Rooted Cosmopolitanism

Stalin called Jews rootless cosmopolitans. I prefer the ideal of the rooted cosmopolitan:
A rooted cosmopolitanism will not promise the relative peace of violence suppressed and controlled--a promise that liberal modernity has utterly failed to fulfill--for it knows that the human heart lusts more for dominion than truth, more for power than for righteousness. But against the cool, disengaged, and manipulative ethos of atomistic universalism, it can promise to meet others in the full bloom of their loves and in the full force of their loyalties. It lets men draw their swords. I have always thought that taking a man's sword seriously and meeting his convictions with a forceful vigor of one's own is the essence of cosmopolitanism: respect.

Rooted cosmopolitanism has a distinguished pedigree:

Herder and Hegel, for example, saw that the concreteness of our historical identities was precisely the medium in which we found and expressed our universal humanity. Later figures such as von Ranke and Mommsen carried forward the humanistic project of historical scholarship: we meet and realize a fuller humanity in and through our immersion in historical particularity. There were many differences in detail, but the general picture remains constant. We get closer to the truth as we lift ourselves out of the limitations of our immediate cultural context--but (and this is what makes the nineteenth-century historical rebellion against the Enlightenment so important) the drive toward transcendence emerges out of very dynamism and genius of historical and cultural particularity itself.

One of the first rooted cosmopolitans was the Hellenist Jewish philosopher Philo, who attended the Alexandrian gymnasium as well as the synagogue, and studied Plato as well as the prophets. Between the melting poles of the Marxists and the Haredi, his is a moderate (and quintessentially Mediterranean) climate to inhabit.

Comments

  1. Ernest MirallesAugust 5, 2009 at 9:27 PM

    As Barcelonan I should admit that a certain part of cosmopolitism consist to know other cultures and to share the same urban space, but as well as barcelonan must say that Barcelona will always be the reference for my policultural knowledge & as this sunny city full of colour and design is my home, I can wander all over the world, being a barcelonan. Roots don't deny cosmopolitism, on the contrary, it strengthens your wise attitude towards difference.

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