A critical review of Edoardo Greblo’s work on cosmopolitanism and human rights. After eliciting the main features of Greblo’s proposal for a ‘realistic cosmopolitanism’, the author focusses on some problems which haunt any view of a cosmopolitanism based on human rights: in a nutshell, both notions are controversial. Cosmopolitanism has always been the ideal of an elite, while hu-man rights are not accepted as universal in many parts of the world because they allegedly generalize a Western, Judeo-Christian image of the human beings. Finally, the author argues that the idea that borders are now evanescent entities and that the Westphalian order, with its accompanying notion of State sovereignty, is finished is wrong, because States show their existence, and their power, in moments of crisis.
