Abstract
It is often argued that cosmopolitanism faces unique motivational constraints, asking more of individuals than they are able to give. This ‘motivational problem’ is held to pose a significant challenge to cosmopolitanism, as it appears unable to transform its moral demands into motivated political action. This article develops a novel response to the motivational problem facing cosmopolitanism, arguing that self-interest, alongside appeals to sentiment, can play a vital and neglected, transitional role in moving towards an expanded cosmopolitical condition. The article explicates the ‘motivational problem’, analyses the relationship between self-interest and sentimental cosmopolitanism in addressing it, and develops a series of claims that self-interest can be one important component in what we label as ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’. In doing so, we argue that self-interested motivations can be compatible with sentiment-based approaches, rendering them more plausible. In addition, two expected critiques of self-interested ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’ are tackled: (A) That it cannot address feasibility constraints, and (B) That self-interested motivations cannot meet what an ‘authentic’ cosmopolitanism entails. We refute and challenge these critiques and outline three conditions in which self-interest can advance a transitional form of cosmopolitanism, while also being compatible with cosmopolitanism writ large.
Keywords
Introduction
Although cosmopolitanism has recently gained increased interest and general support in relation to its underwriting moral principles advocating human worth, dignity and corresponding obligations to those beyond borders, this has not translated into widespread action. For example, despite the fact that more than a billion people face severe poverty worldwide, and around 50,000 people die every day as a result of this dire situation (United Nations Development Programme, 2016), most of us – including those of us who subscribe to cosmopolitan principles – do relatively little to address global poverty. This same sense of inaction continues to plague other areas of global moral significance, such as underwhelming responses to climate change (Held, 2010), global health (Brown, 2012), and the protection of other global public goods (Beardsworth et al., 2019). Accordingly, both cosmopolitans and their critics alike identify what is often referred to as a ‘motivation gap’ at the heart of cosmopolitanism. The significance of this gap is twofold. Firstly, faced with this gap it is unclear that cosmopolitans can offer a convincing route from present conditions to a meaningful cosmopolitics. Secondly, insofar as normative theory is intended to guide the action of ordinary people and not simply sketch out alternative realities, this ‘motivational problem’ undermines the credibility of cosmopolitanism as an account of obligations to others. To many, this shortfall renders cosmopolitanism untenable as both a practical political project and as a viable theoretical alternative to nationalism (Kymlicka, 2010; Lenard, 2012; Miller, 2007).
The purpose of this article is to explore what we see as a largely underdeveloped area of research in cosmopolitan thought as it relates to cosmopolitanism’s motivational problem, namely, the potential role of self-interest as a key motivational component in the development and furtherance of an expanded cosmopolitical condition. In order to advance this agenda, the article is divided into five sections. To begin, Section 1 details the ‘motivational problem’ in cosmopolitanism and outlines a number of key issues at the heart of this debate. Sections 2 and 3 will analyse the potential relationship between self-interest and sentimental cosmopolitanism in addressing the solidarity problem, arguing that self-interested motivations can be mutually consistent and compatible with sentiment-based cosmopolitanism, acting as a potential entry point towards mutual-interest and sentimental solidarity. Section 4 outlines our basic claim that self-interest can be one important component towards sentimentalist solidarity in what we label as ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’. Section 5 addresses two potential critiques of our vision of self-interested ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’: (A) That it cannot address feasibility constraints that currently limit cosmopolitical advancement and (B) That it cannot meet the demands of what an ‘authentic’ cosmopolitanism entails. In both cases we refute these critiques and outline three conditions in which self-interest can be compatible with cosmopolitanism writ large while advancing a transitional form of cosmopolitanism. Through our analysis the article argues that self-interest should be understood as providing an important motivational and transformative component within a broader conception of ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’.
Before beginning it is important to set out some conceptual parameters. First, the referent object of self-interested motivation pertains to both individuals as well as states. Unlike some strong cosmopolitan or neo-sovereigntist accounts, this article assumes that the interests of individuals and states are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that both entities represent potential agents of self-interest able to advance conditions of what we call transitional cosmopolitanism. To be clear, this does not suggest that these agents are motivated in the exact same way nor will respond similarity. The claim here is merely that both sets of agents determine self-interest, and will be motivated to act based on those interests, regardless of the processes in which those interests are determined.
Second, this article adopts a broad behaviourist understanding of self-interest, which denotes an empirical condition where agents are understood to have fundamental interests and that those interests matter when outlining any consistent form of politic order. However, we accept a sociological definition of self-interest beyond its narrow form as found in some classic economic accounts, which argue that rational actors only act to maximise advantage for oneself on immediate and cost-benefit calculations (Bowie, 1991). Instead, sociological definitions recognise that actors do consider advantages to oneself when making decisions about what is best (self-interest), but also recognise benefits from long-term social arrangements and institutions even when those arrangements curtail immediate self-interest (thus we accept the common behavioural distinctions between self-interest and selfishness and philosophical distinctions between psychological, ethical and rational egoism) (Diekmann and Lindenberg, 2001). In line with this broad understanding, this article thus assumes that at the most basic level self-interests are not necessarily inconsistent with the interests of others and that those interests can include emotive or imperfect rationales traditionally disfavoured by some rational choice approaches (Goodin, 1992; Ostrom, 1990). In this regard, the notion of self-interest used in this article accepts the broad definitional properties associated with many behaviourist accounts which recognise that it is possible for one’s self-interest to be furthered and enhanced via coordination with the interests of others under a cooperative or mutually protective scheme (ethical and rational egoism). In many respects this understanding is not overly controversial, since it is thoroughly consistent with the canon of political thought, which often argues that self-interested agents are by fact, or should be, motivated to establish political conditions that can best render a good life and their welfare (Aristotle), mutual security (Hobbes), autonomy (Rousseau), mutual progress (Smith), freedom (Locke, Kant & Marx), utility (Bentham, Mill) and/or justice (Rawls).
Third, when we discuss cosmopolitanism, we refer to attempts to realise moral cosmopolitanism. We understand this as the pursuit of greater equity between groups based on human versus particular cultural interests, and the formation of sentiments and obligations based on those common human interests. This conforms to Pogge’s account, on which ‘moral cosmopolitanism holds that all persons stand in certain moral relations to each other: we are required to respect one another’s status as ultimate units of moral concern – a requirement that imposes limits upon our conduct, and, in particular, upon our efforts to construct institutional schemes’ (Pogge, 1992: 49). However, unlike strong cosmopolitanism (which demands robust moral/institutional arrangements to secure equal justice between individuals – see Knight, 2011), we see cosmopolitan ideals as a transitional normative compass, not a final destination, and are therefore seeking to encourage reforms that correspond with this normativity, to create a condition of greater equity between global populations and their needs. We understand movement towards this normative orientation as providing baseline elements underwriting any establishment of a ‘cosmopolitan condition’.
