World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought

274 Pages·1996·4.722 MB·English

by  Derek Heater

World Citizenship
and Government
Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of
Western Political Thought
Derek Heater
WORLD CITIZENSHIP AND GOVERNMENT
Also by Derek Heater
BRITAIN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD
CITIZENSHIP: The Civic Ideal in World History, Politics and
Education
CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL IDEAS
ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
ESSAYS ON POLITICAL EDUCATION (with Bernard Crick)
FOUNDATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP (with Dawn Oliver)
THE IDEA OF EUROPEAN UNITY
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
(with G. R. Berridge)
NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION: Woodrow Wilson
and his Legacy
ORDER AND REBELLION: A History of Europe in the
Eighteenth Century
PEACE THROUGH EDUCATION: The Contribution of the Council for
Education in World Citizenship
POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE MODERN WORLD
THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF ROTTINGDEAN
WORLD STUDIES: Education for International Understanding
in Britain
World Citizenship
and Government
Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of
Western Political Thought
Derek Heater
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-60231-5
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-12969-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heater, Derek Benjamin.
World citizenship and government: cosmopolitan ideas in the
history of Western political thought / Derek Heater.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-12969-6 (cloth)
1. Internationalism-History. I. Title.
JC362.H34 1996
327.1 '7'09--dc20 95-44303
CIP
© Derek Heater 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WI P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 54321
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Printed in Great Britain by
Ipswich Book Co Ltd, Ipswich, Suffolk
Contents
Preface Vll
Introduction ix
1 Origins of Cosmopolitan Ideas
Decline of the Greek polis
Alexander the Great 8
The Stoics 13
The Graeco-Roman legacy 21
2 The Christian Renewal of the Roman Empire 27
Medieval myth and reality 27
The age of Dante 34
Twin rebirths of the Renaissance 48
Two medieval footnotes 54
The Christian-Imperial style of thought 57
3 Reactions Against Power Politics 60
World union without world empire 60
The Enlightenment cast of mind 70
Schemes in the age of reason and revolution 78
Search for a modem cosmopolitan mode of thought 85
4 The Era of Worries and Ambitions 89
Pragmatism and hesitation 89
Strong league and widespread functionalism 95
World federalism 103
From fallowness to richness of thought 113
5 Ideology and Science 118
Totalitarian projects 118
H. G. Wells and the technological imperative 127
History and science as motive forces 135
6 Last Decades of the Second Millennium 139
Impulses since the Second World War 139
Plans for the United Nations 147
v
vi Contents
Functionalism and federalism continued 154
Full circle: world citizenship 170
Confusion before a synthesis? 176
7 Final Considerations 181
Words, ideas and meanings 181
Denial of the cosmopolitan ideal 187
Why and how the idea has persisted 201
Current thinking 208
References and Notes 217
Bibliography 243
Index 253
Preface
The sentimentalities of an author nearing the end of his writing career are
very relevant to the subject-matter of this work. My first book was
completed thirty-five years ago and, inter alia, questioned the legitimacy
of nationalism. It is very possible that the nation-state is the worst of all
political systems, as Churchill said of democracy, except for all the others.
I have never, however, believed that the ideology of nationalism, which
has been the nation-state's credo for some two centuries now, is anything
but pernicious.
The alternatives of a world state with its attendant personal status and
attitudinal stance of the world citizen have been accorded little serious
practical consideration. In truth, there are enormous difficulties associated
with these ideas. Even so, the concepts of a universal state and of world
citizenship have been discussed and commended for nearly two and a half
millennia. The dream of a politically unified mankind refuses to fade into
complete oblivion. Indeed, in recent decades the dire threats of total war,
nuclear holocaust and ecological catastrophe have revivified interest in the
cosmopolitan political solutions to the dreadful potential fates the human
race has devised for itself.
The present book is not another attempt at panaceas or futurology. My
interests and what competence I have are those of an historian; and although
I have essayed some tentative generalisations in the Introduction, at the
end of each chapter and in the final chapter, the core of the book is a
chronological account of cosmopolitan political thought in its various guises
in Western society.
One of the pleasures of composing a Preface is the opportunity it
provides to record gratitude for help in the writing of the book. I am
indebted to John Roberts of the Association of World Federalists for
invaluable bibliographical advice. And, once again, I would never have
contemplated this work, let alone completed it, without the very great
assistance of my wife in so many ways.
Rottingdean DEREK HEATER
vii
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Man has devised the institution of the state and the station of citizen that
he might live as a mature civilised being. But man is a single species. Is it
therefore desirable - is it possible - that the state should be coterminous with
the whole planet, and the citizenship thereof comprise its entire population?
For two and a half millennia numerous Western political thinkers have
believed that a world state or world citizenship or both were desirable and
possible. This book is a history of this set of ideas. It is not a tract to foster
them or a report to formulate ways for their implementation. The antithesis
between these two approaches to the subject - between history and practice
- was presented starkly and from his own perspective by that enthusiast
for world government, H. G. Wells, in 1939. Denouncing historians, he
declared, 'Cosmopolis they will not endure. It never has been. Therefore
it cannot be. All history is against it. But all reality is for it.'l
However, those historians who objected to Wells's passionate belief in
a cosmopolis on these cited grounds were surely exceeding Clio's brief to
the profession. The true function of historians of ideas is to record, under
stand, explain, assess and criticise thoughts which are of sufficient signific
ance to attract their attention. That is what this book attempts - not to
judge the likelihood of their realisation at some unknown future date.
The book nevertheless still needs justification on the criterion of 'suf
ficient significance to attract [historians '] attention'. If an idea has found
expression in many diverse societies and has persisted for a long span of
time, then that idea is assuredly worthy of study. The concept of human unity
and the desirability of encompassing that unity in political fonn clearly
meets these requirements. An American authority has presented the matter
thus:
Belief in the possibility of world unity and order is far from new. At
least since the days of the late Shang rulers (col 000 Be) and of the Stoics,
representatives in their respective times of the two most civilized cul
tures in the world, there has been present, both in the East and in the
West, the conviction that war and political disunity do not accord with
the purposes of the rational and benign Creating Spirit, be it pagan
Nature, modem Humanity, Chinese Heaven, or Christian God?
Although the present work is confined to Western political thinking, the
themes have also been widely expounded in Asia. In the ancient Orient
ix