Towards a Genealogy of Cosmopolitan ThoughtBefore and Beyond Liberalism

Uncovers the hidden roots and future pathways of cosmopolitan thought in an age of fragmentation and reorientation

• Traces the roots of anti-cosmopolitanism to Plato’s Republic, interpreted as a political counter-response to the proto-cosmopolitan ideas of the Sophists
• Explores how Kant reorients philosophy in light of Plato’s challenge, exposing the limits of his legal cosmopolitanism while showing the potential of his ideological critique of institutions
• Identifies the influence of Martin Heidegger in shaping modern authoritarian and critical reactions to cosmopolitanism
• Presents Hans Kelsen’s legal theory as a post-Nietzschean antidote that yields two models of post-foundational thought
• Includes literal and cinematic voices to uncover poetic modes of communication that transcend philosophical boundaries and speak across space and time

Liberalism, with cosmopolitanism as its intellectual spearhead, seems to be in retreat, while illiberal and populist narratives have come to dominate the digital space. In this book, Detlef von Daniels suggests that this crisis can be addressed through historically situated self-reflection.

It begins by noting that cosmopolitan ideas have antecedents going back to the pre-Platonic Sophists. In this light, Plato emerges as the first anti-cosmopolitan philosopher. Unsurprisingly, Plato again plays an important role in today’s authoritarian discourses. Kant’s political philosophy is then read as a fundamental reorientation of philosophy, though one whose dialectics Kant himself had already discerned. Against Heidegger’s appropriation of both antiquity and Kant, Kelsen’s theory of law emerges as a sober antidote that gives rise to two models of post-foundational thought.

Framed by the voices of Sappho and Hölderlin, the book finally reveals a poetic mode of communication across space and time.