Finally, let us outline the transitional component of our approach. Cosmopolitans disagree about the specific institutional arrangements that will best satisfy moral cosmopolitanism. And it is not the purpose of this paper to resolve those debates. The transitional position we are taking does not presume to know what the final institutional complexion of global justice will ultimately look like, if that is even possible. Rather, our approach seeks to locate steps that can better capture cosmopolitan sentiments and obligations as part of deliberations on, and the socialisation of, cosmopolitan norms. In this regard, our objective is transitional, namely, transition concerns a gradual emergence of some form of cosmopolitan solidarity which in the long-term would lead to the reform and/or creation of cosmopolitan institutions. This focus on exploring the potential role of self-interest as having transitional properties resonates with what Gilabert (2017) calls a ‘transitional standpoint’ as part of a larger dynamic approach to global justice and feasibility. One where we envisage ‘paths of action from the status quo to social arrangements in which principles of justice are fulfilled’ via transformative processes involving political imagination and dynamic duties on the part of political actors (Gilabert, 2017: 25). What we are concerned with here is the potential role of self-interest in motivating transformative political imagination and dynamic duties in the first place (i.e. moral commitments to change circumstances so that certain desirable outcomes become more achievable). In other words, and to use the language of Gilabert, how is it possible to envisage self-interest as instrumental to what motivates actors to adopt a transitional standpoint as part of a cosmopolitan transformative political imagination.
The motivational problem in cosmopolitan thought
Although many people are persuaded by cosmopolitan principles this has not translated into significant action, thus rendering what is called cosmopolitanism’s ‘motivational problem’. As Patti Lenard, observes: ‘Even though [cosmopolitan] principles seem compelling, it cannot be denied that most countries, and most individual citizens, seem unwilling to act as these principles demand. At issue is motivation: although many people would agree that cosmopolitan principles of justice are right, at least to some extent, few seem motivationally inspired to act upon them’ (Lenard, 2012: 613).
Similarly, Dobson (2006: 182), writing in defence of cosmopolitan principles concedes that ‘the cerebral recognition that we are all members of a common humanity seems not to be enough to get us to “do” cosmopolitanism’.
To be clear, this lack of action no doubt derives from a variety of sources. We may want to act but are unsure as to how best to proceed or are paralysed by the enormity of the problem. In some cases, a lack of action may reflect principled disagreement with demanding accounts of cosmopolitan duties, or a commitment to prioritise the needs of compatriots in a climate of scare resources (Miller, 2007). We assume that paralysis in the face of mass suffering and coordination problems, although important, do not account for (all of) the widespread lack of action we currently witness. Moreover, normative disagreements over the scope of cosmopolitan duties do not offer a compelling explanation for a failure to live up to minimal cosmopolitan responsibilities, such as addressing severe poverty beyond national borders – which gain more widespread assent. As Lenard (2012: 613) notes, even these minimal cosmopolitan principles ‘demand more redistribution across borders than we presently witness’. As a result, there is a motivational problem at the heart of cosmopolitanism that transcends the explanatory power of normative disagreement, practical uncertainty and coordination problems. Where, despite commanding assent, cosmopolitan principles fail to motivate action (Long, 2009: 325).
This failure of cosmopolitan principles to motivate consistent action is something that cosmopolitans ought to take seriously for at least three reasons. Firstly, there is the practical concern that if we want people to do cosmopolitanism, rather than simply professing a commitment to cosmopolitan values, then it is imperative that individuals act on these commitments. Secondly, addressing the motivation gap at the heart of cosmopolitanism would offer cosmopolitans a rhetorical advantage against their liberal nationalist critics (Lenard, 2012) who charge that this failure to motivate renders it an unworkable political ethos, ill-suited for ‘regular humans’. Thirdly, although cosmopolitanism’s current failure to motivate widespread action would not be taken by many as a decisive reason to reject it as a normative theory, an inability to demonstrate that cosmopolitanism can consistently motivate undermines its theoretical plausibility. As Singer (1982) observes, ‘an ethic for human beings must take them as they are, or as they have some chance of becoming’ (p. 157). Therefore, alongside the practical and rhetorical advantages, there are sound theoretical reasons to attend to cosmopolitanism’s motivational failures.
This ‘motivational deficit’ has prompted four responses in the literature, three from cosmopolitanism’s defenders and one from its liberal nationalist critics. We will take each in turn.
First, proponents of a ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ argue that this motivational deficit is primarily the result of how cosmopolitan arguments are framed (Lawford-Smith, 2010: 134–150). Rather than appealing to our shared human status, proponents of ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ recommend cosmopolitans highlight causal relationships between individuals in more affluent countries and distant others (Dobson, 2006). This strategy is indebted to Pogge’s (2002) argument that rather than simply failing to aid the global poor, individuals in more affluent countries are causally responsible for harming the global poor – causing their poverty through the collective imposition of unfair trading terms at the global level. However, alongside Pogge’s causal account, proponents of thick cosmopolitanism employ the popular psychological assumption that we feel greater moral urgency to rectify harms caused by our actions, than to address similar harms for which we are not causally responsible (Lawford-Smith, 2010). The thought is that the failure of cosmopolitan arguments to gain traction can be explained by a lack of emphasis on the affluent’s causal responsibility for global poverty, and that correcting this emphasis offers a solution.
Although this argument may go some way towards addressing the motivational deficit facing cosmopolitanism, it is unlikely that this gets us very far. Pogge’s arguments have been popularised for the past 15 years, and yet we find ourselves in an international climate increasingly hostile to cosmopolitan ideals (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018). More significantly, as Lichtenberg (2014) has argued, when the concept of harm is detached from interpersonal cases and applied to causal complicity in a collectively maintained unjust state of affairs, it is questionable that it retains the motivational power it has in more straightforward cases. The conclusion that individuals in developed countries actively harm the global poor (for example) is derived from a complex causal story. Offering this story, or similar arguments, does not seem to be an especially effective strategy by which to generate emotional responses sufficient to motivate action, due to the difficulty of these emotional responses ‘carrying across’ the complex moral argument by which responsibility is established. This conclusion is reinforced by recent psychological studies which suggest that emphasising harm has adverse motivational effects (Cameron, 2018).
