I was introduced to the work of Fred Dallmayr in 2005 during my second semester of graduate study. Now reading Dallmayr's latest book, Being in the World, a collection of essays that revolve around the theme of “the transition from Westphalia to cosmopolis” (p. 2), I cannot but note how far political theory has come in the past decade in shedding its Western-centrism, and how much Dallmayr has contributed to this development.

The new book brings together many pieces representing the various strands of the author’s life's work and, in so doing, charts his intellectual trajectory from what might broadly be described as continental political theory to comparative political theory. At the heart of the book is a concern, and a hope, associated with globalization and what Dallmayr describes as “the ongoing turn toward ‘world’ (or worldhood)” (p. 2). Decrying a Westphalian system based on violence, a cynical political realism, a rabid capitalism, and a gnawing secularism, the essays constitute commentaries on existing intellectual efforts to theorize the new “world.”

In “Cosmopolitanism: In Search of Cosmos,” the second chapter in the book, Dallmayr expresses dissatisfaction with two interpretations of cosmopolitanism: an empirical one that stresses economic and financial processes but hides “glaring ethical and psychological deficits” (p. 31) and a normative (and Kantian) one that emphasizes “universal principles and prescriptions” (p. 36) but ignores “local or regional contexts” (p. 41). He favors instead a third approach, which he associates with “American pragmatism, hermeneutics, and neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics” (p. 42), and which gives primacy to practice. More specifically, cosmopolitanism, according to Dallmayr, “has to descend into the formation of conduct and character” (pp. 43–44). The next few chapters are then devoted to the latter question—how to forge characters concerned with the promotion of the “common good.” Dallmayr recommends exchange programs for students, teachers, and other professionals, and participation in international endeavors like the World Social Forum (pp. 44–45). He also underscores the importance of the teaching of the humanities and the liberal arts in colleges as encouraging “liberation from external tutelage and the subservience to materialistic or instrumental benefits” (p. 61).

The question of cosmopolis or “world” for Dallmayr is also intimately tied to the question of religion. Religious and spiritual traditions, alongside secular ethical and moral ones, provide resources for encouraging the disposition toward the common good worthy of the new global citizen. And Dallmayr here offers a new take on the question of religion, which he introduces by way of a critique of Charles Taylor. While agreeing with Taylor about the “loss of meaning” brought about by secularization, Dallmayr rejects the binary Taylor sets up between immanence and transcendence, for fear that this binary leaves a choice only between “materialism, consumerism, and mindless self-indulgence,” on the one hand, and “the specter of a radically religious antihumanism” and fundamentalism, on the other (pp. 124–26). Dallmayr turns to the Spanish-Indian philosopher Raimon Panikkar for a third possibility where “immanence and transcendence, the human and the divine, encounter each other in ever new ways, leading to profound transformations on both (or all) sides” (p. 125). Drawing on the Indian tradition of nondualism or holism (advaita), the spiritual approach advocated by Panikkar rejects central aspects of monotheistic religion, such as its “command structure” and the idea that God is the sole representative of the Divine, and recognizes instead the “intrinsic” relation between religion and its “human reception” (p. 132).

In line with this emphasis on human reception, Dallmayr criticizes the idea that religious discourse is necessarily “mysterious and urgently in need of translation,” in contrast to modern secular discourse which, according to theorists like Jürgen Habermas, is “readily and universally accessible” (p. 143). According to Dallmayr, the language of religious texts is in fact “an ordinary language readily accessible to people in all walks of life and at all times” (p. 145). The need for interpretation or “hermeneutics” is thus a collective need, not simply restricted to religious people. It is a shared need of cosmopolis, permeating the move from different “cultures, creeds, and customs” to a global “yearning for justice and social well-being” (p. 150) that rises above these differences without submerging them.

The non-Western voices that Dallmayr discusses are emblematic of this move, their interpretive efforts aimed at rising from local context to global relevance. In the last chapter, he examines two voices from the Arab world: the Egyptian Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and the Moroccan Mohammed Al-Jabri. What both thinkers share, and what provokes Dallmayr’s discussion of them, is their “effort to steer a course between or beyond religious obscurantism or fundamentalism, on the one hand, and secularist/laïcist dismissal of religious thought, on the other” (p. 189). The interpretive efforts of both thinkers in relation to the Islamic tradition exemplify what interpretation represents: “the opening wedge for democracy,” for it is in the relation between text and interpretation, according to Dallmayr, that human freedom arises (p. 194).

Given the sequencing of the essays in the book, the non-Western voices in its second half emerge as the necessary next step for a political theory that is critical and reflective vis-à-vis Western modernity. This is in line with Dallmayr’s previous work calling for the need for the study of non-Western traditions, under the rubric of comparative political theory. But as with CPT more broadly, so with its treatment by the author: The question arises as to its significance. For example, where do the non-Western voices considered in the book stand vis-à-vis the West’s own critique of itself? What is specifically different about the non-Western experience? How is interpretation inflected by the particular ideas and experiences of non-Western thinkers?

Although Abu Zayd and Al-Jabri, as well as Gandhi, Panikkar, Bhikhu Parekh, Zhang Longxi, and others, are important figures in the book, its central protagonists are arguably Aristotle, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and John Dewey. It is the ideas of these latter philosophers from the Western tradition that actually motivate Dallmayr’s concerns and approach, even his interest in the East. Hence, the question of how to conceive of the contribution of the non-Western voices in relation to this Western tradition. He comes closest to addressing this question in his discussion of the Mahatma Gandhi: What Gandhi provides, with his notion of “self-rule” (swaraj), is not only a local interpretation of democracy but also one that can serve as an alternative to modern liberalism, even in the West. For Dallmayr, Gandhi’s notion of self-rule recognizes, in a way that liberal democracy does not, that “democracy needs people who are able to rule themselves, that is, people who are not captive to selfish addictions, to the lust for power, the greed for wealth, the impulse for destruction” (p. 155). In other words, Gandhi provides a fresh and needed response to the ills produced by Western modernity, and one that is presumably significantly different from responses provided within the Western tradition itself.

What generally permeates Dallmayr’s treatment of the non-Western world is a faith and a hope. Some of this hope, as in his very optimistic assessment of the Egyptian uprising (p. 163), has already not been borne out by recent events. But it is perhaps only with optimism, even if sometimes overblown, that he could have fought the obscurity, if not sometimes hostility, that has long overshadowed non-Western traditions in the discipline of political theory. And though much still needs to be done to map out the terrain of CPT, Dallmayr has done a huge amount in clearing a path toward it.