Commercium: Critical Theory From a Cosmopolitan Point of View (Reinventing Critical Theory) - Hardcover

Frankfurt critical theorists have had much to say in the last two decades about globalization. Yet Brian Milstein's creative new book takes many of the debates at hand to new and higher intellectual levels. Offering creative rereadings of Kant and many other important cosmopolitan theorists, Milstein treads where many contemporary critical theorists have feared to tread: the harsh realities of our violence-prone international or interstate political system. This is an important contribution to international political and social theory. -- William E. Scheuerman, Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Indiana University In his original and important contribution to the debate about cosmopolitanism, Brian Milstein uses Kant's concept of "commercium" to reconstruct the many ways in which we already live in a globalized world. But one, as Milstein shows with great clarity, in which we have not yet found the legal and political forms for organizing this life in a justifiable way. This book shows the power of a critical theory that combines normative and sociological reflection. A great achievement. -- Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a postnational or cosmopolitan politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a cosmopolitan point of view. Drawing on Kant s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a commercium of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologiesand crises in present-day world society."