 So hello Dan Hallé, and today we are here to discuss ideas of cosmopolitanism and sense of belonging, which you're working on at the moment as a researcher. And the context also is that, well, I've written a book called Ensemblance on Well-Belonging and its Prix de Corre published with Edinburgh University Press. And so perhaps I might have some insights to help you clarify this beautiful question. The other thing that is quite interesting that we are in fact in the same room. So, right, let's see if I turn. Here you are. So, but we wanted to share this with other people on YouTube. So here we go. I'm all ears. Yes. Thank you. So Louise, as you only know that I'm interested in understanding the people who identify themselves as cosmopolitan, meaning who developed their life and also career globally. It's quite interesting to me because I want to understand why your individuals develop. I'm sure you are also one of them. When you develop your life in different places, how do you feel like you actually have the true sense of belonging to different communities? Because I believe that you have to negotiate with a lot of differences around you and physically that's the focus of the person. Right. I have a couple of questions and we just feel free to share because this is all about your story. Okay. How do you live your life and how do you understand what happened to your life? In particular, I will be very interested in understanding how do you see the true sense of belonging developing across this and that. We can start with you introducing yourself. Right. And I can do a short introduction based on what you just presupposed for clarification is indeed I've been living in various places. I was born in Portugal. My parents emigrated to France when I was three years old. I lived most of my life, the first four decades in Paris, France. Although I also lived in New York for a bit or two years. And since 2017, I'm living in Sweden and more recently in Finland also so and commuting between the two Nordic countries. I think that's about it. And I've also lived in the UK in Scotland for three years where I wrote my book on is pretty core and and we're belonging. It's opposite you belong so so it could be that to conclude it could be that there is a. Indeed, a people often say that a PhD is partly so for us a therapy right. It could be that one of the questions that is important for me is the question of autonomy since I'm a philosopher. Philosophers like to claim that they think autonomously which is, of course, problematic. We might wonder if it's ever possible to think autonomously, but nevertheless, this tension between group think and singular thinking is extremely important for me. And I think it's important should be important also as you as you as you enter academia through a PhD because academia is also a place of group think I mean it's it's also a place where innovation in thinking has as its place of course. It's important, but people tend also to be a little bit form formatted so I think for me it was it's always important to to reflect on. Well belonging in the sense that I do believe that we need to have some form of belonging we cannot be completely isolated no man is an island as the poem goes. But at the same time we perhaps want to keep some form of autonomy at least that's, let's say I was educated in France that's the French tradition. Since Descartes, the sort of autonomy of the thinking self to cogito, whether it's fictional or an ideal. That was sort of a presentation, I can of course expand but basically, I'll go with your questions and perhaps in more depth. It's very interesting when you mention about autonomy. Put it together with the belonging. How do you see these two concepts. And they are different spectrum. Right. Right. So, etymologically belonging autonomy means the capacity to sort of leaving according to one's own principle. So, of course, if you are in a group of belonging, you incorporate principles that you are not that you have not authored that are there be for you. You might co create some other principles but nevertheless. So, but that's true for all groups basically whether you're in couple or in a community of interest, etc. And, of course, this is also very important because this is how we humans make worlds right so there's this world building world making world in concept. And it is fundamental if we have to have a sense of belonging and and shared reality. So, nevertheless, once when you asked your question in the beginning or made a presentation. There was this pressure position that we might belong to a place. Of course, as you know we can also belong to ideas we can belong to ideals with an L. And, and this is more how I have always felt because I'm going to tell you an anecdote that is a bit autobiographical but when I was when I was eight. For a while I was convinced that I was not human that in fact my parents were not my parents and I was an alien put on earth by some alien species to observe the life of the humans and make a report on it. And I think that in a way I've never really abandoned that idea completely of course a reasonable part of me who knows that I'm human but the the other part of me is still writing books as a report for if not an alien species at least perhaps people to calm the humans of tomorrow who might be different. So this sense of estrangement this sense of not really belonging very deep because to the point that I felt I was not even from this planet. Made it also possible for me to relate more to a form of intellectual