ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book suggests that the cosmopolitan tradition of moral and political thought historically has sought to embody cultivation of imaginative powers and that such a cultivation of imaginative powers is sorely needed by international political theory and practice today. Cosmopolitanism provides a fundamentally different normative focus to international political theory than do liberal internationalism and, especially, realism, by placing individual human beings at the centre of global politics. The human rights norms embodied in the global human rights regime have contributed to the reshaping of states' behaviours and expectations, thereby helping to constructively change the context and content of global politics in a broadly cosmopolitan direction. The standard criticism frequently directed at cosmopolitan principles of morality and justice is that these principles are naïvely utopian in that they fail to correspond to political reality and are incapable of implementation.