Secondly, sentimental cosmopolitans argue that the failure of cosmopolitan arguments to motivate can be explained by a broader failure of moral arguments to motivate action in the absence of corresponding affective commitments (Long, 2009; Nussbaum, 2001a; Woods, 2012). A lack of affective concern for distant others on the part of individuals in more affluent countries explains the limited success of cosmopolitan arguments (Woods, 2012). To put this bluntly we (or they) do not care about individuals facing global poverty (and other global injustices) enough for arguments that we ought to come to their aid to gain traction. To address this, sentimental cosmopolitans recommend a process of ‘sentimental education’ where exposure to sympathetic portrayals of distant others in media and narrative art serve to develop the affective connections necessary for cosmopolitan arguments to motivate action (Nussbaum, 1998: 65–69). We return to the merits of this project below.
Thirdly, proponents of institutional solutions argue that the failure of cosmopolitan arguments to motivate action can be largely explained by the lack of robust global institutions (Ulaş, 2017). Not only can institutions help solve coordination problems and ensure compliance, collective membership of global institutions could, over time, lead to the formation of a robust sense of community with distant others – motivating individuals to live up to their cosmopolitan commitments. Accordingly, these theorists see the motivational gap facing cosmopolitanism as the result of a lack of robust global institutions, and their creation as the solution (Cabrera, 2019: 224–242). However, although institutions can indeed solve coordination and compliance problems and serve to inculcate a sense of community with fellow members, the concern this route faces is in motivating support for the creation and implementation of these institutions themselves; therefore as Long (2009: 326) observes, institutions ‘cannot be all of the solution, because we need in turn to motivate support for these institutions. In this regard, the doubts are merely moved back a stage’.
Finally, Liberal nationalist sceptics of cosmopolitanism concur with the institutional view, that shared robust institutions are necessary in order to motivate sustained commitments to redistributive obligations, but offer increased scepticism regarding the possibility of such institutions ever existing at the global level. Here there is a divergence between liberal nationalist accounts over whether the existence of the right institutions alone is enough to motivate commitments to redistributive obligations over time, or whether other features of the modern nation state are also necessary. In recent work, Lenard (2012) favours the former view, whilst remaining sceptical that such institutions could ever survive at the global level. Miller tends towards the latter view, arguing that shared culture and (national) identity are necessary to motivate a sustained commitment to redistributive obligations, and that these cannot be developed through shared institutions alone.
Sentimental cosmopolitanism as a response to the motivational problem
The most developed response to cosmopolitanism’s motivational deficit is provided by sentimental cosmopolitan theorists (Nussbaum, 2001a; Woods, 2012). Contemporary sentimental cosmopolitanism begins with the early work of Nussbaum (1998), but has its origins in the writings of the ancient Stoic cosmopolitans (Nussbaum, 2001a) and the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment (Frazer, 2010). As noted above, the fundamental insight is that the motivational deficit facing cosmopolitan duties can be reduced by cultivating affective ties beyond national borders. In order to cultivate these ties, sentimental cosmopolitans recommend a process of sentimental education, where individuals are exposed to news media with a global focus (Long, 2009) and literature and narrative art (Nussbaum, 2001b: 434) portraying the lives of distant others in a sympathetic light. As the sentimental cosmopolitan Long (2009: 330) writes, ‘sentimental cosmopolitanism is thus understood as a certain configuration of our sentiments and interests, through which we identify more readily with people regardless of where in the world they are’. On this account, developing deeper sentimental attachments to distant others is a duty, both because these sentiments are intrinsically valuable and because they offer an empirically plausible means to motivate action to address global injustices (Long, 2009: 330). This latter claim receives significant support from studies in neuroscience, which show that affect is central to moral motivation (Greene et al., 2001; Izard and Ackerman, 2000: 253–264; Koenigs et al., 2007; Prinz and Nichols, 2010: 111–147).
Sentimental cosmopolitans thus agree with the liberal nationalist thesis that support for redistribution at the national level derives from national solidarity (Miller, 2007), and concur with Anderson (1991) and Lenard (2012) that this solidarity was not pre-existing, but constructed through a process of nation building. However, sentimental cosmopolitans disagree with the claim made by liberal nationalists and proponents of institutional solutions (Ulaş, 2017), that global institutions are necessary to achieve similar results globally. Instead, they foreground strategies of solidarity building, such as developing shared media and stories applied at a global level (Gould, 2007). It is critical to emphasise that the sentimental cosmopolitan project is a transitional one, offering an account of how we can move towards a cosmopolitan condition from our present state. 1
Nussbaum’s (2001a) seminal discussion of cosmopolitan sentimental education emphasises literature and narrative art in particular as a means to encourage affective concern for distant others. Her account also foregrounds the role of the machinery of the state, especially state education, as the primary means by which this project is achieved (Nussbaum, 1998: 65–69). 2 Contemporary sentimental cosmopolitanism, although indebted to Nussbaum’s account, has problematised both these claims. For example, Woods (2012) has highlighted the ways in which depictions of the suffering of distant others – presented in narrative art as a means to evoke compassion – may lead to these others being perceived as objects of pity, obscuring their capacity for agency and leading to increased perceptions of distance on the part of would-be cosmopolitans in affluent countries. Gould’s (2007) extensive work on ‘transnational solidarity networks’ has rejected Nussbaum’s state-centric approach in favour of an emphasis on the role of non-government organisations and movements as the site of cosmopolitan solidarity building, and focussed on the role of digital media and the internet as a means to facilitate cross-border interactions.
Despite representing a promising strategy to address the motivational deficit facing cosmopolitanism, the sentimental cosmopolitan approach is still underdeveloped and suffers a number of shortcomings. As noted above, critics have tended to focus on the absence at the global level of the institutional power the state can bring to bear in developing and sustaining robust dispositions of solidarity. However, here we wish to focus on an alternative resource currently neglected by sentimental cosmopolitan accounts: self-interest. A lack of attention to individual self-interest as a potential motivating factor is a key defect of the sentimental cosmopolitan approach for two reasons. First, ignoring or dismissing self-interest serves to limit the motivational resources available to cosmopolitans, through attempting to scale up an unduly romantic picture of national solidarity. Second, a lack of attention to self-interest undermines cosmopolitanism’s plausibility as a transitional project. We will take each in turn.
