Neues vom Grand Hotel Abgrund. Der Paradigmenwechsel vom Kosmopolitismus zur Kosmo-Politik

The time-honored, always contested and slightly graying tradition of cosmopolitanism faces (I) three new challenges: (a) postcolonial, insofar as the Western origins of universal ideas are obvious and narrowing and one-sidedness may follow from this, (b) as an elite project that has never reached or ignores the broad population, coupled (c) with objections from the communitarian side that all notions of belonging, solidarity, and hospitality must be grounded in local communities. The idea of cosmopolitanism can face these challenges if it is (II) more implemented and operationalized: Approaches to “global constitutionalism” that reach beyond the nation-state as an outdated support for government and collective identity and address problem situations that have broken this framework of sovereignty and identity contribute to this. In the age of the Anthropocene (III), an extension of cosmopolitanism is appropriate, namely the overdue inclusion of animate and inanimate nature as a virtual co-actor of international relations. This conceptual and operational revision of cosmopolitan ideas results in overarching planetary “cosmo-politics.”