appiah

A True Cosmopolitan Appiah poses a question: What do we owe strangers by virtue of our shared humanity? Appiah’s answers this with his personal story, history, literature, and philosophy. Pre-historic hunter-gatherers encountered fewer people in a lifetime than we would on a single day walking down the streets of Delhi, or New Orleans. Centuries ago, people lived in a world where they were isolated, and unable to communicate between different countries. Today we live in a world where most of what we do can affect people in other countries. According to Appiah we are responsible for every other human being. Appiah’s understanding of the responsibilities of a human being is that we should understand, and tolerate other countries, but not all people may actually want to accept other beliefs. We should be able to understand and tolerate other countries beliefs because that is how we are responsible for every other human being. Appiah gives many examples in his writing regarding these two factors. “Making Conversation” by Kwame Antony Appiah reflects upon the term “cosmopolitanism” and outlines the steps people in any nation have to take in order to achieve “cosmopolitanism” and “globalization”. He brings up the point of how all cultures have their similarities and differences. In most cases the differences are in star contrast to one another that it makes different cultures hard to connect with each other. He believes that communication is the first and most important step to the understanding of others. “It begins with the simple idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we need to develop habits of coexistence: conversation in its older meaning, of living together, association” (Appiah xix). There are different people from all different backgrounds and cultures that he met in his town. He