Cosmopolitical Reality

Facing Cosmopolitical Reality

By John Taylor; 2006 June 19

Not long ago a deepened believer asked me loaded question, "Do Baha'is get involved in or discuss politics?" The answer is an emphatic yes and no. The problem, as so often happens, is rooted in language. English squeezes too many meanings into the word "politics" to make it possible give an unqualified yes or no answer. It would be "no" if by politics you mean partisan political parties, but "yes" if you consider, "The earth is but one country" to be a political statement, as it no doubt is. It is unfortunate that the word "cosmopolitics," a term given prominence by Immanuel Kant, has not come into general parlance. If it were, you could say, "Baha'is are non-political but at the same time fervently committed to cosmopolitical issues." Let us explore this further.

Immanuel Kant said, "It is often necessary to make a decision on the basis of information sufficient for action but insufficient to entirely satisfy the intellect." Often? More like always! Who ever has the slightest notion of the outcome of an enterprise when they first set out? This, to be sure, is a definition of faith, but Kant also took it as an a priori justification for activism for peace, however daunting it may seem at the outset. Kant devoted the last pages of his "Science of Right" to this question. Here he asks, in essence: "Why even try when peace seems so utterly remote and impracticable?" His answer: "Because reason dictates." The House of Justice's Peace Message covers this ground at length so I think it would be helpful to go over Kant's points in this section, which he calls "The Universal Right of Mankind, or jus cosmopoliticum." He starts off the section called "The Nature and Conditions of Cosmopolitical Right" thusly:

"The rational idea of a universal, peaceful, if not yet friendly, union of all the nations upon the earth that may come into active relations with each other, is a juridical principle, as distinguished from philanthropic or ethical principles."

You can take your own shot at fathoming his meaning here, but I take it to say that the ground of peace is justice, not love, niceness or kindness. Law is a function of peace and peace is derived from the very nature of law. A law that does not serve justice, and ultimately peace, is corrupt and self-contradictory; it will rapidly deflagrate. This has consequences for property, as Kant points out next:

"Nature has enclosed them altogether within definite boundaries, in virtue of the spherical form of their abode as a globus terraqueus; and the possession of the soil upon which an inhabitant of the earth may live can only be regarded as possession of a part of a limited whole and, consequently, as a part to which every one has originally a right."

Again, simplified: the world is round, so every square inch of the planet is a part of a single sum owned by God, or if you prefer, the whole of humanity. "Every one has originally a right" means that there is not nor can ever be wholly exclusive ownership. The more in contact the parts become, the less independent and the more shared and negotiated proprietorship will become. Shareholder number one is everyone. This is shorthand for divine right, He giveth and taketh away and to none is given the right to say why or wherefore. Kant next turns to the question, "Whence does this primal right derive?"

"Hence all nations originally hold a community of the soil... they are placed in such thoroughgoing relations of each to all the rest that they may claim to enter into intercourse with one another, and they have a right to make an attempt in this direction, while a foreign nation would not be entitled to treat them on this account as enemies."

The community of the soil implies, in a slogan, that "the farmer comes first," first among equals. This the Arabic Hidden Word brings up when it asks, do we know why we were all created from one dust? To teach equality, absolute, fundamental and visceral. Since the Hidden Words were still hidden when Kant wrote, he was probably thinking of this train of logic in Rousseau,

"But when the people as a whole makes rules for the people as a whole, it is dealing only with itself; and if any relationship emerges, it is between the entire body seen from one perspective and the same entire body seen from another, without any division whatever. Here the matter concerning which a rule is made is as general as the will which makes it. And this is the kind of act which I call a law." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Penguin Books, London, 1968, p. 81)

The very existence of laws implies equality of all in all under God. Thus it is not government or any of its agent who make up the laws, but all of humanity in service to God, the Lord of justice. "All justice comes from God, who alone is its source..." (Rousseau, 80) Every law, be it local, national or international, springs from our universal desire to implement justice.

"...we can no longer ask who is to make laws, because laws are acts of the general will; no longer ask if the prince is above the law, because he is part of the state; no longer ask if the law can be unjust, because no one is unjust to himself; and no longer ask if we can be both free and subject to the laws, for the laws are but registers of what we ourselves desire." (Ib., 82)

So Kant, having established that fundamental human oneness and equality give anyone the basic right to set out to give human unity a political expression in a permanent peace without being regarded as an enemy, continues:

"This right, in so far as it relates to a possible union of all nations, in respect of certain laws universally regulating their intercourse with each other, may be called `cosmopolitical right' (jus cosmopoliticum)."

It is this fundamental "cosmopolitical right" that Baha'is, non-political that we are, exercise when we work for world peace, for example by distributing the Master's Tablet to the Hague -- as we did after the Great War -- or, more recently, the Peace Message to the leaders and peoples of the world. Interestingly, in a similar manner, last month the UHJ in a letter addressed to Iranian Baha'is gave them limited sanction to teach the Cause there. In support they invoked an international convention establishing the human right of all believers to follow legitimate channels in promoting their own beliefs. Before, obedience to government required that Baha'is halt teaching activities at the bidding of local authorities. No more, it would seem. Such is one internal result felt by Baha'is of the gradual extension of Kant's cosmopolitics, politics of the universe.

Kant continues, bring up what could be called a tourist's right to visit any point on the planet. We can already do this virtually with the aid of Google Maps and its competitors. Certain sensitive locations are intentionally blotted out by these Internet mapping services for security reasons. Kant did not see war and terror as valid excuses for curtailing "tourist rights," but he also considered as worthy of protection the rights of local peoples.

"...evil and violence committed in one place of our globe are felt in all. Such possible abuse cannot, however, annul the right of man as a citizen of the world to attempt to enter into communion with all others, and for this purpose to visit all the regions of the earth, although this does not constitute a right of settlement upon the territory of another people (jus incolatus), for which a special contract is required."

These special contracts are especially needed now that local abuses have the power not only to be felt but to destabilize anyone anywhere on the globe. Examples often cited: substandard farm management practices on a farm in China brought the world to the brink of a bird flu pandemic; the exposure of shenanigans on a Thai stock exchange in the late 1990's brought the economy of Russia to its knees in a matter of hours. There is no such thing as a wholly internal affair any more and politics are rapidly merging into a single cosmopolitical continuum. The more that happens the sooner it will be possible to answer the question, "Do Baha'is get involved in politics?" with an emphatic, unqualified, "Yes."

More on Kant's line of thought about peace later.

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com