Cosmopolitan Education and Its Discontents

Abstract

In this essay I argue that cosmopolitan educators and their critics have been talking at cross purposes, and I indicate common tasks to which both groups can contribute. Philosophical cosmopolitans advance theses about justice and culture. 1 The thesis about justice is that the notion of justice applies to the entire human community, rather than just to territorial nations or sub-groups; all humans are equally considered to be bearers of universal moral, political and social rights. Cosmopolitanism about justice is an ideal that is meant to guide institutional development, governance policy, and education. 2 The strong cosmopolitan thesis states that the human community is the sole group to which the notion of justice applies, with all of the more particular justice claims being justified only on the basis of universal principles. Moderate versions of the thesis allow that the human community is one important arena of justice, though considerations of justice that are not subsumable under universal moral norms can apply to various subcommu-nities. The cosmopolitan thesis about culture 3 holds that individuals can successfully shape life plans and shoulder moral responsibilities by drawing from diverse cultural values and practices, and that education should thus make available rich multicultural resources and contacts. 4 The strong version of the thesis is that only lives constructed around such cosmopolitan life plans and identities — that is, only cosmopolitan lives — can flourish in the contemporary world; moderate versions state that while lives embedded in narrow communities can flourish, cosmopolitan lives can flourish at least as well, and thus there is no unique value benefit inhering in narrow cultural identities.