Pin-Fat - Cosmopolitanism and the End of Humanity

Cosmopolitanism and the End of Humanity:A Grammatical Reading of Posthumanism1

Veronique Pin-Fat

University of Manchester

The academic discipline of International Relations has yet to systemati-cally begin tracing the impact of posthumanism on ethics in global poli-tics. In a context where a humanist picture of the subject is in a stateof crisis that is more acute than ever, and the end of humanity isbeing declared by some, the question arises as to whether a moral com-mitment to liberal cosmopolitanism can be maintained. It arises becausethe moral commitments of cosmopolitanism traditionally rest on ahumanist foundation, and posthumanism, at first glance, seems an obvi-ous threat to it. In this article, rather than reading posthumanism as athreat to humanity, I read humanism as the threat. I propose that, trickythough it may be, a cosmopolitanism that embraces the end of human-ity can be formulated and defended as a moral commitment to human-ity: a cosmopolitanism without foundations. This cosmopolitanismwithout foundations is, I suggest, one way to overcome the skepticsfantasy that we are hidden from each other, and with it the belief thatour primary relation to the world is one of knowledge anchored tofoundational promises of certainty. Instead, a life lived in the world withothers is proposed, and with it a cosmopolitan commitment to humanityas an unavoidable ethical responsibility.

The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) has yet to begin system-atically tracing the impact of posthumanism on ethics in global politics. As amodest beginning to what must surely be a much larger and far-reaching enter-prise, I offer a grammatical reading of posthumanism. I do so in order tosuggest that posthumanismthe end of humanityposes a set of distinctivechallenges to the possibility of liberal cosmopolitan moral commitments inglobal politics.2

Its tricky being a cosmopolitan these days given that a universal ethical com-mitment to humanity can no longer be held without a certain degree of anxietyif indeed it ever could. This anxiety is sufficiently troubling such that it is now

1Aspects of this paper were presented at the Politics in the Global Age: Critical Reflections on Sovereignty, Citi-zenship, Territory, and Nationalism conference at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, inDecember 2011. I am eternally grateful for the intellectual ferment and excitement provided by Daniele Archibugi,Sonika Gupta, Madhu Bhalla, Jayashree Vivekanandan, Latha Varadarajan, Rahul Rao, Arvind Sivaramakrishnan,Anjana Raghavan, Eva Erman, David Chandler, and Garrett Wallace Brown. Thanks also to Jenny Edkins, SimonaRentea, Erzsebet Strausz, Cristina Masters, Julia Welland, Rebecca Ehata, Andrew Slack, and the generous com-ments of the anonymous reviewers.

2A focus on cosmopolitanism and global ethics can be distinguished from the foci of other academic disciplines,such as the ethics of enhancing and/or modifying human traits. See, for example, the Special Issue of the Journalof Medicine and Philosophy which explores the ethics of transhumanism (Bess 2010; Bishop 2010; Bradshaw and TerMeulen 2010; Jotterand 2010; Koch 2010; Persson and Savulescu 2010).

Pin-Fat, Veronique. (2013) Cosmopolitanism and the End of Humanity: A Grammatical Reading of Posthumanism.International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1111/ips.12021 2013 International Studies Association

International Political Sociology (2013) 7, 241257

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commonplace for critics to highlight three points: the lack of universal agree-ment on moral values and practices globally; the possibility that cosmopolitanismmay simply universalize a very specific Western, liberal, moral imaginary in a waythat replicates colonial capitalist logics of exploitation; and the fact that thehumanity of which cosmopolitanism speaks is far from being universal, insteadreflecting a very specific masculinist configuration of it. However, if worryingabout the universal and the particular in global politics were not challengeenough, being a cosmopolitan has become even trickier now that we may bewitnessing the end of humanity, and are facing a crisis in humanism that ismore acute than ever (Badmington 2004:1345; Bruns 2011:11; Ganguly and Jen-kins 2011). Further problematizing the cosmopolitans ability to hold on to anethical commitment to humanity, then, are developments in areas such asbiotechnology which have introduced the posthuman figure into our delibera-tions. Indeed, Fukuyama (2002a) has gone so far as to say that the real threatof biotechnology is the end of the human species as such. In light of theabove, posthumanism generates the question of whether a cosmopolitan moralcommitment to humanity in global politics can still be maintained. Despiteorperhaps more accurately because ofthese challenges to cosmopolitanism,I want to argue that it is nonetheless desirable and possible to recover a univer-sal moral commitment to humanity. What this will require is an appreciationof the ways in which posthumanism offers the possibility, perhaps necessity, ofconfiguring a non-foundational form of cosmopolitanism.The necessity of a non-foundational configuration of cosmopolitanism can

be understood as part of what White calls the ontological turn of latemodernity, wherein one of the entities most thrown into question has beenour conception of the human subject (2000:4). This turn, and its problemati-zation of subjectivity, was introduced to the discipline primarily through thecontributions of contemporary French philosophers (often labeled poststruc-turalist) including Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard, as well as those influencedby them such as Judith Butler.3 However, as this article demonstrates, theontological turn is not, nor need be, solely confined to this intellectual con-text. The shift away from a strong foundational ontology of subjectivity(humanism), toward a weak ontology which allows sustained interrogation ofthe contestability and radical underdetermination of subjectivity, can be foundin various locations across the contemporary intellectual landscape including,I propose, the work of Stanley Cavell and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Anglo-American analytic tradition (White 2000:5). Accordingly, this article specificallyexplores their contribution to weak ontologyan exploration that has hithertobeen absent in IR.4

