  One of the most common objections to cosmopolitanism attacks a position that is in fact made of straw. Often it is said that cosmopolitanism is meaningless without the context of a world–state or that cosmopolitanism necessarily involves the commitment to a world state. These claims are historically uninformed, because cosmopolitanism as a concept arose in the first instance as a metaphor for a way of life and not in literal guise. Ever since, there have been cosmopolitans who do not touch on the issue of international political organization, and of those who do, very few defend the ideal of a world–state. Furthermore, even those cosmopolitans who do favor a world-state tend to support something more sophisticated that cannot be dismissed out of hand, such as a thin conception of world government with layered sovereignty. 