belonging so belonging to the world of books, the world of literacy, and, and the world of ideas, philosophy and that world. It's almost a slogan of cosmopolitanism right to to say that that world of common understanding. That's the world we intellectuals perhaps would like to share, as opposed as a world of nationalism as a world of, you know, genetics or sometimes people tell me oh your two parents are Portuguese therefore you are Portuguese. For me that's totally absurd, because you don't define people by their exactly or their genes or their. So, this is how I would define well belonging, it needs to have an element of approval to a set of ideas values virtues. But of course, I'm very well aware that this needs to be embodied at some point. And, and this is why I think I wrote on on well belonging that I have this nostalgia of this very united groups of epistemic groups, preferably we will have the same vision. And we'll work together towards a common goal, for example, an example that I particularly find fascinating is the burbaki group. So Nicola burbaki was one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century, nevertheless it never existed, because it was actually a a pseudonym for several mathematicians in France. Like, Andre vey, the brother of the philosopher Simon vey, and others who decided that their vision was to unify mathematics in a moment where mathematics was scattered so they had a very strong vision. And they made it up they wrote books and they really, of course they are a bit controversial, but that's more in terms of mathematics, and that's not for us because I mean I'm not an expert in mathematics but. This is really something that I would like to experience, but I have to say I've never experienced. So there is a loneliness in cosmopolitanism. There is a loneliness in philosophizing that I don't feel as extremely painful. Also, because for example I have children and I, and I share with them and I transmit to them, but I would, I would be happy one day if I can really be co-creating is the strong community with a strong vision. Perhaps it will happen someday, although I'm aware of course also of the risks that this might produce in terms of group think in terms of perhaps decreasing creativity or all the famous autonomous thinking that we were talking about. It seems there are some kind of, kind of pensions and how we can fit everything together, how we can label the contrast with the differences with the similarities. Right. But it seems to me that when you're talking about cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitanism, you're talking about idea, isn't it? Right. Identity. Yes. So citizen of the world, right, which is the translation of the term. It is itself an idea. So it's the idea that there is a common experience of being human in the world. Not everyone would agree with that. We tend to live in a moment of human history where there is a sort of an explosion of tribes or communities of belief and the idea that the universalism that is presupposed by cosmopolitanism is actually a bad thing. That would be some sort of form of colonialism because what would constitute this common intelligence of the cosmopolitan. I think this is exaggerating. I think that, first of all, the belief that we can eliminate universalism is naive to speak, to think, to theorize is necessary to generalize. And of course we can deconstruct our generalizations, but I don't think even ethically and politically it is desirable to have a world in which different tribes are in constant conflict with each other. This famous idea by Chantal Mouff of agonism, pluralistic agonism. I never know if it's pluralistic agonism or agonistic pluralism, but the idea that the, these communities of belief would sort of self regulate by being constant conflict. I think we need a more positive and affirmative view of what it is to have a shared experience of being in the world, especially today, where being global induces all sorts of risks and hazards. So I do think that it's very timely that you're working on cosmopolitanism because we do need it for today. And perhaps anticipating further questions or sort of expansion of our conversation, I would also note that there's this idea of cosmos that I find important. The cosmos is the world, it doesn't necessarily have to be the earth, so coming back to the aliens. I think that a sense of being in the universe or the multiverse together is also a way of creating some unity. It's the famous overview effect that you probably have heard of when you go in space and you suddenly contemplate the earth and you have a sort of understanding that there is a unity of the earthly experience that we tend to forget on the local level. Did you start developing that idea or concept of cosmopolitanism? Is it a story from 8 years old that you told me? I didn't really develop the concept of cosmopolitanism, right? We just like think it in your way, the way that you just have to describe. Right, right, right. I think this is connected to what I call Creolectics, so the cosmology I've been working on, based on the notion of Creel, so C-R-E-A-L, like the creative reel, which actually, where are you from originally, if I may? From Vietnam. From Vietnam, okay. So do they have Taoism in Vietnam or not at all? No, people. Okay, but so in the East sometimes you have these ontologies of becoming, and so in the Western world we have processed philosophies that are based on the fact that the source of the reel is a flow rather than a flow. Rather than a