Cosmopolitanism Forever
Roger Scruton (yes, Roger Scruton – he’s not always rhapsodizing about the joys of fox hunting) makes a good point.
The danger that democracy will degenerate into a tyranny of the majority was clearly expressed by Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill. Both of them recognised, however, that democracy is not some kind of new departure which repudiates all that had gone before, but a system of government built upon a specific legal inheritance. Barnett & Hilton rightly refer to the rule of law and individual rights as the first of their principles of democratic government. These were historical achievements of the European legal and judicial systems. They preceded democracy and have not been replicated everywhere. Until they are in place, the introduction of elections may merely let the majority loose upon whatever minority provokes its indignation.
There you go. The rule of law and individual rights are not an automatic or inherent part of democracy; they preceded it and have not been replicated everywhere – to put it mildly. Unless and until they are in place, democracy can simply let the majority impose a theocracy on everyone; unless and until they are in place, democracy can simply let the majority take away the rights of – a majority, to wit, women, as well as various minorities, to wit, various ethnic groups, heretics, infidels, gays, weirdos, nonconformists – you name it.
I don’t agree with all of what Scruters says next though.
The crucial point in all this is to recognise secular government as the sine qua non of democracy, and theocracy as its natural opponent. And secular government depends upon finding some other focus of communal identity and solidarity than religious faith…Our political culture is a culture of the home and the homeland, rather than the faith and the faithful. We are brought up – or were brought up until recently – on a conception of national history and national identity which promoted mutual trust and solidarity between neighbours…That kind of territorial patriotism has suffered erosion…from a culture of repudiation among intellectuals who, for a variety of reasons, not all of them bad, have tried to discard national loyalty and to replace it with the cosmopolitan ideals of the Enlightenment. The problem, as I see it, is that cosmopolitan ideals are the property of an elite and will never be shared by the mass of human kind.
I like the first sentence of that, but not the rest of it. Especially the last sentence. Why? Why will cosmopolitan ideals never be shared by the mass of human kind? How does he know, and why is it true? I don’t see it. He could be right, but it seems to me far from obvious that cosmopolitan ideals are inherently (as opposed to contingently) the property of an elite. And I don’t trust appeals to communal identity and solidarity. I see why they are appealing (and that appeal is probably why Scruton thinks cosmopolitan ideals are the property of an elite), but I don’t think that appeal should be trusted, or encouraged, or fetishized. No, I prefer Simon Blackburn’s take.
And as far as toasting some particular subset of humanity goes, I also wish people were not keen on separating themselves from others, keen on difference and symbols of tribalism. I don’t warm to badges of allegiance, flags, ostentatious signs of apartness, because I do not think they are good for the world.
Ditto. I can see that they promote solidarity and the like, but they do that at the cost of the opposite of solidarity toward everyone else, and that is too high a price to pay. Way too high. I think cosmopolitanism, however lukewarm it may be, is preferable to the hot bonds of solidarity plus hatred.
If you want to take a look at some hatred, you could check out Nick Cohen’s new website which has (in solitary splendour for the moment) his New Statesman article on anti-Semitism on the left. And what do you know – someone (anonymous, of course) obligingly ambled by and dropped a richly anti-semitic comment. As if to help Nick make his point. So helpful.
The either/or polarity between believing in an orchestrated worldwide conspiracy or disclaiming any possibility that bands of Jews act together in their shared ethnic interests is a strawman dichotomy. Everybody knows that Jewish power and influence are vastly disproportionate to their numbers in Britain and the USA, that they hold leadership positions in influential areas of public life, and that they frequently try to suppress criticism of their concerted actions by squealing about ‘antisemitism’. That does *not* make you an ‘antisemite’, only a realist about evolutionary psychology. You may still think that only Jews should be allowed to criticise other Jews in semi-privacy, but not much of the rest of the world is impressed by this double standard any longer. Jews are a rich, powerful little ethnic group which, like any other, acts to preserve itself and further its material interests, and can be devious in so doing. Big friggin’ deal, tell us something we couldn’t have guessed.
And so on. Staggering, isn’t it.
I think cosmopolitan ideals are all we can possibly hope for, the only possible alternative to this kind of dreck. They’d better not be the property of an elite.
NC’s Statesman article contains the allegation:
‘the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: “David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic”. ‘
It didn’t. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1592623,00.html
I wonder what other bits of it (aside from the characerisation of ‘Engage’ which I’ve noted already elsewhere on B&W) are also bollocks.
On a more positive note, I’d love to find someone selling t-shirts, badges and bumper stickers with ‘Rootless Cosmopolitan’ written on them. I’d buy.
I share your hope. But I am unable to conjure one example from history in which cosmopolitanism in the sense used here was not the “property” of an “elite”. The early stages of the French revolution? 1848? The Menshiviks? If so, they’re not very encouraging examples.
