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The idea of cosmopolitanism is increasingly in circulation both in the social sciences and in the language of everyday life. There is, however, much uncertainty about what it means, what it refers to and what role it plays in social scientific thinking. In this book Robert Fine explores the concept of cosmopolitanism, its contribution to critical thought, and its application to a number of pressing political issues: taming global marketisation, resisting the resurgence of nationalism and fundamentalism, constructing transnational forms of political community, enhancing the role of international law and human rights, prosecuting crimes against humanity and assessing the legitimacy of humanitarian military intervention. He explores the idea of cosmopolitanism both as a description of social reality and as a key element in the life of the modern mind. Cosmopolitanism offers an innovative discussion of the social, legal and political dimensions of the cosmopolitan turn in the social sciences. It should be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social theory, sociology, political theory, cultural studies, international relations and law."--Book cover

After the Holocaust European antisemitism did not simply vanish into thin air and critical theorists drew attention to the new or secondary forms of antisemitism that arose in the postwar period. Among them Jürgen Habermas, a leading figure in the younger generation of critical theorists, is remarkable for confronting the legacy of European antisemitism in his his vision of a new Europe. His approach to the postnational constellation emphasised the importance of ongoing engagement with the history of European antisemitism and of reconstructing political community in ways that should make antisemitism less feasible in the future. While this paper endorses much of Habermas' analysis, it is critical of cracks in the edifice of his reconstruction which allow back in a certain form of European chauvinism and which make it possible to reach the premature judgement that the problem of antisemitism has been solved in Europe. The last part of the paper addresses the actual ways in which the cracks in the postnational edifice have provided footholds for the unwelcome return of the 'Jewish question' to Europe and have made it difficult for critical theory to understand new forms of antisemitism emerging on the European landscape. The signs of an inversion of the cosmopolitan project - from critical engagement with the legacy of European antisemitism to an idealized image of European success in overcoming antisemitism - points to a misappropriation of cosmopolitanism that needs to be challenged.

The call to recognize the significance of normative progress through evolutionary mechanisms of adaptation and revolutionary moments of irruption is a key aspect of Hauke Brunkhorst's oeuvre. His thesis is that the reinstatement of solidarity in modern times has 'dialectically' superseded the original limitations of this term by 'cancelling' its restrictive aspects and preserving its emancipatory aspects. Brunkhorst uses the term Aufhebung to conceptualize how moments of freedom within classical civic associations are preserved whilst their unequal distribution is cancelled, and how moments of equality in Christian brotherhood are preserved whilst their other-worldliness is cancelled. Brunkhorst is not faulted for demonstrating the concentration of normative learning processes in the constitutional revolutions of the modern age, but the question remains whether slippage occurs from the indispensable idea of normative evolution to an evolutionism in which the progress of law is presupposed.