Abstract
What is cosmopolitanism? The etymology of the word goes back to Ancient Greek, and is composed of the words kosmos, world, and polites, citizen. Cosmopolitanism should therefore be a theory of world politics, of a world in which a single shared political order would rule and of which every individual would be an active component. Perhaps this is what cosmopolitan theory has become through the works of David Held and other contemporary scholars; but cosmopolitanism began as ? and long remained ? a philosophy of nature. Reflecting upon human nature, the Stoics came to the conclusion that man and earth were part of a same materiality which they called cosmos. Because of this common belonging, all human beings were to be considered equal.
