Marx and the Cosmopolitan Tradition: The Current Situation of a Tension
The decade following the collapse of the Eastern bloc has led various reformulations of the project of a liberal international order. It also led to the updating of the Enlightenment philosophical project, particularly with respect to Kant’s philosophy of history which envisaged the establishment of a confederation of cosmopolitan democratic republics. However, recent literature on the concept of empire and imperialism reminded us that there are reasons to be suspicious at the site of the political economy of cosmopolitan discourse. This tension between tradition and cosmopolitan sociological certain positions such as those contained in the Marxist tradition is not new. This article deals with the genesis of this tension and try to formulate the three main challenges facing an update of the cosmopolitan tradition that seeks to take account of contemporary developments in various sectors of the social sciences.