EXCERPT What we call ‘liberalism’ today is essentially a universalist programme, a programme of tolerance that calls for all people to equally enjoy all rights, and for the dignity of every person to be respected. We must respect everyone as we respect ourselves. This ethical principle originates in Kant’s famous categorical imperative from Critique of Practical Reason: ‘[A]ct that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving of universal law.’ Today we are living in an age in which this universalist programme is collapsing. There were warning signs in the realm of philosophy. We could say that the rise of the critique of rationalism known as postmodernism was one example, as was the split of anglophone liberalism into communitarianism and liberalism. In any case, having been robbed of the universalist programme that sees us progressing from an individual to a member of a nation and finally to a world citizen, we are now entering an era in which our choices are limited to either living as a free yet solitary individual without pride (animal) or living as a member of a nation who has friends and pride, but who ultimately serves the state (human). For a world in which there is a coexistence of the system of Empire and the system of nation-states, or the layer of globalism and the layer of nationalism, is in fact a world in which the path toward the universal global citizen has been foreclosed. I wrote this book because I do not want to live in a world like that. Or in other words, with this book I would like to reopen the path towards the global citizen, but with a method different from the Hegelian dialectical ascension of the individual to the nation and to the world citizen. Namely, the path of the tourist. What is the tourist? As already noted, it is first of all that which crosses over between the system of Empire and the system of the nation-state and connects private lived sensations to public politics while remaining private. And it bears some similarity to the concept of multitude as proposed by Negri and Hardt. Multitude is one of the only remaining concepts in philosophy that can be used to positively discuss the possibility of anti-establishment movements after the fall of communism. For that reason, if we think that some kind of movement will still be necessary in the future, and if we wish to argue this case to a broader audience and not simply to seclude ourselves in our own self-satisfaction, we must inherit this concept in some way. The theory of the tourist presented here has been constructed within such a perspective. But what cannot be forgotten at this juncture is that there are two fatal flaws to the concept of multitude…