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A small, blind-tooled volume sits on a table covered in green baize: one clasp is open, the other is closed; and a slip of paper emerges from it reading 'Veritas odium parit' ('truth breeds hatred'). This detail occurs in the foreground of a portrait by Hans Holbein of a young man identified as the Cologne patrician Hermann von Wedigh III (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A study of the physical features of the book and of the history of the brief text - actually an ancient and then Erasmian adage - leads to a new interpretation of the painting in the context of humanist friendship. The book is seen to be a multivalent simile for the work of art authored by the artist as well as for the sitter himself, raising questions about the implications for these of a medium that can be opened and closed. The half-open condition of the book is understood to reflect the complementary pressures of openness and closedness, accessibility and intimacy, that characterized the Renaissance republic of letters.
The idea of a global world is not a new idea as some may think. The idea was already on the agenda of many philosophers in the countries where German was native language. Leibniz’s, a universal philosopher, dream for an easy and common European Language dates back to the 16th century. His thoughts gains significance for the present idea of Globalizm, for a common language for all nations seems to be an essential prerequisite for a global world. Rotterdam, being a reformist and humanist philosopher, is also known to have used concepts and terms such as “Global Citizenship” and “World Citizen” . Similar expressions can also be found in Kant’s “World Citizenship Theory” in the 18th Century. Likewise, Marks and Engels are known to have used the concepts in the same way Kant and Rotterdam had formerly used them.
This paper aims at establishing a connection between the ideas of the 16th, 17th and 18th century philosophers and today’s projects to form a Global World in view of the significance and necessity of a common language in achieving that end.