set of fixed substances. And so I call that creative flow of possibility, the Creel. And so Creolectics is the philosophy of the Creel. How does this flow produce realities and worlds and how do we contribute to that? And also how do we go from possibilities to what Leibniz called compossibility? So possibilities that are compatible together, more or less harmonious, which is what we need to make a world. Although, of course, our worlds are sort of broken because they contain incompossibles and contradictions to a certain extent. So for me, it was important to explore the idea of well-belonging in the sense that I've always been very independent. Sometimes pathologically so, almost, I don't know. And I do, grown up as a lonely child with this, perhaps the fact that since my parents immigrated to France, I didn't feel Portuguese, I didn't feel French. But also I think the fact that I didn't really relate intellectually to my parents, but also to my... It sounds like a sad story, but it's not necessarily, but to my also the other kids, I had maybe one friend who as himself read a different. So I think that I've always felt like I was questioning the idea of normality. And from the idea of normality, what it is to be normal, you go almost naturally to the idea of belonging. And in my work, in my book Ensemblance, which was derived from my PhD work, I work specifically on this concept of strong belonging to a group which is called esprit de corps. So that's a French term which is used also in English. And if you translate it literally esprit de corps of body, bodily spirit, but it's the group spirit, right? It's this sense of that we are so attached to one group that we are ready even perhaps to the extreme to give our life to it. And I was fascinated to that because since it was not my way of thinking, I wanted to know what does that perform. And I think that the book itself, the title of the book itself gives away my position. So Ensemblance is playing with words, it's a semblance of togetherness. So we should not forget that our groups are not ontological because that actually leads to all sorts of essentializations. Our groups are always conventions, they are arbitrary, they are co-created, even nations, you know, we speak of nation building, etc. So once we are aware of that, then we can more easily circulate escape groups that might be oppressive and circulate between groups, but also find a position where we are neither in pure isolation, neither belonging to a local group. So I suppose that that might be what is called cosmopolitanism because that's a good question. So let's take the cosmopolitan. Isn't it a paradox? Because it doesn't belong to any local group. It belongs to this idea of the earth, the globe, but that's not a real group yet, right? It could be an interesting group and that echoes your remark on shared cosmology, shared spirit. I do believe that it would be interesting to have a shared cosmology for the entire planet. But of course we would want one that might not become a totalitarianism. And I've written somewhere that the only concept that works as a sort of a universal that constantly self destroys would be creation. We're back to the creel because let's say it would be very difficult to implement a totalitarian regime based on the core concept of creation. Because let's say you are the emperor of that regime and I come to you and I say, I propose something new. Cannot put me in jail because by proposing something new, I just follow the core concept of creation. So that's a little bit the idea. I think there is a clear connection between cosmopolitanism and the concept of creation. And therefore artists might be a model for a kind of way of being that would be cosmopolitan. And artists we know they have this tension between singularity, the desire to express a unique perspective, a style, a vision of the world. But they also are quite skilled at creating groups, right? Surrealists and other artistic groups in the history of art. It's very interesting to how you actually see the philosophy or ideas influence how they relate to one. Because you part of the story that you did in France, you didn't feel like you were in the lot of things of French. Right. Our philosophies influence our philosophical ideas influence Marlon. That's actually my definition of philosophy. So I do think that ideas shape the world and that thinking is an excellent pathway towards creating worlds. So I do think as philosophy not as something you use the word detachment, not as something that withdraws from the world, but rather as something that creates, helps create a better world. There's an element of critic, of course, to it. It's very rare that philosophers say, oh, everything is perfect in this world. But there's an element that is very pragmatic, but also very idealistic at the same time. So I think that when I started philosophy, when I was 18 at university, everyone told me that I must have some sort of mental health problem. People still think that people study philosophy, right? We think that if you go to a philosophy department and half of the undergraduates are depressed. And then also they said, you have a problem because you're good at everything. Yeah, I was good at math or physics or whatever. And yet I decided to study philosophy, which was they claim, and that includes my parents, leading to no job at all. And so if I could help, you know, for example, I developed methodologies that I used to help individuals and groups define their purpose, etc. So if I could help young