Cosmopolitan Hospitality, Care, and Respect

DeArmey, Michael H.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_4

Cosmopolitan Hospitality, Care, and Respect

Michael H. DeArmey²

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First Online: 29 May 2020

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Abstract

From the outset Kant’s ethics was cosmopolitan. Universalization, the principle of humanity, the cosmopolitan rights to hospitality and the public use of reason, ethics as determining international law within the framework of a peace federation, are each cosmopolitan concerns.

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Notes

1.
Metaphysics of Morals, 161.
2.
Ibid.
3.
Ibid., 200: “…the law making benevolence a duty will include myself as an object of benevolence.” 150: Wanting your own happiness is part of our nature and is not subject to constraint. But how you go about achieving happiness is subject to constraint.
4.
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What Is Enlightenment? Lewis White Beck, translator (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), p. 41: “…it is possible that a universal law of nature according to that maxim [not helping those struggling with hardships] could exist, it is nevertheless impossible to will that such a principle should hold everywhere as a law of nature… [Everyone] at some time will] need the love and sympathy of others….”
5.
The Metaphysics of Morals, 196.
6.
Ibid., 214.
7.
Ibid., 199.
8.
Ibid., 150.
9.
Ibid., 202. My emphasis.
10.
See David Cummisky, Kantian Consequentialism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Brad Hooker, Ideal Code, Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Barbara Herman, “Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons,” Ethics 94 (1984): 577–602; Karen Stohr, “Kantian Beneficence and the Problem of Obligatory Aid,” Journal of Moral Philosophy, 8 (1) (2011): 45–67; Thomas Hill, “Meeting Needs and Doing Favors,” in Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 201–243; Thomas Hill, Dignity and Practical Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Robert Johnson, “Love in Vain,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 36 (supplement) (1997): 45–50.
11.
“Kantian Beneficence…,” 65.
12.
Ibid., 61.
13.
“Love in Vain,” 46.
14.
The Metaphysics of Morals, 199; Melissa Seymour Fahmy, “Kantian Practical Love,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91 (2010): 313–331 and 318.
15.
The Metaphysics of Morals, 162.
16.
Ibid., 198.
17.
Ibid., 191; also, 210.
18.
Ibid., 205. In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals natural sympathy is said to be just another inclination, in itself void of moral worth. A man without natural sympathy—perhaps preoccupied with his/her own pain—could act out of duty to another in need, and would have a higher moral worth than a person acting from natural sympathy. I interpret this man as acting on principled or “free” sympathy. Cummisky, Kantian Consequentialism, 30, claims that the ground of natural sympathy is pleasure. The naturally sympathetic person “has the purpose of helping others … because it is pleasant.” This is not supported by anything Kant says.
19.
Ibid. This passage could have been written by Mother Teresa!
20.
Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 177.
21.
Kant, Perpetual Peace, in KPW, 106; The Metaphysics of Morals, 121–122.
22.
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, Rachel Bowlby, translator (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 25.
23.
Ibid., 151.
24.
Ibid., 149.
25.
Ibid., 79.
26.
“The right to hospitality in the cosmopolitan tradition will find its most powerful form in Kant and the text, Perpetual Peace.” Ibid., 25.
27.
Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 11–12. Strasbourg is a leader in voluntary hospitality offered to strangers.
28.
On Hospitality, Op. cit., 55.
29.
KPW, 106. My italics.
30.
Garrett W. Brown, “The Laws of Hospitality, Asylum Seekers and Cosmopolitan Right,” European Journal of Political Theory, 9 (3): 17–27; Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor, translator/editor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
31.
Access at: http://www.hospitalityclub.org/.
32.
Tahar Ben Jelloun, French Hospitality: Racism and North African Immigrants (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Originally published in French in 1984.
33.
Ibid., 2.
34.
Ibid., 3.
35.
Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
36.
See the “Audiovisual Library of International Law,” at: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/prsr/prsr.html. This definition is one-sided. A refugee could be someone who flees their country not because of persecution but due to starvation (e.g., Ethiopia), lack of water, pollution (Bhopal, India), or other causes.
37.
Ibid.
38.
The Rights of Others, 42.
39.
Ibid., 133.
40.
Ibid., 138.
41.
Ibid., 13.
42.
Ibid., 19.
43.
Ibid., 218.
44.
Ibid., 88. Quote is from The Economist, November 2–8, 2002.
45.
Discussed admirably by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2006), Chapter 7, 101–113. Also, Josiah Royce, “Provincialism,” in Race and Other American Problems (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 57–108.
46.
Ibid., 47.
47.
Ibid., 59.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Ibid., 42.
50.
Kennedy asked, “How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?” Access at: https://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/founding-moment/.
51.
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in World of Strangers, 121 and 127.

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School of Humanities, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA
Michael H. DeArmey

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DeArmey, M.H. (2020). Cosmopolitan Hospitality, Care, and Respect. In: Cosmopolitanism and the Evils of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_4
Published: 29 May 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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