Summary Of Overcoming Kwame Anthony Appiah

Imagine a world where societies were able to coexist and functioned through eyes of acceptance and love. This idea of universal peace is exciting and enticing to many, however this idealized world is realistically impossible. People are irrational and carry a heavy indifference for others. Throughout all time people have struggled to coexist, whether it be over cultures, ideas, patorism, hate, or religion; conflict is inevitable. Acceptance is the key to a utopian world, however there will always exist an underlying hate in society. An abyss of ignorance and unadulterated evil that corrupts society and exploits the weak. This chasm, or rather set beliefs that some people carry degrades the very moral foundation of a peaceful society. Overcoming
This society however, does not envelop certain communities but rather the entire world. In Making Conversation, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers, Appiah introduces us to cosmopolitanism: an almost contradictory ideology based around the belief that people can and will get along, as long as they “make conversation,” so to speak. Appiah also dives into how global communication has its downsides, the history of cosmopolitanism, partial cosmopolis, his personal experiences with this ideology and the worldview post 9/11. His structure is very informal and at times, choppy, however he does explain his thesis to a well versed extent and proves his understanding on the subject by defining the ideology thoroughly and countering his own arguments and reaffirming them with following explanations. Nevertheless, he is lacking in some areas and is not without his faults, where lack of analysis betrays him and his overall extremely optimistic worldviews portray him as somewhat daft. Despite this, his exploration into the idea of cosmopolitanism is well thought and maybe one day, considered
Appiah addresses this with a solution, it being: cosmopolitanism. He then goes on to explain that “the challenge, then, is to take minds and hearts formed over the long millennia of living in local troops and equip them with ideas and institutions that will allow us to live together as the global tribe we have become” (Appiah 3). Cosmopolitanism itself is not a difficult nor tricky idea to wrap someone's head around, but rather the application of its ideals is the trial. He continues this thought later, and instead jumps into the history of cosmopolitanism as a follow up. He cites the “Cynics of the fourth century BC, who first coined the expression cosmopolitan, ‘citizen of the cosmos’” (Appiah 4), whose phrase can be considered somewhat ironic, but more so enlightening and buoyant. Citizen, which means an individual loyal to a city or state, and cosmos, which refers to the universe a whole. The phrase, “citizen of the cosmos” can be translated to “loyal to the world, or all humanity.” Appiah counties his maunder by invoking Christianity, who used the