philosophers feel that actually they are the core of what it is to be human and co-create the future, that would be a nice purpose such that they will feel less lonely. There is a cosmopolitanism of philosophers that is of this kind of community that we don't talk a lot about today, which is the intellectual type. So as a philosophical counselor, I often get in consultations people that I define as the intellectual type. Perhaps 20% of humanity. And we were talking about the Pareto law when we were getting a coffee and maybe this is the 20% that should make 80% of our reality. But so and they are often estranged from a world that is considerably anti-intellectualist today on a global scale. I mean, if we turn on the television or go on social media, etc. Of course, there is some intellectual offer there, but it's really a minority, small percentage. The world is much more based on emotionalism, shortcuts, simplification. So these people were a minority that no one wants to defend, as opposed as other more, I would say, superficial minorities. I would like to defend and I would like to say yes, they actually, when they managed to connect to this idea that they are actually create electricians, they are world builders, and they have this capacity to think what they do, then they are empowered. Yet it's a process. It's not as simple. It takes time. Why? Because of course, by definition, intellectuals, they like to think and stop. And it looks like they're not doing anything. It looks like they're not being productive, right? And then they doubt. It's like the cart. I doubt therefore I am actually think therefore I am, but it was through doubting. So they're not perceived as the most productive people by the capitalist system. But in fact, I think that they are in the right temple, provided they understand that what they're doing is healthy. And unfortunately, too many feel that they are not attuned to the world. And I think it's the, I think it's the world that is not attuned to them. So there is a sense of belonging that needs to be created for people who cannot not think, cannot not have an intellectual relationship to the world and question their admirations. Perhaps those are the the cosmopolitan's of tomorrow were divided. But who once united could bring a little bit more of meaning and sense making to all our endeavors, whether corporate or institutional and even even relational at the level of simply human relationships. It's an idealistic project, but I do see, you know, that actually taps into your topic. I often have in consultations online, people from really all over the world could be Pakistan, New York, and this is something I didn't know before. How much we humans are alike in terms of our desire to have a meaningful life. And and so there is, you know, I mean, as philosophers was kind of trained to be suspicious of humanism. If it's this discourse, emotional discourse of, you know, we all the same, but how, you know, without really, but I do think we are all the same in our intellectual aspirations and our desire for us. A sense of purpose but also a philosophical worldview or sort of a meaning that we may give to the world such that we may act coherently. A sense of the possible. The sense that yes there is a future and the sense of belonging to right and then of course when we materialize it can come in different forms and it should probably come in different forms. Earlier when you mentioned about belonging, not just belonging to a group or to community, but belong to ideas, belong to a kind of philosophy of large things like that. So, where do you see me belong to? That's a very good question. I do think I belong to what I call the Creolectic aspiration, which is that we are now in a moment of human history, where we need to think compulsively after three centuries of thinking, possibly. So, the difference I've suggested it already but I will reformulate it is that industrialization and capitalism were very strong in bringing the paradigm of the possible. So, great inventions were brought about and the particularity of thinking in terms of possibleization is that we're very focused on a local solution could be technological for example. Now, the problem is that a local miracle can become a global nightmare. So, compulsibility thinking has to be replaced by sorry possibility thinking has to be replaced by compulsibility thinking, which is not only, of course, bringing about new possibilities expanding the domain of the possible for for humans and non humans. But also, how do these singular locals particular possible harmonize up, not in a perfect way, but it's the Leibnizian idea of the best of all. Some possible worlds, not only possible worlds that this is something that I would like to bring about in and contribute to as a vision. Despite the fact that I still have in me this tendency of, you know, being a little bit independent and minding my own business, which is a tendency I try to fight against. But I think it has some virtue as a, as a sort of hygiene exercise. So, I think that philosophical health presupposes a constant balance between this composibilization where it's really about togetherness about cosmopolitanism, not only for humans, but for non humans. And at the same time, the capacity once in a while to step back and simply being singularly connect reconnect with our singular experience, if not uniqueness, but simply the capacity to be in this room for example and admire, which is another topic we could tap into because I think we are in a time where we have