Kwame Anthony Appiah
Cosmopolitanism
Ethics in a World of Strangers
“A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age.”—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s landmark new work, featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of “cosmopolitanism,” a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raised in Ghana, educated in England, and now a distinguished professor in the United States, Appiah promises to create a new era in which warring factions will finally put aside their supposed ideological differences and will recognize that the fundamental values held by all human beings will usher in a new era of global understanding.
“Elegantly provocative. . . . Appiah is so sure-footed and gracious in his explorations that one feels engaged, hopeful, advocating his cosmopolitan ambitions.”—Edward Rothstein, New York Times
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at Princeton University. His earlier books include The Ethics of Identity and Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. He lives in Pennington, New Jersey.
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