Political Community and Cosmopolitan Responsibility

Abstract

This chapter investigates the social and political forces that have encouraged critical deliberations on the state’s immanent cosmopolitan possibilities over approximately the last three decades. It shows how expanding webs of human interdependence have confronted modern peoples with the problem of whether they can undergo the transition from national to post-national perspectives as part of their attunement to the realities of rapid, largely unplanned, and unpredictable global change which have created new opportunities for harming distant strangers. The inquiry considers the challenges in constructing compelling public philosophies (not least in the context of national-populist revolts) that can harmonize traditional state obligations to citizens with demanding responsibilities to other peoples, which are firmly embedded in cosmopolitan law.