Anti-cosmopolitanism, pluralism and the cosmopolitan harm principle

Abstract

For anti-cosmopolitan critics, cosmopolitanism is equated with the universalisation of a particular, liberal, account of justice and is therefore problematic for a number of reasons. The liberal principle ‘do no harm’ principle – and the cosmopolitan principle of humanitarianism, can be used to correct the depiction of cosmopolitanism as hostile to ‘pluralism’, to identify the universalism that is latent or undeveloped in much ‘anti-cosmopolitanism’, and to identify further means of reconciling these positions. A cosmopolitan harm principle argues that the absence of a universal conception of justice should not provide an obstacle to the recognition of an obligation to limit transboundary harms.