Abstract

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans maintain that no national categories of people deserve special weight and that, instead, all people everywhere should be objects of moral concern. Arguably, the most developed of these accounts is the cosmopolitan democracy model articulated by David Held, so it is not surprising that it has received the most attention and criticism. In this paper, I outline Held’s model of cosmopolitan democracy and consider the objections Will Kymlicka raises to this account. I argue that Kymlicka’s objections do not undermine Held’s central claims and that Held’s cosmopolitanismremains a very promising model that deserves further attention.