Internationalizing Nussbaum’s model of cosmopolitan democratic education

Abstract

Nussbaum’s moral cosmopolitanism informs her capability-based theory of justice, which she uses in order to develop a distinctive model of cosmopolitan democratic education. I characterize Nussbaum’s educational model as a ‘statist model,’ however, because it regards cosmopolitan democratic education as necessary for realizing democratic arrangements at the domestic level. The socio-cultural diversity of virtually every nation, Nussbaum argues, renders it mandatory to educate citizens in a cosmopolitan fashion. Citizens must develop empathy and sympathy towards all co-citizens of their domestic polities and cope effectively with socio-cultural diversity. I criticize Nussbaum’s statist model, because it neglects that due to the ways in which international institutions already constrain national decision-making, citizens will not fully enjoy the human freedom of co-determining the political choices that affect their lives unless international affairs are further democratized. Therefore I suggest extending Nussbaum’s statist model and outline an ‘internationalist model’ of cosmopolitan democratic education.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitan education
• Nussbaum
• international democracy
• democratic education
• democratic ethos

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Universitat Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, the University of Leeds, the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universiät München and the Université Catholique de Louvain. I am most thankful to the audiences at these events, and, in particular, to Nicolás Brando, Francisco Garcia Gibson, Pablo Gilabert, Axel Gosseries, Rebecca Gutwald, Lisa Herzog, David Crocker, Julio Montero, Subin Nijhawan, Marc Meller, Mona Hasenzahl, Mihaela Mihai, Hervé Portois, Katarina Pitasse Fragoso, Pierre-Etienne Vandamme, Lea Ypi and Danielle Zwarthoed for very useful comments. Finally, I would also thank the anonymous referees and the editor of Ethics and Education for helpful suggestions.

Notes

1. I do not refer to Nussbaum’s position as ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ because that term describes the view that states can become powerful agents for promoting interpersonal egalitarian distributive justice worldwide. Nussbaum, by contrast, argues that states can help to realize effectively a certain sufficiencitarian conception of justice inside all states, and denies the validity of a global conception of interpersonal egalitarian justice. See Ypi (2008) and Ulaş (2015) on statist cosmopolitanism.

2. ‘Globalist’ and ‘internationalist theorists’ of global justice do not limit the scope of comparative, non-sufficientarian principles of justice in this manner. Globalists (Beitz 1979; Moellendorf 2002; Pogge 1989, 1994; Tan 2004), for example, hold that certain egalitarian principles of distributive justice are valid among all individuals globally, and internationalists (Culp 2014; Pettit 2010; Rawls 1999) maintain that inter-state relations should be governed by comparative principles. Beitz (2000, 677) initially labeled the theorists of this debate ‘cosmopolitan liberals’ and ‘social liberals,’ respectively. By now the terms globalists and statists are more common given that social liberals may recognize certain minimal concerns of justice or humanity beyond the state and may thus also, like Nussbaum, be viewed as cosmopolitans; cf. also Risse (2012, 10) who states that ‘[w]e live on a “cosmopolitan plateau.”’.

3. By ‘international affairs’ I mean to refer to the relations between states, the way in which international organizations such as the World Bank are structured and international regimes such as that concerning the governance of anthropocentric climate change are arranged.

4. Strictly speaking it is a ‘transnational’ democratic ethos because it refers to the emotions, knowledge and skills that the populations of different states hold vis-à-vis one another. But since the term international democratic ethos appears to be more conventional I will use this term instead.

5. The ten central capabilities are understood as political demands in the way in which Rawls ([1993] 2005) defends a distinctively political as opposed to a comprehensive understanding of his theory of justice as fairness.

6. The group of theorists (cf. Nagel 2005) that Caney (2008) refers to as ‘strong statist theorists,’ by contrast, denies that any requirements of justice apply outside the state. But all statist theorists agree that comparative, non-sufficientarian principles of justice are only valid inside the state.

7. Nussbaum (1996) argues in depth for such a moral cosmopolitanism in her essay ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.’.

8. By ‘international institutions’ I mean to refer to the kind of international organizations and regimes that I briefly described above.

9. Grant and Keohance (2005) offer a useful overview of alternative normative standards for holding different kinds of international organizations accountable.

10. For similar arguments that highlight the malleability of human motivation in order to undercut arguments that deny the feasibility of certain political ideals, see Goodin (1986, 167), Rawls (1999, 113), Caney (2005) and Weinstock (2009, 95).

11. What is more, they might argue that even if undoing global economic integration would result in economic welfare losses in the aggregate, the welfare losses might not affect the populations of those liberal democratic states that have been deprived from their national sovereignty through economic integration. This argumentation, however, seems to exaggerate the importance of economic welfare in liberal democratic states relative to the degree of economic welfare in other states. That is to say that a loss in aggregate economic welfare is not acceptable when those who are affect by this loss reside in states that are not liberal democratic and which are in desperate need of maintaining the current level of economic welfare.

12. On the multiplicity of layers of a personal identity, see Sen (2007, Ch. 5).

13. I merely say that international sympathy of this kind is ‘conducive to’ – rather than ‘necessary for’ – democratic arrangements, because I want to remain agnostic as to whether democratic arrangements could be created and upheld solely on the basis of a sense of justice whether or not international sympathy of this kind existed or not.

14. I assume that democratic politics to a considerable extent consists of communicative action of the kind that Habermas (1991) and Heath (2001, 2008) articulate and analyze in their works.