ABSTRACT
Humanity is at one and the same time an ethical ideal and a concrete reality – an ethical ideal that reaches beyond the nation-state, a concrete reality because various interlocking processes – economic, political, cultural, and environmental – now affect humanity as a whole. Those processes demand new forms of global coordination and novel patterns of self-restraint so that people are attuned to the needs and interests of distant strangers, now bound together to an unprecedented extent. Cosmopolitanism can be described in similar terms. It has often been dismissed as a utopian ideal that is destined to fail because of rivalries between nation-states. But it is a social reality because many groups including nongovernmental organizations that demand greater care for the environment support three of its fundamental principles: the belief that all people have equal moral standing; the conviction that the claims that are advanced in the interests of humanity may have greater ethical force than appeals that are designed to promote the welfare of any particular nation-state; and the idea that such moral commitments should not just influence the conduct of states, international governmental and non-governmental organizations, and ‘world citizens’ but be embodied in global institutions that defend the interests that current and future generations have in, inter alia, preventing further environmental damage. That web of ideas challenges traditional assumptions that it is legitimate to privilege the interests of national citizens over the well-being of those who happen to live in other societies; it derives support from the understanding that such customs have become dysfunctional and dangerous in the context of rising levels of human interconnectedness; and it provides the foundations for a new phase of what has been called ‘the civilizing process’ – hence the following emphasis on the global civilizing role of cosmopolitanism.
