intention is not to subsume the two branches into one but to investigate the benefits of cross-fertilisation between them.
The argument is twofold: first, that CPT can meet the challenge posed by Andrew March’s (2009) recent call for an engaged CPT enquiring into deep value conflict by addressing an agenda developed by normative cosmopolitan political theory; second, that normative cosmopolitanism requires the resources of CPT in order to further its defense of cosmopolitan universalism. The argument below sets out a cosmopolitan research agenda that focuses on the issue of inclusion and exclusion from the realm of moral considerability, primarily in relation to the scope of permissible harms (Linklater, 1990a, 2011). Harnessing CPT to this normative cosmopolitan agenda can provide the focus for its engaged comparative endeavors.
The article first discusses March’s argument for an engaged comparative political theory. It argues that normative cosmopolitan political theory is a natural fit for CPT that fits March’s criteria. On the other hand given its aspirations for moral universalism, a viable normative cosmopolitan political theory necessarily requires an engagement with a ‘world’s worth’ of political thought beyond the Western canon. It then discusses CPT’s criticisms and conceptualisation of cosmopolitanism as found in the work of Dallmayr and Godrej (2011). It argues that CPT can do more than problematise cosmopolitan universalism as they imply. The second half of the article demonstrates how cosmopolitanism provides a lens through which to engage in CPT by pursuing the question of how different thinkers and traditions of thought conceptualise and approach issues of inclusion and exclusion, and specifically the question of the moral standing of human beings. This research agenda requires the hermeneutic expertise and sensibility of CPT. 2
What is CPT and what is it for?
CPT is a relatively recent development that seeks to expand the range of political theorising in ‘the West’ beyond traditional European sources and to systematically include non-Western political thought. 3 CPT thinkers share the concern that liberalism in particular and the Western canon in general suffer from a Eurocentrism that is no longer, if it ever was, justified by the conditions of modern life and thought. Thus Dallmayr, the founding figure and champion of CPT, argues contemporary global heterogeneity calls for an enquiry into the possible decentering of Western and especially liberal thought via an investigation into non-Western political thought (Dallmayr, 2004, 2010, 2014). If there is any normative commonality amongst the practitioners of CPT it is close to the view that we live ‘after Babel’, after the scattering of languages and peoples (Dallmayr, 2013: 48), and this ‘after’ should be reflected in political theory. In particular, they wish to challenge the assumption that the Western canon is the only source of political wisdom and should define the terms of reflection in political theory. The observation means that political theorising has to take seriously the diversity and multiplicity of languages, customs and cultural traditions that make up contemporary political communities domestically and globally.
In a provocative intervention, March (2009) criticised CPT on the grounds that it has not given a sufficient methodological justification for comparative engagement as a distinct approach. March’s argument is that CPT can and does have a specific warrant but one that goes beyond much of what characterises it currently. The focus of March’s critique is the identification of a dilemma facing CPT: It wants to be relevant, which it achieves by directing itself to important normative disputes. But when the task is bringing to light poorly understood moral perspectives on normative disputes that oppose dominant Western views (such as Islamic fundamentalist or East Asian communitarian discourses), comparative political theory is often not quite sure what to say. … After describing the contours of the differences between certain Western views and certain non-Western views and noting that one cannot assume the non-Western ones to be misguided, reactionary, or stagnant, comparative political theory often does not know where to go with its dialogue (March, 2009: 551).
CPT has a warrant to understand where and how traditions may agree and disagree but also to evaluate the possibility for agreement or reconciliation. This includes evaluating the coherence and possible applications of principles in terms of possible common proposals because they provide the opportunity to test different approaches against other beliefs and to understand principled objections to them. He concludes that ‘[E]xploring the normative implications for us of principled value-conflict is an appropriate task of engaged political theory and could be made the centerpiece of the comparative political theory project’ (2009: 554). Comparing traditions and thinkers on points of conflict as suggested by March allows a more focused and purposive engagement and escapes the potential aridity of the scholastic enterprise. Enquiry into conflict is an enquiry into the various senses in which differences between thinkers matter. This is important, ‘if only because we think they have social consequences’ (2009: 554). March’s vision therefore is for a CPT ‘engaged’ in comparison of points of contestation between different ‘largely autonomous’ traditions and their representatives. It does so with an eye to substantive issues and proposals of interest to political theory generally.
Most significantly, March concludes ‘[T]he strongest warrant for comparative political theory is that there are normative contestations of proposals for terms of social cooperation affecting adherents of the doctrines and traditions that constitute those contestations’ (2009: 565). Such questions might include the content of justice, the nature of authority and legitimacy, the use of force and how they may inform or what they may reveal about current practices, policies and proposals for social cooperation. 4 Thus, March argues that CPT needs to explore substantive differences, conflicts, symmetries or equivalences between relatively distinct traditions of thought on matters of common concern in relation to points where they may come in to contact; not just hypothetical conflicts but arguments where they may inform competing approaches to proposals for social cooperation. Engaged political theory is of course not only interested in cases of incommensurability or irresolvable conflict, and nor should CPT. Instead CPT ‘implies an interest in the conditions of reconciliation (one possibility being that we are the one’s changing our minds)’(March, 2009: 562): an interest in consensus building and mutual understanding that is also necessary for social cooperation.
