World Community
Podcast # 9: The Cosmopolitan Idea
Today we find the people of the world sharply divided over values that they deem to be sacred and inviolable. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book Cosmopolitanism makes a strong case for much greater toleration of diversity and for values that are not only different from our own but contradictory to our own. Does that mean a cosmopolitan should tolerate whatever anyone thinks or does? Here we confront a major test of the cosmopolitan idea. Does toleration also have its limits? Appiah says:
There are limits to cosmopolitan tolerance. We will sometimes want to interfere in other places, because what is going on there violates our fundamental values so deeply. We, too, can see moral error. And when it is serious enough — genocide is the uncontroversial case — we will not stop with conversation. Toleration requires a concept of the intolerable (Cosmopolitanism, p. 144).
Appiah states the one universal truth that all cosmopolitans must accept: “Every human being has obligations to every other. Everybody matters: that is our central idea” (ibid, p. 144). Speaking as a cosmopolitan, Appiah immediately adds that this central idea “sharply limits the scope of our tolerance.” What should not be tolerated is the view that some people do not matter or, what Appiah says is even more threatening, “the belief that they don’t matter very much” (ibid, p. 153).
This brings us back to the categorical imperative, as formulated by Immanuel Kant that was treated in Podcast # 5. Appiah, like Martha Nussbaum, links the cosmopolitan idea to Kant’s emphasis on the intrinsic value of persons — all persons. People are “ends in themselves,” not mere means to some other ends. Kant’s ethical imperative does not tolerate any action or any belief that treats people as things. Kant’s fundamental ethical principle does not tolerate any action or any belief that deprives people of their autonomy. What Kant calls the supreme principle of morality does not tolerate any action or belief that cannot be applied to everyone, in other words if it is not universalizable. From the standpoint of the fundamental principles of ethics, I can see little difference between Appiah’s cosmopolitan idea and the one presented by Kant. Does Appiah’s book add anything new to what Kant already said about universal ethics? Perhaps what is most important is that his analysis emphasizes the view that genuine ethical commands are relatively few, and that great damage is done to ethics when relative values are falsely presented and commanded as universal. A large number of values are local, personal, tribal, and limited in their application. Because we humans are able to think and act on many levels at once, we seldom encounter ethical demands that call for evaluation by the categorical imperative. This is the most promising aspect of the cosmopolitan idea from the perspective of actually being able to implement it in the real world. Kant’s emphasis on autonomy not only endorses the responsibility each individual has for making fundamental ethical choices, it also means that political and governmental leaders should resist micromanaging value decisions and actions that have little or no impact beyond the lives of individuals. Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Kwame Anthony Appiah all agree on this point. Mill puts it this way:
[1.9] The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle. It is entitled to govern absolutely in the dealings between society and the individual with regard to compulsion and control, regardless whether the means used are physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion. The principle that the sole end for which humanity is warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of its members, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over members of a civilized community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others. Their own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. They cannot rightfully be compelled to do or not to do so because it will be better for them; or because it will make them happier; or because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for pleading with them, or reasoning with them, or persuading them, or entreating them, but not for compelling them, or visiting them with any evil in case they do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter them must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of our conduct for which we are amenable to society is that
which concerns others. In the part that merely concerns our self, our independence is rightfully absolute. Over our self, over our own body and mind, the individual is sovereign (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Agora Publications, Inc. 2003, pp. 11-12).
Although they both support universal values, the content of what Kant and Appiah have in mind is much more limited than the term “universality” suggests. Kant did not propose a world government. He explicitly rejected “a single state composed of nations,” which he said would be a contradiction. Appiah rejects the idea of what he calls “a global state,” which, he says, has three obvious problems: (1) it could easily accumulate uncontrollable power, (2) it would often be unresponsive to local needs, and (3) it would reduce what he calls “institutional experimentation” from which we have much to learn (Cosmopolitanism, p. 163). Both Kant and Appiah insist that there are a few basic ethical principles that can and should be taken as inviolable. Appiah appeals to the nation state as what he calls “the primary mechanism” for human community (ibid). However, as I argued in Podcast # 7, the nation state has lost its appeal as the locus of sovereignty in this postmodern era. So, we need to think again about how universal values might be manifested on a global scale.
