1.3. Cosmopolitism and the question of universality in
plurality
Cosmopolitism is coined from two Greek words: cosmos
which means the world, the physical universe and polis which means
city. From this etymology, we can deduce that cosmopolitism is the belief that
one's city is everywhere in the world. This is clearer in stoic philosophy
where the universal citizenship is declared by the stoic philosophers.
According to them, we are all citizens of the world, the universe is our
fatherland. Cosmopolitism lays emphasis on the disregard of national or local
peculiarities or prejudices.
The philosophy of stoicism originated in Greece, and was based
on the order of the universe. Nature to the stoics, the universe, was a
precisely ordered cosmos. Stoics taught that there is an order behind all the
evident confusion of the universe. Man's purpose was to acquire order within
the universe; harmonizing himself with the universal order. Within this notion
of harmonizing lies wisdom and sin resides in resisting the natural order or
nature. The stoics also tell of a rational plan in nature; our role is to live
in accord with this plan. The natural order is filled with divinity and all
things possess a divine nature. This natural order is god, and thus the
universe is god; the Greek and roman pathos were simply beliefs forged by
superstition. The stoics also had a great indifference towards life, in the
regard that the natural plan cannot be changed. This attitude made stoic's
recluse from fame, and opposed to seeking it.
One fundamental belief stoics held is the universal community
of mankind. They held that a political community is nothing more than its laws'
borders, since the natural
25 laws are universally imposed; a universal political
community existed in which all men share membership. This interpretation is
generally regarded as the early stoic stage, which had yet to experience little
roman influence. Upon roman adoption, stoicism went through a Romanizing
period; an altering of the philosophy to better integrate into roman
mainstream.
It is important to note that Cicero loses sight of the
international community which Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus taught. Cicero
tries to link the universal community of mankind within the borders of roman
political thought. This composite state expressed in Scipio by Cicero, is an
ideal Rome of the past. The Rex was the royal element; the senate was the
aristocratic influence; the plebs and patricians became the deciding people. By
giving this blueprint of the ideal society, Cicero attempted to answer the
stoic doctrine of the universal community of mankind. Cicero addressed the
pragmatic problems faced by the universal community, by giving it armies,
judges and powers; literally giving the community of mankind the powers it
lacked through Rome. But what makes this attempt unattainable is the notion of
Rome; Rome was a dividing agent. Rome was the polity that divides people; early
stoics understood that tradition and politics divide people. Brotherhood of man
is not the assimilation of people into Roman mainstream, but in reality the
assimilation of Rome into the universal community. Cicero does not understand
the spirit in which the universal community of mankind was thought.
It is, indeed, my judgment, opinion, and conviction that
of all forms of government there is none which for organizing, distribution of
power, and respect for authority is to be compared with that constitution which
our fathers received from their ancestors and have bequeathed to us (...) The
roman commonwealth will be the model; and to it shall apply, if I can, all that
I must say about the perfect state.I
Clearly, Cicero identifies the perfect State with Rome; he
suggested that Rome was the closest thing to such an aspiration. The perfect
State was the expression and
I Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Commonwealth,
New York, I929, pp. I5I-I52.
embodiment of the universal community of mankind, to link Rome
with the ideal State; was to link Rome with the universal community. The early
stoics held that a specific community was nothing more than its laws borders.
Thus, arises the notion of a universal community, since we are all under the
natural law imposed by the universe. The fundamental problem lies in that Rome
could not realistically impose the natural law. Rome could simply impose laws
of convention, which it could pass as natural law. This brought about a belief
in dual citizenship; one roman, the other universal. But Cicero believed that
Rome was the closest manifestation of the common community of man. A very clear
bias was present, Cicero forced Roman sentiment on stoic thought; thereby
changing it into something less grandiose than the stoics meant by universal
citizenship.
With the assertion that the universe is our fatherland and
that we are citizens of the world, we can deduce that the movement of all
-Panmobilism- people in the universe should aim at the attainment of happiness.
Men should be free to move in the universe, their fatherland and they should
feel at home wherever they find themselves because external representations
such as war, hunger, and poverty and so on, must not affect their inner self.
They should preserve their ataraxia at all time, at any place and in all
circumstances.
