ABSTRACT
When invited to send a contribution to the Routledge Handbook of Cosmopolitan Studies I was surprised by the title. I never thought that ‘cosmopolitanism’ was a field of study. Although I do not follow Immanuel Kant’s cosmopolitan legacies, I do take seriously the fact that for Kant ‘cosmopolitanism’ was not an object or something to be studied but a project to be realized, although with the clear idea that what counts is the process, the orientation, and not the point of arrival. For we do now know in what direction we are going but do not know where we going to arrive. Cosmopolitanism, as I analyzed here, was since Kant and during its revival in the 1990s a disputed political project. I argue here for de-colonial cosmopolitanism as an option parallel in friendship sometimes and contention in others, with other co-existing options: liberal cosmopolitanism, Marxist cosmopolitanism, and postmodern cosmopolitanism.