There is perhaps no arena today that is as rife with such potential conflicts and sites of contestation as global politics and its academic counterpart international political theory. We live in a rapidly globalising world where cultures and traditions are being brought into conflict and contact in the context of increased levels of exposure and common concern, whether it be popular culture or the terms of economic engagement or global warming. Normative cosmopolitanism is the project of exploring the normative responses suitable for a globalising world. In this context, it involves formulating proposals for social cooperation often on a global scale that affect the adherents of different doctrines and traditions everywhere. Such proposals are both theoretical and practical (or ‘real world’) and include proposals for global distributive justice, criminal justice, the terms of international trade, responses to climate change, the conduct of warfare and peace, the meaning of human rights, the treatment of women and the development of global avenues for communication and deliberation. Such are the concerns of cosmopolitanism broadly understood.
The argument of this article is that the obvious place for CPT to apply its skills and insights is in the context of intercultural explorations of the terms of social cooperation over permissible harms that are central to normative cosmopolitanism and allow an escape from the dilemma identified by March. Equally importantly, this cosmopolitan agenda requires CPT as a crucial part of the defense of any form of moral universalism and the possibility of formulating universal harm conventions.
CPT and cosmopolitanism
At the same time as the concerns of CPT and cosmopolitanism seem to overlap, the former also has some important criticisms of the latter which suggests skepticism towards normative universality. It is necessary to understand the nature of this critique before the case can be made for hitching the wagon of CPT to that of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is commonly understood as both a moral and a political theory, having moral and institutional dimensions (Pogge, 2001). Moral cosmopolitanism identifies the equal moral standing of individuals everywhere as the basic starting point for reflection. Institutional cosmopolitanism involves the claim that political institutions should be brought into line with cosmopolitan moral principles. Normative cosmopolitan is a political theory aiming to incorporate a moral concern for all people everywhere into the conduct of politics, and it is most commonly distinguished from particularistic ‘statist’ approaches which extend at best only a minimal and contingent regard for outsiders (e.g., Miller, 2008; Rawls, 1999) Cosmopolitanism as a political theory aims to overcome the division of human beings into separate political communities and the ensuing competition for power between them. This includes how to overcome the other most likely obstacle to universalism: cultural and value pluralism.
Normative cosmopolitanism has become a broad church in recent years and advocates derive cosmopolitan principles from a variety of positions. 5 At its minimal cosmopolitanism can take the form that says no human should be ruled out of moral consideration a priori, and that means that we should take into account the wellbeing of all in our deliberations on policy and practice (Nussbaum, 1996, 2006). At a maximum cosmopolitanism can claim the moral imperative to restructure the world along global egalitarian lines or even a world state. As such, cosmopolitanism covers a spectrum of political proposals from world government to cosmopolitan statism to those who emphasise the role of global civil society as an agent of cosmopolitan transformation. 6 More generally cosmopolitanism has a political and theoretical task of justifying universalism of scope of moral inclusion, and of justifying the particular content of that vision. Cosmopolitan political thought has at least two dimensions relevant to CPT: the first is the basis of its justification for universalism; the second is the content of that universalism.
However, for better or for worse, cosmopolitanism has come to be associated, from the outside at least, with liberal political thought and its universalisation procedures: in particular, post-Rawlsian concerns with distributive justice and the nature of a globally just political order. 7 Much, but not all, of this cosmopolitanism appears to work within the assumption that some version of liberal cosmopolitan can be made largely independent of its origins in Western political thought and applied globally. While this is not universally true of contemporary normative cosmopolitanism, universalism of both scope and justification is nonetheless a central part of the cosmopolitan move, 8 and a common but not ubiquitous aspect of cosmopolitan thought is a claim to transcultural validity or impartiality. This aspect of cosmopolitanism has been the source of much criticism and a persistent skepticism that its values are never genuinely universal but only the expression of a specific culture and intellectual heritage. 9
The CPT response to cosmopolitanism, insofar as it exists, has been dominated by the ‘epistemic’ approach which argues ‘political theory (and perhaps comparative political science) can make no claims for their universality without including non-Western perspectives’ (March, 2009: 539). According to Godrej, The discourse on cosmopolitanism has remained for the most part an internal Western discussion that privileges the Western experience as though it were self-evident that other resources need not be consulted (Godrej, 2011: 9).
Given its normative goal of developing inclusive universal communities and a universal political order, ‘it seems odd arbitrarily to privilege ideas drawn from the Western experience, and then claim that they apply elsewhere, with no examination of what other traditions have to offer’ (2011: 21). She argues that a truly cosmopolitan theory ‘would be one in which we might bring the idea of Gandhi or Confucius to bear on our discussion of freedom or justice, in the same way that we would use Rawls or Marx or Hobbes … ’ (2011: 67). The goal of CPT according to Dallmayr is to broaden the horizon of cosmopolitanism and to ‘move towards a more genuine universalism, beyond the spurious “universality” traditionally claimed by the Western canon’ (Dallmayr, 2004: 253). From this perspective, the problems with liberal cosmopolitanism are clear It aims to be universal but is parochial in its sources and knowledge base is therefore in need of a broader epistemic warrant.
