The Cynic as Cosmopolitan Animal

Haslanger, Andrea

doi:10.1057/9781137376282_3

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Perhaps Kant is wrong that 'The fields of politics and morality, as they are brought to bear on cosmopolitan thought, are understood as exclusively human fields, even if, as in Kant, there are thought to be greater forces at work.' 38 Given that the origins of many of the most recent influenzas are in livestock agriculture, we ought to take seriously the idea that these pandemics represent a type of 'return of the repressed' of potentially cosmopolitical subjects who are perpetually kept invisible. Thus, we must turn to this broader cosmopolitanism to see what it offers and in doing so, we will introduce a mode of thinking in complex systems.…”

Section: Too Many Humanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norming COVID‐19: The Urgency of a Non‐Humanist Holism

Bishop

Fitzgerald

2020

The Heythrop Journal

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It … becomes necessary to think of reality that is specific to becoming. -Keith Ansell PearsonIf one surveys contemporary news headlines, one will encounter a litany of thought-pieces on what is to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic. It is said to be a result of Chinese food policy, of the proliferation of air travel, of a slow quarantine response by Western nations, or of Spring Breakers. Yet, each 'master key' falls short of explaining the global scale of the phenomenon. The causes proposed aim to achieve normative control over the world; one way or another they are complicit in an anthropocentric humanism. The world we inhabit, however, is the result of far more than human processes, whether these be as individuals, communities, or nation-states. To see COVID-19 as emerging only from a failure of legislation or social policy confuses tools of ethical evaluation with diagnostic analysis. In our paper, we outline an alternate mode of analysis, namely one through overlapping, provisionally-stipulated systems emerging from a nonhumanist perspective. The COVID-19 pandemic poses a rare opportunity to elaborate such an analysis because of the different systems (e.g. biological, agricultural, economic, political, legislative, technic, etc.) that contribute to the outbreak and by the speed with which the powerful asymmetric shocks of the pandemic have appeared. To develop our mode of analysis, we will first demonstrate why conventional humanist models of diagnosis are inadequate, paying specific attention to the cosmopolitan assumptions latent in perceiving COVID-19 as, for example, resulting from a failure in legislation. We will then develop a logic of systems, their interaction, and how forces within one may be transformed to influence another. Our contribution will benefit from a dialogue between two of the most penetrating contemporary nonhumanist researchers, Bernard Stiegler and Keith Ansell-Pearson. On the shambles of the failure of the alternatives, we recommend this mode of analysis because it gives due place to complexity and abandons the search for a single culprit.

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Section: Too Many Humanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norming COVID‐19: The Urgency of a Non‐Humanist Holism

Bishop

Fitzgerald

2020

The Heythrop Journal

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“…However, the Cynic bare life is not a life that has embraced animal embodiment. It is not an animal life, generating an 'animal cosmopolitanism' (Haslanger 2015), but it is a form that the Cynics give to their life through poverty, humility and destitution. The Cynic's dog life is a life of a guard which barks at enemies, which knows how to distinguish the good from the bad and the true from the false.…”

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confidence: 99%

The horizon of another world: Foucault’s Cynics and the birth of radical cosmopolitics

Cărăuş

2021

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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The ancient Cynic Diogenes was the first to declare ‘I am a citizen of the world ( kosmopolitês)’ and the other Cynics followed him. In The Courage of the Truth, Michel Foucault analyses the Cynic mode of parrhēsia and living in truth, however, his text expands the cosmopolitical amplitude of Cynics since the Cynics’ true life contains an inherent cosmopolitan logic. Identifying the core of the Cynic true life in the care for the self that leads to the care for the others within the horizon of the possibility of another life and another world, Foucault shows how the Cynic establishes ‘an intense bond with the whole of humankind’, cares ‘for all mankind’ and for the whole world as a ‘functionary of humanity’ and, as ‘the scout of humanity’, the Cynic prefigures the future and exercises the ‘government of the universe’. This article argues that Foucault’s account on Cynics maps the very first moments of becoming cosmopolitan and offers an insightful perspective on the process of achieving a cosmopolitan subjectivity, a process displayed by different expressions of cosmopolitanism, and especially the ‘insurgent cosmopolitanism’ from the bottom up.

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Citizens of Nowhere: Cosmopolitanisation and Cultures of Securitisation in Dionne Brand’sInventory

Tomsky

2019

Journal of Intercultural Studies

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The Cynic as Cosmopolitan Animal

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Norming COVID‐19: The Urgency of a Non‐Humanist Holism

Norming COVID‐19: The Urgency of a Non‐Humanist Holism

The horizon of another world: Foucault’s Cynics and the birth of radical cosmopolitics

Citizens of Nowhere: Cosmopolitanisation and Cultures of Securitisation in Dionne Brand’sInventory

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