The relationship of the human being with the cosmos, from ancient times to the present, has developed in different ways: mythical and poetic, religious and philosophical, scientifical, political-juridical, ecological ... From the term cosmos derive several others such as cosmology, cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan citizenship, cosmopolitan law, cosmic consciousness...

Cosmopolitanism relates to the ethical ideal of belonging to a universal community, beyond any links to particular communities. Cosmopolitics corresponds to a concern with giving local politics a cosmopolitan dimension and to the desire to make sure global politics has a democratic dimension. Cosmopolitan law, on the other hand, considers the individual to be a subject of law regardless of which state it belongs to, as in the case of individual responsibility for international crimes and the right to an individual petition in human rights. The cosmos is the object of a scientific view as well as of the poetic gaze on the mysteries of the night (Chateaubriand, Novalis, Poe, Rilke), the comets (Whitman, Hugo), the king-sun (Valéry, Artaud, Tardieu, Prévert), the moon (Orpheus, Plutarch, La Fontaine, Yeats), and infinity (Lucretius, Schiller, Byron, Lamartine).

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​This colloquium intends to discuss the various perspectives on the cosmos and concepts derived from it.