Citizens of the World and their Religion

Abstract

The notion of a ‘cosmopolites’ has diverged quite far from its philosophical origins, but may eventually serve a similar function. The hope of a global peace or any sort of global management is probably better fulfilled in a federation or complex network of self-governing communities than in a global empire. With or without such an empire though we need some widely shared ‘morale’ or ‘religion’ that will sustain cooperation and obedience to the common good. There are many such competing ‘religions’ and utopian ideals, such that an ongoing global war between superficially distinct but also alarmingly similar power blocks (as described by Orwell) may seem inevitable. A more hopeful future would be one where bourgeois values, a new respect for other terrestrial life, and an awareness of the vastness and strangeness of the cosmos provide a backdrop for such cooperation, on Earth or out among the stars, as we can manage. The rules of trade and transport in such a future may be in the hands of something like Kipling’s Aerial Board of Control, staffed by a new sort of cosmopolitan, subject to occasional popular rebuke. Whether such an order would avoid division must be doubtful still.

Notes

1 My earlier work around this topic, partly revised and subverted here, includes Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘World Religions and World Orders’, Religious Studies, 26 (1990), pp. 43–57; ‘Global Religion’, in R. Attfield & A. Belsey, eds, Philosophy and the Environment (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1994), pp. 113–28; Philosophical Futures (Peter Lang: Frankfurt 2011), pp. 25–44; ‘Townships, Brigands and a Shared Religion’: Griffith Law Review, 21 (2012), pp. 392–412.

2 See Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘City of the Wise’, Apeiron, 20 (1987), pp. 63–80.

3 Aristotle Politics 7.1324a15–35

4 Plato Euthyphro 13b–14b.

5 Seneca, On Leisure 4.1, in A.A. Long & D.N. Sedley, eds, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1987), vol. 1, p. 431 [67K]).

6 So also George Berkeley in his sermon on ‘Passive Obedience’ (1713), in Works, ed., A.A. Luce & T.E. Jessop, vol. 6 (Thomas Nelson: Edinburgh 1953), pp. 15–46.

7 Euripides, Medea 1415; see also Bacchae 1389–90; Alcestis 1159–60

8 Arnold Toynbee, Some Problems in Greek History (Oxford University Press: London 1969), pp. 421–86.

9 Attila Tanyi remarks that Jan Zielonka, in Is the EU Doomed? (Polity Press: London 2014) offers a similar prediction for the future of Europe, with or without the EU.

10 I have suggested elsewhere that Epicureanism in particular can be seen as a Buddhist sect, its devotees taking refuge in the fourfold way, the Company of Friends, and the memory of their saviour (that is, dharma, sangha and Buddha): see Stephen R.L. Clark, Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy: An Introduction (Bloomsbury: London 2013), pp. 151–54.

11 Rudyard Kipling, Verse: Definitive Edition (Hodder & Stoughton: London 1940), p. 487 (from Puck of Pook’s Hill, 1906).

12 Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’ [1795], in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1970), p. 114.

13 Kant, ibid.

14 Isaac Asimov suggested in ‘The Evitable Conflict’ (I Robot [HarperVoyager: London 2013 (1950)], pp. 216–30) that the Machines could coordinate all human activity, making allowance even for human resistance and mistakes. Other authors, such as Jack Williamson in The Humanoids (Tor Books: New York 1996 [1948]; first published as ‘With Folded Hands’ in Astounding Science Fiction 1947, 39.5) had already suggested that this was a dangerous suggestion.

15 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1.1095a18–22: Eudaimonia, it is still necessary to insist, does not mean ‘happiness’ or ‘contentment’.

16 W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, ‘Why a World State Is Unnecessary: The Continuing Debate on World Government’: Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy , 44, no. 3 (2018) pp. 379–402, p. 402. Whether the European Union is (yet) quite as doctrinaire as Korab-Karpowicz suggests is not a question for this paper. It may also be that his fear that the World State is bound to be authoritarian is, somewhat, exaggerated.

17 Ibid., p. 380.

18 Richard Falk, On Humane Governance (Polity Press: Cambridge 1995), p. 172, cited by Derek Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and Its Opponents (Continuum: London 2002), p. 105.

