“Introduction: The Politics of Humanity” by Richard A. Cohen
Part I: Principles of Justice
Chapter 1: “Ethics of Hospitality: The Limits of Cosmopolitan Rights” by Tito Marci
The paper re-examines, from a cosmopolitan perspective, the ethical and juridical topic of ‘hospitality’ in some of its paradoxical aspects that are more and more involved in difficult relationships with ‘outsiders’. On this base we will try to take another look at the problem posed by the growing phenomenon of migration in democratic and multi-ethnic societies, which, is bound to reappear, for good or for ill, on the level of social inclusion. Rethinking the concept and the practice of hospitality (the terrain of relating among “others”) today becomes an operation as important as ever, since precisely now, with the development of globalization and migration processes over the entire surface of the earth, the way of relating among “outsiders” is presented as a fact decisive for our social coexistence.
Chapter 2: “Cosmopolitanism versus Globalization: Breaking the Inevitable Ceremonial” by Richard A. Cohen
Appeal to the root of intelligibility - scientific, social, economic, political - in moral responsibility arising as singular response to the vulnerability and suffering of the singular other, being for-the-other before being for-oneself, ethics before interest, this “before” as the root significance of any priority, the very importance of importance. Cosmopolitanism oriented by this primordial ethics, in contrast to the nihilism of globalization which puts the private accumulation of capital and the personal satisfaction of self-interests, and the governmental totalities allied to and enforcing such selfishness, before responsibility, responsibility to and for the neighbor, responsibility to and for the neighbor’s neighbors, and responsibility to and for all others, humanity. In pursuit of the above, brief forays into Aristotle, Antonio Gramsci, Heinrich Heine, Herman Melville, Emmanuel Levinas and Socrates.
Chapter 3: “Reassessing the ‘Humanitarian Turn’ in Global Politics” by Luca Scuccimarra
Some scholars have argued that one of the most characteristic aspects of the “new” post-1989 political and legal order has been the emergence – or re-emergence – of a form of international political morality based not on the “particularism” of the modern society of States, but rather on the universalism of the rising global society. Against the traditional State-centric approach to international relations, from the 1990s on there have been more and more positions favoring a real “global” turn of politics, founded on “universal principles that challenge the presumed moral supremacy of territorial boundaries and which favor instead the welfare of humanity generally” (Hayden). The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct the main issues at stake in the philosophical-political debate about the so-called “humanitarian turn” in global politics, in order to discuss their actual meaning in an age of “national-populist backlash.”
Chapter 4: “Vulnerability and Intimacy: Ethical Foundation for Social Relations, Confucius and Levinas” by Kuan-min Huang
In the Hobbesian model, the necessity for the state derives from a virtual contract originating out of a natural state of everyone against everyone. It thus defends self-protection by urging certain rights be given up to construct the state. Our contemporary situation demands that we consider an alternative model. Accordingly, the present paper proposes to consider another view of the natural state considering temporality and affectivity. Every human being, while persevering in existence, is subject to multiple health variations, physical and psychological. Human temporal finitude is expressed in such vulnerability. A newborn baby needs motherly care. The aged often need help in their daily activities. Such are fundamental facts of finite human vulnerability. It signifies that living is not solitary monadic being but a being-together with other human beings. Furthermore, such interactions are not only causal or instrumental, but affective. The affectivity of social life constitutes an ontological need for intimacy. Being intimate with someone (parents, lovers, family members, friends) constitutes basic social interactions, an affectivity manifest in communal life. Based on these two factors – vulnerability and intimacy – the formation of community is founded on a very different foundation than more superficial analyses based in instrumentality, which treats of others by taking advantage of them, for profit, for efficiency. Confucian ideas can contribute to better understanding community in this way, so that we can imagine a social phenomenology inspired by Confucian ethical thoughts.
Part II: Dangers to Justice
Chapter 5: “The ‘Migrant Crisis’ and the Rise of Anti-Humanitarian Populism in Europe” by Luca Scuccimarra
Over the last few years the so-called “migrant crisis” has been acquiring a growing relevance within the space of the political experience of the European Union and its generally out-of-synch member states. The contemporary debate on this issue also includes attempts to question the general reliability of this consolidated representation of the dynamics in progress, through a more or less successful effort to problematize the widely conditioning role that the “language of crisis” plays in the construction of our specific way of representing, interpreting and understanding contemporary migration. This chapter aims at highlighting some of the main passages of this line of critical reflection, discussing the contribution it may give to a deeper understanding of the so-called “populist turn” of contemporary politics.
Chapter 6: “Bourdieu, Brexit and Mobility Justice” by Deborah Reed-Danahay
This chapter considers questions of social justice and mobility in the context of Brexit with reference to the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu was deeply concerned with forms of structural inequality. His concept of social space, with its focus on the relationship between social space and geographical or physical space, is a useful lens through which to examine the ways in which the capacity to be mobile or immobile in physical and social space is unevenly distributed and subject to relations of power and inequality. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union at the end of January 2020, referred to as “Brexit,” resulted from the outcome of a Referendum on the question of staying or leaving in the EU put to the voters in the summer of 2016. The vote to leave was in part fueled by insecurities about immigrants and refugees, and reflects nationalist and anti-cosmopolitan sentiment. The negotiations following the Referendum have resulted in policies restricting forms of geographical mobility to and from the UK. Questions of mobility are central to Brexit, therefore, and mobility is a key pillar of the EU’s social and economic programs. Bourdieu’s focus on trajectories in social and physical space, and his view of habitus as a position in social space, is deployed in this chapter in order to shed light on the injustices of mobility associated with Brexit.
Chapter 7: “The Future of Justice and Our Political Triangulation: Liberalism, Socialism and Fascism” by Richard A. Cohen
Contemporary philosophy realizes that time, like language and embodiment, is not an obstacle to truth and reality but a means to them. Time means past, present, future, and the directionality of before and after. Politics has its own temporality.&nb