I now turn to specifying the features of this ontological context for IR as itappears in the relation between cosmopolitanism and posthumanism. To do so,I shall focus on a feature of cosmopolitanism that is undertheorized in IR gener-ally, and in international political theory more specifically, namely the impact of

3There is a burgeoning and exciting literature in IRtoo vast to list herethat draws on poststructural thought.Seminal works that introduced poststructuralism to IR include Ashley (1989), Der Derian and Shapiro (1989),Campbell (1992), Walker (1993), and George (1994), as well as more recent collections such as Edkins, Persramand Pin-Fat (1997), Edkins and Pin-Fat (2004), Dauphinee and Masters (2007), and Edkins and Vaughan-Williams(2009). For more recent contributions exploring the limits of the human more generally, see the 2011 SpecialIssue of Angelaki (Ganguly and Jenkins 2011). See also Cavells reading of Derrida and Austin in Cavell (1995).

4Wittgensteins contribution appears in all my previous work. While it is the case that a non-foundational formof cosmopolitan commitments is not novel in itself, configuring such a form through a grammatical reading ofposthumanism is. To the best of my knowledge, this grammatical reading of posthumanism constitutes the firstapplication of Cavells work to IR.

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curtis.carbonellSticky NoteWants to use PH to salvage what is worthwhile in H


skepticism on cosmopolitanisms configuration of humanity.5 Using the work ofthe ordinary language philosopher, Cavell (1995, 1999, 2002, 2005), I proposethat the configuration and conceptualization of the humanist subject whichunderpins cosmopolitanism can be read as a response to skepticism or, as Kantexpressed it, the scandal of philosophy.6 I shall suggest that posthumanismexpresses the resurgence of a fear that, in the skeptics doubt about our exis-tence as human beings and with it the existence of others as part of humanity,we may lose our sure-footed epistemological response to the question, What ishumanity?What I hope to offer below, then, is a grammatical reading of both humanity

and posthumanity which suggests that this fear need not be our only ethicalresponse. Instead I hope to show that reading them grammatically reveals theirsignificance for an unavoidable, non-foundational, cosmopolitan commitment tohumanity in global politics.7 The move toward an alternative (weak) cosmopoli-tan ontology can be traced by investigating some of the grammatical features ofthe mutually constitutive language games (discourses) of humanity and posthu-manity. Grammar controls what is possible in the world by regulating what kindsof statements one can make about the world (Wittgenstein 1958:372; Pin-Fat2010:21). As such, an investigation of grammar is an investigation of the possibil-ities of phenomena. In this case, it is nothing less than the possibility of human-ity or, indeed, its end. Accordingly, as a first step to reading grammatically,I shall focus on the grammatical distinctions between human/animal andhuman/machine which, as we shall see, are presented as foundational. However,the point of reading grammatically is not to stop there. It is to disrupt suchgrammars and their foundational claims in order to bring what is hidden in fullview. The way to do this is with the second step of a grammatical reading. Thisrequires resisting the urge to find metaphysical foundations to phenomena and,therefore, to change what we want to do in ethics (Diamond cited in Pin-Fat2010:29). Here Cavell helps us with his disruptive reading of skepticism whichfocuses our attention on the ethico-political significance of the difficulties inacknowledging and responding to a life lived with others: a life lived in theordinary of every day. We might simply say that, when completed, a grammaticalreading offers a cosmopolitanism without foundations.

Humanity

The strong liberal ontology of cosmopolitanismthe foundational features ofwhich are postulated as common to all instances of itincludes both universalityand humanity (Beitz 1983; Pogge 1992; Archibugi and Held 1995; Fine 2003;Beck 2006; Beck and Sznaider 2006; Cali 2006; Archibugi 2008; Holton 2009;Wonicki 2009; Fossum 2011). Pogges seminal articulation of such features isinstructive. He says that individualism, universality, and generality are theelements shared by all cosmopolitan positions (1992:48). Cosmopolitanismtherefore refers to any position in which human beings are the ultimate unit ofmoral concern (individualism), are so equally (universality), and where their

5In discussing Cartesian skepticism, I shall focus only on the skepticism of other minds and not the skepticismof material objects. In other words, on the question of knowing with certainty that I, and other members of human-ity, exist in the world, rather than the knowledge that objects such as tables and chairs exist. It is commonplace todiscuss skepticism and cosmopolitanism in such a way that skepticism means doubts about cosmopolitanisms practi-cality, feasibility, legitimacy, and/or reality (Brock 2009; Lenard 2010; Jones 2012).

6It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable toanswer him with a satisfactory proof (Kant cited in Cavell 2005:133).

7The full account of what constitutes a grammatical reading, its elaboration of key themes in the later philoso-phy of Wittgenstein, and its significance for global politics is in Pin-Fat (2010).

