On the Cosmopolis
From the Romans to Globalisation
“Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam”
(All roads lead to Rome).
The polis was the city-state. It is a small order amongst outer chaos. The polis, because of its scale, is overtaken in the tide of the cosmopolis. The empire, the universal city historically vested onto Rome. Rome is the city of the Republic, of the Empire, of the Pagans and of the Pope. But Rome was abandoned by the Romans, Constantinople was made capital and the city stood as seat of power in name only.
For the past 1500 years or so, Rome has been the capital of Western Religion, so to speak. As a New Jerusalem, as the city of popes, or as the New Babylon; it has had many faces. The Rome of Nero, Caligula and many other emperors is famed as a place of vice, although much of that vision comes from the register of their political rivals. It is a bit like studying capitalism through the pamphlets of any socialist or fascist regime. The Rome of Constantine, of pope Leon and others is — the very same place — famed as a site of virtue, even as their times were decadent. It is much like praising a beggar for the virtue of his poverty, instead of helping him. And it is very much the case that Rome, the city, is no longer the cosmopolis. The imperium romanum is a concept very much still alive, but that is not important here, for it has been dissociated with the de facto state of the cosmopolis.
Rome never set out to conquer the world, yet, having done so, proclaimed its manifest destiny in being the universal empire. Indeed, it is like Voegelin proclaims in The New Science of Politics:
The cosmopolis of the philosophers had assumed historical existence; it was the imperium Romanum.
“All roads lead to Rome”, says the proverb. And indeed, that has been made true by the Romans. An analysis of an ancient Roman map (Tabula Peutingeriana) will show Rome not only as the centre of a stretched — distorted — world, but also of an all-encompassing centre of a web of roads. Rome holds the sceptre, exhibits a crown and the imperial colour; it drapes its imperium. However, the portrayal of Constantinople is already much of the same fashion, showing us that Rome was already not the Empire itself, so to speak — even if Constantinople reaches West, to Rome.
It would be a long time after the fall of Rome before the (known) world was again a more unified place. Yes, the Middle Ages are often misinterpreted in a sense that they were not actually a “historical pause” between antiquity and the Renaissance. There is much to be learned about the medieval times. But it is certain beyond doubt that this was not the time for the cosmopolis. The seat of the cardinals and the pope was the heart of Christianity, but leading a religion is hardly like leading an empire — even if the church wished to claim imperium. In the end, the Papal States were so feeble, that even within its direct domain, other forces were at play. The Roman commune being the most interesting.
Today, on the other hand, no one can deny that the world must be viewed as integrated. But where is the cosmopolis? Is it Washington? Or New York? I would submit that, for a time, before World War One, Paris and, after it, London, had been the cosmopolis. However, I cannot seem to admit a city, a determined and objective location, as the cosmopolis. So, in order to find it, we must regress in our methods, as the Greeks did in engraving their civilisation on the epic tales of Homer and others. The United States is, even as its power shakes, still the greatest power on Earth. It was founded after a revolution, the first revolution in the history of humanity that set back the powers of the government. It is thus that I find an early pilgrim, arrived to what was still a British colony. John Winthrop, lord of the manor in Groton and Suffolk, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and indeed a Puritan, said:
We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
What I seek in citing this quote is that the cosmopolis is “the shining city upon a hill”. In more precise terms, the cosmopolis that had assumed material existence in Rome, after being idealised has become, once again, an idea — and one about the present. We are no longer in the times of the Greek philosophers, we are not in the Roman world, or the Medieval shattering or the brief rule of Paris and London. We have no city which can assume Rome’s place, but we are also not devoid of the cosmopolitan spirit. Barbarism roams the globe, of course, but that is not to say that we have been plunged into darkness. I would submit that the cosmopolis is precisely the “shining city upon a hill”. I would consider that, now that all roads do not lead to Rome, they lead everywhere — and, by extension, nowhere. It is for the individuals to decide if they find themselves plunged without an end, into the pool of chaos; or if they find the ends they seek through the roads they now can choose.
