Session 6: Hope and the Social

Session 6: Hope and the Social
Chair: David JF Maree

Cosmopolitan Hope
Catriona McKinnon
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading, United Kingdom

The ideal common to all forms of cosmopolitanism is this:

• The cosmopolitan ideal : A world in which some fundamental principles of justice govern relations between all persons in all places.

The moral requirement that accompanies the cosmopolitan ideal is this:

• The cosmopolitan requirement : any commitment to some fundamental principles of justice at the domestic level ought to be extended so as to generate principles of justice with cosmopolitan scope.

The objective of cosmopolitan hope is the achievement of the cosmopolitan ideal of global justice through action fit to satisfy the demands of the cosmopolitan requirement. What cosmopolitans hope for is the extension of commitments to justice at the domestic level to the global level so as to create a world governed by principles of global justice.
A common sceptical objection to the cosmopolitan project is that those who hope for the realization of the cosmopolitan ideal are well-meaning but deluded people who lack a proper grasp of how the realities of human nature and social interaction limit what is achievable in political practice. Once these realities are faced, it is claimed, hope for the cosmopolitan ideal appears naïve and misguided. I offer two analyses of this objection and argue, in response to them, that hope for a future state of cosmopolitan justice is both possible and sound. This means that the rejection of cosmopolitanism cannot be based on a world-weary scepticism about the improbability or impossibility of principles and institutions of global justice, and must instead issue from a proper engagement with the numerous doughty moral arguments for cosmopolitanism in the literature. In conclusion, I use Kantian arguments to move beyond countering the sceptical objection by suggesting that not only is cosmopolitan hope possible and sound, but that it is furthermore required.

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The moral significance of the idea of a better future was formulated by Kant: “Without this hope for better times the human heart would never have been warmed by a serious desire to do something useful for the common good . . .” Simply put: there would be no reason to work for the common good unless we believed it was possible to achieve it and that our efforts had some chance to succeed. In religious terms, this belief expresses itself in the idea of a messiah. No matter how bad things may seem, the day is coming when justice will prevail. Again the significance of this idea is easy to see: if things could and eventually will get better, then the way they are now is not the way they have to be. This clears the way for the distinction between is and ought, so fundamental to moral reasoning.
Yet despite the importance of the idea of hope, it is subject to a problem. Hope is meaningless unless there is a reasonable prospect it will be fulfilled. The question is how to explain moral action if it is. If the purpose of morality is to improve on the situation in which we find ourselves, how can we make sense of a situation in which improvement is no longer needed?
This paper will argue that while hope is an essential part of the human condition, it is problematic, raising the question of what could count as the end of human history and whether it can be achieved. In general hope for a better future gives rise to dangerous moral claims unless it is accompanied by a sober assessment of human capabilities.

In the domain of philosophy, hope is mainly traced in the vast area of the philosophy of history. The conception of historical time as endowed with meaning or –as Leibniz put it- “pregnant with futurity” is literally the synonym of hope. The European Enlightenment’s belief in the constant improvement of the human species by means of reason alone, vividly expressed in the “ideology of progress,” bears witness to that.
The aim of the present paper is to explore and elucidate how hope articulates itself by means of the account of linear progress in the philosophies of history of the European Enlightenment and in particular in the projects of Condorcet and Turgot. In turn, the paper will show the legacy of that optimism regarding the possibilities of the human species in the philosophy of German Idealism, in particular Kant’s “Idea of a General History with cosmopolitan intent” and Hegel’s introduction to the philosophy of history.
Both Kant’s a-sociable sociability as well as Hegel’s account of the “cunning of Reason,” according to which private vices, antagonism, passions, empirical motives and inclinations lead unwittingly to public virtues and to the progress of human species seem to be governed and driven by the –almost existential- need to hope for a better world.