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ProtoSociology
An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
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Editor: G P
— .. —
Borders of Global Theory –
Reflections from Within
and Without
Edited by Barrie Axford
Borders of Global Theory –
Reflections from Within
and Without
Edited by Barrie Axford
V. : M U
M J
V. : L V
V. : C – C
H P
V. : C‘ M II
V. : C‘ M I
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ProtoSociology
An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
Volume ,
Borders of Global eory –
Reections from Within and Without
Edited by Barrie Axford
C
Introduction: Global Scholarship from Within and Without..................
Barrie Axford
T G –
W D M T
Reections on “Critical inking” in Global Studies .............................
Manfred B. Steger
Globality and the Moral Ecology of the World:
A eoretical Exploration .......................................................................
Habibul Haque Khondker
Real Leaps in the Times of the Anthropocene:
Failure and Denial and ‘Global’ ought ...............................................
Anna M. Agathangelou
On the Possibility of a Global Political Community:
e Enigma of ‘Small Local Dierences’ within Humanity ....................
Heikki Patomäki
I G S
Geohistory of Globalizations ..................................................................
Peter J. Taylor
Contents
© ProtoSociology
Volume 33/2016: Borders of Global Theory
Autonomy, Self-determination and Agency in a Global Context.............
Didem Buhari Gulmez
e Neglect of Beauty:
What’s In and What’s Out of Global eorising and Why? ....................
Heather Widdows
Mastery Without Remainder? Connection, Digital Mediatization
and the Constitution of Emergent Globalities ........................................
Barrie Axford
G T – T C
Whither Global eory? .........................................................................
Jan Aart Scholte
Contributors ..........................................................................................
Impressum .............................................................................................
On ProtoSociology .................................................................................
Books on Demand .................................................................................
Digital Volumes Available ......................................................................
Bookpublications of the Project .............................................................
On the Possibility of a Global Political Community
© ProtoSociology Volume 33/2016: Borders of Global Theory
O P G P
C: T E ‘S L
D’ H
Heikki Patomäki
Abstract
Is anything like a global political community – and thereby ideals such as global democracy
and justice – achievable? is is a key question not only for political theory but also for
contemporary political practices. Many political realists believe that humans are essentially
tribal beings, or at least will remain so in the foreseeable future. Post-structuralists main-
tain that historical identities are based on contrasts and oppositions, on the play of negative
dierences, which is necessary for language to exist. us identities must always exclude
something. My rst point is that it is possible to dene our shared identity as humans and
earthlings in the context of a cosmic setting. Big History not only frames world history in
cosmic terms and imagines a future world community but is also systematically critical of
Eurocentrism and other forms of centrism. Second, otherness can also be located either in
our own past or, alternatively, in our contemporary being, when seen from a point of view
of a possible future position in world history. ird, utilizing the concept of a horizon of
moral identication and developing further Todorov’s axis of self-other relations, I conclude
by outlining a cosmic, geo-historical, relational and ethico-political conception of global
identity that is based on both positive and negative elements.
Introduction
Is anything like a global political community – and thereby ideals such as
global democracy and justice – achievable? is is a key question not only for
political theory but also for contemporary political practices. For instance, a
call for global solidarity in the face of rapid global warming (UNDP ),
which seems ever more urgent in , assumes a shared planetary identity
across the currently prevailing dierences and divisions. It seems that there
can be no solidarity without a common identity at some level of human being.
Environmentalists maintain that all humans share an important thing in com-
mon, namely planet Earth and its sphere of life, to which we essentially belong.
In contrast, many political realists believe that humans are essentially tribal
beings, or at least will remain so in the foreseeable future. is belief may be
grounded on anything from speculative philosophical accounts of the human
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nature to sociobiological theories about selsh genes or memes. For tribal
beings a shared political identity is possible only if it implies dierent outsid-
ers, understood largely in negative evaluative terms, perhaps antagonistically
as enemies. From this point of view, a global identity is possible only to the
extent that there are outsiders to the humankind as a whole. Hence, in the
s, Ronald Reagan discussed with Mikhail Gorbachev the possibility of
encountering extra-terrestrials as a plausible source for a shared global identity.
As Reagan () explained, “We’d forget all the little local dierences that we
have between our countries, and we would nd out once and for all that we
really are all human beings here on this Earth together”. ese discussions and
re-visions were part of the process that led to the end of the Cold War.
However, no extra-terrestrials have showed up and the condition of particu-
laristic and often parochial identities persists in the st century. Skeptics may
even claim that a cosmopolitan ethico-political identity is impossible in prin-
ciple; humanity is destined to stay partitioned. For instance, according to many
versions of the Nietzsche and Heidegger inspired hermeneutics of suspicion,
hierarchies and violence stem from deep structures of meaning that imply the
denition of others as lower beings and/or enemies. Several post-structuralists
and related theorists believe that there is no position outside deep structures
of meaning in this sense (for a critique of Carl Schmitt inspired post-struc-
turalism, see Abizadeh ). Hierarchies and violence at least in some sense
are therefore almost inevitable; and a truly cosmopolitan identity is virtually
impossible. Although it can assume a wide variety of forms and although not
all of those forms are equally parochial, the problematic of inside/outside of a
political community and thus boundaries will remain with us for a long time
to come, if it can ever be overcome. (Walker ; ).
My aim is not to review and scrutinize every single skeptical argument
against the possibility of a global ethico-political identity. e point is merely
to tackle the most plausible candidates for anchoring the skepticism in some
relatively unchanging realities: either in the nature or genetic constitution of
the human species; or in the nature of language making meaningful politics
possible. Moreover, I argue that in addition to conceptual and philosophical
weaknesses, arguments for the necessity of particular political identities appear
increasingly narrow also in view of recent advancements in the sciences and
global history. A unied theory of temporal emergence and increasing com-
plexity through dierent layers of the universe locates human geo-history as
an important but small and vulnerable part of a much wider whole. us Big
History is relevant to our understandings of self-other relations, not least by
relativizing and reframing them.
On the Possibility of a Global Political Community
© ProtoSociology Volume 33/2016: Borders of Global Theory
Although I argue that humans are not inevitably tribal, and that ultimately
there is no language-based logic of identity that would exclude the possibility
of a global political community, I concur with the post-structuralist skeptics
that negativity and thus some “othering” is inevitable. us it is essential to go
beyond demonstrating negatively the possibility of a global identity. We should
ask “possible yes, but exactly how?” If some othering is inevitable, what are the
possible structures of a global identity-construction? I examine three options.
Firstly, as indicated by President Reagan, otherness can be placed outside the
human species and planet Earth. From a non-antagonistic perspective, the
cosmic context of our evolving beingness can provide an important source for
a global identity, but it is not in itself a sucient solution to the problem of
identity.
Secondly, otherness can be located either in our own past or, alternatively, in
our contemporary being, when seen from a point of view of a possible future
position in world history. As any process of identity-construction is temporal,
this constitutes a fruitful perspective, but does not address all the key prob-
lems or tackle the onto-logical underpinnings of the standard identity-theories.
ere is thus, thirdly, a need to rethink the basic onto-logic of identity from a
perspective that is compatible with Big History, seeing our cultural evolution
as continuation from cosmic and biological evolution. Utilizing the concept
of a horizon of moral identication, and developing further Tzvetan Todorov’s
axis of self-other relations, I conclude by outlining a cosmic, temporal, rela-
tional, and ethico-political conception of global identity based on both posi-
tive and negative elements.
Voices of Skepticism : Political Realism
Since its emergence after the failed liberal revolutions of , political realism
(realpolitik) has been a conservative reaction to the liberal cosmopolitanism of
Enlightenment philosophies, most notably to Immanuel Kant. Its relationship
Kant () constituted the international problematic by arguing, in “Perpetual Peace” and
other essays, that all human development and progress, indeed human survival, is dependent
upon cosmopolitan solutions to the problem of peace and war. By applying Hobbes’s notion
of state of nature to the sphere of relations between nations and states, he proposed an inter-
national social contract: the problem of war could be overcome by an arrangement of rule
of law, republicanism, free trade and “league of nations”. After , the German reactions
to Kant’s “idealism” (starting already from Hegel’s Kant-critique) were labelled as realpoli-
tik. e realpolitik reactions were subsequently re-innovated in Britain and the US, in part
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to the Englightenment tradition has been ambiguous (compare Morgenthau,
, and Niebuhr, , to the global-reformist reading of classical political
realism by Scheuerman, ). ese ambiguities notwithstanding, the most
characteristic move of political realism has been to challenge the cosmopoli-
tan belief in the possibility of hasty progress towards a viable league of nations
associated with true collective security, or to a world community or world
state proper, however imperative that may be seen in the long run. is is
particularly true of neorealists such as Robert Gilpin (, ), who tend to
universalize and eternalize the idea that the human species must remain divided
into separate groups:
Homo sapiens is a tribal species, and loyalty to the tribe for most of us ranks
above all loyalties other than that of the family. In the modern world, we
have given the name “nationstate” to these competing tribes and the name
“nationalism” to this form of loyalty.
