6 - From Republican Self-Love to Cosmopolitan Amour-Propre: Europe’s New Constitutional Experience

Summary

Alexander Somek uses Rousseau’s famous notion of ‘amour-propre’ – ‘that form of self-infatuation which is mediated by shining in the eyes of others’ ’ as a key towards mediating between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Somek’s defence of what he calls ‘cosmopolitan amour-propre’ against the prominent contemporary alternative of ‘constitutional patriotism’ leads him to a discussion of the Janus-faced dimensions of international peer review mechanisms for human rights compliance, and, similar to Fox-Decent’s argument for a ‘fiduciary criterion’ of legitimacy, to an emphasis on the importance of those outsiders ‘legitimately excluded from the constituency’.