In the first instance, sentimental cosmopolitans accept a picture of national solidarity that is overly romanticised, even in comparison to their liberal nationalist critics. In emphasising the role of affective concern for compatriots in motivating support for redistributive policies at the national level, and attempting to employ this model beyond national borders (Nussbaum, 1998), sentimental cosmopolitans neglect the fact that citizens’ commitments to justice at the national level are often underwritten by prudential factors. As Weinstock (2009: 96) observes, ‘nation-states provide citizens with powerful non-moral incentives to comply with the obligations of justice that they have towards their countrymen’. These go beyond prudential reasons to comply with national redistributive policies (for example) lest we are subject to the coercive power of the state, and include the positive benefits state membership can provide individuals – such as healthcare, military protection and diplomatic assistance. As we shall argue, prudential incentives also exist at the global level, which can be harnessed to provide additional motivational resources for cosmopolitan policies.
Second, self-interest can potentially address an important objection to the feasibility of sentimental cosmopolitanism as a transitional project. Just as institutional solutions to address the motivational deficit facing cosmopolitanism are vulnerable to the charge that in order to get these solutions off the ground we need to in turn generate support for these institutions (Long, 2009: 326), the sentimental cosmopolitan appeal to ‘sentimental education’ faces a similar concern. Sentimental education may represent a promising strategy by which to generate motivationally efficacious affective commitments in individuals who are rationally persuaded by cosmopolitan arguments, in part or in whole. However, it is unclear how we get individuals who are genuinely unconcerned by the fate of distant others to engage in processes of cosmopolitan sentimental education in the first place, as there is no clearly outlined political project for implementing these reforms. Cosmopolitan sentimental education requires altering the curricula of elementary and secondary schools as well as universities, but the sentimental cosmopolitan approach offers no particular actor(s) to lead the project and no clear strategy for change.
Aside from the historic employment of significant levels of coercion, 3 this motivational lacuna was filled in the development of national solidarity through the transitional role of appeals to self-interest and mutual benefit (Lenard, 2012). In this regard, self-interest provides reasons to engage in and value particular relationships, and over time these prudential commitments may develop into felt connections (Goodin, 1992). This is a mechanism that applies beyond the national level, and is operative in narrower forms of belonging. For example, in the case of union membership – one might join for purely prudential reasons and, over time, develop an affective attachment, not only to particular union members, but to the organisation itself. Taking advantage of this insight would significantly strengthen the plausibility of sentimental cosmopolitanism as a transitional project.
The role of self-interest in motivational cosmopolitan debates
Attention to self-interest as a motivational resource for cosmopolitanism in the theoretical literature is scant at best. Nevertheless, in unpacking the type of difficulties cosmopolitanism faces when motivating moral behaviour, Goodin (1992: 4) argues that contemporary theories like cosmopolitanism are insufficient because they often ignore Hume’s basic motivational axiom – that ‘only motivations motivate’. For Goodin (1992), like Lenard, the resulting problem is that ‘merely moralizing about the matter will not, in and of itself, necessarily suffice to move people’ (p. 4). Goodin maintains that this sets the bar too high while disregarding other prudential rationales for why people might feel motivated to act appropriately. As Goodin (1992) suggests, it is simply an empirical case that ‘most actions proceed from a multiplicity of motives, some good and some bad’ (p. 7).
In response, Goodin argues that it would be unwise to dismiss morally worthy outcomes on the basis that they were not based on worthy moral motives. What is more sensible and pragmatic, especially in the short-term, would be to allow motivational flexibility in terms of the moral quality of individual motives as long as the motives behind the action will help to produce better results. As Goodin (1992) states, ‘doing it for the wrong reason [does not] undermine the rightness of the action’ (p. 8). Although Goodin does agree that the best way to sustainably deliver morally desirable outcomes over the ‘long haul’ is to assure that those actions derive largely from moral motives (or sentimentality), it cannot mean, de facto, that other motivational rationales are in and of themselves morally inappropriate, or, to be assumed as fundamentally lacking worthy moral qualities. We return to how self-interest can act as an entry point towards transitional sentimental cosmopolitanism in Section 5.
In exploring the multifarious motivations for the production of good action Goodin briefly touches upon the role that self-interest can play in determining worthy outcomes. Goodin locates and examines a number of self-interested motives that in theory and practice often lead to morally desirable outcomes, including self-interested motives for why people join insurance schemes, create self-binding constitutions, and support various basic welfare provisions. The key point for Goodin (1992) is that these cases illustrate that it is possible for self-interest to deliver morally worthy outcomes, and, importantly for us, that these self-motivated rationales can transform into morally grounded motives from which a more substantiated moral politics could be cultivated (p. 76). Although Goodin speaks largely in terms of respecting collective moral norms, we suggest that these self-interested motives can have broader transformative qualities, helping ground sentimental and moral motivations for the protection and enhancement of mutual human laws, cosmopolitical structures and constitutional principles (Reysen and Katzarska-Miller, 2018: 74), socially grounding what Habermas (1996) would refer to as ‘constitutional patriotism’ (p. 449) or a mutual sentimentality regarding a common ‘world risk society’ (Beck, 1999).
Perhaps the most developed case for self-interest as a source of motivation for cosmopolitan justice is made by Weinstock (2009). Building on Goodin’s suggestion that prudential incentives to comply with reciprocal norms can help to develop moral commitments over time, Weinstock argues that states are already in prudential circumstances with regard to ‘global public goods’, from which prudential self-interest could ground long-term political morality. It is worth quoting Weinstock at length here: [T]here are in fact numerous prudence-based arguments that might be used by those who hope that a sense of community uniting the world’s populations might come to emerge. In fact, some of the chief concerns of the citizens of well-to-do societies can quite plausibly be connected to the plight of the world’s poorest populations. These concerns have to do with the spread of infectious disease, with the development of networks of global terrorists increasingly emboldened to carry out destructive actions in affluent countries, and with the degradation of the natural environment and the depletion of global natural resources (Kaul et al., 1999). There are, in other words, “global public goods” that is, goods that the world’s richest countries cannot obtain unless the needs of the global poor are catered to as well (Weinstock, 2009: 98).
Like the sentimental cosmopolitanism examined in the previous section, Weinstock’s focus is a transitional one. Self-interest provides the motivation for states to engage in cooperative behaviour and to develop global institutional strategies to achieve global public goods – such as environmental protection – and over time it is hoped that a sense of cosmopolitan community will emerge. Before moving on to examine Lenard’s analysis of this account it is worth noting that, although the pursuit of global public goods is plausibly in states’ long-term self-interest, in practice it appears that states either fail to see this or prioritise short-term goals. As we argue below, Weinstock has made important headway in delineating a space for self-interest within a transitional cosmopolitanism, but, by failing to discuss the role of sentimentality, his account is incomplete – offering no mechanism by which self-interested cooperation can translate into a more genuine cosmopolitan condition.
