The first three features of cosmopolitanism that I identified at the conclusion of the Introduction were:

1. (1) measured endorsement of patriotism;

2. (2) opposition to nationalism and chauvinism;

3. (3) willingness to suspend narrow national interests in order to tackle global problems such as those of environmental degradation or global justice.

According to Ulrich Beck (2002), nationalism is one of the chief enemies of cosmopolitan societies. In order to explicate why this is so, we need to distinguish patriotism from nationalism, and to understand how they relate to each other and to cosmopolitanism.

The Nussbaum debate

Martha Nussbaum wrote an essay on patriotism, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism”, that was published in the Boston Review, a widely read intellectual journal in the United States, and was later republished with a series of responses and replies (Nussbaum 1996a). It critiqued the perceived insularity of American education and accused it of failing to produce citizens who are knowledgeable about, and thus concerned for, the wider world and its peoples. The education that Nussbaum advocated would involve not only expanding the scope of students' interests to distant peoples, but also considering global justice and human dignity: values that have no borders. Nussbaum argued that students should be taught that they share the world with the whole of humanity and that their being American does not entitle them to a privileged position in the world.