The Cosmopolitan Idea
First of all, I suggest that we try to avoid solutions that call for us to embrace some kind of “ism.” Universalism is an example of what I have in mind. Surely we need to seek universals, but consider some of the alternative ways that have been tried to achieve that goal. Catholicism, Communism, and Imperialism all strive to be universal, but all quickly turn into some form of absolutism that eliminates diversity and autonomy and presents itself as the supreme form of community. Rather than embracing yet another “ism” — cosmopolitanism — I think it would be better simply to strive for what Kant called “the cosmopolitan idea.” The advantage of using that approach is that it would discourage people from thinking that there is some kind of utopian solution, a grand plan or scheme that will solve any and all problems related to the human community. Politicians, especially the ones who use the form of rhetoric proposed by Gorgias, thrive on offering such solutions. In doing that they foster illusion rather than reality. I agree with Václav Havel who, as I explained in Podcast # 7, favors ideas over ideology. Utopian solutions quickly become ideology — plans, programs, formulas, or blueprints that must be imposed on people as the path to the promised land. They are inevitably heteronomous, imposed from the outside through some form of coercion.
What, exactly, is an idea? Kant, in all of his major works, struggled to find a way of thinking about ideas that do not arise from experience and cannot be verified by experience and yet that serve as our guide to acting, deciding, and thinking. Kant used the phrase “practical idea of reason” to describe what he had in mind. Kant explicitly rejected the assertion that such ideas are or could be empirical. This brings us back to the second major demand of positivism — that all statements must be verified by sense experience. Accepting this demand eliminates ethical and political statements from the cognitive domain. Rejecting that demand restores the possibility not only of making ethical and political statements but also of analyzing and justifying them rationally. Unfortunately, Kant was never able to justify his appeal to “practical ideas of reason,” because he had constructed his view of reality on a dualism between what he called the “phenomenal” and the “noumenal” realms. The Critique of Pure Reason, generally considered to be his major work, established that dichotomy. He maintained it in his second critique — The Critique of Practical Reason. The phenomenal realm is the world of experience, and the noumenal realm is the world of ideas. This left a gap that Kant could not bridge, even though he wrote a third critique — the Critique of Judgment — specifically designed for that purpose.
In order to escape from that dualism and understand the proper role of ideas, we must leave the modern world and its basic assumptions about the split between reason and experience. I think the solution can be found in the pre-modern world. Plato made no such assumptions. His analysis of ideas rejects the claim that knowledge must be verified by experience and places ideas at the center of knowing and acting. Plato’s way of thinking about ideas would benefit us as we search for a way of living in the postmodern era. In Greek the term Plato uses is eidos. It can be translated as idea, form, essence or universal. In Plato’s Republic the form of goodness is presented as the central idea that gives power and meaning to all other forms.
Socrates: Then we can say that the form of the good provides truth to what is known and the power of knowing to the knower. It causes knowledge and truth, and in that sense, we can think of the good as knowable. And you would be right to consider goodness as even more beautiful than truth and knowledge. As in our previous discussion, light and sight can be said to be like the sun but not to be the sun, so in this analogy knowledge and truth can be considered to be like the good but not to be the good. The good has even greater value than they have.
Glaucon: You are praising an extraordinary beauty that produces both truth and knowledge and is even more beautiful than they are. But I suppose you will deny that the good is the same as pleasure.
Socrates: Don’t even think that! Instead, let’s continue to consider the similarity in another way.
Glaucon: How?
Socrates: I think you would say that the sun is both the source of visibility in all visible things and also the cause of generation, growth, and nourishment. But it is not the process of generation itself.
Glaucon: Of course.
Socrates: In the same way, we find that goodness is not only the source of learning in everything that is known, but it is also its existence and nature. Goodness itself is not existence, but it surpasses existence in dignity and power (Plato’s Republic, published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2001, 508-509).
Unlike Kant and the other modern philosophers, in The Republic Plato presents both experience and ideas as aspects of a single reality, avoiding the dualism that spawned positivism. The eidos of which Socrates speaks — the idea, form, essence, or universal — is a single reality, but it is manifested in a variety of ways. It appears as shadows, but the reality is what casts the shadow.
Socrates uses metaphor — not logical propositions — as he tries to articulate what he has in mind. The image of the sun and the shadows it casts is one of Plato’s central symbols. It first appears at the end of Book 6 and returns as part of “The Allegory of the Cave” and again at the beginning of Book 7 of The Republic. Here is what he says in Book 6:
Socrates: I talked about this kind as intelligible, even though the mind is required to use hypotheses, because it cannot get beyond making assumptions and proceed to first principles. At this stage, the mind uses the objects of which the shadows are resemblances as images. When compared to shadows, they are more tangible and more highly prized.