Oftentimes the belief in the tribalist propensity has been based on mere arm-
chair philosophy about unfalsiable “laws” and “natures”. e scientically
oriented neorealists can – and sometimes also do – turn to experimental social
psychology and, more strongly, to sociobiology in search for hard science evi-
dence for their views. Sociobiology contends that genes play a central role in
human behavior. Human behavior is seen as an eort to preserve one’s genes
in the population. At the fundamental level, in spite of apparent dierences,
human beings are no dierent from ants or bees, whose complex division of
labour and social behavior is largely determined by genes.
e most famous socio-biologist is probably E.O.Wilson (the classic articu-
as an import from Germany. Smith (, ) argues that “to understand the characteristic
approach of contemporary realists the best place to begin is with Max Weber”. Weber, of
course, synthesised a lot of German late th and th century thinking, combining elements
of liberalism and realpolitik, of positivism and hermeneutics. Weber adhered to a Hobbe-
sian (or Hegelian-Nietzschean) picture of international politics while being committed to
the ideology of nationalism (the good of a particular nation is the highest or only possible
collective value in the modern world). For a genealogy of the international problematic, see
Patomäki a, ch .
Gilpin downplays the vast dierences between tribes (and especially small bands of hunter-
gatherers) and modern nation-states in order to stress the idea of perennial laws and con-
ditions of politics (for a systematic critique of claims about neorealism’s about “perennial
laws”, see Vasquez ). Nation-states are bigger and more abstract, impersonal, complex
and bureaucratic forms of collectivity than bands or tribes. Arguably, as political communi-
ties nation-states are closer to a world state than to bands or tribes. For the complexities and
socio-historical conditions of nationalist social imaginaries, see Patomäki & Steger ,
–.
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lation being Wilson ). His usual strategy for arriving at socio-biological
“laws” is to start with the model of social organization developed in connec-
tion with his study of insect societies and to generalize that model into a law
of social organization displayed by all social species. Such analogies and gen-
eralizations are likely to be unreliable even in cases where they are based on
apparently similar features in an insect and human society. e main problem
is that genetic explanations ignore the fact that human societies change and
vary much more than would be possible if the relevant information was merely
genetic. e relevant pools of genes and biological species change very slowly,
taking a large number of generations to take systematic eect. Secondly, they
ignore the possibility that similar consequences may be the result of very dif-
ferent causes, including meaningful cultural practices and historically varying
social structures. (See Harré , –; Horan ) Recent research indicates
that human genetic change has accelerated with population growth and cul-
tural change. us it is not only that cultural evolution has its own emergent
dynamics, but also that this dynamics has eects on the human genetic con-
stitution too. (Hawks et.al. )
If the only way to rescue the necessity of particular group loyalties and iden-
tities was this kind of biological reductionism – i.e. the assumption that ants
and humans are no dierent in their capacity to communicate and learn –
then Gilpin’s political realism would rest on weak grounds. Richard Dawkins’
() conception of self-replicating “memes” does not fare much better, as the
ontological status of “memes” is indeterminate (physical or cultural) and their
scientic status evasive (can they be observed?, can claims about them be falsi-
ed?). However, although Gilpin and other neorealists may occasionally allude
to the notion that the tribalist propensity is inscribed in the invariant (possibly
genetic or memetic) essence of homo sapiens as a species being, many politi-
cal realists conne tribalism merely to a widespread disposition of preferring
allegiance to particular groups and of dening one’s identity in particularistic
terms, whatever its fundamental causes.
e point of many classical political realists such as E.H.Carr, Hans Mor-
genthau and Reinhold Niebuhr has been to redene the project of cosmopoli-
tanism in a more cautionary and, at times, skeptical way. ey have not been
opposed to cosmopolitanism, although they can be harshly critical of many
of its actual materializations. For Carr, for example, a cosmopolitan world
community based on the recognition of equality and rule of law would be a
typical global utopia. “Political science must be based on a recognition of the
interdependence of theory and practice, which can be attained only through
a combination of utopia and reality” (Carr , ). us Carr developed the
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idea of open-ended peaceful changes to replace various utopian proposals for
liberal harmonious order, which he also argued to be ideological and a key
cause of conicts and wars.
In Reinhold Niebuhr’s e Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, the
“children of light” are democrats and cosmopolitans. It is evident that Niebuhr
does not accept the ideas of the children of darkness; ultimately he sides with
the children of light. However, he also criticizes a number of concrete manifes-
tations of the then prevailing utopian idealism and their unfoundedly optimis-
tic conceptions of human nature. us Niebuhr’s (: ) key argument – in
the context of world politics – was that “...the transition from a particular to
a universal community is a more dicult step than is usually assumed.” Some
hope and appreciation of change can well be justied:
Pure idealists underestimate the perennial power of particular and parochial
loyalties, operating as a counter force against the achievement of a wider
community. But the realists are usually so impressed by the power of these
perennial forces that they fail to recognize the novel and unique elements in
a revolutionary world situation. (Ibid., )
In a similar fashion, Morgenthau was a critic of parochialism. He maintained
that the human moral imagination tends to be limited and thus humans nd
it dicult to see things from others’ dierent perspective. Group solidarity
is formed by setting against the outsiders. Self-criticism is dicult and often
censored. Groups are expecting conformity. Sanctions and other mechanisms
discipline those who dare to challenge its understandings. By exposing these
and related mechanisms, such as the eects of modern rootless uncertainty
and how that uncertainty tends to uctuate with business cycles and economic
crises, Morgenthau (, ) tries to open a perspective for wise moral and
state leaders to see beyond the limited imagination of masses and nations.
What Morgenthau (, ) especially stresses is that political realism refuses
to confuse the particular aspirations and actions of one’s own nation with the
moral purposes of the universe. Against these kinds of ideological temptations,
diplomacy should be free of all crusading spirit and always look at the political
scene from the perspective of other nations (see , ch ).
Morgenthau joins Carr and Niebuhr in articulating a passionate critique of
false universalisms. At the same time, Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations is
a normative argument for a world state and a guidebook for diplomacy during
the long period of transition. e case for political realism rests on the expecta-
tion that it will take a long time to establish a cosmopolitan world community
and that this process is beset with diculties and dangers. is stems not only
from the eects of human limitations and existing historical realities but also
On the Possibility of a Global Political Community
© ProtoSociology Volume 33/2016: Borders of Global Theory
from the contemporary tendency to rely on one-sided and false utopias that
generate further conicts and violence. Moreover, as long as the world com-
munity does not exist, everyone will have to continue coping with the con-
temporary realities, involving particularistic power politics, the best they can.
Skeptical political realists in this sense can push the cosmopolitan identity to
a far away future. is is particularly true if no clear mechanism can be estab-
lished via which the currently powerful social-psychological forces could be
rapidly overcome. As Morgenthau (, ) concluded – originally in –
a major transformation and “the world state is unattainable [ … ] in the world
in our time.” He could easily make the same claim in .
Morgenthau argued that as long as the world state is not actual reality, the
classical practices of diplomacy, balance-of-power and so on are the chief tools
available for preserving at least some order and, to an extent also peace. To the
extent that the reasons for skepticism are only temporal, however, we should
ask whether – and to what extent – circumstances either have already become
or will become dierent in the st century?
Voices of Skepticism : Post-structuralism
ere is another possible explanation for the exclusive nature of political iden-
tities. A meaningful identity can only be dened in and through language.
From Ferdinand Saussure (/) comes the idea that linguistic signs are
arbitrary and that within systems of language, there are only dierences, that
is, elements dened negatively in terms of what they are not. “A language is a
system in which all elements t together, and in which the value of any one
element depends on the simultaneous coexistence of all others” (ibid., ).
“e content of a word is determined in the nal analysis not by what it con-
tains but by what exists outside of it”, that is, by other elements of a system
(ibid., ). Content and “value” are essentially connected, and values always
involve:
() something dierent which can be exchanged for the item whose mean-
ing and value is under consideration, and
Of course there is the counternal possibility that political-realist practices such as pow-
er-balancing prove to be an obstacle to the development of a cosmopolitan community.
Power-balancing may well contribute to reinforcing parochial realities by depicting others as
threats and through processes of securitization.
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() similar things which can be compared with the item whose value is
under consideration.
