Cosmopolitanism

Kwame Anthony Appiah has defined the term "cosmopolitanism" as much as it has defined his career. Because he is associated with the term in so many ways it is hard to overstate the connection, it is difficult to know how to begin locating the term as an Appiah "keyword." To Appiah, cosmopolitanism is an inescapably ethical premise with two major strands: "the idea that we have obligations to others" beyond kinship and citizenship, and the idea "that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives"" (Cosmopolitanism xv). This essay examines how Appiah's work develops the term within theories of world literature and culture: resisting oversimplification of the term, engaging and anticipating a number of ways to further sharpen and specify the concept including rooted and feminist cosmopolitanism, and confronting "counter-cosmopolitan" forces at large in the twenty-first century such as neofundamentalism and anti-universalism.