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moral status extends beyond arbitrary factors such as national boundaries (gen-erality). Cali similarly summarizes the foundational features of cosmopolitanismsthat exist this waywhat makes them all cosmopolitan is their explicit or impli-cit commitment to the equal worth of all human beings, regardless of social andpolitical arrangements and affiliations of place (2006:1153). Simply, this meansthat it is only what is essential and universal in human beings that is morallyrelevant for such foundational cosmopolitans (Dyson 2008:184). This begs thequestion of what these essential and universal features of humanity might be.At this juncture, the notion of an autonomous, disembodied, sovereign reason-

ing subject takes center stage: a subjectivity sometimes called liberal, sometimesKantian, sometimes Cartesian, and frequently simply modernist or humanist(Hekman 1992; Hayles 1999; Murdoch 2004; Dyson 2008; Roberts Glenister andArnett 2008; Negru 2009).8 Either way, it is the very subject about which onto-logical concerns emerge and, as I shall show, requires the deep reconceptual-izations of human being in relation to its world that the ontological turnannounces (White 2000:5). Why describe such a subject as disembodied? (In)famously, because of Descartes separation of mind and body, the effects ofwhich, with regards to certainty as the necessary antidote to skepticism, remainintimately familiar to us today.One implication of disembodiment is that the faculty of reason provides

humanity with the possibility of freeing itself from the constraints of specific dis-positions such as passion, emotion, basic needs, and, more importantly, traces ofanimalistic urges such as the urge to kill. We might say, then, that reason iswhat allows us to overcome the animalistic aspects of our nature. Of particularpertinence here, it provides not only the possibility of distinguishing the humanfrom the animal, but with it the very possibility of ethics. We can control our-selves and refrain from simply acting on passions such as hate, fear, revenge,lust, and so on. Reason, in this picture, is what allows us to be masters of our-selves: to be sovereign and autonomous and to take ownership of our ownactions. In this sense, the human is distinguishable from the animal and, indeed,even able to master nature by overcoming it. From this point of view, we aretherefore able to use reason to make autonomous (free) choices and constructmoral principles and frameworks. In IR, an influential cosmopolitan articulationof the role of reason in providing the possibility of a taking a moral point ofview is that of Charles Beitz.9 He puts it like this:

Speaking very roughly, the moral point of view requires us to regard the worldfrom the perspective of one person among many rather than from that of a par-ticular self with particular interests, and to choose courses of action, policies,rules and institutions on grounds that would be acceptable to any agent who wasimpartial among the competing interests involved. (1979:58)

In this picture of the subject, the faculty of reason provides both the possibilityof ethics and the conditions for its fulfillment.This brings us nicely to a further aspect of the Cartesian distinction between

mind and body, wherein disembodiment provides the possibility for universality.Here, taking the moral point of view (which is a capacity of reason) allowshumanity to transcend its own particularities such as culture, nationality, race,gender, sexuality, religion, and so onand therefore treat each other as equals.Such particularities are understood to be partial and biased, hence the moralimportance of impartiality. The clearest and most familiar articulation of this

8There are, of course, differences in each of these, but the way in which the terms are used points not to thespecificities of each philosophers notion of the subject, but rather a tradition that emphasizes the feature of reasonand, therefore, certainty as a condition of knowledge. This subject has also been named, perhaps more accurately,Cartesian-Kantian-Fichean (Descombes 1991:131).

9I have offered a grammatical reading of Beitzs cosmopolitanism elsewhere (Pin-Fat 2010:6484).

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specific set of commitments to the role of reason in international political prac-tice is the International Bill of Human Rights. The very idea that a universalmoral point of view can be taken is expressed this way in Article 2 of the Univer-sal Declaration of Human Rights: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and free-doms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race,colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or socialorigin, property, birth or other status. From this universal point of view, suchdistinctions are morally arbitrary and, therefore, morally insignificant becausethey do not refer to what is essential and universal in human beings (Dyson2008:184). Article 1 couldnt be clearer on universal human rights requiring thiskind of universal reasoning human subject, famously declaring: All humanbeings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with rea-son and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brother-hood.10

Such then are some of the key features of the role of reason in constituting ahumanist subject as universal, autonomous, disembodied, and sovereign. NeilBadmington captures the features of humanism well when he describes it as adiscourse which claims that the figure of Man (sic) naturally stands at the cen-ter of things; is entirely distinct from animals, machines, and other nonhumanentities; is absolutely known and knowable to himself; is the origin of meaningand history; and shares with all other human beings a universal essence(2004:1345).

Posthumanism as the End of Humanity?

Who, or maybe what, is the figure of the posthuman? From hereon in I want toexplore this figureand its co-constitutive humanist doppelgangerby specifi-cally focusing on the grammatical features of posthumanism. The features I shallfocus on here are the distinctions between animal and human and betweenmachine and humanin other words, features of the line between human andnon-human.11 Both these distinctions hide in full view a conception of the limitsof humanity: what makes us more or less human or just not human at all. Conse-quently, when the limit conditions of humanity are breached, the line demarcat-ing the difference between us and animals or machines is at risk and heralds thepossibility of the end of humanity. Or so it might at first appear. I shall argue tothe contrary and show that the figure of the posthuman can be read as evidencethat humanity, in its humanist incarnation, is alive and positively thriving. Onwhich note, I turn now to the first step of reading grammatically.

The Line Between Animal and Human

It is Descartes who tells us that reason is the only thing that makes us men anddistinguishes us from the beasts (Descartes cited in Badmington 2003:16). How-ever, contemporary bioscience has created a variety of anxieties around this dis-tinction. Two acronyms help us to capture the technologies that are held toherald the creation of post-humans: NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology,

10The word brotherhood brings us to an important gendered implication of Cartesian disembodiment which Iam unable to explore here, but which has been eloquently articulated by a variety of feminists in IR (Elshtain 1981,1987; Enloe 1990; Peterson 1990; Grant and Newland 1991; Peterson 1992; Tickner 1992; Peterson and Runyan1993; Peters and Wolper 1995; Pettman 1996; Zalewski and Parpart 1998; Sylvester 2002; Enloe 2004; Stern 2005;Ackerly, Stern and True 2006; Parpart and Zalewski 2008; Jones 2009).

