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POLS 338

Cosmopolis: From the Roman to the Ottoman and British Empires

Most political theory fixates on the polis or the modern state, leaving the empire — the universal city, or cosmopolis — strangely under-theorized; this course asks why, tracing how thinkers inside and outside the Roman, Byzantine, Holy Roman, Ottoman, Austrian, and British empires tried to make conceptual sense of rule without borders. You'll read across philosophy, history, and literature — from Stoic cosmopolitanism and Augustine to Hegel and Schmitt — and wrestle with primary sources like the Res Gestae alongside modern commentary. It's an upper-level theory elective that rewards comfort with abstract argument, and it reshapes how you read everything else in the political thought sequence by showing what the canon left out.

Credit3ECTS5FacultyFaculty of Economics, Administrative, and Social SciencesBölümPolitical Science and Public Administration

Haftalık müfredat 14 hafta

Hafta 1
INTRODUCTION. Philosophical ideals of polis, imperium, cosmopolis.
Hafta 2
Objective geography. On the geography of the fertile crescent. Garth Fowden, part of ch. 1 of Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 12-19. Miscellaneous maps and an account of Eratosthenes’s calculation of the size of the earth. Transition: languages. Nicholas Ostler, sect. on Turkish etc in Empires of the Word (Harper Collins, 2005), pp. 105-112.
Hafta 3
Subjective geography. On Roman and Greek geography. Claude Nicolet, ch. 3 of Geography and Politics in Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 57-84. Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth trans. G.L.Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2003), pp. 42-55, 86-100. Historical consciousness. G.W.F. Hegel, ‘The Natural Context of the Geographical Basis of World History’, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 152-196.
Hafta 4
From polis to what? Hans Kelsen, ‘The Philosophy of Aristotle and the Hellenic-Macedonian Policy’, The International Journal of Ethics 48 (1937), p. 1-64. Peter Green, ‘The Metamorphosis of the Barbarian: Athenian Panhellenism in a Changing World’ in Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History 360-146 BC eds. Wallace and Harris (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), pp. 5-36.
Hafta 5
Cosmopolis: Cynics and Stoics. Excerpts from texts on Alexander, Zeno etc in Ernest Barker, From Alexander to Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), pp. 1-19, 22-23, 40-43. ‘Diogenes Cosmopolitanism’, Appendix H from Malcolm Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 141-45. Malcolm Schofield, ‘Social and Political Thought’ in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy ed. Schofield, Burnyeat, Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 739-70.
Hafta 6
Imperium: Roman Republic and imperium. Richard Koebner, ch 1 from Imperium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 1-17. Ernest Barker, ‘The Conception of Empire’ in The Legacy of Rome ed. Cyril Bailey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 45-89. Imperium: Roman Empire. Augustus, Res Gestae.
Hafta 7
Imperium/Cosmopolis: The Israelite tradition. Various texts (Daniel, the Gospel of John, Pauls’ Letter to the Romans) Christianity. Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Augustine’s Political Realism’, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses ed. R.M. Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 123-41. Byzantium, Islam, Russia etc.
Hafta 8
Imperium: Holy Roman Empire. Walter Ullmann, ‘Reflections on the Medieval Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (1964), pp. 89-108. States and Overseas Empires. G.V. Scammell, ‘The New Worlds and Europe in the Sixteenth Century’ Historical Journal 12 (1969), pp. 389-412. *** jstor ***
Hafta 9
Imperium: The shift in the meaning of ‘empire’. Richard Koebner, ‘From Imperium to Empire’, in Imperium, pp. 18-60 Robert Lowe, ‘Imperialism’, The Fortnightly Review 24 (1878), pp. 453-65.
Hafta 10
Cosmopolis: Enlightenment and Kant. Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpectual Peace (1795) in Philosophical Writings ed. Behler (1986), pp. 270-311. Modernity. Carl Schmitt, ‘The New Nomos of the Earth’ in The Nomos of the Earth, pp. 351-55. Danilo Zolo, ‘Hans Kelsen: International Peace through International Law’.
Hafta 11
Imperium: Modern Imperialism. Richard Koebner, ‘The Concept of Economic Imperialism’, The Economic History Review 2nd ser. 2 (1949), pp. 1-29 *** jstor **** Chapters from Koebner and Schmidt, Imperialism, pp. 250-300.
Hafta 12
Lenin, ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow, 1934), pp. 73-83. Niall Ferguson, ‘The Limits of American Empire’ in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of American Empire (London: penguin, 2004), pp. 34-104. Samuel Huntington, Who are we? (2004), pp. 366-70.
Hafta 13
Cosmopolis: Modern Cosmopolitanism. ‘Cosmopolitanism’ in International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. David Held, ‘Principles of Cosmopolitan Order’ in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (2005).
Hafta 14
Jeremy Waldron, ‘What is Cosmopolitan?’ The Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (2000), pp. 227-243.

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