While the thrust of both Godrej and Dallmayr’s work lies in the epistemic challenge of bringing new discourses to the table, this work also includes what March calls the ‘global democratic’ agenda. This agenda rests on the argument ‘If the most important questions of contemporary political philosophy are themselves of a global nature, how could a “planetary political philosophy” … proceed except by including a “planet’s worth” of theoretical perspectives’ (March, 2009: 540). In an intervention from outside CPT Williams and Warren argue that CPT is essential for engaging with global publics and for developing new deliberative practices under conditions of globalisation. Warrens and Williams underpin their argument for the centrality of CPT to cosmopolitan global democracy with the epistemic claim that the field has had little or no engagement … with the argument that their understandings of such fundamental concepts as moral individualism, economic development, political legitimacy, and secularism are so thoroughly rooted in Euro-American modernity that they make very uncertain contact with the self-understandings of the majority of the world’s peoples. Nor do they acknowledge the array of non-Western cosmopolitanisms that might provide alternative normative foundations for political order under conditions of globalization (Williams and Warren, 2014: 30).
It is worth noting that neither Godrej nor Dallmayr cite the epistemological critiques as grounds for rejecting cosmopolitan aspirations. In this they differ from many of the standard ‘anti cosmopolitan’ or ‘communitarian’ objections to universalism (Shapcott, 2010). Instead they claim that cosmopolitanism needs to be made more genuinely universal by adopting a different moral epistemology that may require moving away from its Kantian and enlightenment universalism. In this context, they imply that CPT represents a major challenge to the type of thinking common to cosmopolitanism. In both cases, they appear to reject substantive normative theorising and any substantive vision of the content of cosmopolitanism in favour of more open-ended intercultural dialogue (Dallmayr) or methodological pluralism and engagement (Godrej). In their views cosmopolitanism becomes largely a mode of engagement and eschews the traditional task of formulating universal norms.
Godrej’s Cosmopolitan Political Thought is a demanding proposal for ‘cosmopolitan’ reform at the methodological level but which does not engage much with the content of contemporary cosmopolitanism. She argues that ‘a clearer understanding of the scope and methods of CPT is crucial to the development of a cosmopolitan political theory’ (2011: 12) and seeks a political theory that is de-provincialised and decentered. 11 Godrej’s argument remains suggestive and somewhat indeterminate by remaining largely at the methodological level. Indeed, her conclusion seems to imply an ambivalence towards any substantive arguments in favour of a process of engagement and disruption, though she is clear that part of this process is evaluation and assessment of different normative stances, and not just the task of understanding and inclusion. While this has implications for normative cosmopolitan political thought Godrej unfortunately does not pursue them. It is not clear whether this is because she sees such tasks as inconsistent with her view of CPT or simply because she has other purposes.
Dallmayr on the other hand provides a more thoroughgoing engagement with cosmopolitanism as a normative project. While he shares the methodological and epistemic critique of liberal cosmopolitanism he also advocates a more radical rejection of the liberal mode of political theorising. Dallmayr sees CPT’s task as part of a process of global, intercultural and intercivilisational mutual understanding and as part of a global ‘fusion of horizons’ between different cultures and traditions. In his view, the goal of CPT is largely with understanding, with seeking to build bridges between cultures and traditions. He is motivated by a sense of the limits of the Western canon in the age of globalisation, and the practical and moral need to engage with non-Western thought, with the underlying implication that such an engagement lays the groundwork for a more peaceful and just world. CPT is largely an exercise in understanding others and, through understanding, enlarging a sense of global solidarity and avoiding other modes of contact involving domination or assimilation (Dallmayr, 2014).
Beyond this, Dallmayr displays an ambivalence regarding the substantive content of cosmopolitan political thought. While he clearly recognises the need for global solutions to global problems and advocates genuinely democratic forms of global order he is simultaneously skeptical of any form of cosmopolitan theorising that attempts to explore the content of universalism beyond democratic openness. For Dallmayr, while we need to engage in global dialogue any substantive account of universal political order is premature because of the existence of the global Babel and inherent tendency of liberal cosmopolitanism to support or enable instrumental rationality and anti-democratic practices: ‘In this situation, cosmopolis cannot possibly be a uniform legal and political structure hegemonically controlling the world; it can only mean a shared aspiration nurtured and negotiated among local or national differences’ (Dallmayr, 2014: 56). Insofar as Dallmayr lends his voice to a substantive political expression of this view it is to advocate democratic processes that open up participation and understanding.
