COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE PUBLIC USE OF REASON
COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE PUBLIC USE OF REASON

Summary/Abstract: Departing from the question concerning Kant’s cosmopolitanism as expressed in his idea of philosophy in a cosmopolitan sense, we inquire about the practical nature of this cosmopolitanism, aiming to elaborate an understanding of the public use of reason, an idea much developed in subsequent, contemporary, cosmopolitan theories having a Kantian inspiration. Relying on contemporary exegesis, on the one hand and on contemporary cosmopolitan theorems, on the other, we develop a distinction between cosmo-political, practical cosmopolitanism as against passive, doctrinal cosmopolitanism, and arrive at a performative idea of the public use of reason, one emphasizing the active element – ‚use‛ – against ‚public reason‛. We conclude that contemporary cosmopolitanism is Kantian insofar it iterates the ongoing Enlightenment dispute it had departed from, namely, the dispute of a common, dialogical construction of reason that stands on the universalist grounds of a shared – cosmopolitan – right, the right to freedom, common to all human, indeed all rational, beings.

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