The aim of the present study is to articulate a comparative study of Zeno of Citium and Immanuel Kant. The main reason for the comparative form of the study is that the full extent of the selective affiliations, continuities and discontinuities in the philosophers’ thought with regard to democracy under a cosmopolitan condition, as they define it, has not yet been explored. Studying their political arguments does not entail, in the present study, a historical examination of their ideas. Historical research (...) has, to date, been the norm in the examination of the thought of these thinkers. However, although both thinkers focus both on citizenship as an indispensable condition for democratic governance, a systematic comparison of what citizenship and democracy are as major political concerns in Zeno and Kant remains unquestioned by researchers. The originality of the present research derives, first, from the comparison of both thinkers that has not been critically presented so far. Second, it derives from the critique of the political views of Zeno according to the research conducted in the Gregory Vlastos Archive (that has never been conducted and presented so far) and is followed by tracing symmetries and asymmetries in the works of Kant that extend their arguments on cosmopolitanism to the solidification of democracy and the avoidance of war. As for the focus of the study on Kant, the novelty that is being argued for is the priority attributed to the cosmopolitan agenda as a precondition of a sovereign democratic state instead of the opposite being presented and claimed so far. (shrink)

This book examines recent debates on the political dynamics of cosmopolitanism, particularly in its connection with European civil society and the public sphere. Its aim is to trace to what extent cosmopolitanism defines the «second modernity» and to analyse what cosmopolitanism can offer to modern socially and politically diverse societies.

The aim of the present paper is to carry out a comparative study of Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas on democratic governance and citizenship. Both thinkers focus on these two factors but the extent to which these contribute to reinforcing the state and peace has not been investigated by researchers. The present paper questions how cosmopolitanism in comparative and consequential mode: Safeguards peace by presupposing a level of interstate institutional convergence as presented by Kant and Habermas; and Reinforces and innovates (...) democracy on an interstate level not only within the state; and Instead of just safeguarding peace, re‐discovers the political sphere, as presented by Habermas, who on this point develops an array of departures from Kant. The originality of the research derives from the symmetries and asymmetries in Kant and Habermas that extend their arguments on cosmopolitanism to the solidification of democracy and the avoidance of war. (shrink)

Modern logic has Wldergone some remarkable developments in the last hun dred years. These have contributed to the extraordinary use of formal logic which has become essentially the concern of mathematicians. This has led to attempts to identify logic with formal logic. The claim has even been made that all non-formal reasoning, to the extent that it cannot be formalized, no longer belongs to logic. This conception leads to a genuine impoverishment of logic as well as to a narrow conception (...) of reason. It means that as soon as demonstrative proofs are no longer available reason will no longer dominate. Even the idea of the 'reasonable' becomes foreign to logic and such expres sions as 'reasonable decisions', 'reasonable choice' or 'reasonable hypotheses' would be put aside as meaningless. The domain of action, including method ology and everything that is given over to deliberation or controversy - i.e., foreign to formal logic - would become a battleground where necessarily the reason of the strongest would always prevail. (shrink)