Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita Seyla Benhabib has been awarded the 2023 Albert Hirschman Fellowship by the Institute for Human Sciences for her work, Demos, Cosmos and Globus.
The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) is an institute of advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.
The Albert Hirschman Fellowship, in the name and honor of social scientist Albert O. Hirschman (1915 –2012), will be given to distinguished senior scholars, who have contributed to re-framing some of the major questions in the social sciences.
Abstract:
With the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the unification of Germany, and the extension of European Union to east and central European Countries, formerly under Communist rule, the Kantian cosmopolitan ideal of uniting diverse countries under the rule of law, respect for human rights and the free exchange of goods and services seemed to come alive. By the beginning of the new century, cosmopolitanism had fallen on hard times.