Summary Of Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah, one of the world’s most preeminent philosophers, asserts that cultural and language barriers and conflict of values are excuses that force people to forget the powerful ties that connect people all across the world. Appiah demands us to recognize that – all human beings are citizens of the world – cosmopolitan, and more similar than their differences may make them seem. According to Appiah, the fate of humanity depends on people’s willingness to become global citizens and to reach across national and cultural boundaries, to find a commonplace of human morality. Appiah believes in a universal responsibility, an ideal that everyone is responsible for his or her neighbors – both foreign and domestic. He stresses the importance
of becoming global citizens, responsible for the world and each other, because he believes that seeing these differences will lead us to recognizing that we all are human beings and that we all have a similar moral nature. In addition, Appiah supports his claim – that we all should become global citizens – by expressing how globalization has made it possible for people to meet those with different cultures, religions, and backgrounds in greater quantity than in the past. This globalization, Appiah reasons, has given people a new approach of escaping a passive form of collective responsibility, where we only learn about our similarities and differences. Because globalism allows us to intermingle and exchange ideas, Appiah asserts that cosmopolitanism can aid the exchange of ideas and the debating of what is right and what is wrong. These conversations across boundaries, he hopes, will bring a greater sense of obligatory duty for each other. Although I agree that his main points are important and relevant, I cannot help but see the obvious problems and consequences that come with his assertions. The first problem concerns coercion. Why should we be responsible for our fellow citizens of the world? However, before we are able to answer that question, we must ask: what is this responsibility.
Responsibility, in multiple cultures, means several things.
In East Asia, responsibility is usually seen as being responsible to one’s education and to one’s elders. Conversely, responsibility in the Western (Americanized) sense is usually seen as being responsible to protect others from unfair treatment, to promote a sense of fairness, and to be responsible for one’s own life and for one’s own actions. Thus, as said before, responsibility is a word that means multiple things. Therefore, when Appiah attempts to construct this idea of global responsibility, it can mean different things to others. If responsibility is looked as being responsible for one’s education, then it may improve the educational attainment around the world, but also fail to make improvement in other aspects such as social and economic issues. This becomes a problem because we then begin to address different responsibilities as being lesser or greater than others.
In addition, a notion of global responsibility must involve some sense of coercion to work. If someone does not adhere to that notion of global responsibility, how will Appiah convince him or her to support it voluntarily? It is impossible to reason that enough of the world will support a global cosmopolitanism, especially if they are forced to fund
it.
However, even if we reason that enough of the world will follow cosmopolitanism, I am doubtful that it will improve the life of others. Appiah’s notion assumes that we all are better if we help others in need and recognize each other as fellow human beings. However, the problem with this notion is that aid dependent upon the feeling that helping others is our responsibility, does not mean we have become better people. It is rather an example of what Kant would call heteronomous determination – doing something for the sake of something else. When we act heteronomously or for the sake of being “responsible global citizens”, we act opposite of being compassionate neighbors. We are no longer helping people to help them but rather be seen as global citizens.
Another problem of Appiah’s cosmopolitanism is ethnocentrism. Even if we foster a global communal identity, how will we prevent others as seeing their culture as the original culture? Although we may reason that people will not see their culture as being centrally important, the likelihood of someone measuring other cultures relative to their own particular ethnic group or culture remains highly likely. However, I agree with Appiah on this point that measuring or seeing the differences between cultures will help more than harm. If we weigh the differences between cultures fairly, we will be able to address issues in our culture such as treating girls as being of a less worth than boys, etc.
Even though cosmopolitanism may be beneficial, we must not help others to be seen as global citizens. Even though cosmopolitanism may be compassionate, we will not escape a world of ethnocentricity, unless we become more knowledgeable about other cultures (and our own) without a bias lens and an unwillingness to change. In American life, there is a real crisis in race relations. Too many incidents of unnecessary, avoidable violence plague the nightly news and the yearly statistics. This crisis has been passed down from generation to generation. Yet, it remains unsolved. If we desire a world of global responsibility, I believe we must begin at home. We must learn to love, rather than hate the difference of our fellow countrymen. That is the only way we can learn to love others across distant seas. We may learn more about different cultures, but to love those cultures is something different than simply learning about it. I believe what Appiah says – despite my numerous contentions – may hold a path to a better future.