43 pages • 1 hour read
Kwame Anthony AppiahCosmopolitanism
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
The Potential of Conversation Across Boundaries
Cosmopolitanism, as Appiah describes it, is based in the practice of conversation, specifically conversation with those outside our own cultural circles. The book’s Introduction is titled “Making Conversation,” and Appiah first brings up the possibilities of conversation in a nostalgic description of face-to-face interactions of families from various ethnic and national backgrounds from his 1950s childhood in Kumasi. He sees potential in actual conversations with individuals from outside our own cultural backgrounds, in which people seek to understand one another and find common ground. At several points in the text he provides examples of people engaging in such face-to-face interactions, including his own parents and their families.
However, conversation means more than speaking with someone in a literal sense; it also has a more symbolic meaning for Appiah. He emphasizes that what is important about conversation is not seeking to persuade the other party. People are rarely convinced by reasons given or arguments provided in a conversation. What’s important is that a conversation asks us to engage with another person’s viewpoint, much like watching a film or reading a book (85). This engagement transforms us. When we are asked to actively participate in this imaginative engagement across a cultural boundary, it is a kind of conversation. It allows us to shape our own values. Conversation allows us to “get used to one another” even when it does not convince anyone of anything (85).
Because this imaginative connection is so important for Appiah, he emphasizes that even across vast cultural differences, we can still find some relatable common ground with which to engage. This is partly why he stresses that there are some more “universal” values and experiences, or at least values and experiences that might be more normally shared. He acknowledges that cross-cultural conversation can be “fraught,” but he also describes it as a “pleasure,” and he tends to return to the pure joy of engaging with someone from another cultural background (xx).
Appiah knows he is responding to those who might argue that no real moral agreement is ever possible across boundaries, and so he suggests that there may be more values held in common than expected that can enable compromises and understandings. However, he argues that agreeing on practices is more important than agreeing on values because we can often agree on what to do without agreeing on why we do it.
For people to develop cosmopolitan responses to complex world problems, Appiah believes that they will have to develop habits of conversation. They will have to engage, imaginatively, with those affected by the problem and try to understand the issue on their terms, in addition to trying to understand the values at play and decide on their relative weights. In discussing the problem of world poverty, for example, Appiah holds up the UN’s summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, as an example of a cosmopolitan conversation during which specific solutions were discussed. He sees hope in conversations like these (173).
The Limits of Relativism
Appiah argues that relativism, a widespread worldview in Western intellectual circles, makes real conversation across boundaries impossible. He thinks that relativism has serious limits and problems, and that it looms too large in our thinking.
This theme emerges early in the text. Chapter 1 addresses it directly, introducing a symbol for relativism in the chapter’s title: “The Shattered Mirror.” The shattered mirror image comes from the translations of Sir Richard Burton. As Appiah presents Burton, he became a relativist concerning truth due to his world travels and experiences with multiple cultures. For example, he came to assume that no culture’s religious claims had more meaning than any other. In the poetry that Burton purportedly translated, Appiah hears Burton’s own voice instead: “Truth is the shattered mirror strown / In myriad bits; while each believes / His little bit the whole to own” (5). Appiah suggests that relativism might imply there was never one mirror to shatter but that there were lots of little mirrors, each equally truthful (11). We can never know anything about the real truth other than the one shard we hold in our hands.
Appiah understands why we tend to favor relativism in modern intellectual thought. In Chapter 2, he provides context for why, in cultural anthropology, there are good reasons to be suspicious about any effort to impose outsider values onto another culture. As a result, many favor never intervening in another culture for fear of judging customs without proper understanding. This is not an entirely bad impulse, Appiah says, but he still balks at the notion that objective truth is “just a conceptual error” (17).
Appiah links relativism with positivism, the Enlightenment philosophical worldview that undergirds it. Positivism makes a sharp break between facts and beliefs (what we know and have observed about the world) and values and desires (what we hope for and want of the world). Appiah argues that the positivist worldview has led us to conclude we cannot reasonably discuss values—because unless we can somehow get to talking about facts or beliefs, there is nothing to talk about. For the positivist, you cannot reason with someone about what they want or desire, as “that’s not something we can rationally criticize” (22). Appiah believes that positivism has seriously overstated this case, and in Chapter 2—titled “The Escape from Positivism”—he details many reasons why. He also questions, in Chapter 3, whether we have been too hasty in accepting facts and beliefs as entirely objective, an argument meant to suggest there might be more similarity between talking about values and facts than commonly assumed.