Glaucon: I understand. You are talking about geometry and the arts related to it.
Socrates: Now in speaking of the other aspect of the intelligible, please understand that I mean the knowledge that reason itself attains through the power of dialectic, using assumptions not as first principles, but as hypotheses—as ways of access and points of departure—so that it can go beyond assumptions and apprehend the first principle of the whole. Holding fast to that first principle and then proceeding to what depends on it, it descends without the aid of any visible object, moving from ideas to ideas and ending in ideas (ibid, 511).
Plato uses the dialogue form to capture the dialectical method of inquiry that searches for ideas rather than imposing them as ideology. Ideas are goals, ends, and purposes, not plans, formulas, or blueprints. They are what Plato’s student, Aristotle, called “a final cause” (telos).
This is how we should think about the cosmopolitan idea. It is a goal, a final cause, and a telos. Ideas of that kind are not vague, ephemeral dreams but powerful tools that enable us to make the most important decisions concerning the world community. I will conclude this series by considering three such decisions and using the cosmopolitan idea to show how it might function. Rather than leaving such matters to nation states and confining sovereignty to that level of activity, we should think of living our lives on many levels at once. Just as we make ethical decisions about aspects of our personal lives, it makes sense to think of our political lives as consisting of several levels of activity. When I voted on November 7, 2006, I marked my ballot concerning matters that are local, statewide, and national. Should a portion of taxes paid to my town be devoted to preserving open space in order to benefit the environment? Should grocery stores in my state be allowed to sell wine? I voted for legislative candidates at the state and national levels. I exist in all of those spheres of decision and action, each one affecting an aspect of my political life. The cosmopolitan idea opens yet another level on which we should become more active, but it is not one that has governmental status. In the postmodern era we depend more and more on decisions that go far beyond the borders, and that transcend the interests, of any particular nation.
The existence and management of any republic depend on the rule of law. Considerable confusion is caused by the multi-layered nature of law. The depth of this confusion is dramatically presented by the dilemma in which Socrates was caught as he sat in prison waiting to be executed by his fellow Athenians. The drama emerges when his rich friend Crito arrives at the prison to announce that his execution will take place on the next day. However, Crito offers Socrates the opportunity to escape.
Crito: tell me, Socrates, are you acting out of concern for me and your other friends? Are you worried that if you escape someone may inform on us and we will get into trouble for having helped you? Are you afraid that we might lose our property or suffer something even worse? If that’s your fear, put it aside. We certainly ought to run an even greater risk than that in order to save you. So, let me persuade you to do as I say.
Socrates: Crito, I do have that fear, but it’s not the only one.
Crito: Then stop worrying. I’ve found some people who are willing to get you out of here at no great cost. As for the informers, they are not asking much; a little money will satisfy them. I have more than enough money for this purpose, and it’s at your disposal. If you hesitate to spend only my money, some of your friends from abroad have volunteered theirs. Simmias, the Theban, has brought a large sum for this very purpose. Cebes and many others are willing to spend their money too. So, don’t hesitate to escape on that account. And don’t say, as you did in court, that you will have a hard time knowing what to do with yourself if you do escape. People will love you wherever you go, not only in Athens. I have friends in Thessaly who will welcome and protect you. Nobody in Thessaly will give you any trouble (Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, published by Agora Publications, Inc. 2005, Greek pages 44-45).
Socrates insists that he and Crito together think through this proposal. His fundamental concern is that whatever he decides to do, whether it is to escape to Thessaly or stay and drink the hemlock, it must be just and right, not unjust and wrong.
In his dialogue with Crito, Socrates appeals to the concept of law. He imagines a conversation with a third character, which he calls The Laws. They argue against Crito and for the idea of remaining to be executed. Here are their final words on that subject:
Socrates, listen to us who brought you up. Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first. That way you may be justified before the rulers of the other world. Neither you nor anyone related to you will be more happy, more holy, or more just in this life, or any other, if you do as Crito says. Now you depart in innocence, one who suffers rather than does evil; a victim not of laws but of people. But if you escape, returning evil for evil, wrong for wrong, breaking the contracts and agreements that you have made with us, harming those whom you ought least to harm—yourself, your friends, your country, and us—we will be angry with you while you live, and our brothers, the laws in the other world, will receive you as an enemy. They will know that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen, then, to us and not to Crito (Plato’s Crito, 54).
