Diane Morgan / Howard Caygill / Gary Banham

Thursday 25 May 2002
Geoffrey Manton Building, Manchester Metropolitan University, Rosamund Street West, Manchester, M15 6LL

Speakers
Diane Morgan, Senior Lecturer, University College Northampton
Howard Caygill, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Gary Banham, Research Fellow in Transcendental Philosophy, Department of Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University

Politics for the ancient Greeks was about citizenship. They gave us the word cosmopolitan: citizen of the world. In this conference we explore something of the politics that goes beyond nations and states. The idea of a citizenship that is not constrained by belonging to a particular place is one that was developed by Roman philosophers, particularly the Stotics. In modern times it was developed further by Enlightenment thinkers, particularly Immanuel Kant. The thought of a politics that goes beyond nations has ben consistently contested by those who believe in a coalescence of “nation” and “state” and this challenge has immense contemporary charge. When we add to this challenge the arguments of those who would argue and that the legacy of the Enlightenment is riddled with difficulties, we can see the fundamental need to set out again the question as to how we can envisage a future world basis for future political thinking. At this conference we will explore, through dialogue and disagreement, the prospects for such thinking.