From hostility to hospitality

Abstract

The thesis of the article is that it is wrong to think that cosmopolitanism leads to the denial of the autonomy of politics in the name of a universalism that is blind to national, cultural and religious differences. On the contrary, it is a question of taking up the challenge of defending and carrying on an idea of cosmopolitanism able to collect the cultural dispositions arising from negative moral reactions to acts of mass crime perceived in a shared way all over the world.
A decisive source of inspiration in this direction is the cosmopolitanism of Kantian origin which offers the opportunity to conceive of a worldwide legal-political order where hostility can be transformed into hospitality.
Following this perspective, the figure of the foreigner is radically dissociated from the one of the enemy and associated with he who is welcome because he has the right to be received by virtue of a more original right than the rights established by a specific political community, the original cosmopolitan right linked to the common belonging to the human world.