Writing in response to Weinstock, Lenard offers a more pessimistic analysis. Despite concurring that self-interest played an important transitional role in the creation of national solidarity and that something similar could happen at the global level, Lenard (2012) is sceptical regarding two factors (i) the stability of self-interested cooperation and (ii) an availability of mechanisms by which self-interested cooperation can develop into solidaristic commitments at the global level (p. 627). We will address each point in turn.
Lenard’s first concern with Weinstock’s account is that although self-interest may be motivationally efficacious, relying on self-interest renders commitments towards cosmopolitan justice unstable, a point she illustrates via state commitments to addressing global poverty: [W]e risk relying on a merely contingent commitment to remedying global poverty. While self-interest is unambiguously motivationally efficacious, it is unstable for our purposes in an important sense: although states can be relied upon to seek their self-interest, they will do so even when doing so conflicts with (or is neutral with respect to) remedying global poverty (Lenard, 2012: 622).
This potential lack of stability in upholding commitments to cosmopolitan justice is a very important concern for advocates of self-interest as a source of cosmopolitan motivation; accordingly, we address this in detail in Section 4. At this stage we observe that, despite her scepticism, Lenard (2012) offers a compelling argument in support of the potential stability of cosmopolitan policies underwritten by self-interest, observing (again) in the case of states commitments to global poverty reduction that even if they are motivated by purely self-interested concerns ‘we have reason to be hopeful that there will be a reluctance to reduce provisions of these goods once the objective is achieved. [As] It is much more difficult to deny benefits once they have been provided, than it is to deny their provision in the first place’ (p. 626). This claim receives empirical support from studies in behavioural economics suggesting that losses are typically viewed as more serious than equivalent gains – a bias that translates into a reluctance to deny benefits once they are provided (Kahneman and Tversky, 1984).
Lenard’s second concern with Weinstock is a scepticism over whether institutions can turn self-interested cooperation into solidaristic commitments at the global level. Although granting that this process occurred in the formation of national solidarity, and as such may be possible globally, observing that ‘there is some hope that these institutions will, over time, shift our attitudes – this is, after all, what happened at the national level’ (Lenard, 2012: 627), Lenard offers two arguments as to why this is unlikely. First, she makes the empirical claim that economic cooperation alone is insufficient, observing that ‘however dense and intense economic exchange may be, it does not translate easily or automatically into a shared awareness of a common identity, a shared community, or a common ethos’ (Hurrell, 2001; Lenard, 2012: 622). Secondly, she notes that Weinstock (and others) have not offered any plausible mechanisms by which this process might occur (Lenard, 2012: 625–627).
It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully investigate the empirical case regarding the transition from self-interested cooperation to solidaristic commitments. However, we believe Lenard is incorrect to take economic cooperation as the paradigm case of self-interested cooperation between states. Addressing global environmental degradation, for example (even at present) goes beyond economic exchange to include diplomatic meetings and policy discussions which offer clear opportunities for the development of deeper relationships through face-to-face discussions and interaction (Holmes, 2018). Similarly, addressing severe poverty as a driver for international terrorism plausibly requires the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, where potentially thousands of individuals from multiple countries would be required to work side-by-side to achieve a common goal. Lastly, the arms control agreements and end to the Cold War are often attributed to an increase in trust, emotion, intuition, friendship and respect between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which underscores the role of non-economic drivers as well as the importance of sentimentality (Klimke et al., 2016).
Accordingly, we think the possibilities for solidarity building run deeper than in cases of economic exchange. It may be objected, here, that highlighting these cases of self-interested global cooperation between states actually counts against the possibility of self-interested cooperation transforming into solidaristic cooperation at the global level, as such interactions are commonplace, but transnational solidarity is not. We think that this response is too pessimistic and that incipient solidarities beyond national borders are increasingly evident (BBC, 2016; Ghassim et al., 2022; Hall and Yarhi-Milo, 2012; Koschut and Oelsner, 2014; Rathbun, 2011). There is evidence that people increasingly identify as ‘global citizens’ (Business Wire, 2017; De Beer and Koster, 2009), and Carol Gould has documented increasing instances of transnational solidarity deriving from interactions across borders (Gould, 2007). In response to the second point, we believe that Lenard has identified an important lacuna in existing accounts of self-interest as a source of cosmopolitan motivation, and we address this in detail in Section 5.
Nevertheless, before detailing our transitional account, and the motivational role self-interest plays, it is important to address one cosmopolitan argument that will remain sceptical to our approach. Like our position, Ulaş (2016) has suggested that cosmopolitans would do well to better examine the ‘pragmatic value of self-interested motives for the realisation of cosmopolitan ends’ (p. 105). Ulaş further suggests that there are at least three self-interested pursuits that could be potentially consistent with moral cosmopolitanism in terms of the actions they motivate towards a more cooperative cosmopolitics. These include economic self-interest, prudential self-interest (disease control, environmental and global terrorism) and democratic self-interest. Again, in agreement with our position, Ulaş (2016) stresses that although self-interest can be a powerful cosmopolitical motivator, particularly in relation to the aforementioned interests, he also argues that ultimately ‘a self-interested motive alone is not sufficient to sustain actions in accordance with cosmopolitan justice’ (p. 111). As we will argue below, we agree that self-interest is best understood as simply one important transitional component among others that can potentially motivate a nascent cosmopolitical condition. In doing so, we emphasise the potential for self-interest to act as a transitional entry point towards a sentimentality needed for a more robust cosmopolitan commitments. In this regard we agree with Ulaş and others (Cameron, 2018; Goodin, 1992) that a reliance exclusively on self-interested motives (particularly understood narrowly) would struggle to be socially sustainable, predictable and desirable.
However, where we depart from Ulaş’ account relates to his further claim that self-interest is best organised on cosmopolitan grounds within an institutionally robust world government. Like Lenard earlier, Ulaş seemingly assumes that solidarity must have a strong institutional component. Without this component, the implication is that motives based on self-interest without institutionally grounded cosmopolitan solidarities will threaten to undermine cosmopolitan justice. For Ulaş (2016), the ‘political integration’ required for meaningful cosmopolitan principles is only feasible via a world government, which provides the necessary stability to further generate cosmopolitan solidarities (p. 106).
