4th Century BCE – Ancient Greece
The origin of the concept of global citizenship in the Western cultural realm can be traced back to ancient times, around 4th century BCE. It is thought to have emerged in Ancient Greece starting with Socrates and Diogenes of Sinope, the latter being a Greek philosopher belonging to the Cynic school of thought. The main precursor of the concept of global citizenship was the idea of cosmopolitanism which emerged simultaneously in different parts of Greece around 400 years BCE, however, not exclusively as a political thought. Cosmopolitanism has been the core of many philosophical views, but the main idea is that "all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, belong to or are citizens of a single community". In the case of Diogenes" time, global citizenship was more about the perception of life outside of the bounds created by the notion of polities. It was about the experience of being more than “just an Athenian”. This phrase meant the pursuit of equity, justice, and equality which is the base on which the principle of global citizenship stands. Afterwards, Stoics like Zeno of Citium contributed to, and propagated the same idea. Hence, this philosophy set the path for a thought that suggests the expansion of rights from the hands of a reserved amount of people based on state-citizenship to the wider society outside of the niche.
1st Century BCE – Ancient Rome
Cicero – The stoicism that had originated in Greece had reached Rome and by the 1st century BCE, a similar concept had emerged under Cicero, and that is Academic Skepticism. Cicero was more politically inclined, and his ideas explained how one should be ingrained in the system. For example, being a part of the city, and then of a culture and then of a country. However, Diogenes’ concept was based on just recognizing oneself as a human species, unbound by the geographical or philosophical limits of a political system, unlike Cicero's thought.
Philosopher Seneca, and emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus were also Stoics who, like other Stoics, believed that belonging to and serving humanity is as important as belonging to and serving the local community. Hence, Roman Stoics, similarly like Greek Stoics, believed in the importance of both the nation state and the larger community outside the bounds of the nation state. Therefore, Stoics sought to expand the rights of people outside this state-based notion of citizenship.
18th Century CE – Europe (Germany)
After ancient Greece and Rome, the concept submerged for a long while. It re-emerged again in the 18th Century in the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant. Stoic perceptions of cosmopolitanism were visibly strong in their works. Kant was an enlightened philosopher who believed that even though there are laws binding people to their own state and community all humans are bound by a single law of morality and reason. He wrote about Cosmopolitan Law in his work, Toward Perpetual Peace, which meant that in addition to constitutional and international law, humans are ruled by natural laws as ‘citizens of the earth’. He was against foreign invasion and supported free movement and international communication. He established the notion of ‘moral and political cosmopolitanism’, which are the basic identifiers of global citizenship today.
Furthermore, Adam Smith and Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch’s concept of ‘economic cosmopolitanism, or free market’, can also be regarded as a conceptual precursor of global citizenship opening up society beyond the boundaries of national central authorities.
19th and 20th Century CE
The 19th and 20th centuries CE. largely witnessed the re-emergence of theories and assumptions from history in academics. For instance, the capitalist globalisation movement, and the communist revolution, rest upon the concept of economic cosmopolitanism. Indeed, communism fundamentally rejects classism and promotes the notion of common interests. On the other hand, capitalism promotes the liberalisation of international borders through the freedom of trade. During this time, as a result of academic thinkers like O'Neill and Naussbaum, global citizenship became unstuck from academia, and became a concrete political movement. Furthermore, Hannah Arendt (1905-1975), a historian and political philosopher, viewed global citizenship through the lens of ‘political philosophical engagement’ with world citizenship, that is a person’s “subjective and collective answerability to cosmos”. She draws on the work of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), who explained cosmopolitanism more through the perspective of theological and philosophical freedom. His main points of criticisms originated from Eurocentric Christian dogmas. His philosophical faith was mainly focused on the role of an active individual who is not bound by the limits of a religious identity and is open to other religious philosophies of the world. Rather than connecting to Eurocentric church dogmas, or boundary situations like death, frustration, and temptations which bind people into objectivity, according to Jaspers, one should engage oneself beyond such boundaries. Such boundaries can also be overcome by being open-minded and engaging in open communication. Such communication can lead individuals to find their own purpose of life, that is, get to have a subjective experience of life. This type of open-minded communication is called ‘existential communication’, and the school of thought is termed as existentialism. Hence, Jasper's philosophy states that existentialism, that is ‘persons finding their own purpose in life’ is intertwined with cosmopolitanism, that is going beyond one's own boundaries of communication. Apart from Kantian cosmopolitan views and cosmopolitan views of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, other utilitarian views and moderate views on global citizenship also emerged.
In the 20th century, the moral imperative to global citizenship was explained in a stricter sense by philosophers like Peter Singer (1946-) and Peter Unger (1942-), who proposed that all lives are equal, and we have the moral imperative to, by all means necessary, provide for the ‘least fortunate’. Apart from the philosophical viewpoints, global citizenship started taking on institutional formats, simultaneously.
The first concrete institution that symbolised global citizenship was The League of Nations, formed in 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference. Even though the background of the formation of the league never mentioned global citizenship explicitly, it was the first time that an intergovernmental organisation was formed to maintain global peace, after the first World War. Hence, for the first time, the essence of global citizenship could be seen in an institutional format.