forgotten to the feelings of all wonder, admiration, not just for other people, but also for things that might surprise us that we take for granted. So, when we belong too much, we enter in routines of thinking that might deprive us from our capacity to approach some form of creative autonomous thinking. But when we do not belong enough, well, we cannot really participate in the co-creation that is needed and we might feel, of course, isolated and lonely or misunderstood, which we never are. So, there is always this rule. I wrote novels for a while and one of the things I understood is that I call that the rule of the hundred thousand with my consolees. Whatever you think you are experiencing at this moment of your life that feels painful and no one else around you experiences that you can be sure that at the same time 100,000 humans are experiencing it in the world. And that's why that's what novelists understand or artists so in the sense that you never completely isolating your experience. However, the network of shared experience in your country or might be such that you are not talking to the right people that might resonate with you. Interesting. You think because when I approach the cosmopolitan and approach from the angle of identity, look at that concept as a kind of individual choice. Why do you choose to live your life in the way that you do it? I can share or I can relate to some concept before that. For example, the universalism, I may not belong to like all, I mean, bound by nationality or by narrow concept or compass, but it's interesting because you are talking about something beyond that. So I just want to see when connect that career because at the end of the day, I'm trying to understand how we can translate that philosophy of working into how people live their life. Because we humans be in, right? Identity, yes. Yes. So how we can relate that philosophy to the identity. So, there are many views of what identity is, but there are basically two that I would like to emphasize. One being that you sort of discover your inner self, the essence of who you are, right? And the other being that you actually be, you actually reach integrity being one, when you actually self transcend when you forget about yourself and become an idea or an ideal or serve a higher purpose. I tend to think that the second is true. So I do not think that there is a deeper essence that is me. My deeper essence is the Creole. So if we go deep, deep, deep in me, we'll find the same thing that if we go deep, deep, deep in you, which is this creative becoming this flow of possibilities. So that's my version of identity. So identity, you define a sense of purpose. And of course, it might shift a bit over the years. And through serving that ideal, which you admire. And realizing it, both understanding it at deeper and deeper degrees, but also making it real, transform an idea into a world. Then you achieve a form of integrity in which you are actually one with a concept, you become a concept. So that doesn't mean that of course, you cannot choose to be a citizen of the world. If simply you realize that this purpose that you identify with is not something that is can be defined by borders. For example, the borders of a nation, right? So that is true for a lot of higher purposes. Let's say your higher purpose is justice, right? Justice is a universal concept, although there might be different views about it. But as a concept, it transcends borders, right? Or even if in some countries you might have more accumulated injustice than in others. This doesn't mean that there's not an idea of justice everywhere. So I'm not sure you choose to be a citizen of the world for itself. Is it a higher purpose? It could be provided it as a sort of a function in terms of changing the world. Perhaps one may think that affirming world citizenship would create the kind of change that would composibilize our world, that is, approach it to the best of possible worlds. So what that would mean for example, well, yes, if you have a strong belief that you are a world citizen, and if everyone had that strong belief, it's the counter-universalization of the purpose, then what would happen probably if everyone identified with cosmopolitanism is that borders would disappear, right? And would that be a good thing? I tend to think yes, although other people both from the left spectrum and right spectrum would say, no, no, we need to save borders because that protects identities. So it's a debate that is very interesting in itself. But for me, what is more interesting is that sometimes you don't have a choice. So there is a necessity, right? So my parents immigrated to France when I was three. I didn't really choose to become, to have no roots. People once say, no, but you, in fact, you have roots, but to feel estranged from both in the country where I was growing. Then one might say perhaps I just continued since I had sort of positivized the rootlessness, right? I continued to travel. Now I'm actually applying for Swedish citizenship because I live in Sweden with my family. So is it important for me to feel that I belong to a nation only to the extent that you identify intellectually with the values of that nation, which is the case with Sweden. But not in the sense that for genetic reasons or the metaphors of blood or just being born somewhere. So I agree with you that there is an element of, if not choice, intellect or recognition that the values of certain places in the world correspond to something that you would like to see universalized