ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Beck's theory of cosmopolitanisation fails in both its description of the facts of globalisation—national and religious divisions, in particular—and in its prescription for resolving those divisions. Globalisation is construed by Ulrich Beck as continuing the project initiated by the European Enlightenment. For Beck 'globalisation' and 'individualisation' constitute the latest stage in the liberation process initiated by the first Enlightenment. The second Enlightenment consists in the recognition of these phenomena—particularly looming global risk—as warrants for a Kuhnian paradigm shift in sociology: from 'methodological nationalism' to what he terms 'cosmopolitanisation'. Beck claims that cosmopolitanisation 'breaks with philosophical pedantry: there is no substantial founding principle for cosmopolitanisms such as a God-given order or natural law, or the common good, or reason'. Conceptions of a common good are commonly perceived as locking individuals into traditions that are closed to both internal and external challenge.
