2016-17 Academic Catalog

Stoic philosophers saw themselves as citizens of the world (cosmopolitans). In the eighteenth century, Kant thought that the increasingly global nature of the world requires international political institutions to guarantee peace and human rights. After the Cold War cosmopolitanism was back in fashion. Even the favorite drink of the girls on TV's Sex and the City was called Cosmopolitan. This course explores different meanings of cosmopolitanism: moral, political, and cultural. The intention is to show that cosmopolitanism is a complex reality that requires political institutions, as well as a new ethics to be cultivated through a particular engagement of culture.