The founding fathers of Cosmopolis are (1) the Hellenistic sages: the Cynics, Epicurus, Lucretius, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Sextus Empiricus; (2) the Muslim humanists: al-Kindi, the "school of Farabi" (from al-Farabi to Ibn Miskawayh), Ghazali, Saadi, and Nasr Abu Zayd; and (3) Montaigne.
The citizens cultivate an urbane, literate, skeptical cosmopolitanism that is perfectly at home with the natural piety of a Spinoza, Thoreau, Tolstoy, or Santayana. Theirs is a humanism of the disenchanted sublime.
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