Do cosmopolitan ethics and cosmopolitan democracy imply each other?

Carol C. Gould

pp. 153-166

in: Stanvan Hooft, Stan van Hooft, Wim Vandekerckhove (eds), Questioning cosmopolitanism, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

This paper addresses the interrelations between cosmopolitanism in ethics and in politics, and suggests that the way in which cosmopolitan ethics and cosmopolitan democracy imply each other is a function of the way both cosmopolitan ethics and democracy are interpreted. However, lest this seem to involve a mere semantic appeal to the definition of terms, there are in fact several interesting ways in which the two philosophical enterprises of cosmopolitan ethics and cosmopolitan democracy will be seen to mutually implicate each other, and some arguments for thinking that these two projects should move in tandem. Central to the argument will be the claim that there are two senses of universality that need to be incorporated within a cosmopolitan ethics: the abstract universality of human rights and the concrete universality of transnational solidarities that are the ground of democratic forms of governance.