Nobel Ambitions : Cosmopolitan Europe in/as Crisis?

Abstract

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU was met with both celebration and incredulity. For the triumphant the award served to reiterate a connection between peace and the European project, which has not featured in much recent commentary of a Europe in economic and social crisis. For many of the incredulous, it was this very crisis � accompanied by widespread social and economic hardship, a rise in ethno-nationalism and concomitant increase in opposition to the EU project � which prompted their opposition to the award. Whatever one thinks of the prize, it can be regarded as an attempt to (re)-assert the EU�s cosmopolitan mission. But it is not entirely clear of what such a mission consists or of what it should consist. What I term a ´legal cosmopolitan´ government -- associated with, among others, Jurgen Habermas -- seeks to reassert the social and liberal features of the European nation-state in the face of both a parochial nationalism and the extremes of the market, but risks reproducing the closures of a European nationalism. At the same time, what I term a ´market cosmopolitan´ government seeks to overcome such nationalism through the privileging of a ´non-discriminatory´ transnational marketplace but, as the current crisis demonstrates, a dogmatic version of such government can undermine the (social) democracy that legal cosmopolitans cherish. This paper elucidates these two cosmopolitan rationalities in theory and practice; their ethical openings and closures and, in particular, the ambiguous relationship between them. Contrary to many cosmopolitan perspectives, it argues that such an ambiguity -- which could be characterised as an existential crisis -- might be that which is of most ethical value in contemporary cosmopolitan government in Europe.