19 G.K. Chesterton, St Francis of Assisi (Hodder & Stoughton: London 1996 [1923]), pp. 144–45.

20 The Edict of Fontainebleu in 1685, for example, reversed an older and more tolerant Edict (of Nantes, in 1598) and so drove Protestant Huguenots from France.

21 Craig L. Carr, Liberalism and Pluralism: The Politics of E Pluribus Unum (Palgrave: London 2010), p. 4; cf. Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove (Collins: London 1963 [1939]), pp. 163–64: ‘“No faith with heretics” is not an ecclesiastical rule; it is a natural and inevitable human emotion. To make a frontier agreement with a nation of cannibals cannot really forbid an intention to interfere with the cannibals as soon as or as much as is convenient; we cannot seriously be expected to let the cannibals against all basis of good go on eating their aged parents. It is inhuman, and with the inhuman there can be no treaty.’

22 Ramchandra Gandhi’s plea for a properly Hindu tolerance, in Sita’s Kitchen: A Testimony of Faith and Inquiry (SUNY Press: New York 1992), does not seem to have persuaded proponents of Hindutva.

23 See Randolph Bourne, ‘The State’ (1918), first published posthumously in Untimely Papers, ed. James Oppenheim (New York: B.W. Huebsch 1919): Randolph Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays 1915–1919, ed. Carl Resek (New York: Harper 1964), pp. 65–106.

24 It is proper for all Western philosophers and political theorists to recall how often ‘the West’ has broken faith with its neighbours: consider Andrew Jackson’s treatment of Native American nations (1830), or Donald Trump’s abrogation of solemn treaties, against the advice of America’s own allies (2017–2018).

25 W.E. Hocking, Living Religions and a World Faith (Allen & Unwin: London 1940), p. 264.

26 G.K. Chesterton Heretics (John Lane: New York 1905), p. 80.

27 The New York Times reported (19 March 2001) that the Taliban envoy to the US had said ‘that the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation. “When your children are dying in front of you, then you don't care about a piece of art”’: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/taliban-explains-buddha-demolition.html (accessed 14 September 2018).

28 Hocking, op. cit., p. 19. See also Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (Alfred A. Knopf: New York 1956 [1948]), p. 481: ‘there can be no world state without a world community willing and able to support it.’

29 G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Penguin: Harmondsworth 1946 [1904]), p. 24.

30 See Stephen Webb, If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens—Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox (Praxis: New York 2002), pp. 46–48.

31 B. Cooper, ‘A Imperio usque ad Imperium’, in George Grant in Process, ed. L. Schmidt (Toronto: Anansi 1978), pp. 22–39.

32 Emile Durkheim The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study In Religious Sociology, trans J.W. Swain (London: Allen & Unwin 1915), p. 428. See also Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: II Perspectives of World History, trans C.F. Atkinson (New York: Alfred A.Knopf 1928), p. 37. Whether there is after all some gospel that is regularly resurrected (as Chesterton supposed: Orthodoxy [House of Stratus: Thirsk 2001 (1908)], p. 110) I make no commitment here.

33 Kipling (1903), in Verse: Definitive Edition, op. cit., pp. 278–81. First published in The Five Nations (London: Metheun 1903).

34 Kipling, Verse, op. cit., pp. 474–75.

35 See Heater, op. cit., p. 65.

36 Cicero, On Ends 3.63, in Long & Sedley, op. cit., p. 348 [57F].

37 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Oxford University Press: New York 1968 [1949]), p. 109.

38 Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod (Henry Holt & Co: New York 1988 [1928]), p. 25; cf. Qur’an 6.38: ‘there is not an animal on earth, nor a two-winged flying creature, but they are communities like you.’

39 See Amaroq E. Weiss, Timm Kroeger, J. Christopher Haney & Nina Fascione, ‘Social and Ecological Benefits of Restored Wolf Populations’, Transactions of the 72nd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (Wildlife Management Institute: Washington DC 2007), pp. 297–319.

40 Judges chs 19–20.

41 C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen (NEL: London 1989), p. 472.

42 Rudyard Kipling, ‘As Easy as ABC’, in A Diversity of Creatures (Macmillan: London 1912).