In Dallmayr’s hands cosmopolitanism includes both universal and particular, and mediates between them as it mediates between traditions through dialogic engagement. The dialogic model of CPT involves a form of cosmopolitanism that is an ongoing process of moving between potential universal values (such as equality, non-domination and freedom) and the particular locations, cultures and cosmologies in which they are expressed and pursued.
However, at the same time both Godrej and Dallmayr seem to imply that the favoured method of CPT, dialogical understanding, undermines traditional (especially transcendental Kantian) cosmopolitan concerns to identify universally valid norms and/or institutions that can be built from them. CPT in Godrej’s and Dallmayr’s view takes seriously Gadamer’s injunction that to understand another we need to see them as a bearer of possible truth, that is that we may learn something from them and come to see things differently as a result. Eurocentrism rules out the non-West as a source of knowledge or truth.
So the method of engagement with non-Western texts is truly dialogical. A cosmopolitanism informed by CPT seeks not only an overlapping consensus but also a hermeneutic ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer, 1989). In such a fusion the participants not only come to pragmatic agreement but remain open to the possibility that they may learn something from each other’s perspective. An engaged CPT focuses not just on what areas may overlap or where equivalences exist, but also what can be learnt from non-Western traditions.
Dialogue of this type has the advantage of reflexivity about the contents and practices of engagement. It encourages reflection on all sides about beliefs and values including and perhaps most importantly making prejudices and assumptions clearer to all. This performs both an epistemic role, allowing in new knowledge, and also a therapeutic role, allowing transformation. In the context of cosmopolitanism it is important to remember that part of the engagement with non-Western thought is not only to see what areas of possible consensus might exist but what may need to be modified via an encounter with other perspectives and vice versa. In the case of both Dallmayr and Godrej these roles seem to be ends in themselves, or at least ends in the process of decentering the canon and Eurocentrism.
However, this seems also to be the limit of CPT cosmopolitanism it can provide largely critical resources of decentering cosmopolitan thought and an emancipatory space for inclusion of other voices. There seems to be no middle way between the options of understanding and hegemony. CPT therefore can only inform an alternative vision of a global order premised upon a continuing pluralism of cultures and the genuine equal participation of non-Western cultures: ‘Above all, global discourse cannot privilege or assign prima facie validity to a particular voice or discourse (no matter how “universally” formulated)’ (Dallmayr, 2001: 332). That is it seeks to develop an account of cosmopolitanism on communicative and dialogical grounds as a response to conditions of interdependence, interconnection and continuing global pluralism. While mutual comprehension and solidarity are core components of the cosmopolitan project 12 Dallmayr’s reticence about engaging in the substance of cosmopolitanism risks abandoning the field of political theory by associating the classical concerns of political theory with neo-liberalism and global instrumental rationality. 13
As noted above one of the tasks of CPT as March outlined is precisely to bring different traditions of thought together to see how they compare on points of importance for common political projects where competing values are likely to emerge and conflict. This involves not just understanding and dialogue but engagement over the implications of political thought for practice. There is no necessary reason why the evaluative or ‘justificatory’ comparison suggested by March can not be part of a theoretical exercise of identifying the possibilities and limits of substantive cosmopolitan proposals, such as for instance global distributive justice. March’s position suggests that engagement in terms of substantive proposals is the best way to treat different positions with respect as both contenders, rivals and possible partners. While, consequently, Dallmayr’s dialogue is a necessary component of any cosmopolitan approach it cannot remain the limit of cosmopolitan political theorising. It seems also profitable to make cosmopolitan theorising more methodologically cosmopolitan by not only engaging in the process of understanding other political traditions and individual thinkers but also by comparing those thinkers in terms of core questions and possible shared answers. Therefore, the epistemic approach is a necessary but not sufficient condition for cosmopolitan thought.
In sum, cosmopolitanism informed by CPT does not necessarily require it to abandon thinking about substantive topics such as principles of global justice or equitable distribution of the world’s resources. It suggests that the academic inquiry into these topics must draw upon more than the standard and self-referential terms established by Western philosophical canon. More ambitiously CPT can help cosmopolitan thought develop such proposals from a more genuinely universal range of sources and examine the prospects for universal agreement on any given issue. While CPT implies a rejection of a common tendency of normative cosmopolitan political thought to identify transcendent and transcultural moral universals it does not rule out identifying the prospects for cosmopolitanism that can be ‘shaped rather than found,’ in Rorty’s terms (1989).
One historical example is the challenge of responding to the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and the development of a universal human rights movement. Understanding Islam or Hinduism on this matter can advance mutual understanding, and possibly agreement, in a more focused way. Because the idea of human rights is applied to specific projects and specific tasks, different traditions and thinkers are provided with the opportunity to makes themselves understood by others, reflect on their own values, and engage with change (to some extent on their own terms). The success of the UDHR has only been possible because the idea of rights has come to be ‘owned’ and interpreted by different traditions and not by virtue of being unilaterally imposed. 14 UDHR provides a focus for conversation whereby a substantive proposal, that all states should observe human rights of their citizens, becomes the occasion for cross-cultural engagement and engagement. Engagement over this topic arguably reveals more about the content of comparative thought than understanding alone because the context of application to real world circumstances requires engagement at a deeper level. 15
Both Godrej and Dallmayr are critical of cosmopolitanism for its Eurocentrism and faux universalism. While both are keenly concerned to open up the discussion of cosmopolitanism both express reticence about engaging in more substantive application of CPT to normative cosmopolitan thought. As such their vision to date doesn’t fulfill the criteria set out by March for an engaged CPT even while making a sound preliminary case for a cosmopolitan CPT. The next section offers a suggestion that takes their injunctions seriously and suggests a research agenda that both makes CPT more epistemically warranted and cosmopolitanism more genuinely universal.
