Some comments on cosmopolitanism and Europe

Robert Holton

pp. 25-43

in: Roland Robertson, Anne S. Krossa (eds), European cosmopolitanism in question, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

This chapter takes a critical look at the conventional identification of cosmopolitanism with Europe. Seen both as a symbolic entity with a long, continuous history, and as a set of cross-border institutions, Europe may be linked with conventional cosmopolitan ideals of world peace, intercultural tolerance and the global legal regulation of social life. Thus the draft European Constitution under discussion in the early twenty-first century spoke of "the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which developed universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law" (cited in Delanty, 2005: 406). Similar emphases are also very prominent in the scholarly literature, including recent work by the influential social theorist Ulrich Beck and his associates (see especially Beck, 2006; Beck and Grande, 2006). Here cosmopolitanism is not simply a major tradition in European social thought, but also the essential key to unlocking a new vision and set of principles for the renewal of the European political project.

Cited authors

Beck Ulrich