In Can We Live Together? Alain Touraine combines a consummate analysis of crucial social tensions in contemporary societies with a strong normative appeal for a new emancipatory 'Subject' capable of overcoming the twin threats of atomisation or authoritarianism. He calls for a move from 'politics to ethics' and then from ethics back to politics to enable the new Subject to make a reality out of the goals of democracy and solidarity. However, he has little to say about the nature of (...) such an ethics. This article argues that this lacuna could usefully be filled by adopting a form of radical humanism found in the work of Erich Fromm. It defies convention in the social sciences by operating from an explicit view of the 'is' and the 'ought' of common human nature, specifying reason, love and productive work as the qualities to be realised if we are to move closer to human solidarity. Although there remain significant philosophical and political differences between the two positions, particularly on the role to be played by 'the nation', their juxtaposition opens new lines of inquiry in the field of cosmopolitan ethics. (shrink)

This article sheds light on the ‘European citizenship paradox’, which emerges as a result of the tensions between EU citizenship norms and member‐state practices in the context of regional disparities and social inequalities that market integration arguably deepens. I claim that a transnational, politically inclusive European citizenship would provide for public spaces where unjust practices can be submitted to a respectful but no less ruthless critical analysis, where violent impositions and infringements can be disqualified by insisting on human and European (...) citizenship rights and norms. Assessing alternative citizenship models, I argue that a purely liberal‐market, a republican or a cosmopolitan citizenship model all appear to fail to resolve this paradox, unless they include deliberative procedures based on the recognition of different collective identities. (shrink)

The history of what we now term international relations theory is as rich and as complex as any area in the history of political thought. Yet in the last few decades one particular type of political philosophy has come to be almost unambiguously associated with liberal international relations theory. The dominance of Kantian cosmopolitanism in contemporary liberal international relations theory is quite remarkable. Its position is challenged, within liberalism, only by the utilitarian cosmopolitanism of thinkers such as Peter Singer and, (...) from outside the liberal tradition, by communitarians such as Michael Walzer or Alasdair MacIntyre. At least, this is how the debate is portrayed in the current literature. In this article I want to suggest that the biggest challenge to Kantian cosmopolitanism comes from within the neo-Kantian tradition. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the political success of human rights is often taken to be its philosophical failing. From US interventions to International NGOs to indigenous movements, human rights have found a place in diverse political spaces, while being applied to disparate goals and expressed in a range of practices. This heteronomy is vital to the global appeal of human rights, but for traditional moral and political philosophy it is something of a scandal. This paper is an attempt to understand and theorize human (...) rights on the terrain of the social actors who put them to use, particularly radical activists that have a more critical relationship to human rights. Attempting to avoid the philosophical pathology of demanding that the world reflect our conception of it, we base our reflection on the ambiguous, and potentially un-patterned, texture of human rights practice—taking seriously the idea that human rights express a relationship of power, importantly concerned with its legitimate arrangement and limitation. In both the philosophical literature and human rights activism, there seems to be a consensus on basic rights as undeniable moral principles of political legitimacy. This use of human rights is contrasted with radical social movements that reject this conception of rights as ideological and illegitimate, making specific reference to the Zapatista movement (Chiapas, Mexico) and the Landless Peasant Movement of Brazil (MST, from the Portuguese Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra), which are critical of the human rights discourse, but also make strategic use of the idea and offer alternative articulations of political legitimacy. (shrink)