Part II: The Changing Fortunes of Cosmopolitanism: Demos, Cosmos, and Globus. From the Hermeneutics of Suspicion to Reconstructing Cosmopolitan Law

The intense interest in cosmopolitanism in the social and political sciences, cultural and legal studies dates back to the last two decades of the twentieth century. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany, and the extension of the European Union to east and central European countries formerly under Communist rule, the Kantian cosmopolitan ideal of uniting diverse countries under the rule of law, respect for human rights and the free exchange of goods and services seemed to come alive. By the beginning of the new century, cosmopolitanism had fallen on hard times. This lecture series defended cosmopolitanism from below by engaging with the postcolonial critiques of Kantian thought, voiced by James Tully, Inez Valdez, Sylvia Wynter and Walter Mignolo.

Seyla Benhabib began the second lecture with the Caribbean critic, Sylvia Wynter, whose work pushes us towards a reconsideration of the modernist project in the direction of a less Eurocentric and more global vision. She then turned to the work of a group of scholars named TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law), whose reconstructive contributions to international law enable us to leave behind “the hermeneutics of suspicion” (Paul Ricoeur) towards a more cosmopolitan dimension, very much along the lines of the distinction envisaged by Kant between Völkerrecht and kosmopolitisches Recht. Benhabib distinguished between liberal nationalism, liberal internationalism, neo-liberal globalism and cosmopolitanism from below.

Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University. She is currently Scholar in Residence at Columbia Law School and Professor Adjunct of Law, where she teaches legal and political theory as well as a course on refugee, migration and citizenship law in comparative perspective. She also holds appointments in Columbia University’s Center for Contemporary Critical Thought and the Department of Philosophy. Professor Benhabib is the author of numerous publications, including: Exile, Statelessness, and Migration. Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (2018), Another Cosmopolitanism (2006), The Claims of Culture (2003), and The Rights of Others (2004). She is currently working on a book called At the Margins of the Modern State. Critical Theory and the Law (Forthcoming with Polity Press). Her work has been translated into twelve languages. Professor Benhabib has previously taught at the New School for Social Research and Harvard Universities, where she was Director of Harvard University’s Program for Degrees in Social Studies. Throughout her professorial career, she has held many prestigious visiting professorships including the Spinoza Chair in Amsterdam (2001), the Gauss Lectures at Princeton (1998), the John Seeley Memorial Lectures (Cambridge University, 2002), and the Tanner Lectures (Berkeley, 2004). Professor Benhabib is the recipient of the Ernst Bloch prize (2009), the Leopold Lucas Prize (2012), and the Meister Eckhart Prize (2014). Currently, Seyla Benhabib is Albert Hirschman Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Insititut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, IWM) in Vienna.

IWM Rector Misha Glenny delivered the welcome address and introduced the speaker.

Recordings of all three lectures in the series are available on our YouTube channel.