By drawing on Nietzsche, Kirkegaard and Heidegger and their “hermeneutics
of suspicion” (see Dreyfus ), Jacques Derrida (, –) radicalized
Saussure’s linguistics into an immanent criticism of a long philosophical tradi-
tion as a whole. Derrida treats the principle of dierence “as constitutive not
only of modes of signication but of existence in general” (Giddens a, ).
Our self-conscious existence and thus our identities are possible only because
of language and, especially, writing.
Derrida (, –, –; cf. Searle ) does not deny that language is
used for everyday communication or that words or sentences can have non-
discursive referents, but he claims that (i) many and especially the iterative and
metaphorical aspects of language can, and in eect are, abstracted away from
subjects, intentions, contexts and referents; (ii) these aspects of the language
form a system which makes subjects, intentions, contexts and, in some ambiva-
lent ways, even referents possible; and (iii) intentionality, consciousness, and
self-aware identity are largely – although never only – eects of a system of
inscribed codes and negative dierences. Language is thus much more than
just a medium of expressing already existing ideas and thoughts that have their
corresponding parts in the real world. Ideas and thoughts – as well as the speak-
ing or writing subject him- or herself – could not exist without a pre-existing
system of language (writing). Moreover, references to the external world are
always complex and at times irrelevant. ere is no language-independent way
of postulating the identity of any particular being.
ese points have far-reaching implications. ey give rise to the suspicion
that conventional language and thus also ethico-political identities are tied to
metaphysics that is, in eect, hiding the real nature of signs and language by
constructing apparently undeniable centers or foundations, or by assuming
that such centers exist (see for instance Derrida , ). But what exactly are
these metaphysical systems trying to hide? ey are hiding that human sub-
jectivity, intentionality, consciousness and identity are relational and histori-
cal, stemming from changing and ultimately arbitrary dierences in the codes
and signs of writing. ey may also be hiding the fact that writing in this sense
emerged rather late in human history (see Derrida , –; Derrida ,
–; cf. Jaynes ). Reective consciousness and reexive subjectivity are
not something that we have by virtue of being born and of having bodies. ey
are shifting eects of the emergent layer of culture and its historical develop-
ment through background capacities and learning.
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At least in the Western systems of thinking, but perhaps also more widely,
dierences between ego and alter are not usually understood as dierences
in this sense. Consciousness is not seen as a historically changing eect of
language, conceived as a codied and inscribed system of writing largely but
always ambiguously shared by speakers/writers and their (often absent) audi-
ences across a range of contexts. Derrida thus assumes that at a deep level of
language, at the level of “arch-language”, meanings cannot be much more than
mere play of dierences eected in and through language and thus, in the last
instance, random possibilities of meaning. And yet they are always excluding
other possibilities. ereby, when meaning is determined, a construction of a
certain kind of alterity or otherness is eected through the background system
of language that no speaking subject can control in any signicant way.
Unfounded and most of the time inconspicuously changing historical iden-
tities are based on contrasts and oppositions – on the play of negative dier-
ences – and always exclude something. Yet it is not possible to step beyond dif-
ferences and thus, presumably, otherness. What is more, it would also seem that
the thus constructed others are often evaluated as lower beings and/or enemies
(for a discussion, see Bernstein ). Deconstruction is a rhetorical strategy to
resist the violence and repression constituted by layers of writing (Derrida ,
–; , –). However, the existing systems can be only deconstructed
locally and step by step. e process of deconstruction is thus never-ending
and can take almost any text as its object, reexively also Derrida’s own texts.
Can anything remain outside of deconstruction? Derrida () declared
that justice cannot be deconstructed. Derrida conceived justice both in terms
of a respect for otherness and a possible future (global) democracy, where
dierences, even if always in the process of becoming, are just let-to-be as
recognized dierences. us Derrida distinguishes between the inevitability
of negative dierence from the contingent eects of othering (cf. Abizadeh
, –). However, given Derrida’s generalized hermeneutics of suspicion
and metaphysical assumptions, why should his very specic notion of justice
(cf. many other models, theories and ideologies discussed in Patomäki )
remain immune to the ever skeptical rhetorical operations of deconstruction?
Moreover, while the process of deconstruction may lead toward a cosmopolitan
Derrida is also using the metaphors of battle and war to denounce the eects of othering,
without explicating the reasons for this metaphor or the normative basis of his criticism. e
somewhat overcharged anxiety about potential violence, including in extended metaphorical
senses of the term, seems to connect Derrida to pacist and Buddhist ethical traditions. It
also makes it dicult to take a positive stand on any substantive ethico-political issue and,
perhaps inadvertently, aligns Derrida with the spirit of the no-harm principle of liberalism,
while being evidently incompatible with many other ethico-political principles.
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direction through deconstructing parochial and exclusionary systems of mean-
ings, the cosmopolitan direction itself cannot be established in any secure way;
and the end-state of a global identity can never be reached.
In his essay on cosmopolitanism, Derrida () focuses on Kant’s narrow
concept of hospitality as an exemplar of universal cosmopolitanism. Kant’s
(, ) third denitive article for a perpetual peace is explicitly purported
to restrict universally applicable rights: “cosmopolitan right shall be limited to
conditions of universal hospitality”. It comes nowhere near to proposing global
citizenship or worldwide socio-economic or political rights. It means only “the
right of an alien not to be treated as an enemy upon his arrival in another’s
country” and the “right to visit [other parts of … ] the earth’s surface” (ibid.,
). Kant’s point was to oppose European colonialism from a moral perspec-
tive that appeared universalizable given the late th century situation:
Compare [universal hospitality] with the inhospitable conduct of civilized
nations in our part of the world, especially commercial ones: the injustice that
they displace towards foreign lands and peoples (which is the same as conquer-
ing them), is terrifying. When discovered, America, the lands occupied by the
blacks, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc., were regarded as lands belonging to
no one because their inhabitants were counted for nothing. [ … ] China and
Japan (Nippon), which have had experience with such guests, have therefore
wisely restricted contact with them. (Ibid., )
At rst Derrida questions Kant’s naturalistic (universalistic) interpretation of
the right to hospitality and then, moving to another direction, the strictly
delimited sphere of its application. ere is nothing natural about Kant’s cos-
mopolitan right. It is a human creation that comes about in writing. Simultane-
ously, Derrida (, ) argues for extending its application to the reception
and inclusion of the others, implying a right to asylum and residence. He also
allures us, like in so many of his later writings, to an unspecied new form of
law and democracy to come (ibid., ), thus anticipating further unknowable
shifts in language, probably towards a more cosmopolitan direction. Yet Der-
rida steers clear from the path of Kant (, ) who wrote unambiguously
For an interesting attempt to integrate Habermasian and Derridean insights into the conditions
of the new post-national democracy to come, see Morris . Morris argues that, while
Habermas provides an account of postnational public spheres and political spaces, Derrida
provides important qualications in two ways. First, he emphasises the constructed and open
character of identities; and, second, he points to the diculties of creating political spaces
free from asymmetrical or biased relations of power. Morris thus takes Derrida’s metatheory
of writing as a qualier of more substantial normative theories of democracy and justice, i.e.
as a constant reminder of their metaphysical tendencies and potential for (justifying) violence
(and repression).
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that eventually human relations across the planet will “become matters of
public law, and the human race can gradually be brought closer and closer to
a cosmopolitan constitution”. A key reason for Derrida’s cautiousness lies in
his understanding of the role of language as a system of relational dierences.
Every determination of meaning implies negativity and othering at least in
some sense, although its concrete manifestations and eects are contingent.
Hence, any positive claim about cosmopolitanism has always a negative coun-
terpart that is potentially problematic also from an ethico-political point of
view, not least because exclusion and opposition always involves violence at
least in the metaphorical sense of the term, and often also concretely.
It is true, as Derrida argues, that the largely unconscious and unacknowl-
edged background system of repeatable codes and inscribed signs is a condi-
tion of possibility for any successful act of reference, truth-claim or speech act.
For instance, demonstrative pointing cannot directly dene meanings; rather
it is the other way around, meanings organize demonstrative pointings. e
meaning of the term must be already known when, by simple demonstration,
we have indicated an instance satisfying the recognative criterion. Hence, at
the epistemological level, it is not possible to distinguish clearly between sense
and reference. However, being is not only about negative dierences and the
possibility of making references to the real world are a condition of our exis-
tence. Derrida seems to choose to ignore “that even to mention the identity of
a code presumes some component of a reference” (Giddens , ), designat-
ing the elements of the code as belonging together, for instance “vocalizations,”
“marks,” “inscriptions” etc.
