Cosmopolitanism: A plausible political project

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism is usually defended on a moral basis. Because of that, it seems to be available only for political moralists. In this paper, we propose a non-moralist foundation for cosmopolitanism rooted in the metapolitical framework provided by political minimalism. This framework articulates a distinction between ethics and politics on the one hand, and between politics and metapolitics on the other. Through this lens, we argue that cosmopolitanism should be understood as a political normative position, rather than an ethical, metaethical, or metapolitical thesis. In addition, political minimalism allows us to provide a novel argument in favour of cosmopolitanism by conceptualizing the global political community in a way that avoids the utopianism often associated with other conceptions of cosmopolitanism, thereby strengthening its overall plausibility.