first review www.theglobalsite.ac.uk 2001

Kimberly Hutchings

Cosmopolitanism

This special issue of the journal Global Society is, as the Editor acknowledges, an addition to a fast growing literature on cosmopolitanism. The overarching purpose of the volume, according to the Editor, is to bring together a variety of cosmopolitan views and debates concerning distributive justice and violence in order to work towards the integration of a fully fledged cosmopolitan agenda across disciplines. This agenda is concerned both with acknowledging/demonstrating links between questions of distribution and of security (peace) and with addressing the problems of making ideal theory relevant to a far from ideal world. It is clear from the Editor's introduction and from her own contribution to the journal, that this project reflects a powerful ethical commitment to addressing the radical injustices of the contemporary world. In particular, the Editor wants cosmopolitan theorists to move from debating questions of justification with each other, to recognising common ground and applying common insights to actual problems of poverty, war and conflict resolution. As so often happens with this kind of collection, the Editor's aims are not wholly fulfilled by the different contributions taken as a whole. There is much of interest in several of the articles here, but to a large extent the territory remains a familiar one. On the one hand, theoretical arguments are rehearsed between different types of moral universalism or between moral universalism and moral particularism in the justification of norms. On the other hand, contributors try to address the perennial problem of the relation between theory and practice both in terms of application of principles and of moral motivation.

The Editor provides a useful summary of each contribution in her Introduction (483). I will not refer to all of the contributions here, but only to the ones I felt were most interesting and fresh in the contribution made to ongoing debate in this area. The Special Issue is structured so that the reader moves from more abstract and thoeretical to more concrete and applied argument. Of the more abstract pieces,

Katrin Flikshuh's thesis that cosmopolitanism needs metaphysics is philosophically interesting in its engagement with Onora O'Neill's work, though it leaves us with the crucial question of how we decide on the appropriate metaphysics in the first place. More persuasive, and very nicely argued, is Simon Caney's well focused piece, in which he provides a careful refutation of various communitarian positions on cosmopolitan justice. Of the articles which address more concrete issues, Nigel Dower provides a sensible cosmopolitan response to critiques of notions of

Cosmopolitan citizenship, which gestures towards but does not thoroughly explore, the importance of existing cosmopolitan non-governmental institutions. Toni Erskine's article "Embedded Cosmopolitanism and the Case of War" is an excellent example of the ongoing tension in ethical thinking about war between moral universalism and particularism. Erskine is looking for the 'way between' these stark alternatives, but ends on a somewhat uncertain note as to whether 'embedded cosmopolitanism' provides an answer. Christien van den Anker contributes an article

arguing for impartial approaches to justice in conflict resolution as well as global distributive justice, which includes interesting references to counselling as a necessary constituent for remedying past injuries and makes the strong claim that retribution does not aid processes of reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

This collection has some useful and interesting articles and will be of interest to many scholars working in the general area of cosmopolitanism and international ethics, whether in research or teaching. However, it remains the case that overall, in terms of the cutting edge of academic argument, this collection is rather disappointing in that it does not deliver the movement forward in cosmopolitan debate which is clearly signalled by the Editor in the Introduction.

Kimberly Hutchings

University of Edinburgh