Although there are good reasons for Derrida’s choice to focus on the struc-
tural-historical background of language-use, it does not come without unwel-
come consequences. One of them is the implicit denial that beings and thus
identities include also positive elements. Positive non-discursive realities are
the condition of possibility for language, writing and social structures. Social
beings are embodied; our bodies follow the laws of physics; and our existence
presupposes complex biological systems. What is needed is an independent
and ontological notion of being to which we can refer; and a related con-
cept of referential detachment. (See Harré , –, ; and Sayer ,
). By referential detachment I mean the detachment of the act of reference
from that to which it refers (Bhaskar , –). Referential detachment is
implicit in all language-use and conceptualized practices, such as for instance
playing football – or writing about writing. It is impossible to play football if
one cannot, practically, make a distinction between the act of reference (saying
“take the ball forward”) from that to which it refers (the ball, directions in the
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football eld dened in terms of goals etc). e same applies to writing about
writing.
Moreover, in social practices, by saying something we also do something,
for instance evaluate, promise, warn, or threaten. Speech acts include insti-
tutionally positioned actors performing actions that constitute beings, pro-
cesses or commitments (a state-leader declaring threats to national security,
implying securitization, or signing a treaty and thus bringing about collective
commitments) or actions that the sentence describes by saying or writing the
sentence itself (for instance, a judge declaring a verdict). Speech-acts are often
indirect and complex, with the multiple indirect – sometimes ironic or sar-
castic – meanings indicated by the context. Also ethico-political identities are
constructed through speech-acts. e simple pronoun “we” in numerous sen-
tences presupposes a collective identity that it simultaneously also reproduces
or occasionally transforms.
“God bless America” presupposes that the name of the continent refers also
to a country called the United States of America; declares and reproduces that
particular national identity; and imagines it on a higher onto-ethical plane as
something that is directly linked to God. Historical stories about the origins
and development and, say, struggles, wars, suerings and glory of France or
Russia or China are also constitutive of the national identity that they may
also naturalize and personalize. e unconscious background system of lan-
guage and writing is an enabling and constraining component of the causal
complexes that bring about social and political eects, but these complexes
include many other elements as well. Agency, for instance, is co-constituted by
cognitive and social-psychological mechanisms of learning. e production of
group conformity and solidarity implies power-relations. e eects of these
and other components depend also on uctuating uncertainties of the world
economy (business cycles, crises). And so on.
My critical remarks notwithstanding, I believe that Derrida and his followers
are right in arguing that there can be no ethico-political identities that consist
only of positive elements. Every identity dened in language involves implicit
and explicit negative dierences with implications to others, whoever they are
and where-ever they may be. Being in general presupposes various absences,
level-specic voids and other forms of ontological negativity (see Bhaskar ,
) and, as Derrida has stressed, negativity plays out also at ethico-political lev-
els of identity. All denitions and constitutions of social beings exclude some
other forms of social being. Although beings could not exist without positive
elements, and although the relationship between ego and alter may be consti-
tuted in profoundly dierent ways, and although this constitutions depends
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on concrete historical circumstances, a degree of negative exclusions and oth-
ering seems inevitable.
A cosmic perspective: the identity of human beings living on planet Earth
us far I have focused on explanations of dierences and divisions that in
some contexts can also be taken as their justication. It is time to switch per-
spective and see also what is common to humanity and other earthlings. As
Morgenthau stressed, parochialism stems from the inability to see one’s self,
understandings and surroundings in a wider context and from others’ view-
point. e world as a whole is a wide context. is “world” exists on the surface
of Earth, itself part of a solar system, which in turn is a part of a large galaxy.
It is no coincidence that Kant the cosmopolitan was also a cosmologist, shar-
ing this interest with many of his fellow Enlightenment thinkers. In his early
work Kant made important contributions to cosmology. In the Universal Natu-
ral History and eory of Heaven (), Kant explains how one can explain the
formation of the solar system from an initial state, in which matter is dispersed
like a cloud, solely by means of the interaction of attractive and repulsive forces.
Kant’s view is accepted by today’s astronomy. Kant is also well-known for being
one of the rst to develop the concept of galaxy. Drawing on earlier work by
omas Wright, he speculated that a galaxy might be a rotating body of a huge
number of stars, held together by gravitational forces akin to the solar system
but on a much larger scale. From a scientic point of view, these observations
and insights must have raised the question whether Earth and humanity have
emerged from cosmic evolution.
Cosmopolitanism is not only tied to the idea of order in nature (which is the
original meaning of the Greek word cosmos) but also to this kind of a wide cos-
mic perspective on one’s identity and place. Near Kant’s tomb in Kaliningrad
is the following inscription in German and Russian, taken from the “Conclu-
sion” of his Critique of Practical Reason: “Two things ll the mind with ever
new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reect
upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” In the
Critique itself, Kant explains further that neither of these things is beyond his
horizon. On the contrary: “I see them before me and connect them directly
with the consciousness of my existence.” Similarly he also talks about “universal
and necessary connections” to both. (Kant [],–)
A suciently wide temporal and spatial perspective allows us to see simulta-
neously the limitations of both political realist socio-biology (biological reduc-
tionism, whether literal or metaphorical) and post-structuralism (linguistic
reductionism). Ants and bees do not have science or technologies, nor can
they learn much. Insects’ learning is very limited and insect-societies do not
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change (in our historical time-scale). But from a scientic point of view, it is
also evident that humans share the evolutionary history and most of genes with
ants and bees and other complex living organisms. e required capabilities for
language and cultural learning have gradually emerged over a very long period
of time on the surface of a particular planet in a particular solar system located
in a particular galaxy consisting of at least two hundred billion solar systems.
Ultimately we have all emerged from stardust, sharing a long causal history
from cosmic through biological to cultural evolution.
Together, the cosmic, biological and cultural evolutions provide a rather dis-
tinctive perspective on the question of identity. As emphasized by the popu-
lar astro-physician Carl Sagan, it is possible to dene our shared identity as
humans and earthlings in the context of a cosmic setting. As Sagan did not
want to rush answers, he formulated a question:
e nature of life on Earth and the quest for life elsewhere are two sides of
the same question. e search for who we are. (Sagan , )
Astrobiology – one of the growing areas of the early st century sciences – has
made it increasingly obvious that so far the theory of evolution and biology
has been based on the study of one case only (see Jakosky ; Barrow et.al.
). Life sciences cannot make universal claims in the same way as physics
and chemistry can because little is known of the conditions of life elsewhere.
e laws of physics apply everywhere but many of the biological and ecologi-
cal mechanisms we know may be particular and specic to the planet Earth.
Technical means to study other planets and solar systems have been gradually
emerging and evolving in the late th and early st century. In July , Ence-
ladus, a moon of Saturn, was conrmed to have extra-terrestrial liquid water.
By early–, about exoplanets have been discovered to orbit around
stars in the neighboring parts of the Milky Way, a few of them rocky planets
with water and within the habitable zone. ese ndings would not have sur-
prised many of those who have suspected for centuries, even millennia. that
our world is only one of many. We not only share a long and complex causal
history, but we are earthlings – and this has ethical and political consequences.
e vastness of the cosmos and the idea of cosmic pluralism encouraged tol-
erant cosmopolitanism already in the ancient agrarian empires of Eurasia such
as China, Rome, and parts of India, as well as in religions such as Buddhism.
e large empires were self-centric, but within their own sphere, they often
represented limited cosmopolitanism. Later, a new and more explicit form of
e belief in extra-terrestrial life may have been present in ancient Assyria, Egypt, Arabia,
China, Babylon, India and Sumer, although in these societies, the notion of alien life is di-
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cosmic pluralism emerged in Europe in the th and th centuries. e cos-
mic perspective enables and encourages distance from one’s own identity and
from the prevailing ideas and practices of one’s own society. e proponents of
cosmic pluralism laughed at human dierences and smallness. Of course, the
cosmopolitanism of early modernity and the European Enlightenment was not
based on merely a cosmic viewpoint, but also on the increasing familiarity with
the existence and perspective of non-European others. For example, Voltaire
was inuenced by the image of “noble savages” by baron de Lahontan’s Curi-
ous Dialogues Between the Author and a Savage of Good Sense Who Has Travelled
from , on the one hand; and by invocation of China as an ancient and
sophisticated civilization, on the other (see Muthu , –).
e cosmic scale that puts the drama of life and human history on our small
planet in a very wide perspective. In one sense this is an optical eect: the wider
the imaginable scale of possibilities – also in terms of dierences – the smaller
the within-the-humanity dierences appear. Alienation in this sense makes
possible a critical sensibility, the basis of any cosmopolitan identity. In another
sense, the cosmic vision insists on the idea of interconnectedness. Humans, as
matter and energy and as biological organisms, are dependent not only on each
cult to distinguish from that of their particular gods, demons, and such. Following ales and
Anaximander, the Greek atomists took up the idea, arguing that an innite universe ought to
have an innite amount of populated worlds. e Roman poet Lucretius (– BC) spread
these ideas – importantly, he also talked about “illimitable space in every direction – across
the Roman Empire. (See Dick , –) It seems that Chinese astronomy, perhaps until the
time of the late Ming Dynasty or so, cultivated similar ideas (for a summary, see Needham
, –). Arguably, Chinese astronomy was more modern in its conception of space and
distances than the geocentric system of Ptolemy, while at least as accurate in its predictions
of the movements of celestial bodies.
e best known early-modern proponent of cosmic pluralism was Giordano Bruno, who
argued in the th century for an innite universe in which every star is surrounded by its
own solar system. In , he was burnt at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition.
e attitude towards science was nearly reversed already in the late th century Holland.