Towards a cosmopolitan CPT
While CPT can benefit from cosmopolitanism’s scope of enquiry in order to provide an epistemic warrant, normative cosmopolitanism needs an infusion of CPT to broaden its epistemic base and to subject its universalism to scrutiny. Any account of global moral and institutional cosmopolitanism that aims to be in any way persuasive outside its own tradition, or that can claim to deal adequately with normative pluralism, must factor that pluralism into its own account. It needs to draw upon traditions of thought other than its own, both as potential adversaries or interlocutors who it may have to persuade, and as potential contributors to the solutions to problems facing humanity. This section explores what a more methodologically cosmopolitan approach would mean for cosmopolitan thought and, as importantly, how the normative cosmopolitan project provides a framework in which to engage in the type of engaged CPT suggested by March.
The first part of the argument is to define the parameters of an appropriately thin form of cosmopolitanism that can accommodate CPT concerns. The subsequent argument explores how, following Linklater, the pursuit of cosmopolitan harm convention provides a focus for examining different conception of the range and content of moral considerability and the possibilities for cosmopolitan universalism.
As noted above contemporary cosmopolitan thought has been dominated by liberalism and is often associated with the project of global egalitarianism and the globalisation of Rawlsian accounts of justice. These argue that the condition of global life is such that it warrants the expansion of the ‘domestic’ liberal view of justice to the world. This view sees cosmopolitanism as an expression of the liberal view of justice, and the two cannot be separated. While ‘critical cosmopolitanism’ (Delanty, 2014: 384) and what Valentini (2011) calls the third wave attempt to move beyond this approach, it still casts a long shadow. As noted this form of cosmopolitanism is particularly vulnerable to the CPT critique of the dominance of the Western canon and to the epistemic criticism that it suffers from a parochial universalism. Arguably such a charge is unavoidable for any form of cosmopolitan project that goes beyond platitudes. Nonetheless it is a criticism that must be taken seriously. Linklater argues that the normative defence of universalism requires transcending that parochialism. In order to do so it is important to remember that cosmopolitanism begins with a critique of unjustiable forms of exclusion that render members of different political communities morally unequal. The reverse of cosmopolitanism is an ethics that advocates that the boundaries of political communities amount to the boundaries of the moral community. The normative task of cosmopolitanism is to continue to subject such claims to evaluation at the same time as recognising the exclusions that may be involved in universalism. According to Linklater the relevant question is ‘How to promote universality which respects difference, and how to [do so] … without encouraging and unleashing extreme particularism’ (1998 27). Linklater argues that cosmopolitanism as political theory is concerned with the grounds and justification for excluding and including other people from the moral realm and the community of political discourse. The problem of community in cosmopolitan thinking revolves around identifying those principles of inclusion most likely to secure universal consent, while recognising and including difference. Refocussing cosmopolitanism on this dimension includes the recognition that it can take many forms and that it may require a ‘thinner’ universalism than it is often associated with. Therefore instead of asking ‘what is the content of global justice?’ or ‘are human rights universal?’ Linklater (1998, 2011, 1990a, 1990b) identifies the task of cosmopolitanism more generally with the defense of universalism understood in terms of the range of moral considerability, that is who is considered a subject of moral concern. The normative goal is to defend the idea that no person in principle should be ruled out of moral consideration. The question of what form that consideration should take and how it might inform practice, forms the second part of the normative project. For Linklater a cosmopolitan harm principle forms the basis for deciding the content of a cosmopolitan considerability (2011). Linklater’s defence of a ‘thin’ cosmopolitan harm principle (2009) provides a venue for making cosmopolitan thought more epistemically pluralist and a focus for engaged projects of CPT. A research agenda for a CPT of cosmopolitanism would consist at least of two major lines of enquiry: the first into the scope of moral inclusion and the second into the nature and scope of permissible harm.
The argument below endorses Delanty’s injunction that ‘The time has come to move beyond the latent Eurocentrism that persists in cosmopolitan thought’ (2014: 375) and to explore cosmopolitan themes from a comparative stance while simultaneously subjecting its universalism to cross-cultural investigation. The following section spells out some examples of the type of theoretical enquiry this orientation would give rise to and in the process demonstrate why CPT is an important part of the cosmopolitan project.