Who or what are these laws? To answer that question we must go back to the Euthyphro, closely analyze what was said there about divine law, then reflect on what is said about the laws of Athens in the Apology, and finally follow the complex discussion that emerges in the Crito. To do all of that lies beyond the scope of this podcast, but it might be helpful for the present purpose to make a distinction among three kinds or levels of law. (1) Divine law. If divine law is based on what pleases the gods or what the gods demand of human beings, then Socrates in the Euthyphro clearly refuted that as a proper basis for establishing what is just and unjust. That is not the law Socrates thinks he should follow in making his decision about whether or not to escape. (2) Human law. The human law that has Socrates sitting in prison waiting to be executed is the law made by the people of Athens. The Laws who are speaking at the end of the Crito make an explicit distinction between (a) the laws and (b) people. The Laws claim that if he is unjustly executed, he will be a victim a victim “not of laws but of people.” In the Apology Socrates tells the jury that he has, on more than one occasion, refused to obey the laws of Athens when he thought they were unjust. So it would seem that human law cannot be the law Socrates is willing to follow, at least not when he thinks it is unjust. In the Apology Socrates makes it amply clear that it is unjust for the Athenians to convict and execute him. So, there must be another level of law that goes beyond both the law that religious people like Euthyphro follow as well as the law human beings enact in their republics.
The Laws in Plato’s Crito personify this third level of law. This is what Kant would call the moral law, or the supreme principle of morality. Perhaps it is best identified as universal law, the goal or purpose of all ethical and political thinking and action. This law is the basis of the cosmopolitan idea to which we must appeal if we are to have a viable world community.
In the final podcast of this series I will begin by considering three examples of global issues that are among the most urgent problems facing the entire human race today. They all call for appeal to this third level of law, because they cannot be resolved by legislation and adjudication on the part of any particular sect or nation. They require a universal law that applies to the entire world community.
Podcast # 9: The Cosmopolitan Idea
Today we find the people of the world sharply divided over values that they deem to be sacred and inviolable. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s book Cosmopolitanism makes a strong case for much greater toleration of diversity and for values that are not only different from our own but contradictory to our own. Does that mean a cosmopolitan should tolerate whatever anyone thinks or does? Here we confront a major test of the cosmopolitan idea. Does toleration also have its limits? Appiah says:
There are limits to cosmopolitan tolerance. We will sometimes want to interfere in other places, because what is going on there violates our fundamental values so deeply. We, too, can see moral error. And when it is serious enough — genocide is the uncontroversial case — we will not stop with conversation. Toleration requires a concept of the intolerable (Cosmopolitanism, p. 144).
Appiah states the one universal truth that all cosmopolitans must accept: “Every human being has obligations to every other. Everybody matters: that is our central idea” (ibid, p. 144). Speaking as a cosmopolitan, Appiah immediately adds that this central idea “sharply limits the scope of our tolerance.” What should not be tolerated is the view that some people do not matter or, what Appiah says is even more threatening, “the belief that they don’t matter very much” (ibid, p. 153).
This brings us back to the categorical imperative, as formulated by Immanuel Kant that was treated in Podcast # 5. Appiah, like Martha Nussbaum, links the cosmopolitan idea to Kant’s emphasis on the intrinsic value of persons — all persons. People are “ends in themselves,” not mere means to some other ends. Kant’s ethical imperative does not tolerate any action or any belief that treats people as things. Kant’s fundamental ethical principle does not tolerate any action or any belief that deprives people of their autonomy. What Kant calls the supreme principle of morality does not tolerate any action or belief that cannot be applied to everyone, in other words if it is not universalizable. From the standpoint of the fundamental principles of ethics, I can see little difference between Appiah’s cosmopolitan idea and the one presented by Kant. Does Appiah’s book add anything new to what Kant already said about universal ethics? Perhaps what is most important is that his analysis emphasizes the view that genuine ethical commands are relatively few, and that great damage is done to ethics when relative values are falsely presented and commanded as universal. A large number of values are local, personal, tribal, and limited in their application. Because we humans are able to think and act on many levels at once, we seldom encounter ethical demands that call for evaluation by the categorical imperative. This is the most promising aspect of the cosmopolitan idea from the perspective of actually being able to implement it in the real world. Kant’s emphasis on autonomy not only endorses the responsibility each individual has for making fundamental ethical choices, it also means that political and governmental leaders should resist micromanaging value decisions and actions that have little or no impact beyond the lives of individuals. Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Kwame Anthony Appiah all agree on this point. Mill puts it this way:
[1.9] The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle. It is entitled to govern absolutely in the dealings between society and the individual with regard to compulsion and control, regardless whether the means used are physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion. The principle that the sole end for which humanity is warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with
the liberty of action of any of its members, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over members of a civilized community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others. Their own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. They cannot rightfully be compelled to do or not to do so because it will be better for them; or because it will make them happier; or because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for pleading with them, or reasoning with them, or persuading them, or entreating them, but not for compelling them, or visiting them with any evil in case they do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter them must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of our conduct for which we are amenable to society is that
which concerns others. In the part that merely concerns our self, our independence is rightfully absolute. Over our self, over our own body and mind, the individual is sovereign (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Agora Publications, Inc. 2003, pp. 11-12).
Although they both support universal values, the content of what Kant and Appiah have in mind is much more limited than the term “universality” suggests. Kant did not propose a world government. He explicitly rejected “a single state composed of nations,” which he said would be a contradiction. Appiah rejects the idea of what he calls “a global state,” which, he says, has three obvious problems: (1) it could easily accumulate uncontrollable power, (2) it would often be unresponsive to local needs, and (3) it would reduce what he calls “institutional experimentation” from which we have much to learn (Cosmopolitanism, p. 163). Both Kant and Appiah insist that there are a few basic ethical principles that can and should be taken as inviolable. Appiah appeals to the nation state as what he calls “the primary mechanism” for human community (ibid). However, as I argued in Podcast # 7, the nation state has lost its appeal as the locus of sovereignty in this postmodern era. So, we need to think again about how universal values might be manifested on a global scale.
The Cosmopolitan Idea
First of all, I suggest that we try to avoid solutions that call for us to embrace some kind of “ism.” Universalism is an example of what I have in mind. Surely we need to seek universals, but consider some of the alternative ways that have been tried to achieve that goal. Catholicism, Communism, and Imperialism all strive to be universal, but all quickly turn into some form of absolutism that eliminates diversity and autonomy and presents itself as the supreme form of community. Rather than embracing yet another “ism” — cosmopolitanism — I think it would be better simply to strive for what Kant called “the cosmopolitan idea.” The advantage of using that approach is that it would discourage people from thinking that there is some kind of utopian solution, a grand plan or scheme that will solve any and all problems related to the human community. Politicians, especially the ones who use the form of rhetoric proposed by Gorgias, thrive on offering such solutions. In doing that they foster illusion rather than reality. I agree with Václav Havel who, as I explained in Podcast # 7, favors ideas over ideology. Utopian solutions quickly become ideology — plans, programs, formulas, or blueprints that must be imposed on people as the path to the promised land. They are inevitably heteronomous, imposed from the outside through some form of coercion.
What, exactly, is an idea? Kant, in all of his major works, struggled to find a way of thinking about ideas that do not arise from experience and cannot be verified by experience and yet that serve as our guide to acting, deciding, and thinking. Kant used the phrase “practical idea of reason” to describe what he had in mind. Kant explicitly rejected the assertion that such ideas are or could be empirical. This brings us back to the second major demand of positivism — that all statements must be verified by sense experience. Accepting this demand eliminates ethical and political statements from the cognitive domain. Rejecting that demand restores the possibility not only of making ethical and political statements but also of analyzing and justifying them rationally. Unfortunately, Kant was never able to justify his appeal to “practical ideas of reason,” because he had constructed his view of reality on a dualism between what he called the “phenomenal” and the “noumenal” realms. The Critique of Pure Reason, generally considered to be his major work, established that dichotomy. He maintained it in his second critique — The Critique of Practical Reason. The phenomenal realm is the world of experience, and the noumenal realm is the world of ideas. This left a gap that Kant could not bridge, even though he wrote a third critique — the Critique of Judgment — specifically designed for that purpose.
