cosmopolitanism
/ˌkɑzməˈpɑlɪtənɪzm̩/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.19 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The philosophy of cosmopolitanism underlies theories of global citizenship. Cosmopolitanism is the ability to balance a local and global identity. A cosmopolitan individual engages meaningfully with different cultures and feels at home in the world."
- "To present the world anthropologies project (WA), this article explores the existence of three kinds of anthropological cosmopolitanisms and cosmopolitics: imperial, liberal, and radical."
- "The idea of a universal human nature brings us to a third theme, humanism. The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion. They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation, or religion. It is individuals, not groups, who are sentient—who feel pleasure and pain, fulfillment and anguish. Whether it is framed as the goal of providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number or as a categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means, it was the universal capacity of a person to suffer and flourish, they said, that called on our moral concern. Fortunately, human nature prepares us to answer that call. That is because we are endowed with the sentiment of sympathy, which they also called benevolence, pity, and commiseration. Given that we are equipped with the capacity to sympathize with others, nothing can prevent the circle of sympathy from expanding from the family and tribe to embrace all of humankind, particularly as reason goads us into realizing that there can be nothing uniquely deserving about ourselves or any of the groups to which we belong.¹⁰ We are forced into cosmopolitanism: accepting our citizenship in the world.¹¹"
- "rootless cosmopolitanism"
Etymology
From cosmopolitan + -ism. The sense referring obliquely to Jewishness comes from the long era in which all Jews lived in the Jewish diaspora because Jews had been banished from the ancient Jewish homeland and no new homeland yet existed. In Soviet use it was rooted in fear of transnationalism generally but took on coded or dogwhistle antisemitic qualities that were not explicitly separable from the generality.