11There are other ways of organizing the diversity of literature on posthumanism, as well as a number of otherdistinctions that could be drawn: animal/machine, social/material, flesh/information, and cultural/natural (What-more 2004:1360). A mapping of posthumanism is offered by Badmington (2004) and a different but equally helpfulgrouping by Braun (2004).


information technology, and cognitive science) and GRAIN (genetic manipula-tion, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology; Roco and Bainbridge2002; Wilson and Haslam 2009:249).Perhaps one of the starkest examples of the creation of an NBIC posthuman

was the 1998 fusion of a human cell with a cow egg (Heffernan 2003). In thiscase, the procedure consisted of melding a human cheek cell with the remainingcytoplasm of a cow egg that had had the nucleus removed. Heffernan tells usthat the human cell reverted back to its embryonic state resulting in a clusterof mostly human embryonic stem cells (2003:116). Needless to say, it focusedattention, in a notably visceral way, on the question of whether such a thingshould count as human, animal, potentially human, or something other. Put dif-ferently, this case not only posed questions of where the line between animaland human was to be drawn, but whether it could now be drawn at all. Im notinterested in resolving or answering these questions here, for reasons which willbecome clearer below. For now, it suffices to note this example as a posthumanform of questioning the distinction between men and beasts.There is more to NBIC than just this of course. The idea of enhancing or

modifying humans is very much at the forefront of these technologies (Rocoand Bainbridge 2002). Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought in thedebate on whether the applications of NBIC and GRAIN technologies will behumanizing, super-humanizing or dehumanizing (Wilson and Haslam2009:250; Hansell, Grassie, Blackford, Bostrom, and Dupuy 2011). Interestingly,those advocating enhancement tend to focus on aspects of the humanist picturethat are already familiar to us as defining features of being human (Bostrom2008; Savulescu and Bostrom 2009; Persson and Savulescu 2010). For example,enhancements such as control over mental states, moods, emotions andimpulses, as well as intelligence and intellectual capacity, all speak to a reason-ing subject who is sovereign and has mastery of his (sic) animalistic nature(Wilson and Haslam 2009:251). The line between animal and human, far frombeing threatened here, is actually being made more robust and resilient. More-over, with the enhancement of control, sovereignty, and rationality follows thepossibility of moral excellence, which according to Bostrom also enhances themoral worth of the enhanced (Wilson and Haslam 2009:251). In this positiveconfiguration, then, the posthuman figure is less post and more super. Thereis no prima facie threat to foundational liberal cosmopolitan moral commitmentshere, as the line between animal and human is technologically modified andenhanced.In contrast, those against human modification and enhancement see NBIC

and GRAIN technologies as a threat to the very foundations of humanity. Fukuy-ama, for example, claims that Huxleys biotechnological vision of a Brave NewWorld is upon us, and with it the possibility that it will alter human nature(2002b:7). He thinks we should be very worried, since [h]uman nature shapesand constrains the possible kinds of political regimes, so a technology powerfulenough to reshape what we are will have possibly malign consequences forliberal democracy and the nature of politics itself (2002b:7). For Fukuyama,such a human nature is universal and must be protected, in part to preserveMans (sic) mastery over technology and, therefore, his sovereign and autono-mous self as the guarantor of True freedom (2002b:218). Consequently, it isimperative to defend humanity from falling into the moral chasm that posthu-manity announces as it threatens the distinctions between human and animal/human and machine and with it, apparently, the very possibility of ethics andpolitics (Fukuyama 2002b:17). For Fukuyama, the defense of human nature isthe defense of liberal democracy. Unsurprisingly, then, the liberal subject is thenatural human rights bearer of liberal democracies and cosmopolitan

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commitments. Here the posthuman figure appears to be under a moral and exis-tential (ontological) threat, unlike Savulescu and Bostroms vision.12

So, depending on ones point of view, NBIC and GRAIN technologies areeither a threat to the distinction between human and animal or can enhance it.Either way, what is of interest here is that, grammatically speaking, neither pointof view is questioning the humanist picture of the subject which enabled the dis-agreement in the first place. The disagreement may be expressed in terms ofwhether biotechnology offers more or less humanity but not, essentially, whatthe main features of this humanityas rational, universal, disembodied, and sov-ereignare. It is these features that both sides of the debate understand as con-tributing more or less to the possibility of ethics, whether through enhancingour capacity for rational judgment (more) or through the dissolution of ourhuman nature (less). In this sense, the figure of the posthuman reveals that, farfrom heralding the end of humanity, the humanist picture of the subject is aliveand well. There is, therefore, still life left in a traditional cosmopolitanism whichcenters its universal moral concerns upon this ontologically strong picture ofhumanity. So, the first step of reading the grammatical distinction betweenmen and beasts shows us, in a rather straightforward way, that nothing has(yet) been lost of humanity.13

