are fundamentally humanistic doctrines that reject artificial differences in wealth and power playing a determinant role in social relations. But at many points cosmopolitanism can slide into a kind of cheesy moralism which sheds a tear for current social conditions but is incapable of getting at the real roots of the problem. At its worst cosmopolitanism can either serve as an apologetics or even a justification for the exercise of the most brutal forms of power; as Martti Koskeniemmi will remind us in The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, many of the Founding Fathers of international law saw
...more