more than other countries in the world, for example. There's so many steps in your sharing that I'd like to follow up. Maybe we can go back to the story you're talking. You didn't have a choice to move to France, right? That's your parent choice. Right, I was three years old. So here is where some people actually don't belong to that kind of border or nation or anything like that. Do you still have that kind of feeling now that you're removed across different countries? The feeling that, which feeling? The feeling like you have when you were a child. Mm-hmm, estrangement. Brutalism. I think nomadism. I do think that I belong to now an epistemic community, which is still vague. Let's call it academia. So I think despite all the problems of academia today, which is another topic, but I still think it's a beautiful ideal to have a community of people that are thinking about the world. So I don't feel estranged because I do think that I belong. And that's why probably I did my PhD on that as a reflection on what was to come, what group I was joining. And of course, there's a lot of group thinking in academia. There's a lot of absurdity. There's a lot of bureaucracy like in a lot of groups. But still, I think it's beautiful that we are still in a world where we can get paid to think and paid to really go deep about questions of all sort. What we are doing now. So this is, I think we shouldn't take it for granted. It's not that capitalistic. Sometimes for me, it's a surprise. If capitalism really were radical, it would probably delete academia, which is ongoing to a certain extent. So that's why we need to fight as a community of knowledge for that space. That doesn't mean that people outside of academia shouldn't think I was outside of academia until I was 40 or 42. And I was avoiding academia because I want to write novels I wanted to think independently. So it was only after a while that I thought, okay, I'm perhaps strong enough to resist the group think also that might come from from academia or other groups in which people might tend to speak the same language, use the same terms, have the same routines of thinking. So that was a long answer to your question. Moreover, more simply, that's perhaps banal, but it must be mentioned is that having children now. And the partner that I love that small community called family, right, which seems to be the core ideal of most Hollywood movies. This is, of course, not insignificant, especially for the fact that you can transmit to your children in a way that is slow, that has the comfort of time, right. So there's at least 18 years of their growth that you can transmit your experience and also, of course, learn from them. So those two, those two reasons, plus the fact that being independent, I have, and probably this is I've learned from when I was a child, being a lonely child books were my best friends, especially in that time or in my first two days when I felt that I didn't belong and a bit isolated and lonely. I sort of discovering in literacy, not only literacy, but a form of city, a form of world, the world of words. I mean, when you are talking about do you think you belong to a community or a cult in the media, because you see that you are able to speak as a language, you can relate to people who have the same, same routine or same way thinking or same same aspiration or purpose or something like that. So again, it will come back to the interrelationship or the relationship between human and human. Community of cult, academy, I mean the people in that community. So is it eventually sense of belonging is because you belong to some idea at the same, at the same time you need to translate into like the people that will share that idea. And by human to human, you mean the connection between the human because it, you know, for example, nobody shared that philosophy or that idea. Right. Well, it's very, again, I think autonomous thinking is is a sort of a myth. So it's the rule of the 100,000. So we never completely original that we can say that we are thinking Exactly. So, so in that sense, I'm just I would be just even more joyful if if I somehow can connect to this 100,000 humans. Imagination or through my books, for example, right, I think that's why I write books as messages in the bottle. I think that might be a nice conclusion for today, perhaps, because this we might continue this conversation of the record, but I think there's one one of the songs that I liked when I was a teenager, this police song, a message in the bottle. Right. So a book when you write a book. At least in my case, it's always a message in a bottle and sometimes I hear randomly, because I don't write the kind of books that create fans. But sometimes I hear for someone in in the world Brazil or Russia, who has read my book and and and so that's the kind of surprise that I have as the eight year old in me that thought that he was completely alien. In fact, no, there is there is an echo or bite perhaps sometimes not as strong as we would like or or perhaps sometimes stronger than we would like. But there is a resonance. It's a beautiful way to conclude today's conversation. Thank you. Thank you for your question. There's many aspects that are very interesting and fascinating in the sense that I need to explore even more. Exactly, but I do think you have a very timely topic. We tend to think that cosmopolitanism is is an idea of the past. And I think it's it's actually potentially very powerful for the challenges we have in the in the 21st century. So thanks a lot.