The Line Between Machine and Human

Once again it is the figure of Descartes who initiated a distinction betweenhuman and machine as a way of overcoming skeptical doubt via his CogitoIthink therefore I am (not an automaton).14 Again using the field of biotechnol-ogy as an example, the distinction between humans and machines may appearto be under threat in what is called regenerative medicine. This areaencompasses research in tissue engineering and stem cells, as well as borrowingtechniques from therapeutic cloning, gene therapy, and advanced surgical tech-niques (Thacker 2003:90). Moreover, one of the aims of such technologies is toturn data into (human) flesh by growing organs, such as skin grafts, in a labo-ratory (Thacker 2003). Needless to say this is precisely the kind of vision thatFukuyama finds horrifying, but those who favor human enhancement (extro-pians) do not. The Transhumanist Declaration makes clear that this posthu-man vision is entirely consistent with an Enlightenment vision of humanprogress, but take[s] humanism further by challenging human limits by meansof science and technology combined with critical and creative thinking (Bailey,Sandberg, Alves, More, Wagner, Vita-More, Leitl, Staring, Pearce, Fantegrossi,Baily, Otter, Fletcher, Aegis, Morrow, Chislenko, Crocker, Reynolds, Elis, Quinn,Sverdlov, Kamphuis, Spaulding, and Bostrom 2009; Thacker 2003:75). But howdoes this happen and how might this still keep the humanist distinction betweenhuman and machine intact?With regard to the first, Thackers insights are informative as he argues that

data is made flesh (for example, a skin graft) through a process of encoding,recoding, and decoding. First, a DNA sample needs to be taken and turned intocomputer code (encoded). Secondly, tissue engineering enables a process ofrecoding whereby software applications and database tools that focus on the

12Neil Badmington offers a damning critique of Fukuyamas picture of the subject, arguing that there is some-thing remarkably fascistic about Fukuyamas sense of the universal, of human nature (2004:1347).

13I say straightforward because making this observation is not original and is relatively commonplace in the lit-erature sometimes labeled critical posthumanist. Key texts in this vein would include Haraway (1991) and Hayles(1999). Katherine Hayles summarizes this point well in her piece The Human in the Posthuman (2003; Wolfe2009).

14It is fascinating to note that Descartes can be read as the first posthuman thinker because of the distinctionand his form of mechanicism (Vaccari 2012).


multiple genetic triggers that take a stem cell down one route of differentiationor another enables tissue to become skin rather than, say, ear cartilage(Thacker 2003:90). And finally, this data made as skin can then be transplantedback on to the body from which the code originated (decoding; Thacker2003:91). At first glance, it may look as if the distinction between (machine)code and (human) flesh has completely dissolved.However, extropians celebration of these techniques as the next stage of

human evolutionary progress still relies on, and indeed reinforces, the distinc-tion between humanity and machines. Thacker argues that this is achieved by aform of informatic essentialism where the idea of humanity as sovereign,autonomous, and rational remains intact because technology is viewed as a tool:a tool which we are masters of and make free choices about in the shaping ofour (enhanced) selves and of our future. It is the human user that guaranteesthe right, beneficial use of otherwise value-neutral technologies (Thacker2003:77). Consequently, humanity remains in control of its own progress (his-tory), and its mastery of nature remains not only intact but enhanced. Whereaspreviously humanitys mastery of its own nature may have been confined to con-trolling its animalistic aspects, this has now been enhanced to include mastery ofits own biological finitude and limits. So, once again, we find there is no primafacie case to suggest that biotechnology necessarily heralds the end of humanitywith a breakdown of the distinction between humanity and machine. On thecontrary, extropian declarations hint at just how pervasive and enduring it is.Such is the conclusion of the first step of grammatically reading cosmopolitan-

ism and the end of humanitythe posthuman figure has revealed that nothingof humanity is necessarily lost, Cartesian lines of distinction can be biotechnolog-ically enhanced, and a humanist picture of the subject is alive and kicking. Thisinsight doesnt present any insurmountable problems for those who would wishto defend a traditional, ontologically strong, form of cosmopolitanism. But it isnevertheless worth remarking here because grammatical readings have two steps,and it is the second step that seeks to render this familiar story unfamiliar andto disrupt it (Pin-Fat 2010).

Rendering the Familiar Unfamiliar: Humanism as the End of Humanity

Having examined the above distinctions as grammatical features of posthuman-ism, and concluded that they do not necessarily imply the end of humanity,I now want to turn to the second step of reading grammatically, revealing whatis hidden in full view or, simply, rendering the familiar unfamiliar. This step willpresent humanism as the end of humanity by emphasizing those features whichwere historically constituted as a response to skepticism. More importantly, per-haps, a grammatical reading will serve to recover a sense of the ethico-politicalrelations required by turning our attention away from knowledge and, instead,toward acknowledgment. Using the work of Cavell, I seek to show how his read-ing of skepticism reveals it as an expression: an expression of the end of human-ity as my annihilation of the other and a lethal set of attempts to deny theexistence of another as essential to ones own (2005:5, 12).15

Lessons in Hypocrisy

Stanley Cavell arguescontroversially, I thinkthat Skepticism and solutions toskepticism make their way in the world mostly as lessons in hypocrisy: provid-ing solutions one does not believe to problems one has not felt (1999:393). So

15In this sense, Cavells answer to Kants outrage at skepticism as the scandal of philosophy is to say, Here isthe scandal of skepticism with respect to the existence of others; I am the scandal (2005:151).

