ABSTRACT
The idea of the ‘cosmopolitan’ as being a ‘citizen of the world’ rather than of particular states carries a European birthmark. It originated in the classical era Europe of the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers and thus emerged against the background of Hellenic and Roman versions of a cross-European society and culture. In the twenty-first century the concept has begun to be used to help understand the contemporary characteristics of the cross-European social formation which is beginning to be created by and as the European Union (EU). In the two millennia which intervened between then and now various different theories and/or practices of cosmopolitanism came andwent in Europe, leaving a variety of intellectual, traditional and institutional legacies, some of which can be held to form the cultural and social basis on which the EU builds and promotes its particular versions of Europeanisation and cosmopolitanism. This chapter aims to explore some of these.