Inclusion/exclusion
The first task of a comparative cosmopolitanism requires an investigation into how any given theory or tradition approaches the question of the scope of human moral considerability. By this is meant both the scope of potential application, to which group of humans it applies and how that audience should act towards other humans. The goal of expanding, or creating, a realm of universal inclusion in the range of moral considerability has traditionally been undertaken as a monological exercise in abstract reasoning and the identification of transcendental universals. The CPT approach to this question however would build upon existing traditions of thought in order to establish the opportunities and obstacles facing potential transcultural theoretical consensus on the moral standing of people everywhere. Therefore, investigation into the prospects for cosmopolitanism begins with enquiring into how different thinkers and traditions conceptualise and defend the scope of moral considerability.
Further questions involve looking for evidence of universalism in non-Western approaches, establishing what it consists of and if it is compatible with a cosmopolitan concern with the moral standing of individuals. Understanding the prospects of inclusion requires asking whether some traditions may understand the scope of their applicability to be universal or particular. Some universalisms may however draw stark distinctions between insider and outsider, compatriots, believers, etc. as has been the case in Western history where universalism is often qualified by describers such as civilisation, race, gender, etc. Islam is known to distinguish between the dar al Islam and dar al Haarb. Does this also translate into a different moral standing between Muslims and nonmuslims or a fundamental breach in the range of considerability? Such a study would ask whether, for instance, Confucian thought makes any relevant moral distinctions between different categories of human beings including between those within its own political community and those outside (Dallmayr, 2014)? How does Hindu political thought with its hierarchical conception of society think about non-Hindus? 16 Other ways of thinking such as many indigenous approaches, are not clearly universalist or non-universalist. Australian indigenous political thought for instance is solidly informed by a profound sense of place and spiritual connection to land. Relations of obligation are tightly tied to relations of blood and family and ‘mob’. 17 Does this translate into an exclusionary relationship to non-members, as in Western nationalism, or merely a differentiated one? Does the southern African concept of Ubuntu, which could be translated roughly as including friendship (see Graness 2015) have geographical or racial limits? How central are such distinctions, are they basic or conditional, contingent or inherent, are they absolute or on a spectrum? A cosmopolitan political theory needs to ask these questions if it seeks to extend its epistemic base.
A further way of pursuing this enquiry is to ask whether there are equivalences to the answers provided within the Western canon. For instance what types of argument are used to justify exclusion, do they have parallels with arguments deployed in the West and defended by ‘nationalists’ or ‘communitarians’? 18 Or are there equivalents of cosmopolitan or statist conceptions of universalist political arrangements? Is there evidence of an ‘ethics of coexistence’ or of distinctions akin to that made by Rawls between natural duties and duties of justice (1999)? Asking these types of questions of non-Western thought provides a focus for comparison and also helps to delineate the theoretical possibilities of the normative cosmopolitan framework that can embed hermeneutical comparative enquiry into cosmopolitan universalism. 19
However, an engaged CPT, as March argued, requires more still. In the context of the cosmopolitan agenda cross cultural comparison requires evaluation of the compatibility and possibilities for reconciliation between different answers to these questions. Thus a more ambitious cosmopolitan CPT may also be required to evaluate the coherence and persuasiveness of the answers provided in different traditions and by different thinkers.
Harm
Beyond this preliminary undertaking the further task is to enquire into the content, coherence and reconcilability of specific values and ethical frameworks. Linklater argues that cosmopolitanism raises the prospect of higher degrees of universalism regarding a commitment to reduce human suffering everywhere (2011). The reduction of unnecessary human suffering includes investigation into the question of the moral permissibility of certain types of harm. As a result, a central task of cosmopolitan enquiry is to examine the prospects for a global harm ethics. The harm principle ‘means that to impose a harm upon someone is to treat them without moral respect or to exclude them from the realm of obligation. [] … expresses the primary cosmopolitan commitment to equality and friendship for the world. If we wish to treat ‘outsiders’ as equals we must attempt to avoid harming them’ (2008:195). This requires seeking to defend and construct a moral defense of the principle of harm minimisation and its universality even if disagreements exist about the specifics of what constitutes a harm.
In this account of cosmopolitanism, the defense of moral universalism is concerned first with reducing harms between political communities before developing robust accounts of positive duties favoured by contemporary liberal accounts of global justice. This line of enquiry identifies cosmopolitanism less with substantive conceptions of justice or the good life, including positive duties of beneficence, and more with concerns regarding negative duties. 20 In contrast to Rawlsian approaches which assume a reflective equilibrium of shared background values, or human rights doctrines which articulate an idealised human individual, a focus on harm reduction assumes only that people everywhere have an interest in avoiding certain forms of harm. Linklater’s conclusion is that cosmopolitanism is most likely to develop if different groups support universalising the ‘disposition to abstain from (deliberate, unjustified) maleficence’, as well as promoting efforts to ensure that no one is ‘excluded’ from the scope of moral consideration (Linklater, 2011: 86). The advantage of this focus is that duties to refrain from harming are more likely to be able to be agreed upon by adherents of different normative starting points and form the basis of a more viable cosmopolitanism.
