Cosmopolitanism

Appiah describes global Muslim fundamentalists who, like cosmopolitans, share beliefs across local boundaries. In part a response to the experience of being a minority religion, this fundamentalism rejects traditional religious authority and emphasizes universal community. But “[u]niversalism without toleration” (142), Appiah says, has a bloody history in Christianity and can lead to violent intolerance of religious difference, although he notes that most Muslim fundamentalists are not violent. He points out the need to distinguish between forms of universalism.

The difference between cosmopolitans and counter-cosmopolitans boils down to more than tolerance because tolerance can be calibrated differently. Cosmopolitans value pluralism (the idea that many value systems can and should coexist) and fallibilism (the notion that our knowledge is imperfect and always subject to change upon receiving new information.) For counter-cosmopolitans, universalism implies uniformity, a shared identity with only trivial differences. Counter-cosmopolitans also fear conversation across difference as an invitation to error. Appiah points out that within religious traditions, like Islam, there are differing viewpoints on tolerance and conversation across difference, some of which are cosmopolitan.

Appiah describes a childhood memory: attending dinner at his Muslim cousins’ house for Eid al-Fitr, the feast for the last day of Ramadan.