Most critically, Appiah believes that values are shaped in community—and in conversation—with others, so we always are going to have some shared moral vocabulary (28). Even when we are not members of the same community, we can find enough common ground, or some shared identity, to have some values in common. These values could be enough for us to have a conversation.
The stakes here are very high for Appiah. At the end of Chapter 2, he points out that advocates of relativism sometimes suggest it will lead to greater tolerance. But he argues that for relativists, any conversation about ethics is always going to end with us giving up and failing to make progress because we can’t do anything beyond agreeing to disagree. Appiah stresses how bad of a situation he thinks this is: “Relativism of that sort isn’t a way to encourage conversation; it’s just a reason to fall silent” (31). For Appiah, who sees conversation as the key to progress, this kind of silence is the worst possible outcome.
Our Obligations to One Another in a Global World
The first strand of cosmopolitanism is that we have obligations to those even outside our local communities, and one of Appiah’s themes is exploring how far those obligations extend in a complex world. In Chapter 1, when Appiah introduces Sir Richard Francis Burton, he points out that Burton is a cosmopolitan in his curiosity about others and his ability to imaginatively engage with other perspectives. Yet Appiah also emphasizes that Burton falls short as a cosmopolitan due to his failure to take responsibility for others; he sees humor in suffering, and he buys enslaved people for his own convenience (8). Appiah wants us to see that it is not good enough to be a skilled linguist or a world traveler to know everything about cultures around the globe. We must also be actively interested in the well-being of other people.
In the course of his argument, Appiah circles around this theme, examining several questions about what obligations those in more affluent countries might have toward the rest of the world. For example, Chapter 7 argues against the notion that “authentic” local cultures automatically need to be protected from encroaching Western culture. In Chapter 8, Appiah questions whether the concept of cultural patrimony is necessary or appropriate to protect the heritage of cultural groups. Appiah does not want readers to assume the role of protector in the name of others unless they have fully examined and viewed the context from a global as well as a local perspective.
Appiah fully expands on his conception of being obligated to global strangers in the book’s last chapter, “Kindness to Strangers.” Here he argues, contra Peter Unger, that we do not need to donate most of our wealth to global poverty organizations to be morally serious toward others. He also lays out a set of “core moral ideas” that he proposes as guidelines and constraints for how to hold ourselves responsible for others. According to Appiah, human beings have certain basic needs; they ought to be provided with certain options in life (to have children, to express themselves, and so forth); and they ought to be shielded from unnecessary suffering (163). Our obligation is to try to ensure these criteria are met. Appiah argues that our efforts must come through the mechanism of the nation-state (rather than a world government); that we share this responsibility of meeting needs among ourselves by taking on our own share; that we acknowledge we are not completely impartial to own identities or our own lives; and that we recognize the existence of many values at play as we seek solutions (163-66).
While Appiah does recommend in abstract terms what human beings might need, and sets constraints on how these needs might be met, he does not propose specific recommendations. For example, he does not propose that the US foreign aid budget should be increased to a set number. This is consistent with his claim that this is not a book of policy. Instead, he urges the reader to “accept the cosmopolitan challenge” and advocate for political leadership that goes beyond national boundaries (174).
One significant facet of Appiah’s view of our obligation to others is that he does not think it stops merely at helping them to survive. Because he believes humans have the right to be provided with certain options in life, and because the cosmopolitan values pluralism, Appiah believes we also have an obligation to allow others to practice their own cultural and religious beliefs, even if it means intentionally withdrawing from society and thus from cosmopolitan conversation (like the Amish, for example). If one seriously respects the differences in human expression, then “you can’t […] expect everyone to become cosmopolitan” (xx). In other words, Appiah believes we owe others the right not to engage with us at all.
