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Chasing Butterflies Without a Net: Interpreting Cosmopolitanism

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Abstract

In this article, I map current conceptions of cosmopolitanism and sketch distinctions between the concept and humanism and multiculturalism. The differences mirror what I take to be a central motif of cosmopolitanism: the capacity to fuse reflective openness to the new with reflective loyalty to the known. This motif invites a reconsideration of the meaning of culture as well as of the relations between home and the world.

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Notes

  1. The idea of hospitality has a long lineage in cosmopolitan thought, reaching as least as far back as Confucius and Cicero; see, for example, Kwok-bun (2005), Nussbaum (1997b) and Pangle (1998). For contemporary accounts of cosmopolitan hospitality, see Benhabib (2006), Derrida (2001), Greene (2004), Gregoriou (2004), and Todd (2008).

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented as the 2008 Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Philosophical Studies in Education Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association, New York City. I thank Doris Santoro for the invitation to give the lecture and Nicholas C. Burbules for his thoughtful response. My thanks also to Stephanie Burdick-Shepherd and Terri Wilson for their invaluable bibliographic assistance.

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  1. Program in Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Box 204, 525 W. 120th Street, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    David T. Hansen

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Hansen, D.T. Chasing Butterflies Without a Net: Interpreting Cosmopolitanism. Stud Philos Educ 29, 151–166 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-009-9166-y

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