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what is the problem that he is alluding to here? It is, of course, Cartesian skepti-cism and especially the problem of other minds.Broadly speaking, the skeptic typically denies that we know something (the

existence of the external world, other minds) with certainty (Hammer 2002:39).Skepticism, therefore, is not only an epistemological problem, but to seek torefute it also means providing an epistemological response: a response thatresolves the existence of others by offering the criteria that are required forclaims to count as an instance of knowledge, as opposed to an instance of opin-ion or belief, for example. Here I want to concentrate on what philosophers callthe problem of other minds. That problem consists of how, or on what grounds,we know that other human minds, understood as other human beings, exist. Itis an anxiety surrounding the epistemological possibility that no one, or onlyoneself, may with certainty count as a human being: a member of humanity asthat category of living beings which is at the very center of liberal, cosmopolitan,moral commitments. It seems like an odd problem to have, so how does it arise?It arises as a historical symptom of Descartes Cogito. His solipsistic notion that

I can confirm my own existence through an introspective experience of my ownmind (I think therefore I am) is all very well for ones own existence, but itraises a problem of knowing the existence of other minds. I cannot look intoothers the same way as I, purportedly, look into myself, and neither can I experi-ence directly what another experiences the way that I, for example, can experi-ence my own pain, hopes, fears, desires, thoughts, etc. This is despite aneveryday saying to the contraryI feel your pain. Consequently, if knowledgerequires the direct experience of minds and private sensations, and this isunavailable, how am I to know that those people who surround me, those thathave a human shape, walk, and even talk, are not sophisticated automatons?Such then is the problem of other minds. For Cavell, the problem of otherminds may be a lesson in hypocrisy that seems to produce the need for a solu-tion to something one has not felt. Do you feel the need to be sure that thosebeing killed and suffering in wars are not automatons?16 Is this really the ques-tion we need to have answered in order to have established the foundations of acosmopolitan ethic?A way of elaborating Cavells insight more fully is to explore a sense in which the

truth of skepticism reads humanism as the end of humanity. What is of interestfor a grammatical reading is not whether the Cartesian skepticism of other mindscan or cannot be overcome. Rather, it is what Cartesian skepticism, and responsesto it, express, that I think is worth following through in relation to cosmopolitanismand the end of humanity. It is to this we shall turn next.

The Truth of Skepticism

According to Cavell, skepticism expresses a truth, namely that there exists acondition of human separation (1999:389). Trivially, I am I, not you, and viceversa. However, the problem of other minds is generated because it surmisesfrom this separation that I can know myself but others cannot. This expresses apowerful fantasy that I am hidden from others. For Cavell, the issue is not that arefutation of skepticism is mistaken in the belief that self-knowledge is possibleand that we should instead countenance that we cannot know ourselves (a tri-umph of the scandal of philosophy), but rather that skepticism expresses an avoid-ance of others. His reading of skepticism, therefore, resists answering the skepticscall to establish the truth or falsity of either position and instead emphasizes anunavoidable condition of exposure whereby [i]n knowing others, I am exposed

16Many a science fiction film is based on precisely this Cartesian difficulty, Ridley Scotts Blade Runner perhapsbeing one of the most iconic. Thank you to Sonika Gupta for pointing this out.


on two fronts: to the other; and to my concept of the other (1999:432). In whatremains, I hope to show that understanding aspects of what this exposure revealscan form the heart of a non-foundationalist cosmopolitan ethic.Among other things, Wittgenstein (1958) is famous for overturning the idea

of the possibility of a private language in his Philosophical Investigations.17 Thehumanist notion that I can know myself, but others cannot, rests on a picture ofintrospection and language use in which I feel a pain, x, name it and thereforelocate it as an object of (self-) knowledge. It is a picture of language that restson the idea that meaning is dependent upon a wordobject relation. However,others cannot feel or see my x and so they cannot know it. Therefore, in thispicture, pain sensations are profoundly subjective (private), and so too must thelanguage that accompanies paina private language. Given that you cannot feelmy pain, and cannot name the same x by which to confirm or deny its presence,my talk of/my wincing in pain is not convincing evidence of its existencebecause I could be deceiving you. Not only may you not know that I am in painbut, by implication, you may not know I have a mind (an inner life with thesame level of privacy as an inner sensation of pain) and, therefore, know that Iam a fellow human being rather than a robot. Such are the features of a privatelanguage upon which skepticism, and humanist responses to it, rests.In contrast, an entirely different understanding of language is proposed by the

Investigations, which I believe has ethico-political significance for the kind of cos-mopolitanism I seek to defend (Pin-Fat 2010, forthcoming). In the Investigations,language does not simply represent reality by naming objects, but instead gram-matically produces that reality/realities, is relational, and is necessarily public,not private. Wittgenstein calls the multitude of language uses language games,rather than discourses, in order to stress the idea that language use is multifari-ous, does not have shared common features, has rules that can be changed, andis shared with others (other than myself). Here meaning does not come from awordobject relation, but rather the meaning of a word is its use inthe language and comes from the rest of our proceedings or context(Wittgenstein 1958:43).18 At a minimum, it therefore requires accepting theexistence of another as essential to ones own (Cavell 2005:12).19 There is noescaping that we express ourselves and that we do so in language. We do so inordinary (as opposed to private metaphysical) ways. Perhaps we exclaim, Im inagony, writhe, or indeed try to hide the pain with a stoic expression. At thispoint, we are exposed to the other (as opposed to hidden), not only because weare unable to avoid expressing ourselves, but also because there is no guaranteethat we will receive the response to our (pain) expressions that we have hopedfor. Others may misunderstand us, refuse to understand, ignore us, or respondwell, badly or indifferently for example. This kind of exposed and vulnerableknowledge of others is as good as it gets. It is to say that my attempts to restrictmy relations with others, of my caring for or about some other, or all others,may, at any place, fail (1999:433).20

17I first explored the private language argument in IR in Pin-Fat (2000; Holt 1997). Many have read Wittgen-steins private language argument as a refutation of skepticism, but following Cavell this isnt the reading Im advo-cating here.

18Wittgenstein says, I shall call the whole, consisting of language and the actions with which it is interwoven,the language game (Wittgenstein 1958:7). He also says, The word language-game is here meant to emphasizethat the speaking of language is part of an activity or a form of life (Wittgenstein 1958:23). Language games arenot just what we say, but what we do. Words are Deeds (Wittgenstein 1980:46).