Christiaan Huygens (–) crowned his celebrated career as a modern astronomer,
mathematician and physicist by writing Cosmotheoros. e celestial worlds discover’d: or, conjec-
tures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets. In this book,
which was published posthumously in Latin and translated to several European languages
soon after Huygens’ death, Huygens imagined a universe brimming with life both within
our solar system as well as elsewhere. is work among a few others paved the way for Kant’s
mid–th century astronomical speculations and for the Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. A
good example is Voltaire’s Micromégas (), a story of a ,-metre tall alien Micromégas
who travels through the Milky Way and almost by coincidence realizes that there is life on
our insignicant planet. rough the perspective of Micromégas, Voltaire laughs at us silly
humans who are killing each other in wars over religion. Voltaire’s sci- satire thus takes moral
distance from the Earthly disputes and wars.
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other but also on a variety of cosmic processes and, most importantly, on the
long-standing but thin and fragile biosphere of Earth. All humans form part
of an interdependent whole; our fates are closely interconnected.
e more we view the Earth from the outside, the more we come to see it as an
exquisite, tiny world, everyone dependent on everyone else. (Sagan , )
Mutual dependency and fate has to do with a widening of the sphere within
which the basic moral principles apply. Any form of morality has to do with the
capacity to generalize normative claims in an acceptable way and, most impor-
tantly the ability to see things from the point of view of others. us Morgen-
thau’s (, –) fundamental rules of diplomacy are essentially principles of
cosmopolitan morality, albeit conned to the sphere of diplomacy and interna-
tional relations. “Diplomacy must look at the political scene from the point of
view of other nations.” “Nations must be willing to compromise on all issues
that are not vital to them.” Morgenthau’s rules of diplomacy may constitute
a rather limited vision, tied to nations and diplomats, but they nonetheless
exemplify the fundamental principles of morality, namely the attempt to see
things from others’ perspective.
Is a cosmic perspective necessary for a cosmopolitan morality? Morgenthau,
for instance, was not an explicitly cosmic thinker, although the planetary dan-
ger posed by nuclear weapons was of major concern and an argument for
the necessaity of a world state for him. My point is merely that a cosmic and
planetary perspective clearly facilitates and encourages the adoption of such
a moral viewpoint. e level of moral consciousness is directly connected to
identity-formation. us a possible and plausible argument for global morality
and thus for planetary identity involves an idea that we should work together
as a species to preserve and cultivate the human potential on a cosmic scale.
Cosmic pluralism can also contribute to extending the variety of living
beings with which we can identify. Carl Sagan talks about the extension of
our “identication horizon”, the category of beings to whom we are willing to
apply the basic moral principles:
If we survive these perilous times, it is clear that even an identication with all
of mankind is not the ultimate desirable identication. [ … ] It is important
that we extend our identication horizons, not just down to the simplest and
most humble forms of life on our planet [by-products of the same biological
evolution that resulted in us], but also up to the exotic and advanced forms
of life that may inhabit, with us, our vast galaxy of stars. (Sagan , –)
Sagan’s point is important and his moral vision astounding in its comprehen-
siveness, but it also bring us back to political theory. Even with a cosmic-scale
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distance to human dierences, and even with a wide identication horizon, the
problems of false universalisms and negative othering within humanity persist.
e skeptical arguments against a global identity continue to carry weight in
the st century. erefore the adoption of a cosmic perspective is not enough.
e prevailing dispositions to identify with and favor particular groups are
based, in part, also on the human condition. Social beings are necessarily rela-
tional and presuppose also negativity and dierences.
e Temporal Aspect of a Possible Solution: Negative Otherness in
One’s Own Past
Although othering may in some sense be inevitable, the most relevant identity-
constituting others need not be those contemporary humans on the planet
Earth who are in some regards dierent from us, whoever ‘we’ are. Otherness
can also be located either in our own past or, alternatively, in our contemporary
being, when seen from a point of view of a possible future position in world
history. In other words, what we are can be dened in terms of critical dis-
tance from what we once used to be. And what we may become – and would
like to become – can be dened in terms of critical distance from what we are
now. Critical distance from one’s own past entails the possibility of normative
improvement and ethico-political learning and development over time.
Two th century examples illustrate how one’s own past can take part in
constituting one’s present or future identity: (i) the case of post– Germa-
ny and (ii) the case of truth and reconciliation commissions in various late–
th century post-conict situations. First, Germany: in the Nürnberg trials it
was concluded that Nazi-Germany had committed crimes against humanity.
Attempts to come to terms with one’s own past have not only been constitu-
tive of the German identity but have also led to moral development. Harold
Marcuse () argues, using Jürgen Habermas’ categories, that “the identity
Habermas (), following Lawrence Kohlberg and others, outlines three basic stages of
moral learning, pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. In the pre-conven-
tional stage, people understand and follow behavioral expectations and perceive concrete
actions and actors. is is the stage of punishment and obedience, tting also for the child.
In the conventional stage people understand and follow reexive behavioral expectations
(norms) and distinguish between actions and norms, individual subjects and role bear-
ers. Although actors can adopt the other’s perspectives and also take the perspective of
an observer, the standard is that people conform to a given social role. Finally, a stage is
reached, where moral decisions are generated from rights, values or principles which are (or
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of (West) German society has developed from a preconventional form in the
Nazi and immediate postwar years, to a conventional stage in the s, and
is now, in the s, showing many postconventional traits.”
Nazism rose from the muddy and bloody trenches of the First World War.
Generally, it can be argued that wars cause unlearning and moral regression.
While the Nazi-era meant moral regression toward an egocentrism and overtly
physical and behaviorist pre-conventional stage, the deep post-war German
guilt was something that the Germans themselves had to tackle. is required
critical reexivity that enabled moral learning. Post-conventional morality
attempts to dene good and bad according to principles that transcend the
groups holding the principles. In the post-conventional stage, systems of norms
lose their quasi-natural validity and require justication from a universalizing,
yet reexive, point of view. e developments in Germany, perhaps especially
in the s and thereafter, have facilitated the cosmopolitanisation of German
citizenry (cf. Beck et al. ).
e late th century truth commissions have generally been created follow-
ing a military dictatorship or a civil war (see Hayner ). e point of truth
commissions has been to establish some kind of basis for democracy and justice
as well as to enable moral learning and building a basis for a we-feeling across
a divided community. Particularly in South Africa, the idea has been to let the
truth out into the public sphere by allowing diverse people to tell their stories
about past suering. However, there is no well-dened mechanism to deter-
mine what the truth is in the case of contradictory accounts. Although truth
commissions have often been established as a substitute for judicial trials, for
instance the s Argentinean truth commission was complemented with the
opening of criminal trials against past human rights violators.
e success of truth and reconciliation commissions to achieve reconciliation
has been at best only limited, but in some cases they have fostered human rights
activism that may be taken as a sign of moral learning (for instance Bakiner
; for a somewhat more positive account, see Brahm ). In contrast to
the case of post– Germany, the aim has been less to come to terms with
one’s own collective past than to create a public sphere within which past and
could be) agreeable to all individuals composing or creating a society designed to have fair
and benecial practices. In the post-conventional stage, systems of norms lose their quasi-
natural validity and require public justication from universalizing points of view. People
understand and apply reexive norms (principles) and distinguish between heteronomy and
autonomy. In Habermas’ scheme, in the highest stage the ability to universalize concerns
need interpretations – which become the object of practical discourse for the rst time –
and include, at least potentially, all human beings as citizens of an imagined cosmopolitan
world society.
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perhaps also present grievances concerning others can be brought to the atten-
tion of everyone concerned. Although this procedure may in principle enable
the adoption of a post-conventional moral perspective to the conict in ques-
tion, in practice this tends to be dicult, particularly if actors make loaded
charges against the other. Moreover, if these charges make sense but no formal
prosecutions are possible, the work of truth commissions may feed further feel-
ings of bitterness and injustice.
