The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism

The Early Modern Origins of the Intellectual Ideal

Leigh T.I. Penman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350156982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism challenges our most basic assumptions about the history of an ideal at the heart of modernity. Beginning in antiquity and continuing through to today, Leigh T.I. Penman examines how European thinkers have understood words like 'kosmopolites', 'cosmopolite', 'cosmopolitan' and its cognates. The debates over their meanings show that there has never been a single, stable cosmopolitan concept, but rather a range of concepts-sacred and secular, inclusive and exclusive-all described with the cosmopolitan vocabulary. While most scholarly attention in the history of cosmopolitanism has focussed on Greek and Roman antiquity or the Enlightenments of the 18th century, this book shows that the crucial period in the evolution of modern cosmopolitanism was early modernity. Between 1500 and 1800 philosophers, theologians, cartographers, jurists, politicians, alchemists and heretics all used this vocabulary, shedding ancient associations, and adding new ones at will. The chaos of discourses prompted thinkers to reflect on the nature of the cosmopolitan ideal, and to conceive of an abstract 'cosmopolitanism' for the first time. This meticulously researched book provides the first intellectual history of an overlooked period in the evolution of a core ideal. As such, The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism is an essential work for anyone seeking a contextualised understanding of cosmopolitanism today.

1

Strangers, citizens and sojourners

Towards a vocabulary of the cosmopolitan

In September 1522 the celebrated Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) declared that he was a ‘citizen of the world’.¹ At first glance the statement appears to be a fitting self-designation for a figure widely considered to be an early modern archetype of the cosmopolitan. Erasmus was a polymath whose contributions to literature, philology, philosophy and ethics remain of interest and inspiration to scholars today.² Through his extensive travels and his epistolary activity Erasmus enmeshed himself in a transnational republic of letters, a virtual scholarly community extending across political, cultural and linguistic borders. Intimately familiar with the writings of antiquity, Erasmus frequently appealed to Stoic ideas to critique the status quo and created literary monuments to tolerance and thought free from religious dogmatism. In his Querela pacis (Complaint of Peace, 1521), he expounded at length on the subject of the brotherhood of all men, representing the conflicts of his age as a fracturing of natural law and divine order. A testament to the endurance of Erasmus’s reputation as a model internationalist is the attachment of his name to the eponymous Erasmus Programme, established in 1987 as a European Union educational project dedicated to fostering student exchange at institutions of higher learning across the continent.

But this particular vision of Erasmus and his legacies is surprisingly modern. It first flourished in the decades after World War II, when the Dutch humanist was seized upon by scholars as a balsam for a modernity ailing from the excesses of totalitarian ideology and international conflict.³ In recent decades, very different readings of Erasmus have emerged. Far from being a figure of unreserved internationality in outlook, some scholars now see in his work traces of nascent Dutch patriotism, and a figure whose dedication to Christian community outweighed his obligations to any transnational scholarly network.⁴ Although Erasmus’s declaration of world citizenship is often mentioned in this revisionist literature, it is rarely quoted or discussed in detail. This neglect is unfortunate, for Erasmus’s statement provides further evidence towards the need for a reconceptualization of his motivations and, perhaps, his legacy. Indeed, Erasmus made his statement in a letter addressed to the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), in which he declined the offer of citizenship in the city of Zürich. Erasmus’s words in his missive repay careful attention:

I am most grateful to you and your city for your kindly thought. My own wish is to be a citizen of the world (ego mundi civis esse cupio), to be a fellow-citizen to all men, a pilgrim (peregrinus) better still. If only I might have the happiness of being enrolled in the city of heaven. For it is thither I make my way, under the constant attacks of all this illness.⁵

This statement is neither based on Erasmus’s self-awareness of being part of a humanistic republic of letters, nor does it comprise a fundamentally ‘secular … free declaration of acceptance of humanity and tolerance’ that is ‘connected to the antique tradition of Cosmopolitanism’.⁶ Furthermore, it can hardly be read as suggesting his membership in ‘a single political human brotherhood, fraternizing beyond the frontiers’.⁷ The statement was exclusive, not inclusive, political not by intent but by implication, and sacred rather than secular. Indeed, Erasmus was a citizen of the world because he was a peregrinus – a pilgrim or stranger – making his way towards ‘the city of heaven’, where he ‘might have the happiness of being enrolled’. While this resembles classical Stoic themes of the individual being enmeshed in obligations owed to the larger world, more centrally and perhaps more unexpectedly, it embodied the idea of the Christian homo viator sojourning through life towards the city of God, where he is enrolled in the books of Heaven (Hebrews 11:13). Similarly, Erasmus’s desire to be a ‘fellow-citizen to all men’ derives from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 2:19.⁸

