18 formation, renewal and strength4. To found this Europe – so the message – it was not a matter of finding a site, but rather of creating one. “Europe is something that has to be made… constructed. And it requires a lot of inventiveness… and work… that never ends.”5 Today, the project seems to have been betrayed ON THE IDEA OF COSMOPOLITANISM and lost6, and the EU is in the largest crisis since its founding. The cosmopolitan idea is based on a concept of a unified humaBy Christina Thürmer-Rohr nity in a world that can give everyone a home beyond borders. It intends to join all humanity under the principle of affection7 and a concept of reason that all people share while combining human potential with the world’s multiplicity: people as citizens of the world and simultaneously as strangers who can In November 1948, the UN General Assembly was interrupted lay claim to an actual and mental right to reside and remain by the former American bomber pilot Garry Davis. He called while being foreign and at home everywhere at the same time. for a world constitution that would strengthen the UN and It’s an old story: thus Socrates, when asked where his home is, increase the chance for global peace. As a result, a supporanswered: “not: Athens, but rather: the world”. He devotes “his ters’ committee was formed; members included Einstein and participation… to all of humanity, not like us who only see what Camus, among others. A world citizen registry was opened, is directly in front of our eyes”8. The most-cited author in the formulation of the German Federal Republic’s Basic Law, the world IDs were designed, world marriage certificates, world cosmopolitan Montesquieu, wrote the famous phrase in the passports. Today, you can order a World Passport on the internet 17th century: for less than 100 dollars; approximately “If I knew something useful to me two million people have one. One should “The cosmopolitan idea and harmful to my family, I should put also remember the second UN Geneis based on a concept it out of my mind. If I knew something ral Secretary, the cosmopolitician Dag of a unified humanity useful to my family and not to my counHammarskjöld, who had ensured that the in a world that can give try, I should try to forget it. If I knew UNO was granted a maximum of trust everyone a home beyond something useful to my country and in the 1950s and whose objective was the borders.” harmful to Europe, or useful to Europe creation of ethics for humanity that would and harmful to the human race, I should not serve national governments but consider it a crime.”9 rather the spirit of the UN Charter. He was In this sense, cosmopolitanism is a metaphor for polimurdered in 1961. tical thought with reference to the world10: the ideal of over Cosmopolitanism – understood to be a “responsibi1 or an “educational program to create coming divisive categories such as race, religion, background lity as a world citizen” open-mindedness for the world”2 – is an age-old human desire3 and nation, of taking the stigma away from being foreign, of that had been formulated in Greek classics and has repea“treating the guest… as a potential citizen”11, of having a vision tedly achieved new appeal over the course of 2000 years. The of permeable borders, active interest in understanding one cosmopolitan idea reaches back to the myth of the Phoenician another and justice that does not end at state boundaries. CosKing’s daughter called Europa. Transformed into a white bull, mopolitanism means, as Seyla Benhabib writes, “recognizing Zeus transported her from the country of her home, today’s that people are moral persons who… (have) rights that they do Lebanon and Syria, to Crete. Whether seduced or kidnapped, not attain as state citizens or members of an ethnic group, but the myth symbolizes the crossing of borders between God rather simply claim as people”12 The idea of the unity and unlimited access to the and man, countries and parts of the world… and the King’s world, of common affection and a simultaneous ability to be daughter Europa had a life between different origins, a life of reasonable, immediately brought about its antithesis: the call meeting and mixing. And this entire narrative was not told as a loss, but rather as a kind of love story, an expression of trans- for borders and the emphasis on differences that didn’t just
FOREIGNERS, OTHERS, ENEMIES
JAHRBUCH ITI YEARBOOK utopien
1.
1
Seyla Benhabib: Kosmopolitismus und Demokratie. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, no.5, 2009.
2
Ulrich Beck, Interview
3
Peter Coulmas: Weltbürger – Geschichte einer Menschheitssehnsucht. Reinbek near Hamburg 1990.
4
Ulrich Beck / Edgar Grande: Das kosmopolitische Europa. Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 392.
5
Zygmunt Bauman: Europa – ein unvollendetes Abenteuer. Hamburg 2015, p. 24.
6
Ulrike Guérot: Warum Europa eine Republik werden muss – Eine politische Utopie. Bonn 2016, p. 19.
7
Julia Kristeva: Fremde sind wir uns selbst. Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 66.
8
Michel Montaigne: Essais (Auswahl): Über die Kindererziehung. Zürich 1985, p. 195.
9
Montesquieu: Mes pensées, zit. in: Julia Kristeva: Fremde sind wir uns selbst, Ibid, p. 142.
10 Julia Kristeva: Fremde sind wir uns selbst. Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 143. 11 Seyla Benhabib: Kosmopolitismus und Demokratie, Ibid. 12 Seyla Benhabib: Kosmopolitismus und Demokratie ...