A key to a successful overcoming of violent antagonisms seems to lie in col-
lective learning via collective self-criticism. If one looks deep enough, the his-
tory of every group, every class and every country is lled with episodes that
not only could but also should have been otherwise. For instance, the Finnish
civil war in led to concentration camps and mass killings; and the so called
“continuation war” in – was an alliance with Adolf Hitler, in which the
Finns contributed to the Siege of Leningrad. It is always possible to locate
layers of negative otherness in one’s own collective past, whether national or
otherwise – and from a universalizing perspective, we know that this applies
to everyone.
An even more important possibility is locating otherness in our contempo-
rary being and identity, when seen from a point of view of a possible future
position in world history. Alexander Wendt () formulates a similar idea
in the context of making an argument for “the inevitability of a world state:”
[ … A] world state could compensate for the absence of spatial dierentiation
between its present and its past [ … ]. e past here is [international] anar-
chy, with all its unpleasantness. In Hegelian terms we could say that ‘history’
becomes the Other in terms of which the global self is dened. Of course this
Other does not have a subjectivity of its own, and so cannot literally recognize
the world state. But a functional equivalent to recognition can be achieved by
an act of temporal self-dierentiation. (Ibid., )
For Wendt the temporal self-dierentiation would occur in the future when
the world state is established. However, the idea of temporal self-dierentiation
and otherness can be made concrete already now by imagining for instance a
future historian or sociologist looking back. is device has been successfully
utilized in some science ction writings (e.g. Brunner ; Wagar ). e
act of imagining a future historian generates far-reaching questions about his
or her identity, about our identity, and about the truth of his or her histori-
cal stories and explanations. Who is she? What kind of a historical story and
explanation can be argued to be true and relevant? What is the appropriate
spatio-temporal framework for writing world history? How will she view us?
e future may be contingent, but attempts to establish visions of a meaningful
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future can become co-constitutive of our current identities and, in turn, take
part in constructing the future (Berenskoetter ).
Most versions of classical political realism recognize that the reasons for
skepticism about a world community are only temporal. At some point things
may be dierent: there may be no more reason for more than some realist
cautiousness anymore. Whenever this kind of world may come to being, our
future historian is likely to identify with the planetary political community,
looking at the past from a global vantage point. A leap ahead into the future
seems thus to suggest a standpoint of global history. is general standpoint
does not stop interpretation of history from being ethico-political or contested.
As in any political community, history will be periodically re-interpreted and
constantly debated also in a future global political community. But in contrast
to more limited histories, world history proper covers the planetary history of
humanity in its entirety.
From a Global System of Communications to Big History
In the mid-th century, Karl Jaspers () argued that the world is now a
single unit of communications. is, he assumed, gives rise to a growing drive
toward political unication, possibly through mutual agreement in a world
order based on the rule of law. Instead of following a simple linear logic and
leading to the irreversible emergence of political unication, however, world
history can be seen in much more complicated and dialectical terms. Modern
society has involved an increasing dierentiation of institutionalized contexts
of activities and functions, including the emergence of contexts such as inter-
national/world law, politics and economy (see Albert ). It is not at all evi-
dent that a single institutionalized context and its associated spatial scale would
become dominant within any system of multi-spatial metagovernance (Jessop
). Moreover, developments may be reversed and occur through crises and
catastrophes, which have the potential of changing the identity of one or more
To an extent I agree with Bruno Latour () who criticizes objectivist cosmopolitanism
and argues for explicit cosmopolitics. For Latour, cosmopolitics recognizes the radical plural-
ism of understandings and the fact “that the parliament in which a common world could be
assembled has got to be constructed from the scratch” (ibid., ). However, at least Latour’s
claim about “construction from the scratch” goes too far. In addition to the mostly shared
causal history of humanity, the industrial civilization and its systems of governance connect
every part of the world and is more comprehensive than anything that has occurred before.
(Braudel , –)
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of those dierentiated domains and systems, and thereby also the emergent and
historically evolving whole of these parts.
ese complexities notwithstanding, we may accord with Jaspers that the
globalization of communications can be seen as the beginning of the world
history proper. It is “the spiritual and technical acquisition of the equipment
necessary for the journey; we are just setting out” (ibid., ). is setting out
can be a long process from the limited perspective of a human life-time. It also
entails a new understanding of the essentially shared causal history of human-
ity. H.G.Wells worked on the idea of a universal history already during and
after the First World War. In his two-volume Outline of History, Wells (,
v-vi) argued for the importance of shared historical ideas. “ere can be no
common peace and prosperity without common historical ideas.” He contin-
ued by talking about “a sense of history as the common adventure of all man-
kind” being necessary for peace.
It is of course no coincidence that Wells framed his world history in cos-
mic terms, starting the story by outlining the origins of our solar system and
explaining to the common reader the huge distances in space. In book I of the
rst volume, Wells narrates the origins of planet Earth before moving gradually
to the history of humankind in book II. ere had been universal histories –
presentations of the history of mankind as a whole, as a coherent unit – before
Wells, but most of them have told the story in Eurocentric terms, often assum-
ing or suggesting that a particular (Christian or) Western society constitutes
the end-point of world history. In contrast, Wells framed the world history in
cosmic terms and imagined a future world society, indeed a world state, thus
providing an entirely new vantage point. Wells’ angle remained unique for
most of the century.
e late s saw a systematic and globalist critique of Eurocentrism ris-
ing. e colonizers’ model of the world – Eurocentrism – is based on a simple
and yet false assumption: all important concepts, practices, technologies and
capacities have emerged from Europe or from Europeanized parts of the world.
Originating in Europe, the central concepts, practices, technologies and capac-
ities have subsequently diused to the rest of the world. us, world history
is presented as the history of how the central dynamics of cultural evolution
moved gradually from Mesopotamia westwards via Greece and Rome towards
North-West Europe and, later, towards the United States of America. e deci-
sive achievements of the great Eurasian civilizations of Arabia, China, India,
Japan and Persia have thus been largely neglected and the parallel developments
in Africa, Americas, and Pacic mostly ignored. (Blaut ; Blaut )
e critics of Eurocentrism have argued plausibly that this is a biased and
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one-sided account of the common adventure of all mankind (Amin ; Frank
; Hobson ; Needham ; Pomeranz ). e Greco-Roman civ-
ilization was not unique – the Han Dynasty China and parts of India went
through similar developments – and after the collapse of the Western part of
the Roman Empire the areas north of Mediterranean formed an outlying part
of Eurasia for a millennium. Until the th and th centuries, most important
concepts, practices, technologies and capacities actually originated in China,
India and Arabia and were slowly diused to Europe. It is also possible to write
counterfactual scenarios about how the Industrial Revolution could have tak-
en place elsewhere on the Eurasian continent, most plausibly in China, with
far-reaching world-historical consequences (Tetlock, Lebow, New and Parker
; Patomäki ).
e starting point of non-Eurocentric and post-Wellsian Big History is
that human societies remain part of nature, “properly at home in the universe
despite our extraordinary powers, unique self-consciousness, and inexhaustible
capacity for collective learning” (McNeill , xvii). McNeill argues further
that as natural sciences have been historicized at many levels, it is now the task
of historians – and social scientists – to generalize boldly enough to connect
their area of study with the history of the cosmos, solar system and life. In his
programmatic statements in the second volume of the new Journal of World
History, David Christian (; see also Spier ) phrased the task also in
terms of scale of space and time:
What is the scale on which history should be studied? e establishment of
the Journal of World History already implies a radical answer to that question:
in geographical terms, the appropriate scale may be the whole of the world.
[ … ] I will defend an equally radical answer to the temporal aspect of the
same question: what is the time scale on which history should be studied?
[ … T]he appropriate time scale for the study of history may be the whole
of time. In other words, historians should be prepared to explore the past on
many dierent time scales up to that of the universe itself – a scale of between
and billion years. is is what I mean by “Big History.” (ibid., )
David Christian’s () Maps of Time. An Introduction to Big History is a uni-
ed story of developments of the whole universe from the Big Bang about
thousand million years ago through the present into its distant future (Brown
is another recent history of all of time and space; McNeill and McNeill
starts from Homo Erectus; Christian, Brown and Benjamin is a beau-
tifully illustrated textbook version of the same thing). e story of Big His-
tory is about the emergence of new layers of qualitatively distinct beings and
development of increasing complexity locally – against the background of the
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second law of thermodynamics that sees increasing entropy rather than com-
plexity in the cosmos as a whole (see also Kauman ; and Wheeler ).
Finally, in the course of the development of a particular mammal species,
Homo sapiens, the stage of collective learning was reached, Humanity acquired
the “capacity to share information precisely and rapidly so that information
accumulates at the level of the community and species giving rise to long-term
historical change” (Christian, Brown and Benjamin , ).
