COML 6970 - [Cosmopolitanism]

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 6970)

Spring. 4 credits.

Next offered 2012-2013.

N. Saccamano.

This course will examine cosmopolitanism as a cultural, moral, and political concept both historically, with reference primarily to the eighteenth century, and theoretically, in contemporary debates. The aim will be to elaborate critically the universalist and egalitarian premises of the Enlightenment notion of cosmopolitical subjects and to evaluate what progressive or ideological functions this notion continues to play in discourses on sovereignty, human rights, religious tolerance, and cultural dissemination and aesthetic community. Works by Hobbes, Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau and Kant will be read with those by Arendt, Balibar, Benhabib, Cavallar, Held, Dallmayr, Derrida, and other contemporary theorists.