Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006) is a philosophical text written by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Appiah, a philosopher and ethicist who teaches at New York University, grew up in Kumasi, Ghana, where his father was a Ghanaian political leader and his mother a British expatriate. His family’s multicultural background, as well as the experience of growing up in diverse Kumasi and then attending school in the United Kingdom, informed Appiah’s thinking about communicating across boundaries. In this text, Appiah proposes his view of cosmopolitanism, or the concept that we are not just members of our own city, nation, tribe, or family, but members of a global community that transcends local loyalties.

This study guide references the first edition published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Summary

Being a member of the global community comes with two important responsibilities, according to Appiah. First, it means we have moral obligations to people, even strangers and people with whom we seemingly have nothing in common. Second, it means we must take other people’s lives seriously, including their practices and beliefs, even if we do not agree with them or share in them. These responsibilities might sound difficult, but Appiah sees many people in our complex world already engaging in cosmopolitan behaviors in their everyday lives.