Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice in Practical Contexts

Cosmopolitanism seeks to expand the moral community of concern to include all human beings scattered around the globe—and not merely to those in closer interactive circles (e.g. family, friends, colleagues, compatriots, etc.) who traditionally benefit from our care. This expansion has clear implications for institutional agents but also for individual agents who endorse cosmopolitanism, e.g. in terms of the ‘locations’ where we might seek to do good for others. For instance, a commitment to cosmopolitanism may create tensions, inter alia, because of an individuals’ limited ability and resources to combat global injustices or because of a perceived conflict between cosmopolitan duties and special obligations. The graduate conference “Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice in Practical Contexts” hosted by the Munich Center for Ethics (MKE) at LMU Munich seeks to explore the range and depth of implications that an endorsement of cosmopolitanism has for specific issues of global justice and to explore what cosmopolitanism can offer in the face of such challenges in the highly interconnected and globalised world we find ourselves in. To this end, we suggest to focus on four major thematic issues of global justice: (1) Global (Citizenship) Education; (2) Climate Justice; (3) The Ethics of Immigration; and (4) The Ethics of Technology.