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Cosmopolitanism is the identification with the community of all human beings on planet Earth, representing the highest possible level of identification, barring a hypothetical multispecies interstellar community.

Cosmopolitans usually reject all lower levels of identification, such as tribalism, nationalism and supernationalism as immoral. Cosmopolitanism can be compared to internationalism, but it goes further as it calls for abolition of national identities, while internationalism only insists on friendship and cooperation between existing national units.

History[]

Cosmopolitanism arose in the Hellenistic period, when after Alexander the Great's conquests parts of Europe, Middle East and India were ruled by related dynasties, and the idea of uniting the three cultural areas into one worldwide civilization became possible. Stoics were important proponents of early cosmopolitanism, opposing the distinction between Greeks and barbarians, believing that it's most important that all human beings have reason.

Early Christians also supported cosmopolitanism. As Paul the Apostle wrote in Galatians 3:28, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus". However, later Christianity was adopted as an imperial religion, and especially after the Great Schism and failure of the Crusades, the idea of Christendom was primarily understood as a supernational unit restricted to Western and Central Europe.

Since the Enlightenment, many progressive intellectuals started promoting cosmopolitan identity again. Prominent examples include Immanuel Kant in the 18th century and Auguste Comte in the 19th. The poet Alfred Tennyson, in his 1835 poem "Locksley Hall", dreamed of a future era when "the battle-flags were furl'd in the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world". By the end of the 19th century, cosmopolitan views became commonplace among Western intellectuals. In 1887, Ludwik Zamenhof invented the artificial language Esperanto to promote unity of humanity and abolition of national identities ("anationalism"). In 1930, a vision of a future world-state was elaborated by Olaf Stapledon in his science-fiction work, Last and First Men.

Cosmopolitan sentiments led to the creation of the League of Nations after the end of World War I and then the United Nations after the end of World War II. In the following decades there was a backlash, as left-nationalist movements in the Third World became more popular and attracted support of many Western intellectuals. Nevertheless, cosmopolitanism remains an important idea for futurists in the 21st century.

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