Cosmopolitan openness

The word cosmopolitanism is increasingly commonly used although it continues to escape an easy definition. Philosophers and sociologists find it difficult to define the term and they are at pains in agreeing just who befits the label ‘cosmopolitan’. In this sense they are no different from ordinary citizens who – often just because they like the hipness of the fad word ‘cosmopolitan’ – use it to describe their lives, experiences and tastes. There are different ways of being cosmopolitan but what most cosmopolitans share is a disposition of openness to the world around them. This may sound nebulous and trite but openness is probably one characteristic that most theorists of cosmopolitan agree on and it is also one common theme connecting a vast majority of conceptions of cosmopolitanism through its history: from Diogenes to Kant (1983), Nussbaum (1996) to Derrida (2000).