Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers.Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah Kwame Anthony Appiah (1954-) is a Ghanaian-American philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. W.W. Norton & Company, January 2006 $23.95, ISBN ISBN abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-393-06155-8 Imagine a mirror falls and shatters. The mirror can reflect an entire image, but its shattered shat·ter v. shat·tered, shat·ter·ing, shat·ters v.tr. 1. To cause to break or burst suddenly into pieces, as with a violent blow. 2. a. pieces can only capture fragments of the whole. Now imagine the mirror is a metaphor for the world and each shattered piece represents a nation or community. Fragments have different shapes and fit into the mirror in different ways, yet each piece reflects a unique perspective that is necessary to creating a worldview world·view n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung. 1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. 2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group. . This is the basic premise behind Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. The book is relatively short but is large in its ideas, as the author explores "cosmopolitanism" a principle covered in his previous book, The Ethics of Identity, (Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities Press, 2005). Appiah suggests we go beyond tolerance and tribalism to accept responsibility for the impact we have on the lives of people we know, as well as the lives of people we don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. . Human life and the beliefs and practices that give each life significance have value. These ideas suggest that cosmopolitanism is an ideological approach to creating a new world morality, a method of ethics building in a global community. The world seems much smaller today than it did decades ago. Once-disparate societies have meshed into international networks of ideas and human groups. Advances in technology and communications have created global economies in which sales at a store in Idaho affect working mothers in China. Emails allow us to touch lives around the world instantaneously, and the reality of a global community is even more profound when looking at issues of health care and economic policy. With nations at war in a post-9/11 world, discourse on global ethics is not only necessary; but as Appiah suggests, it is also inevitable. --Reviewed by Aaron Bryant Aaron Bryant is a research fellow at the University of maryland University of Maryland can refer to:
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