Keeping the 'Ism' in 'cosmopolitanism' – Wieland and the origins of cosmopolitan discourse. Issue 3 (2nd September 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jordheim, Helge
• Is Part Of: Journal of political ideologies. Volume 23:Issue 3(2018)
• Page Start: 299
• Page End: 319
• Publication Date: 2018-09-02
• Subjects: Right and left (Political science) -- History -- Periodicals; Political science -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Political science -- History -- Periodicals; Ideology -- History -- Periodicals; 320.5
• DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2018.1503770
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1356-9317

Abstract

ABSTRACT: After having been dormant for much of the 20th century, the concept of cosmopolitanism has regained some of its former rhetorical power in current academic and political debates. Taking Kwame Anthony Appiah and Robert Fine as key interlocutors, the article argues that a historically informed analysis of the linguistic context, in which the language of cosmopolitanism first emerged, can help us understand better the political and ideological underpinnings of the concept. In the first part of the article, I discuss the emergence of cosmopolitanism in the context of what I shall refer to as the 'ismatization' of political language in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the second part, I turn to what I consider to be a key text for understanding the paradoxes of cosmopolitanism: the essay Das Geheimnis des Kosmopolitenordens ('The Secret of the Order of the Cosmopolitans'), published by the German novelist, poet and publicist Christoph Martin Wieland in the journal Teutscher Merkur in 1788. At the end of the 18th century, I argue, Wieland makes a similar observation to Fine, namely that the 'ism' connotes something doctrinal, even sectarian, and steeped in secrecy and conspiracy.