The age of globalisation foregrounds harms associated with everyday activities of states and their citizens. Recognition of transboundary harms presents an opportunity for the development of cosmopolitan principles that may be applied in the presence of pluralism and absence of a thick homogenous community. (Shapcott, 2008; 2010) a harm-focused defense of cosmopolitanism provides a possible plausible universal that is consistent with high degrees of cultural diversity and communal political autonomy while speaking to the needs of a time of increased interdependence. The principle of communal autonomy and the preservation of plural conceptions of the good are both consistent with a commitment to reducing harms to outsiders. A cosmopolitan harm principle minimally claims as Shue argued, ‘every nation ought generally to avoid producing harm outside its territory’ (1981 115). In accepting such an obligation not to ‘export’ harm states and their citizens recognise obligations to outsiders while retaining their self-determining capacities.
A further advantage of the harm principle is that it holds out a ‘thin’ basis for a universalism that may be derived from a number of sources with the least number of assumptions regarding content. It is different from global egalitarianism both in its substantive ambition and content but also in terms of its assumptions regarding its own universal applicability. It differs from Kantian and Habermasian thought also in that it seeks less transcendental (or quasi-transcendental) or metaphysical grounding for its universalism and ascribes fewer qualities to the human agents to whom it applies. It remains abstract but without the idealisation common to other approaches. 21 It does not base its universalism upon ‘thick’ assumptions but rather upon enquiry into posited common interests in freedom from harm to self.
The task for any defence of a cosmopolitan harm principle is to seek to expand cross cultural agreement on the meaning of unnecessary suffering and the desirability of transboundary harm minimisation. However, amongst the criticisms made of the harm principle is its definitional imprecision. What constitutes a harm and what sorts of harm are permissible or appropriate is likely to differ across cultures and this is likely to be reflected in political and moral thought. Therefore, it follows that the construction of a global harm ethic requires cross-cultural investigation into the meaning of harm or its equivalents. Such an enquiry thus needs to add investigation into the meaning of what is harmful to the question of who can be harmed. For example, Linklater (2009) points out that modernity in the West has been accompanied by a rejection of justifications of ‘sacred pain’ and an emphasis on reducing physical and psychological harm and cruelty but this rejection may not be shared universally. Understanding different harm conventions necessarily requires the task that March asked of CPT: understanding and engaging with the different definitions of harm and different vocabularies of justification, the very terms in which things are or are not justified.
For example, first encounters between Europeans and residents of the areas around Port Jackson illustrate the contextual nature of harm. While the English noted with alarm the casual and severe violence amongst the original inhabitants, especially between men and women, these same locals expressed ‘disgust and terror’ at the European practice of flogging (Flannery, 1996). While both experiences of violence were harmful they were understood by their perpetrators as justifiable in their own cultural terms. The social meaning of violence was different in each case and as such so was the justifiability of associated harm. Flogging was seen as a civilised act by the British and a necessary tool in correcting aberrant behaviour. Such a framework was not available to the locals who may have understood violent punishment in terms of retribution and not ‘correction’. Thus, value conflict often arises because what counts as a justifiable reason in one view may not count as such in another if its basis of justification is doubted or not understood. In this way, an appropriate question for a CPT of cosmopolitanism is ‘how do different traditions and thinkers understand the nature of permissible harms, and?’
This mode of enquiry fits well with another: the dialogical component of CPT. In agreement with CPT, critical, as distinct from liberal, cosmopolitanism employs and advocates a dialogical perspective as intrinsic to any plausible notion of universality (Linklater, 1998). Because, as Delanty puts it, ‘The key underlying characteristic of cosmopolitanism is a reflexive condition in which the perspective of others is incorporated into one’s own identity, interests or orientation in the world’ (2014: 634), dialogical engagement with other perspectives is core to cosmopolitanism. This leads to the recognition that exclusion from dialogue regarding one’s interests is an unjustifiable harm (Linklater, 1998) therefore ‘In order to define any particular substantive concept of harm, a task of translation, dialogue and engagement between those who are said to be harming and those who are said to be harmed is necessary so as to assess the exact nature of the harm being committed’ (Shapcott, 2008: 200). Consequently a dialogical approach is intrinsic to the search for a cosmopolitan harm principle likely to secure universal consent.
Addressing these issues demonstrates that the skills and sensitivities appropriate to CPT are essential to the cosmopolitan harm project. According to Linklater, there is not only a prima facie universal human interest in not being subject to unjustifiable forms of harm or unnecessary suffering but also evidence that ‘major world religions have concurred on the ethical importance of a duty of non-injury. Some version of the harm principle is evident not only in Jainism and the Christian Decalogue … but (also) in many Hindu Confucian and Islamic texts … ’ (2011: 84). While such precepts may not be directly equivalent to the notion of harm developed in European liberalism they nonetheless provide the basis for comparative work. However such a claim clearly requires substantiation and further defense. An important part of any such defense would draw upon CPT.
