Patrick Comerford
I was discussing the thinking of the American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, in a blog posting last night (1 August 2026), and her interest in the Greek classical world and the world of Greek philosophy as well as her commitment to principles of Reformed Judaism.
She has described cosmopolitanism – rooted in the Stoic tradition of radical equality of dignity for all – as a ‘noble but flawed ideal’, which became the subtitle of her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2009).
The word cosmopolitan, an important concept in modern philosophy and political discourse, is, of course, derived from the κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopoliítes) found in classical and koine Greek, formed from the words κόσμος (kosmos), world, universe, cosmos or created order, and πολίτης (politês), citizen, one of a city.
Contemporary usage defines the term as ‘citizen of the world’. But the word cosmopolitan was coined by the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BCE. When Diogenes was asked from what city he hailed, he replied that he was a citizen of the world, κόσμος πολίτης (kósmos polítēs), or κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolites), a citizen of the world, rejecting narrow local loyalties.
The plural, κόσμου πολῖται (kosmou politai), means ‘citizens of the world’ or even ‘citizens of the universe’, of the whole created order. The phrase originates from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, describing the idea that human beings belong to a single, universal community rather than being defined solely by their local city-state or nation. At the time, the broadest basis of social identity among Greeks was either the individual city-state or the culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hellenic group.
Diogenes lived from ca 413/403 to ca 324/321 BCE, and he was one of the founders of Cynicism. He was renowned for his ascetic lifestyle and radical critiques of social conventions, and he became a legendary figure whose life and teachings have been recounted, often through anecdote, in both antiquity and modernity.
Diogenes advocated a return to nature, the renunciation of wealth, and introduced early ideas of cosmopolitanism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.
He spent the mild winters in Athens, surviving by begging and taking shelter in a large ceramic jar or πίθος (pithos), originally meant for food storage, and he spent the summers outdoors in Corinth, cooled by breezes from the isthmus.
Some sources say Diogenes died on the same night as Alexander the Great, 10-11 June 323 BCE, but this is likely legend.
Later thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius expanded this idea of cosmopolitanism from Diogenes, teaching that all people share a spark of universal reason and mutual brotherhood.
Stoicism, another Greek school of thought that was founded roughly a century later, built on Diogenes’ ideas, with many of its thinkers and adherents stressing that each human being ‘dwells ... in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration’.
In his circle model of identity, the Stoic Hierocles states that individuals should regard themselves as concentric circles: the first one around the self, followed by immediate family, extended family, local group, citizens, countrymen, humanity. Within these circles human beings feel a sense of affinity or endearment towards others, which the Stoics termed οἰκείωσις (oikeiôsis).
The task of world citizens becomes then to draw the circles somehow towards the centre, making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.
The concept evolved into modern political and ethical cosmopolitanism, which argues that all human beings share equal moral worth and obligations, regardless of nationality. Today, people use the term to describe feeling connected to global culture, issues, and humanity as a whole rather than just one country.
Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be world citizens in a universal community. The idea encompasses different dimensions and avenues of community, such as promoting universal moral standards, establishing global political structures, or developing a platform for mutual cultural expression and tolerance.
In his essay ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795), Immanuel Kant stages a ius cosmopoliticum (cosmopolitan law or right) as a guiding principle to help global society achieve permanent, enduring peace. Kant’s cosmopolitan right (Weltbürgerrecht, ‘world-citizen right’) stems from an understanding of all human beings as equal members of a universal community. Cosmopolitan rights thus work in tandem with international political rights, and the shared, universal right of humanity.
After World War II, as a reaction to the Holocaust and other atrocities, the concept of crimes against humanity became a generally accepted category in international law. This clearly shows the appearance and acceptance of a notion of individual responsibility that is considered to exist toward all of humanity. We know that many problems can only be addressed at the global level, such as global warming.
In her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), Martha Nussbaum engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. She pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.
In an interview, she linked cosmopolitanism with the pursuit of political justice. ‘Cosmopolitanism is certainly highly compatible with a personal attachment to a group that pursues justice. The difficulty comes with whether it is compatible with attachment to a particular nation, or state, or city, since those are political units and cosmopolitanism holds that one’s first loyalty should be to the entire world. I think it is flawed for several reasons.’
She summarised cosmopolitanism as a comprehensive doctrine of how to arrange one’s values, ‘and as such it is not a view that can become the object of what John Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” among all the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of value, both secular and religious.’
She pointed to the 17th century Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius who said the nation has a moral importance. ‘It is the largest unit we know that is accountable to people’s voices and that can be a vehicle for their autonomy, their wish to give themselves laws of their own choosing. We should have special attachments to our own nation and channel global duties through those, I argue.’
She added that cosmopolitanism ‘is a form of humanism, and has nothing to say about duties to non-human animals and nature.’
Despite those nuances and reservations, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had already stirred up controversy in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claiming the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’.
Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’.
Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago was the best-known among the philosophers he attacked. Hawley misrepresented her when he accused her of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.
Those wondering how Nussbaum might respond to Hawley’s criticism did not have long to wait. By coincidence, a little over a month later, Harvard University Press published The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, in which she spends most of her time discussing the limits of cosmopolitanism while developing her own positive account of the nation-state and its responsibilities.
Cosmopolitanism – the idea that we are, first and foremost, citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation or region – is predicated on a universal respect for human dignity and a demand for justice regardless of race, sex, or creed. Nussbaum argues, however, that to arrive at this conception of human dignity, the cosmopolitans of earlier ages came to exclude worldly success or material wealth from their notions of the dignified life.
‘In order to treat people as having a dignity that life’s accidents cannot erode,’ she says, the founders of cosmopolitanism scoffed ‘at money, rank, and power, saying that they are unnecessary for human flourishing. The dignity of moral capacity is complete in itself.’
But cosmopolitanism continues to be misused as a term by figures on the political far right and used as a catch-all phrase to put down and dismissed those who question the politics of Trump and his MAGA circles. Recently, Stephen Miller, a Trump administration senior policy adviser and far-right thinker, publicly accused Jim Acosta of CNN of exhibiting ‘cosmopolitan bias’ during a discussion of a new Trump regime immigration plan.
Previous words in this series:
1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.
2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.
3, Bread, Ψωμί.
4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.
5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.
6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.
7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.
8,Theology, Θεολογία.
9, Icon, Εἰκών.
10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.
11, Chaos, Χάος.
12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.
13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.
14, Mañana, Αύριο.
15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.
16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.
17, The missing words.
18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.
19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.
20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.
21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.
22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.
23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.
24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.
25, Asthma, Ασθμα.
26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.
27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.
28, School, Σχολείο.
29, Muse, Μούσα.
30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.
31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.
32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.
33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.
34, Cinema, Κινημα.
35, autopsy and biopsy
36, Exodus, ἔξοδος
37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος
38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς
39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια
40, Practice, πρᾶξις
41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός
42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή
43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή
44, catastrophe, καταστροφή
45, democracy, δημοκρατία
46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end
47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse
48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha
49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric
50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις
51, Bimah, βῆμα
52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.
53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible
54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality
55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church
56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church
57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas
58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany
59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind
60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow
61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’
62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’
63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’
64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)
65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)
66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης
Series to be continued
