The World We Want
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by Mark Kingwell
Reviewed by Sam Sullivan

Kingwell argues for a citizenship that is based on active participation. He refers to watershed stories of the development of these ideas including the death of Socrates, the thinking of Machiavelli, the friendship of Montaigne and La Boethie and the letters between Benjamin and Adorno. He also discusses issues of space and time and how they influence citizenship including interesting observations about dwelling places and the futility of pursuing economic growth in the face of environmental constraints.

He ends his book trying to outline how we can embrace a new ideal which is intimately connected to action that expresses our need to be connected to each other and our search for justice for all.

Preface

This is a small book about a big topic: what it means to be a citizen in a rapidly changing world.

Critical reflection on the possibilities of political life is one of the highest duties of humanity - that, indeed, such reflection is a form of political action as important as any demonstration or protest.

The only thing more dangerous than a total lack of political argument is political argument without awareness of its own pre-commitments.

Chapter 1
The World We Have

My first aim in this book, therefore, is to provoke reflection on the idea of citizenship at a time when such reflection is in painfully short supply, whether from pressures of time or from assumptions of certainty - whether from busyness or from knowingness, the twin distracting deities of our day.

Citizenship is a way of meeting one of our deepest needs, the need to belong; it gives voice and structure to the yearning to be part of something larger than ourselves. By the same token, citizenship is a way of making concrete the ethical commitments of care and respect, of realizing in action an obligation to aid fellow travelers - in short, of fostering justice between persons.

Cities are now the gathering places of global culture and diversity. They are free-ranging, energized conversations, restless and inventive confabs.

The key to resolving and managing the deep conflicts of pluralistic politics is a willingness on the part of citizens to tolerate imperfect solutions. In order to make a social order of diverse goals tend towards justice, it is necessary for each citizen to internalize the virtues of dialogue, in which the claims of others are considered and one's own claims are phrased in terms intelligible to others.

Civility might be the first virtue of citizens, a basic willingness to see oneself as part of a larger shared undertaking.

None of these three historical models - the models based in blood, belief, or law - has been complete in its attempted domination of the political realm.

What we need is a new model of citizenship based on the act of participation itself , not on some quality or thought or right enjoyed by its possessor. This participatory citizenship doesn't simply demand action from existing citizens; it makes action at once the condition and the task of citizenship.

The aim of politics is not, in my view, the final elimination of any and all conflict. Conflict can be productive and it can be exciting; it can also be vicious and destructive. The first task of citizenship is to recognize the difference.

We are (1) inquirers, seeking the truth about our lives and the universe in which we live. We are (2) moral agents, seeking to discern, do, and defend what we consider is the right thing. We are (3) house-holders and consumers, involved in a daily round of dwelling, eating, and entertaining. We are, necessarily, (4) workers or economic agents, engaging in the labour that makes dwelling possible. We are (5) cultural beings, who enjoy the fruits of human creativity in everything from staged performances and recorded music to the pictures we hang on our walls or the television we watch and books we read. And we are (6) intimates, creators of love and emotional connection in our relationships with our friends and families.

Citizen - what we might call "Role Seven" - is instead the primary one.

Citizenship could ground our other commitments, could orient us as people.

Life, as Kierkegaard said, has the unfortunate characteristic that it must be lived in a forward direction but can only be understood backwards.

Citizenship, if it means anything, means making our desire for justice active. It is not something we can do alone.

When linked to the deep insight that we owe a duty of justice to our fellow citizens, the concept of citizenship sheds its dark origins in the project of keeping people out and, reversing the field, becomes a matter of bringing people in - not loving them or liking them or even agreeing with them, much of the time, but making room for them to be at home too.

Chapter 2
Rights and Duties

Real wisdom is all about learning how to die. That the philosopher is always practising for death.

Chapter 3
Virtues and Vices

In Montaigne's eyes, therefore, the highest expression of humanity is friendship, and the highest purpose of human society is therefore to make such friendship possible.

Citizens must build character more than intellect if they are to take up the challenging task of political commitment.

Loyalty is a virtue, in the citizen as much as in the friend: the rule of law, as Socrates taught, must be observed if there is to be a state at all. But loyalty is not unreasoning, and it is not uncritical.

Aristotle makes a point of saying, "it is possible to be a good citizen without possessing the excellence which is the quality of the good man".

John Rawls, "the safety of democratic liberties requires the active participation of citizens who possess the political virtues needed to maintain a constitutional regime."

Chapter 4
Spaces and Dreams

Citizenship can function only if it is perceived and inhabited as a political role, which is to say as a concrete disposition to act.

Chapter 5
The World We Want

Herman Daly, "The current national accounting system treats the earth as a business in liquidation."

The project of universal justice? Let us say something that is neither banal nor unrealistic: we're working on it. In the meantime, be a citizen of the world. Donate 10 percent of your income to international relief every year. Take back some public space every week. Listen to somebody as unlike you as possible, including machines and animals, every day. And argue with anyone who says that this is the best of all possible worlds - or even just a world beyond changing. It is neither.

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