Cosmopolitanism

In Chapters 9 to 10, Appiah more fully elaborates on the idea that a cosmopolitan worldview implies certain obligations to others. Appiah considers cases of counter-cosmopolitanism in Chapter 9, where he notes that for some counter-cosmopolitans, the issue with cosmopolitanism is valuing differences between cultures, while for others, the problem is assuming that everyone must matter morally. For the cosmopolitan, the slogan is “universality plus difference”—everyone matters, as does their cultural particularity (151). This implies a set of obligations and leads into the full focus of Chapter 10, which examines what specific role we must play to strangers around the world.

Although the focus of Chapter 9 is ostensibly counter-cosmopolitanism—and Appiah provides several examples of groups that represent this—he also uses these groups as a foil and contrast to highlight aspects of cosmopolitanism. He begins the chapter with intentional misdirection, listing a series of traits he knows will sound cosmopolitan to the reader. He describes people who “believe in human dignity,” who “share their ideals with people in many countries, speaking many languages,” and who “resist the call of all local allegiances” (137). He then reveals that he is talking about “young, global Muslim fundamentalists,” whom he identifies as counter-cosmopolitan. In rhetorically highlighting how similar they are to cosmopolitans, he pinpoints the specific ways he sees them as importantly contrasting: specifically, their tolerance of differences among others and their willingness to engage in conversation across differences. He is then able to identify the “distinctively cosmopolitan commitment” to pluralism, for example, or to fallibilism about knowledge (144).

Appiah follows his discussion of global Muslim fundamentalism as an example of counter-cosmopolitanism with a personal story intended to show a different kind of Muslim religious identity. He focuses this story on his Uncle Aviv, a Muslim Lebanese businessman who married Appiah’s Christian Auntie Grace. Appiah relates memories of attending an Eid al-Fitr dinner they hosted on the last day of Ramadan. He remembers attending Muslim celebrations as a Christian cousin with little fuss, his Christian aunt attending church during Ramadan, and his Uncle Aviv being an open-minded, gentle, and religious man (148-51). Appiah is clear that as a non-Muslim, he does not think it is his place to say who is practicing Islam well. But he does want to demonstrate that within the same religious tradition that counter-cosmopolitans claim as authentically theirs, cosmopolitan perspectives can and have flourished. He further argues that those who practice Islam like his uncle are likely “more numerous” (151).

Chapter 10 turns Appiah’s argument outward, applying it to the question of how we ought to react to problems in the world. He chooses to frame this chapter with a literary anecdote that also draws from moral philosophy. In a story taken from Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac, the character Eugene Rastignac asks his friend if he remembers a passage from Rousseau that questioned if one would be willing to become rich through murdering a faceless “mandarin” in China simply by willing it. Appiah points out that this passage is not from Rousseau and speculates that Balzac may have been thinking of a related passage from the philosophical work The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) by Adam Smith. Smith’s work, which is about our capacity to sympathize with others, questions whether Europeans would be moved by the deaths of many people due to an earthquake in China. He says yes, of course they would, but a European would probably be more upset over the sacrifice of their own little finger, which is personal to them, than the deaths of strangers.

Appiah observes that Smith’s work is really about moral psychology, whereas Balzac ventured into morality itself. Appiah’s interest is really in both (156-57). Starting Chapter 10 with the story from the novel—and the counterpart passage from Smith—allows Appiah to set up relevant and provocative questions. Is it right to think of a stranger at cost to ourselves? Are we always sympathetic enough to strangers to help them at cost to ourselves, even across boundaries? Appiah revisits the Balzac story at the end of the chapter, having made his case for cosmopolitan solutions, and presents the conclusion of Rastignac’s friend: “I’ve come to the conclusion the Chinaman must live” (174), which seems to validate that sympathy across boundaries is possible. Appiah uses these literary references to contextualize his own argument in a broader intellectual conversation about morality and moral psychology, in addition to providing several illustrative hypothetical situations.

Appiah also actively engages the work of two well-known philosophers and fellow ethicists, Peter Unger and Peter Singer. Unger’s famous work, Living High and Letting Die, argues that most people in the West, being affluent by global standards, are morally obligated to give away most of the money they have to effective organizations like UNICEF. Unger’s work is based, in part, on an analogy made by Singer: that if you are walking past a shallow pond and you see a drowning child, you should rescue the child, even if your clothes get dirty. Dirty clothes are bad, but dead children are much worse, and you should always try to prevent worse things from happening, even if you suffer a small misfortune. Appiah calls this idea “the Singer principle” (160).

Appiah argues that the Singer principle seems simple when considering saving a drowning child, but it falls apart against the complexity of the real world. He takes issue with Unger and Singer on the whole notion of principles at all; Appiah prefers to talk about values, which are more flexible and conducive to conversation and differing cases and contexts. He also argues that if one donates money to prevent starvation, one isn’t taking into account what happens to the child after they are no longer starving, what kind of life they might have, what kind of life they might want, or why they were starving to begin with. Appiah further does not believe that an individual must give up most of their own resources to respond ethically to poverty. The cosmopolitan response to global poverty, Appiah implies, both requires more and less than writing a big check.

Appiah imagines much of the work of cosmopolitan ethics occurring at the level of policy. Indeed, he believes solutions are best sought at the level of the nation-state. Many of his ethical statements, then, are social ethics and calls for political cooperation; for example, he discusses what is an appropriate number for US foreign aid. He consistently shies away from making direct recommendations, saying, for example, “I do not know exactly what the basic obligations are of each American or each human being” (173). Instead, he emphasizes only that he knows “we owe more” and that conversation is the way forward (173).