The concept of Cosmopolitism was considered in a special way
by Immanuel Kant's writings on the philosophy of history, and
particularly his political Project for a Perpetual Peace, in which he attempts
to come to grips with the consequences of the breakdown of the pre-modern
conception of the nation in order to outline the modern principles governing
the three levels of right: of the Rechtsstaat, a state based on the
rule of law; of the Völkerrecht, the people's right; and of the
so-called Weltburgerrecht, the "cosmopolitical right". The decisive
and perhaps disturbing idea that has to be demonstrated is that, in Kant's
modern political thought; there is no contradiction between nationalism and
cosmopolitism. Any interpretation of his thought that neglects this point would
lead to a misunderstanding of Kant's philosophical revolution.
In Kant's work, we find cosmopolitism in two domains. Kant is
first of all a moral cosmopolitan. Moral cosmopolitanism is the view that all
human beings are members of a single moral community, language, religion,
customs, and so on. Given that Kant defends the view that all human beings -
broader still, all rational beings - belong to a single moral community, and
that all humans are to be regarded as citizens of a supersensible moral world,
Kant is clearly a moral cosmopolitan. In the context of a moral theory, this
talk of world citizenship should be read analogically. It refers to membership
in a moral community, rather than to political citizenship in a transnational
state. The analogy between "citizens" in the moral world and political citizens
is that in both cases, the individuals so designated are free and equal
co-legislators in their respective communities. Kant also defends a political
version of cosmopolitanism. Two aspects of his political philosophy are
relevant here: his theory of the league of States and the doctrine of
cosmopolitan law. In his essay, Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of view (I784), he argues for a "cosmopolitan
situation", which would arise if states formed a federation "similar to a civil
commonwealth"I and submitted themselves to common laws and a common
authority to enforce these laws. He calls such a league a great political body
in which every member State receives its security and rights from a "united
power and from decisions in accordance with the laws of a united
will"2.
Teilhard de Chardin takes roots on the Heraclitean tradition
in order to develop a morality for humanity that will take into account the
points of divergences, the specificities and local peculiarities. Although
everything is in movement towards the Omega point, this movement does not aim
at destroying the differences among peoples but it aims at building a form of
conviviality, the civilization of the universal which is the panhuman
convergence. Panmobilism in Teilhardian humanism springs from his metaphysics
which is metaphysics of totality which will be applied to real men and
women.
I Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from
a Cosmopolitan Point of view (I784), London, VIII, 25. 2
Ibid., 24, 28.
CHAPTER TWO
TEILHARDIAN METAPHYSICS AND THE
EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Teilhard de Chardin's metaphysics is essentially metaphysics
of convergence and totality. According to him, at first sight, beings and their
destinies might seem to us to be scattered chaotically over the face of the
earth; but the more one reflects, with the help of all that science, philosophy
and religion can teach us, each in its own field, the more one comes to realize
that the world should be likened not to a bundle of elements artificially held
together, but rather to some organic system animated by a broad movement of
development which is proper to itself. In effect,
[...] the distribution of living forms is a phenomenon of
movement and dispersion. The lines are more numerous, they intersect less often
and further from us than we thought -- all the same, they exist and, towards
the base, they converge.'
As centuries go by, it seems that a comprehensive plan is indeed
being slowly carried out around us:
K 1l y a une affaire en train dans l'univers, un
résultat en jeu, que nous ne saurions mieux comparer qu'a une gestation
et a une naissance...Laborieusement, a travers et a la faveur de
l'activité humaine, se rassemble, se degage et s'épure la Terre
nouvelle. Non, nous ne sommes pas comparables aux elements d'un bouquet, mais
aux feuilles et aux fleurs d'un grand arbre, sur lequel tout apparaat en son
temps et a sa place, a la mesure et a la demande du Tout.
»2
For Teilhard de Chardin therefore, there is a dynamic structural
character of things and a temporal dimension of totality.
I Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The vision of the
past, London, I966, p. I6.
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymne de
l'univers, Paris, I96I, p. I5I. There is a situation that is taking place
in the universe, a phenomenon that can be likened to pregnancy and to the
giving-birth process. Arduously, through human activity, the new Earth is
gathering itself. We are not to be likened to the items of a flower pot, which
are gathered haphazardly; but to the leaves and flowers of a great tree, on
which everything appears at the right time and at the right place, according to
the measure and request of all the others.
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