ABSTRACT

Luftmenschen was a favourite slur of the Nazis: the people of the air were the rootless; those who would not or could not take root. As a paean to Luftmenschlichkeit the chapter argues for an appreciation and an education of 'global guesthood'. It looks to movement and multiplicity, too, as ideal ways to measure just procedures of state: to formulate ideas of justice and just relations between human beings. Justice entails ensuring the free movement that is fundamental to human being and becoming, to its potential for multiplicity. Openness is advanced as a social value and an analytical value alike. This chapter takes forward an Enlightenment vision of individual freedom, civilitude and cosmopolitanism; social and cultural multiplicity is understood as a consequence of individual creativity. It looks to the city as a site where an embodiment of global guesthood might be secured and enshrined.