The article explores the considerations that are at stake in assessing the prospects of cosmopolitanism today. It is argued that there is scope for fruitful dialogue between sociology and political science around the question of how a normative idea, such as global justice, becomes an empirical phenomenon. The idea of global justice should be placed in the context of the broader framework of cosmopolitanism. Rather than focus only on the normative project, attention needs to be given to the process by which cosmopolitanism emerges. Cosmopolitanism, in this view, involves socio-cognitive shifts for critical publics in ways in seeing the world. It is such changes in cognitive capacities and in individual and societal learning that often make possible the articulation of new normative principles or their application in domains where they previously did not apply.