The Politics of Humanity: Justice and Power

"Introduction: The Politics of Humanity" by Richard A. CohenPart I: Principles of JusticeChapter 1: "Ethics of Hospitality: The Limits of Cosmopolitan Rights" by Tito MarciThe paper re-examines, from a cosmopolitan perspective, the ethical and juridical topic of 'hospitality' in some of its paradoxical aspects that are more and more involved in difficult relationships with 'outsiders'. On this base we will try to take another look at the problem posed by the growing phenomenon of migration in democratic and multi-ethnic societies, which, is bound to reappear, for good or for ill, on the level of social inclusion. Rethinking the concept and the practice of hospitality (the terrain of relating among "others") today becomes an operation as important as ever, since precisely now, with the development of globalization and migration processes over the entire surface of the earth, the way of relating among "outsiders" is presented as a fact decisive for our social coexistence.
Chapter 2: "Cosmopolitanism versus Globalization: Breaking the Inevitable Ceremonial" by Richard A. CohenAppeal to the root of intelligibility - scientific, social, economic, political - in moral responsibility arising as singular response to the vulnerability and suffering of the singular other, being for-the-other before being for-oneself, ethics before interest, this "before" as the root significance of any priority, the very importance of importance. Cosmopolitanism oriented by this primordial ethics, in contrast to the nihilism of globalization which puts the private accumulation of capital and the personal satisfaction of self-interests, and the governmental totalities allied to and enforcing such selfishness, before responsibility, responsibility to and for the neighbor, responsibility to and for the neighbor's neighbors, and responsibility to and for all others, humanity. In pursuit of the above, brief forays into Aristotle, Antonio Gramsci, Heinrich Heine, Herman Melville, Emmanuel Levinas and Socrates.
Chapter 3: "Reassessing the 'Humanitarian Turn' in Global Politics" by Luca ScuccimarraSome scholars have argued that one of the most characteristic aspects of the "new" post-1989 political and legal order has been the emergence - or re-emergence - of a form of international political morality based not on the "particularism" of the modern society of States, but rather on the universalism of the rising global society. Against the traditional State-centric approach to international relations, from the 1990s on there have been more and more positions favoring a real "global" turn of politics, founded on "universal principles that challenge the presumed moral supremacy of territorial boundaries and which favor instead the welfare of humanity generally" (Hayden). The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct the main issues at stake in the philosophical-political debate about the so-called "humanitarian turn" in global politics, in order to discuss their actual meaning in an age of "national-populist backlash." Chapter 4: "Vulnerability and Intimacy: Ethical Foundation for Social Relations, Confucius and Levinas" by Kuan-min Huang
In the Hobbesian model, the necessity for the state derives from a virtual contract originating out of a natural state of everyone against everyone. It thus defends self-protection by urging certain rights be given up to construct the state. Our contemporary situation demands that we consider an alternative model. Accordingly, the present paper proposes to consider another view of the natural state considering temporality and affectivity. Every human being, while persevering in existence, is subject to multiple health variations, physical and psychological. Human temporal finitude is ex