Cosmopolitanization Without Cosmopolitans: On the Distinction Between Normative and Empirical-Analytical Cosmopolitanism in Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Abstract

Why do we need a cosmopolitan re-defi nition, re-invention of the social sciences? To cut a long story short-my thesis is: reality is becoming cosmopolitical. There is no pure cosmopolitanism, there is only deformed cosmopolitanization. We, therefore, need a cosmopolitan social science. Cosmopolitanism is a long-sidelined concept recently reactivated by a wide range of social and political theorists.1 Are they, are we-to put it in ironic terms-self-enclosed, jargon-ridden, hyper-theoretical white men in their late midlife crises, ignoring the excluded and generalizing their own frequent-traveller-cosmopolitanism to be the conditio humana at the beginning of the 21st century? No, defi nitely not. Again my argument is very simple: mainstream social sciences is doing a miserable job. Because of its historical genesis and by its basic framings, concepts and methodologies the social sciences are still prisoners of the nation-state. They misunderstand the realities and dynamics of a globalized world. In order to do their job, they have to overcome methodological nationalism and develop a methodological cosmopolitanism.2