Human cultural evolution has been fast and accelerating. During the most
recent Ice Age – lasting for about , years – new developments started to
take place. e “revolution of Upper Paleolithic” some ,–, years
ago was followed by “the Neolithic agricultural revolution” about ,–
, years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age (both “revolutions” were slow
processes when compared to the pace of changes during the last years). e
rst state-formations and systems of writing and mathematics emerged rough-
ly ,–, years ago. Similar developments were subsequently repeated
quite independently in other parts of the world, including in the so called
New World.
Gradually began the history of agrarian states and empires; of division of
labor and taxation; of religions and new levels of abstraction; of wars and power
struggles; of slavery and violence; and of increasingly rapid cultural evolution.
Within Eurasia, a world economy of regular trade networks has existed for
about ,–, years. Many innovations have spread across dierent parts
of Eurasia, opening up new possibilities to develop on previous innovations
and practices, including writing, narratization and subjective consciousness.
Two millennia later all this resulted in the Industrial Revolution.
e so called modern time has been the most dramatic era in the com-
mon adventure of humankind thus far. e Eurocentric waves of globaliza-
tion – starting with the imperial reintegration of the American continent with
Europe and continuing with the late th century and early th century waves
of neo-imperial expansion – have intensied the new global coming together
of humanity (although this “coming together” has often occurred under vio-
lent, oppressive and tragic circumstances). e Industrial Revolution led to a
rapid global population growth from one to seven and a half billion people
today. is growth continues until the benchmark of nine or ten billion will be
reached in or so. Simultaneously, the Industrial Revolution and its conse-
quences have also complicated and obscured the connection between available
resources and control over land.
e th century was exceptional because for the rst time in centuries there
were long periods of absence of war in Europe (outside Europe the situation
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was dierent, not least because of European expansion and competition else-
where). A few occasional wars notwithstanding, the European heartland was
no longer plagued with recurrent warfare. e contrast to the inter-dynastic
era of –, characterized by nearly constant warfare both in Europe and
European colonies, was evident (see Hamilton and Herwig , –). e
core of the industrializing world economy seemed to have become relatively
peaceful. Moreover, many mid–th century liberals anticipated the end of the
colonial and imperial era. Since Napoleon, imperialism had been a bad word.
In industrial capitalism there are mechanisms and processes that tend to
generate outcomes reminiscent of classical imperialism, including competition
over raw materials and markets, at times assuming the form of explicit impe-
rial projects. e era of new imperialism began in the s. (Patomäki )
Moreover, industrialization created also new powers of destruction. e North-
American civil war of – and the Franco-German war of – were the
rst modern industrial wars (Giddens b, –). In , the First World
War came as an immense surprise to most Europeans. Even though writers and
intellectuals had been anticipating a major war, only very few of them warned
that it would be unprecedented in destructiveness and likely to spread to impe-
rial peripheries (see Clarke , –). Moreover, at the outbreak of the war,
the prevalent expectation was that the war would soon be over. is error and
miscalculation made, in part, some of the decisions for beginning or joining
the war easier. (Stevenson , )
us the th century, “the age of extremes” (Hobsbawm ), began with
a largely unanticipated massive catastrophe, which recurred in –. Fur-
thermore, the Russian revolution is unlikely to have occurred without the
war (and German support for the Bolshevists). us, also the Cold War was
a co-product of the First World War and its aftermath. It was at this time that
humanity reached the technological capacity to destroy itself and large parts of
the ecological systems of the planet; and it was at that time that world history
proper emerged for the rst time.
Big History is oriented not only towards the past but also towards the future.
Big History presupposes the possibility of collective learning. It encourages the
anticipation of possibilities such as global security community and favors the
development of better systems of governance of global processes and problems
(Patomäki , ch ; Patomäki , chs and ; Patomäki , ch ). Chris-
tian (), like many other advocates of Big History, remains agnostic about
the possibility of a world state. Should there be a world state, it will probably
be rather dierent from the current exclusive territorial states and their institu-
tions (Wendt , ; Partington , –).
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Big History frames world history in cosmic terms and imagines a future
world community that may eventually take the form of a world state in some
sense, thus providing a new vantage point for writing history and viewing our-
selves. From that perspective, what we are now constitutes a form of (possibly
negative) otherness. And yet, this is far from being the end of the story of those
‘small local dierences’ that beset humanity in the st century.
e Problem of ‘Small Local Dierences’ Restated: A Possible
Solution
Big History can provide an overall framework for thinking about who we are,
but it does not mean abolishing cultural and historical dierences. Moreover,
the background system of language depends on a system of dierences and
similarities. Language is constitutive of social relations and thereby co-produc-
es social and political eects, even if only through actions in social contexts
that involve unacknowledged conditions, both intrinsic and extrinsic. Also,
actions tend to have unintended consequences that can form a part of a sys-
temic whole. Social structures and systems can have emergent properties and
powers that are not reducible to their parts. While the open-systemic historical
processes of causal determination are thus in no way reducible to language,
various causal processes can accentuate language-constituted dierences into
intensely and perhaps violently negative self-other relations. ere is thus a
need to rethink the fundamentals of identity-constitution from a perspective
that is compatible with the critics of false universalisms.
What is more, progressivist readings of Big History and related process-
es of temporal othering involve horizontal self-other relations here and now.
Even if every individual of the currently existing humanity would eventu-
ally adopt a future-oriented globalist identity, their learning and development
would be non-synchronous. Some would be “lagging behind” in the progres-
sivist temporal axis, which they may also try to challenge and change. ey
would represent negative otherness for those who have learnt more rapidly
(whose learning must remain subject to criticism, as pluralism and controver-
sies are essential for learning; Rescher ; ). ey might in turn develop
negative modes of responsiveness and forms of counter-othering. Even when
everyone is fully aware of the vastness of the long-term global matrix of Big
History, these apparently small-scale dierences are signicant to our lives.
We can also see that even at the level of syntagmatic competencies – making
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speech and action possible – there are often wide dierences in the grids, mea-
sures, matrixes and relations of exclusion that constitute self/other-relations.
It would be a dangerous illusion to ignore the importance of these kinds of
dierences.
One consideration is that many aspects of global togetherness may be pos-
sible only to the best educated and wealthiest part of humanity. e wealthy
and powerful may celebrate a form of cosmopolitanism – say market globalism
(Steger ) – that becomes a source of resentment for a multitude of actors,
especially if they experience increasingly uncertain living conditions and exis-
tential insecurity. Furthermore, closer interactions and experiences of interde-
pendency not only create new points of contact but may equally engender new
points of conict. Encounters with otherness are enmeshed with practical con-
cerns and anxieties of everyday life and mundane things such as competition
over jobs under the conditions of un- or underemployment. Various labels,
ways of legitimization and myths are sedimented into the deep structures of
language, from where they can be drawn also for strategic purposes. e con-
cerns and anxieties of everyday life can thereby be mobilized for support for
antagonistic platforms and political activism.
Tzvetan Todorov’s () three axes of ego/alter-relations helps to analyze
the problem of ‘small local dierences’ further. e rst is the epistemologi-
cal axis. What do we really know about the other? Ego can either know or be
ignorant of alter’s history, identity and values. Knowledge or ignorance of the
other can have deep roots. From many philosophical standpoints, dierences
are dicult to see. Answers to the questions “what is there in the social world?”
and “how can and should we acquire knowledge?” enable and constrain visions
and knowledge of the others. ere is no absolute knowledge about the self
and other but an endless gradation of the lower or higher states of knowledge.
e axiological axis, the basis for value judgments, is at least partly indepen-
dent of knowledge. e other can be seen as good/bad or superior/inferior (or
something else, perhaps something more nuanced). Coming to know the other
better can help to understand and evaluate it more positively, but more knowl-
edge can also make the value judgement more negative. How and on what basis
this judgment is made varies signicantly. e “desire to grasp the unknown by
means of the known” (, ) often means that improved knowledge about
dierences makes the evaluation of the other worse, perhaps just by increasing
sensitivity to these dierences. Distinctions play an important role in social dif-
ferentiation in the most familiar everyday contexts (Bourdieu ) and these
distinctions are instinctively used in evaluating also the more dierent or dis-
tant others. A lot depends of course on what is known – on ego’s experiences
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and familiarity with frames, metaphors and myths – and on the cognitive level
of ethical and political reasoning.
Todorov’s third axis, the praxiological axis, has to do with rapprochement
with or distancing from other’s real or imagined identity and values in practical
terms. If the existence of alterity, of a truly other human substance, is denied,
the others can be only either identical (implying assimilation) or inferior (jus-
tifying submission). at is, inability to perceive alterity on the epistemologi-
cal axis precludes any position on the praxeological axis. If real alterity can be
perceived, one possibility is neutrality or indierence based on the capacity to
take distance, which is one of the potential functions of Big History.
e dierent others can also be recognized as equal in terms legal and other
entitlements or rights, such as Kant’s universal right to hospitality or universal
human rights. e right to equal participation or representation implies global
democracy. A problem is that the more precisely and comprehensively these
entitlements and rights and the possibly corresponding duties are dened, the
more this recognition makes others identical, implying assimilation. Todorov
writes (ibid., ) that “we want equality without its compelling us to accept
identity; but also dierence without its degenerating into superiority/inferior-
ity.” Todorov’s problematic is closely connected to the struggles over recogni-
tion especially typical of the last half-a-century. Particular forms of recognition
are bound up with specic possibilities with regard to identity. When a new
claim or constitutive possibility emerges, it regularly results in a struggle for
the social recognition of a new form of identity. (Honneth )
What we are witnessing in the late s is a dialectic between three logics
of identity. First, from the philosophical standpoint of market globalism, dif-
ferences are hard to see. e economistic logic of this form of globalism pre-
cludes any position on the praxeological axis. Everyone must be identical and
submit to market globalism and its characteristic modes of subjectivity (e.g.
Chandler & Reid ). Second, the concerns and anxieties of everyday life
are being mobilized for antagonistic politics against both globalism and associ-
ated forms of otherness such as immigrants. is mobilization occurs in terms
of frames, categories, metaphors and myths that have been sedimented into
the deep structures of national and religious imaginary (cf. Patomäki & Steger
), from where they are again being drawn also for strategic purposes. ese
categories and myths may include also claims about our tribal nature, perhaps
grounded in our genes or memes.
e third logic of identity concerns the struggle for recognition. ese strug-
gles will continue to diversify claims and open up new possibilities. To the
extent that these claims and possibilities can be conned to the private sphere,
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they may be compatible with the liberalism of market globalism (in spite of its
techno-logic; see Amadae ). ey can, however, politicize market globalism,
in particular in terms of problematizing the privileges and inequalities charac-
teristic of market globalization. ere are other ways organizing democracy and
relations of production and exchange. e third logic is reexive and has to do
with the general relationship between socio-economic equality and identity.
Conclusions
e skeptics do have a point. As the increasingly apparent failure of market glo-
balism indicates, the process of building a cosmopolitical community is beset
with diculties and dangers. Many forms of universalisms are false. Political
realists are right in criticizing (liberal and other) utopias of harmony and see-
ing various mechanisms that generate and reinforce group-thinking on a large
scale. Post-structuralists, in turn, are right in maintaining that negativity and
some othering are inevitable. While not all negative contrasts and exclusions
are illegitimate (i.e. legitimate norms can be violated), there is a constant quest
for hermeneutics of suspicion and deconstructionist analysis.
Attempts of reducing human beingness to genes, memes, nature, structures
of language, or something else that is not changing, are implausible and geo-
historically false. We humans, our language, and our capacity to learn have
gradually emerged over a long period of biological evolution on the surface
of a particular planet in a particular solar system located in Milky Way. ese
developments have made cultural learning and the emergence of reective
consciousness and increasingly reexive ego-identity possible. Language too is
changing and evolving. On the basis of these and related reections, I have con-
tended that the most relevant identity-constituting others need not be those
contemporary humans who are in some regards dierent from us. e cosmic
perspective and the possibility of cosmic pluralism encourages the adoption
of a broad moral perspective, facilitating the widening of moral identication
horizon also to all forms of life and (possibly) to other sentient beings.
I have further argued in this paper that otherness can be located in our own
past. As the past is often present in contemporary beings, this has implications
to contemporary self-other relations as well. Or, alternatively, it can be located
in our contemporary being, when seen from a point of view of a possible future
moment and position in world history. What we may become – and would
like to become – can be dened in terms of critical distance from what we are
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today. Critical distance from one’s own past entails the possibility of normative
improvement and ethico-political learning and development.
e global grid and matrix of Big History corresponds to the emergent forms
of time and space evident in many social practices and ethico-political con-
cerns, such as global warming. Big History means the human history in cosmic
scales of time and space. In a Wellsian manner, I have argued that Big History
is necessarily oriented also towards the future, anticipating the possibility of
cosmopolitical unication through collective learning. Although world history
is non-linear and although the emerging social forms and wholes are complex,
we can rationally anticipate that these kinds of developments will pave the way
for a global ethical and political community in some meaningful sense.
However, although Big History may provide an overall framework for think-
ing about who we are and where we are heading, it does not abolish cultural
and historical dierences. A global political community would not put an
end to negative dierences, conicts or tragedies of social action. Rather the
cosmopolitical perspective I have developed in this paper is compatible with
what William Connolly (, xv) calls the “ethos of critical responsiveness.”
is means that the self-condence and congealed judgements of dominant
identities and understandings of the political community and constituency
should be recurrently challenged. It also means that the basic onto-logic of
identity needs to be repeatedly and reexively rethought from a perspective
that is compatible with both the criticism of false universalisms and with the
basic tenets of Big History.
A key point I have made in this paper is that although the open-systemic his-
torical processes of causal determination are not reducible to language, various
causal processes can accentuate language-constituted dierences into intensely
and perhaps violently negative self-other relations. From this perspective, I
have discussed Todorov’s three axes of self-other -relations: epistemic, axiologi-
cal and praxiological. “Knowledge does not imply love, nor the converse; and
neither of the two implies, nor is implied by, identication with the other”
(Todorov , ). By distinguishing the three axis and by avoiding reduc-
tionism, we can make more nuanced and plausible claims about their intercon-
nections in dierent world-historical contexts. I have suggested that what we
are witnessing in the late s is a dialectic between three logics of identity.
Market globalism cannot acknowledge dierences or privileges, which is one of
the reasons why the concerns and anxieties of everyday life are currently being
mobilized for antagonistic politics based on re-imagining the nation. Mean-
while, the struggle for recognition continues to diversify claims and possibili-
ties, reecting on the ambiguities of equality and dierence.
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It is obvious that my conceptualization of the problematic is not indierent
with regard to dierent options within the wider whole of Big History. It entails
contrasts and dierences and an evaluative stand. I clearly prefer the third logic
of dierences and collective identity. At the meta-level, however, my argument
is that we can let many dierences just be and evolve in terms of their own
dynamics. Also, we can see the on-going dialogues and debates in terms of a
co-constitutive and mutually transformative temporal relationship between
self and other within the expanding set of relevant ethico-political possibilities.
Humans can and do learn through practical experiences, encounters and
dialogues. Due to learning they can also revise their values, goals and identity.
It is entirely consistent to believe in the superiority of one’s position and see
how the others are rationally entitled in their circumstances – given the path of
their particular historical experiences – to hold a position at variance with ours.
Pluralism is the best guarantee for further collective learning in our planetary
and cosmic setting – that may also have cosmic-scale signicance.
Acknowlegement
is paper has been in progress for a decade. I rst wrote it in and pre-
sented it in a few conferences, workshops and the like, including the Calcut-
ta Research Group Winter School in December . at presentation led
eventually to a limited-circulation publication “Is a Global Identity Possible?
e Relevance of Big History to Self-Other Relations”, Refugee Watch, ():,
, pp.–. A couple of years later I used the last two sections of this paper
in a revised form in “e Problems of Legitimation and Potential Conicts in a
World Political Community”, Cooperation & Conict, ():, , pp.–.
is is a thoroughly rewritten and up-dated version of the paper, best seen as
the rst fully nalized edition of it.
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Anna M. Agathangelou, Associate Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Pro-
fessional Studies, Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto,
Canada.
Barrie Axford, Professor of Politics, Director of the Centre for Global Poli-
tics, Economy and Society (GPES), Department of Social Sciences, Oxford
Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Didem Buhari-Gulmez, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Jean
Monnet Chair, Department of International Relations, Istanbul Kemerburgaz
University, Bağcılar – İstanbul, Turkey.
Habibul Haque Khondker, Professor of Sociology, College of Sustainability
Sciences and Humanities, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Heikki Patomäki, Professor of World Politics, Department of Political and Eco-
nomic Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Jan Aart Scholte, Faculty Professor in Peace and Development, School of Global
Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Manfred Steger, Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Hono-
lulu, United States of America, Honorary Professor of Global Studies, RMIT
University, Melbourne, Australia.
Peter Taylor, Professor of Geography (Emeritus), Department of Geography,
Northumbria University at Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, United King-
dom, Director of the Globalization and World Cities Research Network,
Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom.
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Ritu Vij
Educational Modernisation Across the Tai-
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Ho-fung Hung
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Class, Citizenship and Individualization in
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Chinese Nation-Building as, Instead of, and
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Principles for Cosmopolitan Societies:
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