In order to escape from that dualism and understand the proper role of ideas, we must leave the modern world and its basic assumptions about the split between reason and experience. I think the solution can be found in the pre-modern world. Plato made no such assumptions. His analysis of ideas rejects the claim that knowledge must be verified by experience and places ideas at the center of knowing and acting. Plato’s way of thinking about ideas would benefit us as we search for a way of living in the postmodern era. In Greek the term Plato uses is eidos. It can be translated as idea, form, essence or universal. In Plato’s Republic the form of goodness is presented as the central idea that gives power and meaning to all other forms.
Socrates: Then we can say that the form of the good provides truth to what is known and the power of knowing to the knower. It causes knowledge and truth, and in that sense, we can think of the good as knowable. And you would be right to consider goodness as even more beautiful than truth and knowledge. As in our previous discussion, light and sight can be said to be like the sun but not to be the sun, so in this analogy knowledge and truth can be considered to be like the good but not to be the good. The good has even greater value than they have.
Glaucon: You are praising an extraordinary beauty that produces both truth and knowledge and is even more beautiful than they are. But I suppose you will deny that the good is the same as pleasure.
Socrates: Don’t even think that! Instead, let’s continue to consider the similarity in another way.
Glaucon: How?
Socrates: I think you would say that the sun is both the source of visibility in all visible things and also the cause of generation, growth, and nourishment. But it is not the process of generation itself.
Glaucon: Of course.
Socrates: In the same way, we find that goodness is not only the source of learning in everything that is known, but it is also its existence and nature. Goodness itself is not existence, but it surpasses existence in dignity and power (Plato’s Republic, published by Agora Publications, Inc., 2001, 508-509).
Unlike Kant and the other modern philosophers, in The Republic Plato presents both experience and ideas as aspects of a single reality, avoiding the dualism that spawned positivism. The eidos of which Socrates speaks — the idea, form, essence, or universal — is a single reality, but it is manifested in a variety of ways. It appears as shadows, but the reality is what casts the shadow.
Socrates uses metaphor — not logical propositions — as he tries to articulate what he has in mind. The image of the sun and the shadows it casts is one of Plato’s central symbols. It first appears at the end of Book 6 and returns as part of “The Allegory of the Cave” and again at the beginning of Book 7 of The Republic. Here is what he says in Book 6:
Socrates: I talked about this kind as intelligible, even though the mind is required to use hypotheses, because it cannot get beyond making assumptions and proceed to first principles. At this stage, the mind uses the objects of which the shadows are resemblances as images. When compared to shadows, they are more tangible and more highly prized.
Glaucon: I understand. You are talking about geometry and the arts related to it.
Socrates: Now in speaking of the other aspect of the intelligible, please understand that I mean the knowledge that reason itself attains through the power of dialectic, using assumptions not as first principles, but as hypotheses—as ways of access and points of departure—so that it can go beyond assumptions and apprehend the first principle of the whole. Holding fast to that first principle and then proceeding to what depends on it, it descends without the aid of any visible object, moving from ideas to ideas and ending in ideas (ibid, 511).
Plato uses the dialogue form to capture the dialectical method of inquiry that searches for ideas rather than imposing them as ideology. Ideas are goals, ends, and purposes, not plans, formulas, or blueprints. They are what Plato’s student, Aristotle, called “a final cause” (telos).
This is how we should think about the cosmopolitan idea. It is a goal, a final cause, and a telos. Ideas of that kind are not vague, ephemeral dreams but powerful tools that enable us to make the most important decisions concerning the world community. I will conclude this series by considering three such decisions and using the cosmopolitan idea to show how it might function. Rather than leaving such matters to nation states and confining sovereignty to that level of activity, we should think of living our lives on many levels at once. Just as we make ethical decisions about aspects of our personal lives, it makes sense to think of our political lives as consisting of several levels of activity. When I voted on November 7, 2006, I marked my ballot concerning matters that are local, statewide, and national. Should a portion of taxes paid to my town be devoted to preserving open space in order to benefit the environment? Should grocery stores in my state be allowed to sell wine? I voted for legislative candidates at the state and national levels. I exist in all of those spheres of decision and action, each one affecting an aspect of my political life. The cosmopolitan idea opens yet another level on which we should become more active, but it is not one that has governmental status. In the postmodern era we depend more and more on decisions that go far beyond the borders, and that transcend the interests, of any particular nation.
