Cosmopolitanism Quotes

“I am urging that we should learn about people in other places, take an interest in their civilizations, their arguments, their errors, their achievements, not because that will bring us to agreement, but because it will help us get used to one another.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“if relativism about ethics and morality were true, then, at the end of many discussions, we. would each have to end up by saying, “From where I stand, I am right. From where you stand, you are right.” And there would be nothing further to say. From our different perspectives, we. would be living effectively in different worlds. And without a shared world, what is there to discuss? People often recommend relativism because they think it will lead to tolerance. But if we cannot learn from one another what it is right to think and feel and do, then conversation between us will be pointless. Relativism of that sort isn't a way to encourage conversation; it's just a reason to fall silent.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“Once you start offering reasons for ignoring the interests of others, however, reasoning itself will usually draw you into a kind of universality. A reason is an offer of a ground for thinking or feeling or doing something. And it isn’t a ground for me, unless it’s a ground for you. If someone really thinks that some group of people genuinely doesn’t matter at all, he will suppose they are outside the circle of those to whom justifications are due.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes His little bit the whole to own.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“My people—human beings—made the Great Wall of China, the Sistine Chapel, the Chrysler Building: these things were made by creatures like me.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“temporizing).”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“obscurantism”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“It is a fine gesture to return things to the descendants of their makers—or to offer it to them for sale—but it certainly isn’t a duty. You might also show your respect for the culture it came from by holding on to it because you value it yourself.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“The mere fact that something you own is important to the descendants of people who gave it away does not generally give them an entitlement to it.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“The point of many sculptures and paintings, the reason they were made and bought, was that they should be looked at and lived with. Each of us has an interest in being able, should we choose, to live with art; and that interest is not limited to the art of our own “people.” Now, if an object acquires a wider significance, as part, say, of the oeuvre of a major artist, then other people will have a more substantial interest in being able to experience it and to the knowledge derived from its study. The object’s aesthetic value is not fully captured by its value as private property.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“Given these circumstances—and this history—it has been natural to protest against the pillaging of “cultural patrimony.”2 Through a number of declarations from UNESCO and other international bodies, a doctrine has evolved concerning the ownership of many forms of cultural property. It is that, in simplest terms, cultural property be regarded as the property of its culture. If you belong to that culture, such work is, in the suggestive shorthand, your cultural patrimony. If not, not.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“Once the governments of the United States and Mali, guided by archaeologists, created laws specifically aimed at stopping the smuggling of the stolen art, the open market for Djenné-Jeno sculpture largely ceased. But people have estimated that, in the meantime, perhaps a thousand pieces—some of them now valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars—left Mali illegally. Given these enormous prices, you can see why so many Malians were willing to help export their “national heritage.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“The modern market in African art, indeed in art from much of the global south, is often a dispiriting sequel to these earlier imperial expropriations. Many of the poorest countries in the world simply do not have the resources to enforce the regulations they make. Mali can declare it illegal to dig up and export the wonderful sculpture of Djenné-Jeno. But it can’t enforce the law. And it certainly can’t afford to fund thousands of archaeological digs. The result is that many fine Djenné-Jeno terra-cottas were dug up anyway in the 1980s, after the publication of the discoveries of the archaeologists Roderick and Susan McIntosh and their team. They were sold to collectors in Europe and North America who rightly admired them. Because they were removed from archaeological sites illegally, much of what we would most like to know about this culture—much that we could have found out by careful archaeology—may now never be known.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“Cosmopolitans think human variety matters because people are entitled to the options they need to shape their lives in partnership with others.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“But what he was teaching us is that what you see depends on what you believe. What it’s reasonable for you to think, faced with a particular experience, depends on what ideas you already have.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“In belief, as in everything else, each of us must start from where we are.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“mutatis mutandis,”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers