The final set of features of cosmopolitanism that we need to explore is:

1. (17) acknowledging the rule of international law;

2. (18) commitment to open and participatory political processes globally;

3. (19) religious and cultural tolerance and an acceptance of global pluralism;

4. (20) dialogue and communication across cultural and national boundaries;

5. (21) seeing the world as a single polity and community.

The suggestion that the whole world might be seen as a global community could express an ideal or describe a reality. It may be an ideal that cosmopolitans advocate as a hoped-for utopia or it may be an apt description of the way the human world actually is. I shall suggest it could be both. A global community may already exist, but in a form that requires further enhancement in order to realize the hopes and aspirations of human beings everywhere.

Community

Before we can begin our discussion of whether the world constitutes a global community, we need to specify what we understand by a “community”. A group of people who are together in some sense but only by chance does not constitute a community.