The existence and management of any republic depend on the rule of law. Considerable confusion is caused by the multi-layered nature of law. The depth of this confusion is dramatically presented by the dilemma in which Socrates was caught as he sat in prison waiting to be executed by his fellow Athenians. The drama emerges when his rich friend Crito arrives at the prison to announce that his execution will take place on the next day. However, Crito offers Socrates the opportunity to escape.
Crito: tell me, Socrates, are you acting out of concern for me and your other friends? Are you worried that if you escape someone may inform on us and we will get into trouble for having helped you? Are you afraid that we might lose our property or suffer something even worse? If that’s your fear, put it aside. We certainly ought to run an even greater risk than that in order to save you. So, let me persuade you to do as I say.
Socrates: Crito, I do have that fear, but it’s not the only one.
Crito: Then stop worrying. I’ve found some people who are willing to get you out of here at no great cost. As for the informers, they are not asking much; a little money will satisfy them. I have more than enough money for this purpose, and it’s at your disposal. If you hesitate to spend only my money, some of your friends from abroad have volunteered theirs. Simmias, the Theban, has brought a large sum for this very purpose. Cebes and many others are willing to spend their money too. So, don’t hesitate to escape on that account. And don’t say, as you did in court, that you will have a hard time knowing what to do with yourself if you do escape. People will love you wherever you go, not only in Athens. I have friends in Thessaly who will welcome and protect you. Nobody in Thessaly will give you any trouble (Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, published by Agora Publications, Inc. 2005, Greek pages 44-45).
Socrates insists that he and Crito together think through this proposal. His fundamental concern is that whatever he decides to do, whether it is to escape to Thessaly or stay and drink the hemlock, it must be just and right, not unjust and wrong.
In his dialogue with Crito, Socrates appeals to the concept of law. He imagines a conversation with a third character, which he calls The Laws. They argue against Crito and for the idea of remaining to be executed. Here are their final words on that subject:
Socrates, listen to us who brought you up. Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first. That way you may be justified before the rulers of the other world. Neither you nor anyone related to you will be more happy, more holy, or more just in this life, or any other, if you do as Crito says. Now you depart in innocence, one who suffers rather than does evil; a victim not of laws but of people. But if you escape, returning evil for evil, wrong for wrong, breaking the contracts and agreements that you have made with us, harming those whom you ought least to harm—yourself, your friends, your country, and us—we will be angry with you while you live, and our brothers, the laws in the other world, will receive you as an enemy. They will know that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen, then, to us and not to Crito (Plato’s Crito, 54).
Who or what are these laws? To answer that question we must go back to the Euthyphro, closely analyze what was said there about divine law, then reflect on what is said about the laws of Athens in the Apology, and finally follow the complex discussion that emerges in the Crito. To do all of that lies beyond the scope of this podcast, but it might be helpful for the present purpose to make a distinction among three kinds or levels of law. (1) Divine law. If divine law is based on what pleases the gods or what the gods demand of human beings, then Socrates in the Euthyphro clearly refuted that as a proper basis for establishing what is just and unjust. That is not the law Socrates thinks he should follow in making his decision about whether or not to escape. (2) Human law. The human law that has Socrates sitting in prison waiting to be executed is the law made by the people of Athens. The Laws who are speaking at the end of the Crito make an explicit distinction between (a) the laws and (b) people. The Laws claim that if he is unjustly executed, he will be a victim a victim “not of laws but of people.” In the Apology Socrates tells the jury that he has, on more than one occasion, refused to obey the laws of Athens when he thought they were unjust. So it would seem that human law cannot be the law Socrates is willing to follow, at least not when he thinks it is unjust. In the Apology Socrates makes it amply clear that it is unjust for the Athenians to convict and execute him. So, there must be another level of law that goes beyond both the law that religious people like Euthyphro follow as well as the law human beings enact in their republics.
The Laws in Plato’s Crito personify this third level of law. This is what Kant would call the moral law, or the supreme principle of morality. Perhaps it is best identified as universal law, the goal or purpose of all ethical and political thinking and action. This law is the basis of the cosmopolitan idea to which we must appeal if we are to have a viable world community.
In the final podcast of this series I will begin by considering three examples of global issues that are among the most urgent problems facing the entire human race today. They all call for appeal to this third level of law, because they cannot be resolved by legislation and adjudication on the part of any particular sect or nation. They require a universal law that applies to the entire world community.