Surely the Enlightenment was the product of an elite. More particularly as to our own national origins, I hardly conceive Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, et al. as drawn from among the hoi polloi.
This is not to say I necessarily agree with “will never be shared by the mass of human kind”. But “have never” is likely right and it’s difficult to conceive just what might effect a change.
Jim
I’d love to find someone selling t-shirts, badges and bumper stickers with ‘Rootless Cosmopolitan’ written on them. I’d buy.
Ditto.
But I am unable to conjure one example from history in which cosmopolitanism in the sense used here was not the “property” of an “elite”.
Ginve that the production of the vast array of Enlightenment values was almost certainly an example of historical contingency, it doesn’t seem likely we’d see it reproduced elsewhere. That said, there may be more limited examples that reproduce pieces and parts of what’s good about it. Off the top of my head (and sans coffee, so be gentle), how about the medieval Middle East? Like in America, there was a substantial non-native population with a merchant economy, and they seemed to have some tolerance for diversity of religion.
That doesn’t get one very far, but it may suggest that the values of rootless cosmopolitanism have some internal connection with developed economies.
‘But I am unable to conjure one example from history in which cosmopolitanism in the sense used here was not the “property” of an “elite”.’
It’s my understanding (which of course could be wrong) that Sarajevo was pretty thoroughly cosmopolitan. Medieval Sicily was, for a time, and so was Spain, until it stopped.
But leaving that aside – I realize the basic point, but that’s exactly why I made the distinction between inherently and contingently. The fact that people have never done X does not necessarily mean that they never will. It could mean that, but it doesn’t necessarily. And assuming or claiming that it does mean that has been a favourite of conservatives through the ages. Scruton doesn’t give any argument or evidence – so, you may note, I asked a lot of questions – why is that true, how does he know? and the like. I don’t know that he’s wrong, but I don’t think his claim is self-evident.
Chris Williams writes:
>Nick Cohen’s Statesman article [on anti-semitism] contains the allegation: “the Guardian ran a web debate entitled: ‘David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen are enough to make a good man anti-Semitic’.”
>It didn’t. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1592623,00.html
>I wonder what other bits of it… are also bollocks.< Well, Cohen’s grasp of history is more than a little shaky. His contention that the “tenplate” for the modern (in contrast to traditional) form of anti-Semitism had its origins in conspiratorial explanations of power in reaction to the American and French revolutions strikes me pretty as dubious. In order to make his potted recent history consistent with this he shoehorns in whatever comes to hand regardless of the historical facts: “There is a chosen people: the Germans, the Italians or Spanish in classic fascism…” This is nonsense. Neither the Italians nor the Spanish during the Mussolini and Franco regimes respectively had notions that their respective nationalities were “chosen” people. http://www.nickcohen.net/
Sorry, that slightly mangled sentence above should have read:
‘His contention that the “tenplate” for
the modern (in contrast to traditional) form of anti-Semitism had its origins in conspiratorial explanations of power in reaction to the American and French revolutions strikes me as pretty dubious.’
OB “Why will cosmopolitan ideals never be shared by the mass of human kind? How does he know, and why is it true?”
OB, this is an interesting point. The idea of marker opinions as a status display arises in this very context. Ones position on racism, abortion, gun control and war are used both in a conventional sense to argue, but also as a moral status display.
They actually seem to have a strong group identity function; “I think rightly, just examine these opinions for proof. Therefore I am a better, more enlightened person than, say, that republican over there.”
In that viewpoint it is kind of definition-based truth; the cosmopolitan ideals will change to maintain the function of differentiating the ‘in’ person from the out, the common herd. This of course applies not so much to the leading edge of people actually seeking understanding, but to the ones who follow on their coattails.
Yes, true about status display – or what JS calls narrative of self. But that’s not necessarily a permanent situation for any particular idea or attitude or stance. Attitudes can go from being those of an enlightened few – abolition, for instance – to those of pretty much everyone. It’s not obvious to me why cosmopolitanism is not potentially that sort of idea or attitude. Again, it’s the contingency thing. It’s a contingent fact that cosmopolitanism is a minority view now, but do we know that that’s a permanent inherent non-contingent situation? If so, how?
Wow.
Abolition is a great example of what you describe – it WAS a cosmopolitan value.
But ‘cosmopolitan’ values is a second-order idea, being ‘that set of values held by the educated and broadly enlightened of our time’; the set of such values will change as individual ones are received by the others. I think there is a flow of adoption of the better ones, because cosmopolitans do in fact set the agenda and drive the culture; even ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ is created by teams of people of the csmopolitian class.
Of course I use cosmopolitan here in the sense of the authors who use that term to name the 40% of our society who are tertiary educated. Cosmopolitans are the ‘new class’ which replaced the middle class, distinguished from the ‘parochials’ or ‘bedrock amurrricans’ or whatever they named ‘the rest’.