19There are obvious connections to the work of Emmanuel Levinas which I am unable to explore here. Cavelldiscusses these in the chapter What Is the Scandal of Skepticism? in Cavell (2005).

20Cavell also reads this as an avoidance of love in The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear (Cavell2002).

250 End of Humanity

For Cavell, skepticism and attempts to refute itthe skeptical recitalare anavoidance of an exposure to failure: an avoidance of the risk of failing in ourrelations with others, and they with us. In this way, skepticism is a practice of theannihilation of the other and consequently provokes the idea that humanismcan be grammatically read as the end of humanity. Skeptics, and those commit-ted to refuting skepticism, must take responsibility for this annihilation for aslong as they remain seduced by the safety (isolation, maybe) of their own privacyas grounds for the certainty of their existence or lack thereof.Thus, what is at stake here is neither knowledge nor certainty. It is humanity.

If humanity is to remain a central concern of cosmopolitanism, as I would liketo argue it can be, it now relies on both (i) a willingness to overcome the avoid-ance of exposure to the other, as explained above and, at the same time, (ii) awillingness to overcome an avoidance of the ethics and politics of our reading ofeach others humanity. It means a reconfigured appreciation of how ethico-polit-ical responsibility is generated and the impossibility of avoiding it.Accordingly, I turn to point (ii) as Cavells second front of exposure and a

truth of skepticism. He says, Being exposed to my concept of the other isbeing exposed to my assurance in applying it, I mean to the fact that this assur-ance is mine, comes only from me. The other can present me with no mark orfeature on the basis of which I can settle my attitude. I have to acknowledgehumanity in the other, and the basis of it seems to lie in me (Cavell 1999:433).The Cartesian anxiety that human-looking things around me may not be

human, but instead soulless automatons, expresses something important. Themessage is not that an epistemological settling of the existence of their human-ityone way or the otheris required, but rather that it is us, through our prac-tices and ways of life, who are responsible for settling it. Accepting for themoment that there may be no external markers to differentiate a sophisticatedautomaton from humans and that there is no direct access to some kind ofinner life of theirs that will establish their humanity, it may be that the distinc-tion between inner and outer, between mind and body, can come into questionand that, therefore, the matter of their (our?) humanity will be settled publicly,that is in the ethico-political space of language games. The question of human-ity, the central concern of cosmopolitanism, now shifts away from foundationsand toward interrogating the ways in which our language games (our ethical andpolitical practices) may suffer from a form of aspect-blindness: a soul-blindnessto seeing others as human (Cavell 1999:378). The point is that any form of soul-blindness is neither an epistemological crisis of ignorance nor a simple lack ofknowledge. It is instead an ethico-political practice that enacts an absence ofcontinuous attempts at acknowledgment. The central moral concern with regardto humanity is therefore transformed by a grammatical reading so that its focusis not my ignorance of him but my avoidance of him, call it my denial of him(Cavell 1999:389).In contrast to the privacy of knowledge, Cavell emphasizes acknowledgment.

Acknowledging others is an active, public, vulnerable, deeply fallible, expressive,and, perhaps, unavoidable way of responding to others and their lives. I, you, weexist in the public domain of language and are unavoidably involved in respond-ing to each other whether we like it or not. It means that we can read the skep-tical recital as a reminder that we are actively responsible in our avoidance ofeach others humanity, whether through soul-blindness or, what amounts to anexample of the same thing, an attachment to a humanism that remainsenthralled by an impersonal and apolitical fantasy that the connection betweenknowledge claims and the objects to which the claims apply involves no (human)intervention on anyones part (Cavell 1999:352).To sum up thus far, as a first step, a grammatical reading of the end of

humanity explored two salient grammatical features of posthumanity. These


features were classically Cartesian, consisting of the distinction between humanand animal, and human and machine. While it may putatively seem that the fig-ure of the posthuman threatens these distinctions, a grammatical readingshowed that those distinctions remained intact, even, in some cases, biotechno-logically enhanced. I concluded that posthumanism by no means necessarilyimplies the end of humanity and that as a result no humanist foundations needbe understood as lost. Thus, contra readings of posthumanism such as Fukuy-amas, I have shown that posthumanism does not necessarily pose a threat tohumanity nor, therefore, foundational liberal cosmopolitanism.The second step of reading grammatically remained on the topic of this, still

intact, humanist picture of the subject and sought to render it unfamiliar byreading humanism as the end of humanity. I did so using Cavells reading of theskeptical recital as my annihilation of the other. I suggested that holding on tothe epistemological foundations of humanity constituted a loss that has ethico-political implications for cosmopolitanism. The most important loss was pro-duced by the avoidance of humanity itself, and along with it an avoidance of ourethico-political responsibilities in granting each others humanity in the world.We might say, then, that this aspect of the grammatical reading brought to thesurface a violent annihilation of humanity at the heart of traditional cosmopoli-tan commitments.However, in order to complete the grammatical reading, I now want to pay a

little more attention to the role of failure. Some forms of failure are no loss atall, grammatically speaking. They can offer us reminders of what it is that wehold most dear, even if we find it where we least expect it (Pin-Fat 2010). In thiscase, renewed, albeit non-foundational, cosmopolitan commitments are to befound at the end of humanity. In other words, the question with which this arti-cle began can now be answered affirmatively. A moral commitment to cosmopol-itanism can be maintained at the end of humanity. It is to an embrace of failureas a defense of cosmopolitan commitments that I now turn.

