The Cosmopolitan Imaginary (ARTS90037)

Cosmopolitanism is an ideal that has persisted in different forms throughout many civilizations. It has been influential in anthropology, art history, political theory and cultural studies. More recently, there has been an attempt to relate this concept to non-Western theories of universalism, belonging and humanitarian philosophy. In this subject there will be a strong focus on the Classical and Hellenistic philosophers the Stoics – that represented a radical vision of equality. They proposed a notion of an ideal state – a Republic that would be populated by sages. The status of sage was open to all irrespective of race, class or gender. In this imaginary Republic a cosmic city was envisaged of unrestricted citizenship and in which the regulative institutions will have withered away. These simple propositions have also earned them the epithet that they were the first to conceive of a cosmopolitan worldview. Most surveys of the history of the concept of cosmopolitanism start with a dutiful acknowledgement of the Stoics. It will then leap forward to the Enlightenment accounts of cosmopolitanism and Kant, and his enduring influence on contemporary theorists such as Habermas and Derrida. Finally, it will take a wider optic, and address a range of Chinese and Japanese scholars that can provide alternative traditions of cosmopolitan thinking.