Yet, there are two problems with the account presented by Ulaş. First, it could be argued that Ulaş’ position is a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, where the demands for authentic cosmopolitanism requires a particular form of political integration from which the only way to guarantee that condition is to rely on that very form of political integration. As Ulaş (2016) argues, ‘self-interested motivations will be. . . much harder to harness usefully without a world government’ (p. 117). Nevertheless, this suggests that only certain institutions can generate the right kind of motivations, and that those motives struggle to properly attain without the existence of those institutions in the first place. If this is correct, then it is hard to see how the right kind of institutions would be developed in the first place. The problem is that this position undervalues the fact that those institutions will most likely be founded on various motives – as Goodin (1992) says ‘some good and some bad’ ( p. 7). Alternatively, we suggest that any move towards cosmopolitical institutions will be iterative and transitional, from which solidarities may develop over time, and from which other motivations, like common values (Cameron, 2018) and sentimentalities (Hobbs, 2017), may amalgamate to provide additional foundations (Brown, 2012; Kirk, 2012). As Goodin suggests, the key to this iterative approach is incentivising behaviour that is ‘regularly and systematically the right thing to do’ for the ‘right reasons’. However, as Goodin (1992) notes, this doesn’t require that every right action must be for the right reason all the time nor that more practical considerations for why we might act rightly should be immediately dismissed as lacking any moral quality (p. 9).
Second, we disagree with Ulaş that self-interests are best ‘harnessed’ in line with cosmopolitan principles if they are also somehow centrally organised via a world government. A more reasonable and attractive account would be to understand that political legitimacy is often born from self-legislation and intersubjective processes and that this form of solidarity building should be organic, sloppy, iterative, time-consuming and subject to near incalculable moral and political processes. What Gilabert (2012) describes as a dynamic approach to global justice and feasibility. Yet, what would undoubtedly be involved is an element of self-interest, which over time, could evolve towards more robust understandings of mutual interests and sentimentalities, and the political mechanisms deemed necessary to protect them. Moreover, it is reasonable to argue that this is empirically representative of actual historical processes from which communal, national, statist and perhaps now, more cosmopolitan, solidarities evolved and can evolve (Reysen and Katzarska-Miller, 2018). Thus, we are not suggesting that there will be no world government, nor are we specifically arguing against it. Our aim here is merely to argue that good cosmopolitan outcomes can derive from both cosmopolitan and non-cosmopolitan self-interested motives, via a plurality of institutional sources, and that those motives can have transformative properties from which to motivate moral cosmopolitanism and any associated cosmopolitics.
Defending and delineating transitional cosmopolitanism
Fragility
As discussed in Section 3, despite granting that self-interest may be motivationally efficacious in directing individuals and states towards supporting cosmopolitan policies, Lenard (2012) argues that such commitments are unstable. Here, the link between pursuing self-interest and support for cosmopolitan policies is necessarily a contingent one, and, should circumstances change, these fragile commitments will be broken. Lenard (2012) further notes that in the case of addressing global poverty, ‘although states can be relied upon to seek their self-interest. . .It will simply be a happy coincidence, if the pursuit of state interests demands attention to global poverty’ (p. 622). For example, although addressing global poverty may provide an effective means by which to reduce the spread of infectious diseases to citizens of affluent states, we can imagine cases where this goal might be better promoted through the locking down of national borders, or even a Malthusian solution (Brown, 2012).
Defenders of self-interest as a source of motivation for transitional cosmopolitan policies have two compelling responses to this line of attack. First, although individuals and states may have self-interested reasons for pursuing policies aimed at reducing global poverty, it is plausible that this is not their only reason for doing so. In fact, there is increasing empirical evidence to suggest that motivations for reducing poverty and human suffering are never based solely on humanitarianism nor self-interest alone, being largely motivated by a significant mixture of both rationales (Pratt, 1999). Therefore, even if we ignore the iterative dimension, self-interest could serve to strengthen cosmopolitan commitments deriving from other sources rather than operating independently to secure these commitments. These commitments that derive from a variety of sources will be less fragile than those deriving from just self-interest. Moreover, such commitments underpinned by multiple considerations are arguably more robust and consistent than commitments motivated exclusively by moral commitment (Pratt, 1999: 321).
Second, advocates for self-interest as a source of cosmopolitan motivation can grant that Lenard is correct that cosmopolitan commitments motivated primarily by self-interest may be particularly fragile, but that their role in securing cosmopolitan goals is a transitional one. Self-interest serves to secure initial participation in cosmopolitan institutions or schemes and, over time, could be replaced by more robust sources of commitment, such as sentimentality. Accordingly, the substance of the fragility critique is not the relative robustness of cosmopolitan commitments motivated by self-interest, but whether plausible mechanisms can be identified through which initial participation based on self-interest can, over time, lead to the development of value-supported commitments. Here, we offer three mechanisms through which this process can occur.
Firstly, self-interest can serve to motivate initial participation in transnational institutions which, over time, can shape the allegiances and identities of participants in a cosmopolitan direction. The nature of these institutions will determine the extent to which this strategy is successful, with institutions inculcating common narratives having more success than those aimed at narrow economic goals (Lenard, 2012: 622). However, here self-interest offers a means to get institutional approaches to solidarity building ‘off the ground’, motivating initial participation and an entry point for potential long-lasting sentiments to develop. This dynamic has evolved within European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which has expanded to include non-European members, and is argued to represent a nascent cosmopolitan legal order based on self-motivated membership and compliance pull (Brown and Andenas, 2020). As Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan argue, through original self-binding commitments the ECHR has developed to become a multi-level, transnational legal system in which justiciable rights are held by individuals, all public officials bear the obligation to fulfil the fundamental rights of every person within their jurisdiction (without respect to nationality or citizenship), and domestic and transnational judges supervise how officials do so, fulfilling key principles of legal cosmopolitanism (Stone Sweet and Ryan, 2018).
Although reliance on self-interest will necessarily be part of the motivational solution, it is important to again stress that self-interest alone will not be a sufficient cosmopolitical foundation in the long-term and that self-interested motives in isolation could lead to counterproductive and anti-cosmopolitan outcomes. 4 Thus, in line with Goodin, and evidenced by emerging normative and legal commitments to the ECHR, the argument here is that self-interest has powerful motivational properties in the first instance (Kasser, 2009), which when combined with, or followed by ‘self-transcendent’ (Darnton and Kirk, 2011), or other cosmopolitan motives and sentiments (such as rule of law or human rights), can offer a series of transitional conditions from which to ground a more substantial cosmopolitics (Cameron, 2018).