Conclusion: Cosmopolitanism Without Foundations

I want to suggest that there are two kinds of foundational failure that are atstake in reading cosmopolitanism and the end of humanity and that both aremorally defensible. The first is epistemological and the second ontological.The firstepistemologicalfailure is the one revealed as the truth of skepti-

cism, discussed above. Cavell described it as the ultimate failure of the fantasythat we can be hidden from each other in our privacy. If failure exposes us to allthe different ways in which we do, or do not, read each other as human andhow we respond, I think it returns us to the ethico-political landscapes of oureveryday lives and encounters with each other. This by no means guarantees anideal outcome since the loss of certainty as foundational means that we mustbegin to pay attention to the politics of the multiplicity of ways in which ourreading of each other can fail to grant being human (Cavell 1999:397).Furthermore, and more importantly perhaps, we have no choice but to take ethi-cal responsibility for our readings of each other. There are no other grounds(foundations) available, other than what we are actually doing in relation toeach other. A sense of this kind of ethical responsibility can bring horror intoour lives. Horror is the title Cavell gives to the perception of the precarious-ness of human identity, to the perception that it may be lost or invaded, that wemay be, or may become, something other than we are, or take ourselves for; thatour origins as human beings need accounting for, and are unaccountable(1999:4189).The point is we are in the world with others and not hidden away behind a

foundational epistemological relation to the world. We are unavoidably

252 End of Humanity

responsible for the multifarious ways in which we are implicated in each othersexistence as human, for better or for worse. For a grammatical reading, the out-come to be defended is a constant vigilance in our relations with each other andthe effects of those relations on the constitution of each others humanity: evenat the cost of being exposed to the horror that a lack of epistemological groundsmay bring. Put differently, a focus on the constitutive effects of our political andethical practices of humanity (our relations with each other) is a cosmopolitancommitment.As I hope has become clear, it is relationality that Cavells insights from ordin-

ary language philosophy have stressed. Espen Hammer describes Cavells posi-tion thus, the extent to which we experience something as human depends noton its physical or mental features, but on our relation to itthe quality of ourreciprocal stance (2002:75). This brings us to the secondontologicalfailurethat I seek to defend.What we may mean by humanity need not rely on locating specific features

such as rationality, autonomy, universality, disembodiment, or sovereignty,whether privately through introspection or otherwise. Indeed, the larger point totake from the grammatical reading of the distinctions between human/animaland human/machine is that (i) they can foundationally fail and (ii) even if theydo so, they can remain intact. With (i), we saw that the language game of post-humanism exposed an ontological anxiety surrounding the very possibility of acontinued differentiation of animal and human, and human and machine andyet (ii) the humanist subject emerged intact and thriving. Thus, my argumenthas been directed at what this intact subject both expresses and implies for cos-mopolitanism.Left unchallenged, the humanist subject expresses the end of humanity as my

annihilation of the other. Cavells reading of skepticism emphasized that usingthe word humanity isnt just a matter of vocabulary. It is to do something. It isan activity (language game). Cavells lesson to us is that it is an activity of grant-ing, withholding or annihilating each others humanity depending on what ourethico-political practices have constituted as humanity. All being well you mayfind yourself included as human. Unfortunately, it is far too common to be con-fronted with the horror that Cavell describes. The issue at stake is not whichpractices of humanity are true or false (this is the obsession of those seduced bythe call of skepticism) but rather our complicity and responsibility in practicesthat constitute and possibly deny the others humanity.The implication here is that ontology is weak. The meaning of humanity is

not hardwired in the structure of our nature as rational, autonomous, and sover-eign but, rather, it is written by us: by our practices and uses of it in our rela-tions with each other. There is no below the surface of language that languagerepresents through naming objects, and therefore, there are no strong founda-tions for cosmopolitanism and humanity.So, where has this questioning of the need for ontological and epistemological

foundationalism via a grammatical reading of posthumanismthe end ofhumanityled us? It has led us where exploring skepticism led us: from theprivate into the public, from the inner to the outer, from beneath language toits surface, from the hidden to the familiar, and from the metaphysical to ethi-co-political practice. It has led us out of the safety of hiding: back to eachother and the necessity of acknowledging each others humanity. It has made acosmopolitan moral commitment to humanity a superficial exercise in globalpolitics: an exercise asking us to politically and ethically engage in understand-ing the multifarious political practices of granting or denying each othershumanity.The implication of this articles grammatical reading of skepticism and posthu-

manism, therefore, is that the liberal form of cosmopolitanism that postulates


humanity as a strong ontological foundation can be read as the practice of anavoidance of humanity. But even there, not all is lost. To read foundationalcosmopolitanism as the expression of our annihilation of each other provides uswith a powerful reminder of what we are doing. It offers us an opportunity torecover an ethical commitment and responsibility toward humanity withoutshying away from all its (our) vulnerable, violent, annihilating, uncertain, misun-derstood, and messy configurations in practice. A cosmopolitanism without foun-dations, I suggest, is one way to overcome the fantasy of being hidden from eachother and with it the belief that our primary relation to the world is one ofknowledge anchored to foundational promises of certainty. To lose this fantasy,the end of humanity, is no loss at all in this specific sense. With the end ofhumanity, we can gain a life lived in the world with others, and with it a cosmo-politanism that makes a commitment to humanity an unavoidable ethicalresponsibility. Who knows? Embracing our vulnerability to skepticism might justlead us to fall in love with the world (Cavell 1999:431).

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