A cosmopolis of all beings: Cosmopolitanism, Indigeneity and the more-than-human

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism - either an idea that goes far back in recorded human history, or an approach whose form came before a definition - places high value on individual moral responsibility to other moral beings beyond the intermediation of the nation-state. Nussbaum's version, critiqued by Naseem and Margison, links cosmopolitanism to rational liberal democracy, beyond, but not to the exclusion of, individual responisiblity and loyalty to the state. Appiah's more nuanced version still holds the possibility of a universalist ethic while respecting difference. Magsino sees cosmopolitanism as a possible countervailing force to globalization. All of these recent theorists place cosmopoiltanism in the realm of human action and responsibility. This paper explores Spinoza's cosmology as a way of not only broadening the sphere of cosmopolitanism to the more-than-human world, but in doing so, shifting the basis of membership therein from responsibilty to other moral beings, to acting morally to the extent of the capacity one has to formulate moral sensibility. This stretches the hitherto human orientation of cosmopolitanism. But Toulmin's etymology, linking human ordered-ness to ordered-ness in the world, suggests otherwise. Spinoza's cosmology is shown to have relevance to some Indigenous ontologies.