Of course, in beginning with a specific concept such as ‘harm’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’ the danger is that ‘foreign’ concerns can be read into the material being studied. This is the danger associated with what Delanty has called ‘post-Eurocentric liberal cosmopolitanism’ which is ‘an attempt to distance cosmopolitanism from its Eurocentric traditions by representing non-European cultural traditions within a system of thought created by Europe’ (2014: 380). To be sure there is a superficial resemblance, cosmopolitanism is an established research agenda that sets out terms of enquiry from within an established Eurocentric framework. The more important question is whether the enquiry into harm can engage with non-Western thought on its own terms while still maintaining a coherent agenda. The key advantage of bringing CPT to bear on these concerns is precisely to overcome the dangers inherent in seeking to identify what we already know in that we seek to understand. A CPT approach keeps such dilemmas and tendencies in mind when reading foreign texts and is essential to countering them. As Godrej argues, CPT provides a method of reading that is dialogical and ‘transgressive, hybridising, mindful of tradition’ (2011 16). Thus, CPT begins with the hermeneutic task of seeking to understand others on their terms, and then pursuing the act of contrast, interpretation and translation.
It is important to bear in mind in this type of questioning that the task is not mere retrieval but also dialogue and engagement in which neither participant remains immune from change. Thus, enquiry also looks for resources that may favour further dialogue and higher levels of inclusion. It highlights points where blockages to agreement may exist but also points to where further communication may be needed. The goal is not, as is often suggested, to identify hidden universalism in other beliefs, that is to necessarily identify where we already agree, because that assumes we do. Nor is the task in the first instance to persuade others or ourselves of how traditions might be reconciled with liberalism, nor even about more effective practice of conversion or persuasion. 22 It is closer to what Redmond, following Pannikar, calls homeomorphic enquiry where concepts and words can neither be said to be analogous nor exactly equivalent, they are homeomorphic in that ‘they perform a certain type of respectively corresponding function in the two different traditions’ (Redmond, 2001: 83) such as God in Christianity and Dharma in Hinduism. The task is distinct from ‘finding’ an already existing but unseen agreement, to focus on identifying the possibilities for a new horizon of shared understandings, of the nature and scope of unacceptable harms. This is above all a dialogical approach, one aspect of which is the contributing to possible new meanings.
In sum, the project requires at least two levels of dialogic engagement first explores the proposition that some form of harm principle may be universalisable by identifying cross cultural equivalents. This requires a philosophical dialogue of the type advocated by Dallmayr but informed by a substantive agenda second explores the meaning of harm in specific contexts of interaction and harm. Since dialogue about harm is both a theoretical and practical task for cosmopolitanism, the normative cosmopolitan harm principle can provide an agenda within which CPT can undertake meaningful comparison and engaged research while at the same time having its claims to universalism rigorously examined.
Pursing these questions requires the hermeneutic skills and sensibility of CPT, while at the same time CPT can bring focus and applicability to the task of broadening the epistemic base of political theory by hitching its wagon (however provisionally or instrumentally) to the thin cosmopolitan agenda of the cosmopolitan harm convention. Such hitching does not require CPT practitioners to necessarily subscribe to or endorse the normative cosmopolitan vision. The case that has been made here is that the cosmopolitan agenda is synergistically compatible with the stated CPT agenda of epistemic inclusion and that it can provide a suitable epistemic warrant for further engaged exercises in comparative work.
Conclusion
Cosmopolitanism holds forth the possibility of moral universalism as a desirable and defensible goal. The political normative agenda of cosmopolitanism is needed in order to avoid CPT becoming an exercise in retrieval only.
One of the advantages of CPT is that it can help to identify whether different claims can be persuasive cross-culturally or whether they have limited purchase beyond their origins. Such a task is, of course, not a substitute for the practical engagement of real people which may or may not lead to an overlapping consensus or a common horizon, but it does perform the crucial task of assessing whether cosmopolitanism’s universal aspirations are shared or incompatible with the moral and ethical traditions of those outside its standard canon of thought. For instance, when proposals for global justice are advanced that are derived entirely from within one tradition, such as Rawlsian liberalism, the hard work of CPT is necessary to investigate whether such proposals could resonate beyond their origins. If such resonance is missing or minimal then the appeal of such proposals will be minimal and we may have to look elsewhere for an account of global justice. This is the work of an engaged CPT examining proposals for social projects that affect people everywhere.
This article has set out the case for a mutual cross-fertilisation of normative cosmopolitan thought and the field of CPT. Its argument has been that both are necessary to the other if their primary claims to are warranted. CPT needs coherence about what distinguishes its enterprise and makes it truly comparative across traditions and normative cosmopolitanism needs transcultural validation of its normative ideal of human community and moral universality. The cosmopolitan agenda exploring comparative views of inclusion and exclusion and universality in the context of a global harm principle provides the field in which the necessary cross fertilisation can occur.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following for their insights and comments on earlier versions of this paper; Kath Gelber, Ryan Walters, Ian Hall, Kim Hutchings and in particular Richard Beardsworth for his detailed and insightful comments and encouragement.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.