Seen in this light, Erasmus’s statement does not appear to correspond at all with what one historian has recently identified as the core of cosmopolitanism in early modern Europe. ‘Since at least the sixteenth century,’ we are informed, “‘cosmopolitanism” meant – as now – the ability to experience people of different nations, creeds and colors with pleasure, curiosity and interest, and not with suspicion, disdain, or simply a disinterest that could occasionally turn into loathing.’ We are furthermore assured that this ‘ability’ was inspired by travel and intellectual exchange, leading ‘some Europeans [to] approach those distinctly different from themselves hospitably, with a willingness to get to know them, even to like them. From at least the sixteenth century such an expansive person was called a cosmopolite, best defined as a citizen of the world’.⁹ This statement has little in common with Erasmus’s own conception of his world citizenship relating to a religious heavenly community. His words suggest rather that early modern Europeans could use the cosmopolitan terminology to designate a variety of concepts, none of which need be correlated with an ability or disposition to meet, greet and tolerate the people of the world, or to belong to a ‘cosmopolitan movement’.¹⁰ Although it was sometimes attached to the idea of an abstract world community, it could also be linked with concepts largely alien to modern conceptions of cosmopolitanism.

Situated at the intersection of conceptual history and intellectual history, the present volume provides a new history of the rise of cosmopolitan thought in early modern Europe. Rather than looking for antecedents of modern cosmopolitan conceptions in the past, it is dedicated instead to documenting the variety of meanings that early modern figures attached to the idea of the cosmopolitan. It considers and contextualizes statements made in letters, books and other documents between 1500 and 1800 from throughout Europe, which employ what I have chosen to call the ‘cosmopolitan vocabulary’. This includes words like the Greek κοσμοπολίτης, the Latin cosmopolitanus and mundanus, the French cosmopolite, cosmopolitain and citoyen du monde, the Italian cittadino del mondo, the English cosmopolite, cosmopolitan and worldling, the German Weltbürger, the Dutch Wereldburger and other vernacular equivalents. Rather than providing an exhaustive catalogue of these usages – a largely antiquarian task that would fill several volumes – it focusses on a selection of key moments when meanings attached to the cosmopolitan vocabulary were contested, disputed or inverted by historical actors.¹¹ Alternatively, it pays attention to those moments when early modern conceptions of the cosmopolitan seem most alien to modern scholarly expectations.

What emerges is a new history of the intellectual origins of a cherished, though volatile, modern ideal. Far from being merely historical in interest, it tells a larger story about how we came to think about cosmopolitanism today, which challenges scholarly and popular conceptions of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and understandings of its origins. Additionally, this volume opens new avenues through which modern observers can approach the cosmopolitan, by demonstrating the crucial role played by early modernity in the formulation of a cherished ideal. Indeed, without the debates surrounding the cosmopolitan ideal in early modernity, modern cosmopolitanism would not exist.

Influenced by concerns religious, philological, scholarly, social, cultural and biographical, the cosmopolitan vocabulary was used by early modern actors to designate a diverse range of concepts. In the sixteenth century the vocabulary was used in an overwhelmingly religious register by Catholics and Protestants alike, often to designate concepts related to a spiritual ecclesia. But in the course of the seventeenth century, influential clerical authors, especially in Protestant countries, began to associate the vocabulary instead with worldliness, thus inverting its associations. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the cosmopolitan vocabulary was the almost exclusive preserve of deists and secular philosophers.

Two crucial arguments emerge from this history. The first is that, historically, the cosmopolitan vocabulary was used to impose difference, instead of to efface it. Furthermore, there has never existed a single, stable cosmopolitan concept; but rather a range of concepts designated with the cosmopolitan vocabulary. The second argument is that the Enlightenment ideals of cosmopolitanism would be unthinkable without the early modern discourse on the cosmopolitan. In France, the philosophes reflected on historical usages of the cosmopolitan vocabulary, and attempted to appropriate the terminology to designate their own endeavours, thereby creating a meta-discourse of ‘cosmopolitanism’. As such, this study provides not only a history of how early modern Europeans used the cosmopolitan vocabulary in shifting registers to designate sometimes surprising concepts. It also demonstrates that the diversity of expressions of early modernity were a crucial precursor for European thinkers to conceive of an abstract modern ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the first place.

The cosmopolitan vocabulary

The cosmopolitan vocabulary first appeared in antiquity. Although the Greek word κοσμοπολίτης (hereafter kosmopolitēs) is said to have been coined by the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (fl. fourth century BCE), the earliest ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Strangers, citizens and sojourners: towards a vocabulary of the cosmopolitan
• 2 Hieroglyphics of empire
• 3 Theatres of the world
• 4 The cosmopolitan inversion
• 5 Sharing Diogenes’s tub
• 6 Heavenly cities of the eighteenth-century philosophers
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright