The moral ground of cosmopolitan democracy

Abstract

The writer seeks to clarify the moral basis for pursuing cosmopolitan or global democracy. Against a widely shared conviction in contemporary philosophy, he contends that there is such a ground, but, against most who advocate consensual world government, he suggests that this ground cannot be articulated in the kind of principle or principles of human rights to which they appeal. His objection to the latter (particularly as articulated in the Kantian thought of Karl-Otto Apel) is that there is an inconsistency in affirming both the transcendental nature of the moral law and the inescapable historicity of any actual understanding. His conclusion is that the human moral ground must be a universal individual, in whose actualizations all events as they occur are completely included.