In postwar France, a new movement – Citoyens du Monde – emerged with the aim to unite people across the world around the political target of achieving world peace through dissolving the national borders and establishing a worldwide society. In 1949, Världsmedborgarrörelsen (the World Citizen Movement) was established in Sweden as the 21st branch of the movement and represented the new ism mondialism.

The aim of the study is to understand and explain the ideas that propelled Världsmedborgarrörelsen, and how these ideas emerged, evolved and faded away in relation to the prevailing political circumstances. Theoretically, the dissertation draws on formation of -isms and approaches to political temporality. The study is supported by Hannah Arendt’s posited gap in time between memory and expectation as a crucial precondition for political actors as they temporally orient themselves to establish new policies. The study argues that the temporal orientation of world citizens was based on a gap in time filled by the idea that World War II had demonstrated the failure of traditional politics. Furthermore, the would-be citizens of the world forged their political expectations through a ”reactopia”; they presented a utopian political dream to ward off an imagined dystopia of nuclear war. Having experienced World War II and now living under the very real threat of nuclear weapons, Världsmedborgarrörelsen proclaimed that nation states, with their intergovernmental strife and division of people, were paving the way to new wars. By the time Världsmedborgarrörelsen dissolved in the 1960s, it appeared to be a prisoner of its own reactopian temporal orientation. Memories of World War II had faded and the threat of nuclear war diminished. As the new political boundary was drawn between Global North and Global South, the movement found it difficult to mobilise its forces.

Cosmopolitanism is a value-loaded concept that seems to become popular in intervals. The latest cosmopolitan period started after the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union and concentrated mostly on aspects such as “a new world order”, and often with reference to Kant. It might be questioned if the cosmopolitan period still exists. Here it is suggested that a historical understanding of cosmopolitanism together with experience from later social and political experiences might give a new perspective on the difficulties of creating a better world in a Kantian sense, including cosmopolitan education. Considering its history and taking concern of experience Kant’s cosmopolitanism still is relevant, not least in its broader sense.

Since the Enlightenment, the definition of terms such as humanity, citizenship and rights has fluctuated and these ideas continue to haverelevance for contemporary discussions of globalization from a «cosmopolitan» perspective. This volume goes back to the conception ofcosmopolitanism in Greek antiquity in order to trace it through history, resulting in an unmasking of its many myths. The concept is reconstructedwith reference not only to well-known (and some lesser known) historical thinkers of cosmopolitanism, but also to noted «anti-cosmopolitans».The first aim of the book is to display historical perspectives on a discourse which has been dominated by ahistorical presumptions. Thesecond is to critically explore alternative paths beyond the Western imagination, redefining the Enlightenment legacy and the centre-peripherydichotomy. Most notably, Eastern Europe and the Arab world are integrated within the analysis of cosmopolitanism. Within a framework ofconceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), cosmopolitan reason is criticized from the viewpoints of comparative literature, psychoanalysis,phenomenology, postcolonialism and moral philosophy.The book’s critical approach is an attempt to come to terms with the anachronism, essentialism, ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism thatsometimes underlie contemporary theoretical and methodological uses of the term «cosmopolitanism». By adding historical and contextualdepth to the problem of cosmopolitanism, a reflexive corrective is presented to enhance ongoing discussions of this topic within as well asoutside academia.

Whether in science or in international politics, neutrality has sometimes been promoted, not only as a viable political alternative but as a lofty ideal – in politics by nations proclaiming their peacefulness, in science as an underpinning of epistemology, in journalism and other intellectual pursuits as a foundation of a professional ethos. Time and again scientists and other intellectuals have claimed their endeavors to be neutral, elevated above the world of partisan conflict and power politics. This volume studies the resonances between neutrality in science and culture and neutrality in politics. By analyzing the activities of scientists, intellectuals, and politicians (sometimes overlapping categories) of mostly neutral nations in the First World War and after, it traces how an ideology of neutralism was developed that soon was embraced by international organizations.

This book explores how the notion of neutrality has been used and how a neutralist discourse developed in history. None of the contributions take claims of neutrality at face value – some even show how they were made to advance partisan interests. The concept was typically clustered with notions, such as peace, internationalism, objectivity, rationality, and civilization. But its meaning was changeable – varying with professional, ideological, or national context. As such, Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe presents a different perspective on the century than the story of the great belligerent powers, and one in which science, culture, and politics are inextricably mixed.

In this article, the historical roots and philosophical premises of post-communist transitology, that rose to prominence during the 1990s, are critically contextualized and analyzed from the point of view of intellectual history and political philosophy, paying attention to the development of the concept of time, and also of history, development, evolution, progress, revolution, and acceleration. The idea about regime change is accordingly reconstructed and traced through the political philosophy of Greek antiquity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, as well as in biological thought and debate of the 19th century, in the modernization theories of the 1950s and in 1970s and 80s “transitology” dealing with Southern Europe and Latin-America. The analysis takes it point of departure in a comparison between post-communist transitology and cold war sovietology and critically assesses implications of teleology, chronocentrism and ethnocentrism.

The aim is to present a conceptual and historical reconstruction of Gorbachev's notion of a ‘European home’, its underlying philosophy of history as well as its relation to Russian cosmism. The concept is contextualised within the convergence debate of the post-war period, in which a rapprochement between communism and capitalism was posited. The essay concludes with reflections on what the conceptualisation can tell us about the fall of communism and what impact the concept has had on today's search for a common European identity. An argument is advanced that the notion contained paradoxes that rather contributed to the dislocation of post-Soviet Russia from Europe.

The postcommunist concept of transition, as it was in use during the 1990s and early 2000s, is analyzed from the viewpoint of its intellectual prehistory. The concept is partly contrasted with alternative notions, partly relocated to its antithesis of communist ideology, where “transition” actually was an established concept. Via Hegel and Lenin, the concept’s logic of asymmetry and negativity is theoretically demonstrated. One thesis is that radical versions of teleological postcommunist transitology have unconsciously reproduced an essentially communist conceptualization of change that may generate new ideological biases and misconceptions. The reconstruction of the dialectics between communist and postcommunist transitology indicates and responds to a need for historical reflexivity.