The European Union and the Challenge of the Democratic Cosmopolis

Doi: https://doi.org/10.58603/YAIA5129

Rezumat: This article seeks to clarify the crisis currently experienced by the European Union and to explore possible avenues for overcoming it. Taking Cosmosystemic Gnoseology as the method of analysis, the article presents three theoretical models considered pivotal for organizing post-state-centric reality, with the aim of addressing the challenge that the prospect of the democratic cosmopolis poses for the EU. It is argued that an axiologically neutral position presupposes liberating thought from the dominant political and constitutional ideology of modernity. This, in turn, requires that, before the article's central problem is addressed, reflexive questions be posed about how modern thought conceives the notion of politics, both at the intra-societal and at the inter-state level. The article then analyses, first, Thomas Hobbes's theoretical approach to the Christian commonwealth; second, Immanuel Kant's federation of free states; and third, Rigas Velestinlis's oecumenical state. These three models of political constitution are assessed for their points of similarity and difference with the present structure of the EU, as well as for the possibilities they open up for finding effective solutions to the crisis it faces. On this basis, the article determines whether any of these theoretical models can respond to contemporary political developments and to the fundamental challenge that European integration poses in terms of democracy. The analysis concludes that the pre-modern and early-modern horizons of Hobbes and Kant cannot resolve the EU's existential impasse, and that Velestinlis's cosmopolitical model offers the more promising constitutional orientation for a genuinely democratic European integration.