Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition.” An Essay by Charles Taylor with commentary by Amy Gutmann, editor, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf.

Debates about cosmopolitanism in the spheres of political philosophy, sociology and postcolonial criticism have on the whole ignored specific histories of the cosmopolitan imagination and its vernacular expressions in everyday life. This article draws on aspects of the urban and often feminized worlds of entertainment, commerce, the arts and the emotions in metropolitan England during the first decades of the 20th century, in which an interest in abroad and cultural ‘others’ increasingly signalled an engagement with the new, in order to (...) argue for a notion of cosmopolitan modernity. This should be understood not just as a reflexive stance of openness, but also as a dialogic formation – a counterculture – part of a psychic and often gendered revolt against the conservatism and xenophobia of the parental culture. (shrink)

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of world (...) risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created. (shrink)

The article begins by noting that the widespread assumption that the social basis of more difficult or cosmopolitan art has been undermined in later modernity should lead to blander, less controversial art. An alternative interpretation is briefly described in which cosmopolitan art has become a spectacular tourist attraction. Significant questions that would follow such a development are: how national cultural institutions have been co-opted into a global spectacular culture and whether the work displayed in these settings can be radically critical (...) of dominant social values; and the implications of the development of a public culture focused on spectacular attractions for notions of cultural citizenship. In the article these questions are explored through a brief history of changing attitudes and values in British public culture, leading to a suggestion that we are experiencing an era of cultural fragmentation. The article concludes with a consideration of the possibilities for cultural citizenship in these changing circumstances. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to the revival of `virtue ethics'. If we regard human rights as a crucial development in the establishment of global institutions of justice and equality, then we need to explore the obligations that correspond to such rights. It is argued that cosmopolitan virtue a respect for other cultures and an ironic stance towards one's own culture spells out this obligation side of the human rights movement. Cosmopolitanism of course can assume very different forms. The article (...) traces various cosmopolitan ethics from the Greeks, Roman Stoics and Christian philosophers. Contemporary cosmopolitanism needs to be ironic to function usefully in hybrid global cultures, but it is open to the charge of being culturally `flat' and elitist. These criticisms are examined through the confrontation between Maurizio Viroli and Martha Nussbaum. While American patriotism is not a promising foundation for ironic cosmopolitanism, the republican tradition of virtue does offer a viable method of developing cosmopolitanism. Ironic cosmopolitan care for other cultures is founded on the commonalities of social existence, of which there are two central components: ontological vulnerability and political precariousness. (shrink)