Blog posts

  • On Nussbaum, cosmopolitanism and patriotism (and nationalism)

    Martha C. Nussbaum, professor at University of Chicago Law School, published in 1994 an article praising a “cosmopolitan stoic education” over a “national education” that started debates in the English speaking world about cosmopolitanism. The article is a reaction against Richard Rorty and Sheldon Hackney, and is therefore answering an internal Northern American debate. Published…

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  • Obama’s Foreign Policy: A Cosmopolitan Policy in the Interests of the U.S.A.

    Candidate Obama signed an article in the well-known scholarly journal of international relations Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007, entitled “Common Security for our Common Humanity.” There are a few reasons why Obama can be called a cosmopolitan politician as well as his policy agenda a program for cosmopolitics. One thing that is immediately striking is that…

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  • Obama and McCain: Barack the cosmopolitan and John the local

    Many things oppose Obama and McCain. Of course, on the paper–on which their programme is printed that is–not much is separating them. On many issues they agree and especially in foreign policy one would be a fool to believe that Obama would be more multilateralist than McCain. The “America interest” will always prime. However, the…

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  • Schlereth: The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought

    Schlereth, Thomas (1977) The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694-1790. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Thomas J. Schlereth studied how the cosmopolitan ideal had a “noticeable impact on Enlightenment intellectual life throughout the trans-Atlantic community”.[1] But Schlereth does not advance that…

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  • French cuisine and national identity

    I read in this week’s French equivalent to Time magazine Le Point an interview of gourmet critique Christian Millau, creator of the famous restaurant guide of the best restaurants, that ‘French cuisine does not exist.’ Actually, it is a point of view I came up with long ago after a few thoughts based on my…

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  • Back in France: diversity and integration

    I am back in France and have been staying for a month now. I left about 7-8 years ago and only came back a few days twice a year for season holidays to visit my parents. My contact with French politics was limited to following the news sporadically in the dailies, and I only kept…

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  • Obama the first cosmopolitan politician

    Will Obama be the first cosmopolitan elected official? Everything points to an affirmative answer — on both counts. Surely, he is the first ever to be so multicultural with a Kenyan father, a US citizen mother, born in Hawaii, raised in Jakarta. He is also the first to make campaign abroad, the first who understands…

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  • Dans la pensée de Rousseau, il y a un paradoxe sur lequel on se penche de plus en plus. Une certaine acrimonie face aux cosmopolites, alors que Rousseau exprime une pensée cosmopolitique en reprenant le grand projet de Saint-Pierre d’une paix universelle et perpétuelle. Projet raillé par un truculent Voltaire il est vrai, dans son…

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  • Cosmopolite, cosmopolitain, cosmopolitisme: définitions et problèmes

    Que faut-il comprendre aujourd’hui des mots cosmopolite, cosmopolitisme ? D’abord si l’on reprend ‘histoire de l’apparition de ces mots, il faut bien se rendre à l’évidence que notre conception actuelle est liée au paradigme dominant du nationalisme qui nous pousse à y voir une opposition entre cosmopolitisme et nationalisme. J’avance la thèse, en fait, que…

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  • Scandinavian literary weekend

    This weekend was under the sign of cosmopolitan literature. First of all, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio received the Nobel Prize in literature: ‘author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.’ This was the occasion for me to deepen my acquaintance with Le Clézio’s works.…

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