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Chapter 9 IfYou Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan JEREMY RABKIN As a political doctrine, cosmopolitanism seems to have two distinct roots. One is dedication to equality. As David Held has put it, “the first principle” of cosmopolitan morality “is that the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human beings, not states or other particular forms of human association. Humankind belongs to a single moral realm in which each person is regarded as equally worthy of respect and consideration.” Apart from dedication to equality, there is a second impulse: disdain for the particular against the universal, the contingent against the systematic. As Harry Brighouse has put it, “National membership is for the most part morally arbitrary. We did not choose our nationality from a range of serious options anymore than we chose our race or sex or the class positions of our parents.” Christine Sypnowich argues, in a similar vein, that egalitarian reasoning should apply even more in international policy than in national policy because the differences between countries seem so morally arbitrary, from an individual perspective: “In the context of a single, affluent national polity, the idea that my ability to be wealthy or poor is the unmerited byproduct of a ‘natural lottery’ is vulnerable to a variety of objections derived from concepts of free will, desert and responsibility. But to be born in a poorly governed drought-stricken country as opposed to an affluent liberal democracy truly does seem to be a matter of plum bad luck.” At some level, these two concerns may seem not only closely related but mutually reinforcing: if one views distinctions between fellow citizens and outsiders as arbitrary, then it will seem morally obligatory to treat people in both categories equally—or rearrange the world so that their differences no If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan 167 longer have much consequence. There is an obvious problem, however. Most people prefer what is familiar or shared; so they prefer fellow citizens (or fellow nationals) to outsiders. To insist on equality across national boundaries is to give priority to the cosmopolitanism of a relatively small minority. That does not seem very egalitarian. But perhaps that is another appeal of cosmopolitanism for those who regard it as a political imperative. Cosmopolitanism combines the warm glow of egalitarian fellow-feeling—embracing the whole world, as it does—with the secret satisfaction of belonging to an enlightened elite. Socialism once offered a similar attraction to many people: in the name of equality, it empowered an elite of planners, administrators, and official ideologists to tell everyone else how to live. Socialism claimed unheard-of concentrations of political authority with incredible claims to universal benevolence. Perhaps that is why academic advocacy for “cosmopolitanism” only emerged as a broad trend after the collapse of communism, when egalitarian impulses (and claims to special authority) needed a new outlet. Like socialism, cosmopolitanism presents itself as an extension or perfection of liberalism. Starting from the liberal principles of equality and impartiality, cosmopolitanism promises to extend equality beyond the arbitrariness of national attachments, much as socialism promised to extend equality beyond the arbitrary limitations of private ownership. It is true and telling that classical liberalism—the outlook, for example, of the American Founders or the classic works on natural law (in its Enlightenment version)—recognized certain claims of generalized humanity. So, for example, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government holds that by “the Law of Nature” everyone “is bound to preserve himself . . . and so by the like reason . . . ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of Mankind” but only “when his own Preservation comes not in competition” (para. 6). When there is “injury” to a “member” of an established commonwealth by “those that are out of it,” the “whole community . . . engages in the reparation of it” because the community as a whole retains the primal right to give priority to its own preservation (para. 145). Montesquieu summed up the “law of nations ” in a more genial and perhaps more accommodating spirit: “Different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.” The Federalist opens with the admonition that the failure of the new American Constitution would “deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.” Therefore, “all considerate and good men” should feel “solicitude” for its success, adding “the inducements of...

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