Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

Introduction

Appiah, a philosopher born in London and raised in Ghana, published the book in 2006 in a series edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. He takes up the ancient Cynic and Stoic ideal of the “citizen of the world” and joins two commitments: obligations to all human beings, and respect for the particular ways of life that give lives their meaning. Against both relativism and fundamentalism, he argues that people can live together without agreeing on values or on their justification – through conversation, habit and shared practices. He also discusses the return of cultural objects and the claims of “cultural purity”. Many examples come from his father’s Asante family in Kumasi.

Connections

Builds on

• Perpetual Peace1795 · Immanuel Kant

More works by Kwame Anthony Appiah

• 1992In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture