A Civility-Based Form of Rooted Cosmopolitanism

At its core, cosmopolitanism is the belief that all human beings, regardless of their social, political, cultural, or religious affiliations, are part of a single moral community. As such, it appears that cosmopolitanism is morally superior to, and practically antagonistic toward, nationalism and/or patriotism. However, three general challenges have been raised against this strong form of cosmopolitanism, which emerges from the Cynic-Stoic tradition and is encouraged by liberal writers such as Martha Nussbaum in her provocative essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” (1996). These challenges concern: the endorsement of a European-dominated abstract moral principle, the assumption of a homogeneous world culture, and the alleged unfeasibility of a world government. Rooted cosmopolitanism, initiated by Kwame Anthony Appiah (1996, 2005: chapter 6, 2006), by contrast, serves as a revised and moderate form of cosmopolitanism aimed at mediating our local attachments and cosmopolitan commitments. The various versions of rooted cosmopolitanism disagree about what these potential roots are and how they function. In this essay, I propose a civility-based form of rooted cosmopolitanism—or simply civility-rooted cosmopolitanism—developed through a cross-cultural dialogue between Andrew Linklater’s (a leading figure in the English School of IR) conception of global civility and the eminent Chinese Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming’s (1472–1529) doctrine of “innate knowledge” (liangzhi 良知). By defining global civility as the moral restraints against harming others and as respect for human dignity, I argue that rooting cosmopolitanism in the potential convergence of norms of civility concerns not so much Kantian Moralität as Hegelian Sittlichkeit. In other words, civility, by default, is embedded in lived ways of life—local practices and properties—that nonetheless support the equal moral worth of all humanity. Moreover, the convergence at stake does not homogenize culture; rather, it functions as an “overlapping global moral consensus” across diverse cultures. Finally, I contend that civility-rooted cosmopolitanism, so understood, may endorse a conception of “basic human rights” that, at minimum, “grants all people an equal right to protest against, and to be protected from, indefensible harm” within political communities. In this sense, it defends a global politics of “basic needs”—health, food, shelter, education—endorsed by both Nussbaum and Appiah, from a certain Confucian point of view.