Secondly, participation in processes of deliberation aimed at establishing cosmopolitan policies leads to increased interaction with individuals beyond national borders. These can take place within international institutional arrangements, or via more informal networks. As Schwarzenbach (2009) has argued, such interactions can lead to the development of empathetic connections with distant others, serving to underwrite support for cosmopolitan policies ( p. 152). In her work on ‘transnational solidarity networks’, Gould (2007) has offered a detailed account of this process occurring through the latter mechanism, for example via international workers movements, with increased interactions fostering an incipient transnational solidarity. This mechanism receives further support from recent work by Cameron (2018), who has drawn extensively from psychological research to argue that communicative framing, appeals to common human values and emotional messaging to create empathetic connections provide a number of cosmopolitan motivational strategies. Cameron’s basic research findings have been further confirmed by Reysen and Katzarska-Miller (2018), who tracked rises in social psychological perceptions of global citizenship, and which also demonstrated transformative characteristics in line with the transitional approach presented here. West-Oram notes that this mechanism is especially strong in cases where self-interested cooperation is in response to a shared danger, as our shared vulnerability to the threat serves to highlight our similarity: ‘Self-interest in this particular context serves as a motivational starting point from which solidarity can be developed. Self-interested motivations to act cooperatively with distant others are based on recognition of similarity in an important aspect with those distant others—to cooperate with others out of self-interest in response to a shared danger is to recognize that threats to others are also threats to oneself. This recognition of similarity is the catalyst which reminds us of our own relationality (West-Oram and Buyx, 2017)’.
Thirdly, as the example of the ECHR above suggests, where self-interest motivates the drawing up of international legal documents such as human rights charters and the integration of these documents into the lives of citizens, citizens may come to sentimentally identify with these rules over time. We acknowledge that, here, our suggestion departs from the traditional sentimental cosmopolitan emphasis on felt connections to distant others, and closer resembles Rawls’ (1971) account of a ‘sense of justice’ where there is a felt connection to particular principles or institutions, but at a global level. It is beyond the scope of the paper to pursue this fully, but this may offer fertile territory for the sentimental cosmopolitan. As Prinz (2010: 211–229) observes, affective connections to rules and emotions of anger and shame arising at their transgression may be both a more motivationally efficacious and consistent means of securing moral action than empathetic concern for victims of injustice. As Jurgen Habermas and others note, legal rules often begin as mere practical tools for social coordination, personal protection and peaceful co-habitability. Nevertheless, over time, those same rules become foundations of one’s normative and moral identity, in which a form of ‘constitutional patriotism’ develops (Habermas, 1996), where mutual risks are internalised (Beck, 1999), and from which collective identities of ‘overlapping communities of fate’ emerge with meaningful solidaristic properties (Held, 2010).
Cosmopolitan ‘authenticity’
Another critique of self-interest would be to argue that appealing to non-moral reasons to motivate transitional cosmopolitics renders a potentially ‘unauthentic’ form of cosmopolitanism. This argument suggests that cosmopolitanism is an inherently moral philosophy, where duties and obligations arise from universal principles of moral character and common humanity. Within these cosmopolitan arguments there is either an implicit or explicit suggestion that the moral rightness of an act is determined by the moral quality of the preceding moral reason. Here, the concern is that motive and intent matter, and that our moral assessment of an act depends on what moral qualities motivated the act in the first place. As one example, some Kantians will find our treatment of self-interest as a motivation to establish a condition of cosmopolitan public right problematic, since they argue that the reasons for action must be morally right for an action to be morally worthy (Grey, 1987). In Weinrib’s (1987) words, ‘purposiveness involves a relationship of a peculiar sort between the purposive being and the object towards which this being acts’.
There are two responses that might help clarify our transitional approach and why it is not antithetical to cosmopolitanism writ large. First, if Kantianism is the standard of ‘authenticity’, then it is worth noting that Kant adopts a more practical approach in his later political theory, particularly in discussions regarding the instantiation of cosmopolitan public right. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Theory and Practice and Perpetual Peace Kant explicitly argues that the development of a cosmopolitan condition is possible outside the ‘motivations of morality’ alone, as long as those motivations can be at the same time understood as serving a cosmopolitan purpose (Kant, 1996: 114). Kant outlines a series of self-interested cosmopolitical motivators, including open trade, the protection of the natural environment, the reduction of common ‘troubles’, reducing inconveniences, the reduction of war, and the safe and mutual use of the world in common. Thus, given Kant’s use of non-moral motivators, it would seem that there is actually a fair amount of non-moral motivational licence within his cosmopolitan inquiries, where self-interest can serve a transitional and transformative cosmopolitan purpose.
Second, in highlighting the role of instrumental values in motivating moral politics Goodin (1992) draws a distinction between the rightness of reasons and the rightness of action. Whereas the rightness of reason focuses our moral assessment of why an act was performed, rightness of action focuses on whether the motive produces a good or rightful outcome regardless of motive. These are not mutually exclusive, nor is one suitably sufficient to ground a thoroughgoing moral political behaviour alone. For Goodin, some combination of both assessments is necessary for furthering our thinking about political motivation. Nevertheless, as Goodin further argues, what is most useful when incorporating instrumental values is that it allows motivational flexibility in terms of the moral quality of individual motives towards rightness of action as long as the motives behind the action will help to produce better results (Goodin, 1992: 10). Similar to Kant, for Goodin the key question of rightness of action is whether the act can be considered to have generated a better moral result. Again, like Kant, Goodin argues that motivators outside morality can have meaningful purpose. This is because non-moral reasons can have moral rightness of action and that the underpinning self-motivated rationales driving the action can transform into morally grounded and sentimental motives from which a more substantiated moral politics can be cultivated (Goodin, 1992: 13). In our case, the rightness of action ought to be determined based on whether or not it is possible to understand the result as having a transitional cosmopolitan purpose.
However, this poses the question of how we might determine the rightness of action that results from prudential motivations towards satisfying a cosmopolitical purpose. This is obviously a complex and difficult endeavour and one that cannot possibly be exhausted within a single article. Nevertheless, as a foundational step, we suggest that it is possible to understand prudential-based self-interested motivations as compatible with a form of transitional cosmopolitanism as outlined above under three conditions:
That the outcome of political motivation broadly reflects, in whole or in part, what an ideal cosmopolitan moral position would have demanded anyway.
That the motivation behind the practical solution could be reasonably interpreted as an iterative foundation, which underwrites a nascent cosmopolitical condition, even if that motivation was not originally framed as such, and even if the solution only satisfies one aspect of cosmopolitanism writ large.
That the motivation for political action promotes, in some form, a wider recognition of a common human condition that requires moral and/or political coordination and mutual responsibilities.
So how do these conditions play out in out applied practice? As a hypothetical, let’s say that an affluent political community or state determines that it has a self-interest in preventing dangerous pathogens from infecting its population and that better disease preventions are required to mount an effective response to known susceptibilities (COVID-19). This self-interest involves self-regarding factors of population health, system burdening risks, risks to economic prosperity and/or a general fear of death. Furthermore, this same political community also determines that better global coordination is prudentially required to effectively institute and deliver these disease control measures. Moreover, this political community has access to an evidence-base that suggests that source prevention and focussing on upstream determinants is both more cost-effective and preventative in countering the risk of epidemics (and by default pandemics). Lastly, let’s also say that there is evidence suggesting that health system strengthening (especially in high-risk areas) will deliver better response times and solutions to emerging threats before they become epidemics and pandemics. The evidence also suggests that a system strengthening approach is cheaper than fighting epidemics once they emerge and that source prevention promotes resiliency and minimises the emergence of new and unforeseen risks. From a general self-interest to protect oneself and the political community the government of this affluent community with other self-interested parties sign a revamped Global Health Agenda (GHA) and pledge billions of dollars in aid to promote health system strengthening in countries most at risk. Here, the sole rationale and motive for offering this assistance is self-preservation and self-regarding health security. If history is anything to go by, let us also assume that such a recognised mutual condition only comes after considerable loss to self-interests and only after many unilateral actions have proved unsuccessful over time.
Prima facie, from this hypothetical, it could be argued that neither the original political motive (or being forced into cooperation) nor the evidence informing those motives is particularly cosmopolitan or that it has a cosmopolitan purpose.
However, according to our assessment the rightness of action can be understood as representative of displaying elements of cosmopolitan purpose, since it meets three of the conditions outlined above. First, the initial motivation for health security has underwrote a nascent cosmopolitical condition of collective health policy and institutionalisation, as well as the redistribution of needed resources to develop strengthened health systems for those most at need. Thus, even if the original motivation was not originally framed in terms of fulfilling a cosmopolitan moral duty, and even if the aid solution only satisfies some aspects of cosmopolitan distributive global justice, the rightness of action has nevertheless produced a more cosmopolitical outcome. Second, the motivation for health security and its resulting political action promotes a wider recognition of a common human condition that requires moral and/or political coordination and mutual responsibilities. From the example above, it is possible to suggest that the affluent countries have recognised their susceptibility to common human pathogens and base-line health factors (what Hume might call ‘heroic medicine’), which require a more cooperative political response and the redistribution of resources that it involves (money, technology, expertise, coordination, etc.). In line with our argument in Sections 2 and 3, this recognition may also provide nascent foundations for the emergence of additional sentimentalities regarding personal and communal health, potentially broadening a sense of moral and cosmopolitical solidarity with others. Finally, it is possible to suggest that the outcome of health security motivation broadly reflects, at least in part, what an ideal cosmopolitan moral position would have demanded anyway. For example, cosmopolitanism often advocates for a needs-based redistributive system that promotes individual human wellbeing, including better access to health (on both resource and capability based accounts). In our example, which is germane given the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is possible to understand that the rightness of action increases health access and responsiveness and that additional spillovers from having a strengthened health system will result. Here the redistribution of resources has been based on risk, but it also corresponds to need, and thus the distribution fulfills what a cosmopolitan moral and institutional position would have demanded anyway, although admittedly, not to the degree many cosmopolitans would want.
Two notes are important to highlight regarding the example above and its implications for our cosmopolitical thinking. First, there is nothing to suggest that some cosmopolitical progress will automatically lead to a cosmopolitan condition. That is not our claim. Our claim, more humbly, is merely that some cosmopolitical progress is better than no progress, especially in the face of many global collective action problems (such as health). Moreover, even limited progress affords possibilities for additional rightness of action that may not have been available previously. Again, this represents a transitional, iterative and moderate approach about how to think cosmopolitically, which requires the acceptance of a more political approach than has traditionally been the case in much cosmopolitan thought. Second, adopting a transitional approach will necessarily require an acceptance that not all cosmopolitan principles will be satisfied quickly or simultaneously. As a result, those seeking a more universal and immediate moral (Singer, 2010) or institutional cosmopolitanism (Pogge, 2002) will be unsatisfied with the transitional approach outlined here. In their mind, we have perhaps allowed too many practical and procedural concerns to undermine what they would see as a coherent and mutually consistent form of cosmopolitanism. This might be true, however, what the transitional cosmopolitan position does afford is a more realistic and feasible acceptance that political change takes time, that change will often be non-linear, and that a degree of deliberative ebb and flow of self-interested motives (and failures – such as with current COVID-19-COVAX vaccine policies) will be involved in determining what global justice requires to satisfy mutual interests and why we might be motivated to take it seriously.
Conclusion
This article has sought to respond to cosmopolitanism’s ‘motivational problem’ by exploring the potential role of self-interest as an important, and often overlooked, motivational component in the development and furtherance of an expanded cosmopolitical condition. In doing so, we pursued three claims. First, that sentimental cosmopolitanism offers a viable and promising response to lacunas involved with motivating cosmopolitan moral behaviour and solidarities. Second, unlike traditional understandings, self-interested motivations can be mutually consistent and compatible with sentiment-based cosmopolitanism, acting as a feasible entry point for triggering appropriate cosmopolitan sentiments, thus offering a potentially promising area of research. Lastly, thinking in this transformative way is representative of what we label as ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’, which is an iterative approach to promoting rightful action towards cosmopolitan sentimentalities in light of multifarious non-moral and prudential motives. As a transitional and transformative approach, we suggest it can be an important mechanism for meeting the long-term moral aims of cosmopolitanism writ large, while also offering promising responses to well-treaded feasibility restraints often levelled against the idea of a meaningful cosmopolitics. In sharpening the idea of transitional cosmopolitanism we also posited three conditions involved in assessing when a prudential action can also be understood as furthering a rightful action towards a cosmopolitan purpose, regardless of whether the motive of that act was originally based on cosmopolitan morality or sentiment.
There are two immediate implications of transitional cosmopolitanism. One, the transitional cosmopolitanism offered here rejects a static conception of moral and political community while fully accepting that identification relationships between peoples, and the solidarities that are generated from these relations, are important in creating lasting cosmopolitan motivations. Second, the cosmopolitics offered here is a more iterative and transitional approach to cosmopolitics which accepts prudential and self-motivated drivers that raise awareness of common human conditions and underwrite potential sentimentalities which then act as valuable foundations or entry points for a broadening of moral cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics. Again, this departs from traditional cosmopolitan arguments, which often devise abstract moral principles to determine the morally right motive for cosmopolitical action while often assuming that the moral argument is enough to ‘convince people to act’. Here, we reverse the logic, arguing that the rightness of action, namely the motive’s overall ability to have a cosmopolitan purpose, is an important consideration, which should not be readily dismissed as a potential source of political motivation towards cosmopolitan solidarities.
