2 The Cosmopolitan Paradox Travel, Anthropology, and the Problem of Cultural Diversity in Early Modern Thought Joan-Pau Rubiés The Longue–Durée History of Enlightened Cosmopolitanism Too often scholars have restricted the analysis of the emergence of an explicit cosmopolitan ideal to the second half of the eighteenth century, at which time it became pervasive. 1 However, in the same way that more recent flowerings of the cosmopolitan ideal have been inspired by the Enlightenment experience, the eighteenth century formulations had a deeper philosophical background. It is of course widely acknowledged that between the ancient Stoics, who first formulated the ideal of citizenship of the world, and the writers who trans- formed it into one of the key themes of the Enlightenment, a variety of commercial, political, and cultural contexts, from international trade and diplomacy to antiquarianism, natural science and the Grand Tour, created the foundations for a cosmopolitan praxis. 2 By contrast, it is not always suffi- ciently recognized the extent to which the ideal, closely connected to the various practices of the Republic of Letters, was also given a specific formula- tion from the mid-sixteenth to the turn of the eighteenth century, often in relation to two distinct but connected genres: moral philosophy and travel writing. Indeed, given the polymathic nature of humanistic culture, it may be argued that throughout the early modern period moral philosophy often developed its arguments and ideals in close connection to the new geograph- ical consciousness and cultural identities made possible by the growth of travel writing. This specific early modern dimension has implications that the simple juxtaposition of Kant’s landmark formulation of the cosmopolitan ideal with 1 The literature on cosmopolitanism is vast and growing, including various readers and compan- ions. For the eighteenth century in particular, see Thomas Schlereth, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694–1790 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). More recently, Pauline Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and the collection Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism, ed. David Adams and Galin Tihanov (Leeds: Legenda, 2011). 2 Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 55 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009305372.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press