Cosmopolitan Patriots Author(S): Kwame Anthony Appiah Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol

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Cosmopolitan Patriots Author(s): Kwame Anthony Appiah Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 3, Front Lines/Border Posts (Spring, 1997), pp. 617-639 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344038 . Accessed: 08/02/2011 15:27

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http://www.jstor.org CosmopolitanPatriots

KwameAnthony Appiah

My fatherwas a Ghanaianpatriot. He once publisheda columnin the Pioneernour local newspaperin Kumasi,under the headline"Is Ghana WorthDying For?' and I knowthat his hearts answerwas yes.l But he also lovedAsante, the regionof Ghanawhere he and I both grewup, a kingdomabsorbed within a Britishcolony and, then, a regionof a new multiethnicrepublic: a once-kingdomthat he and his fatheralso both lovedand served.And, like so manyAfrican nationalists of his classand generation,he alwaysloved an enchantingabstraction they called Africa.

My thinking on these topics has evolved out of discussionsof multiculturalismover the past few years and was stimulatedprofoundly by an invitationto read and respond to Martha Nussbaum'sessay "Patriotismand Cosmopolitanism,"Boston Review, Oct.-Nov. 1994, pp. 3-6. I am particularlygrateful to Homi Bhabha, LawrenceBlum, RichardT. Ford, Jorge Garcia, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Amy Gutmann, Martha Minow, Maneesha Sinha, Charles Taylor,David Wilkins,and David Wong; and to those participantsin two conferences- "Textand Nation"at GeorgetownUniversity in April 1995, and the Annual Conferenceof the Associationof UniversityTeachers of Englishin South Africa(AUTESA), at the Universityof Natal, Pietermaritzburg,inJuly 1995 who commentedon earlierver- sions of these thoughts. Portions of this essay appeared in my essay "AgainstNational Culture,"in Textand Nation: Cross-DisciplinaryEssays on Culturaland National Identities, ed. Laura Garcia-Moreno and Peter C. Pfeiffer(Columbia, S.C., 1996), pp. 175-90. 1. This questionwas firstput to him byJ. B. Danquah,leader of the majoropposition party in KwameNkrumah's Ghana, in 1962. See Joseph Appiah,JoeAppiah: TheAutobiogra- phy of an African Patriot (New York,1990), p. 266. My father'scolumn is reprintedin Appiah, Antiochus Lives Again! (Political Essays of Joe Appiah), ed. Ivor Agyeman-Duah (Kumasi, Ghana, 1992).

CriticalInquirw 23 (Spring1997) <) 1997 by The Universityof Chicago.0093-1896/97/2303-0001$01.00. All rightsreserved. 617 618 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots

When he died, my sistersand I found a note he had draftedand neverquite finished, last words of loveand wisdom for his children.After a summaryreminder of our double ancestry-in Ghanaand in Eng- land he wrote:"Remember that you are citizensof the world."And he went on to tell us that this meantthat-wherever we chose to live, and, as citizensof the world,we could surelychoose to live anywhere we shouldmake sure we left that place "betterthan you found it.""Deep insideof me,"he went on, "isa greatlove for mankindand an abiding desireto see mankind,under God, fulfil its highestdestiny." The favoriteslander of the narrownationalist against us cosmopolitans is that we are rootless.What my fatherbelieved in, however,was a rootedcosmopolitanism, or, if you like, a cosmopolitanpatriotism. Like GertrudeStein, he thoughtthere was no point in roots if you couldn't takethem with you. "Americais my countryand Parisis my hometown," Steinsaid.2 My father would have understood her.

We cosmopolitansface a familiarlitany of objections.Some, for example, have complainedthat our cosmopolitanismmust be parasitic: where,they ask, could Stein have gotten her rootsin a fullycosmopolitan world?Where, in otherwords, would all the diversitywe cosmopolitans celebratecome from in a worldwhere there were only cosmopolitans? The answeris straightforward:the cosmopolitanpatriot can enter- tainthe possibilityof a worldin whicheveryone is a rootedcosmopolitan, attachedto a homeof one'sown, with its owncultural particularities, but takingpleasure from the presenceof other,different places that are home to other,different people. The cosmopolitanalso imagines that in sucha worldnot everyonewill find it best to stayin their natalpatria, so that the circulationof people amongdifferent localities will involvenot only culturaltourism (which the cosmopolitanadmits to enjoying)but migra- tion, nomadism,diaspora. In the past, these processeshave too often been the resultof forceswe shoulddeplore; the old migrantswere often refugees,and older diasporasoften began in an involuntaryexile. But whatcan be hateful,if coerced,can be celebratedwhen it flowsfrom the free decisionsof individualsor of groups.

2. Gertrude Stein, "AnAmerican and France"(1936), WhatAre Masterpieces? (Los Angeles, 1940), p. 61.

KwameAnthony Appiah is professorof Afro-Americanstudies and philosophyat HarvardUniversity. He is the author of, among other works,In My Father'sHouse: Afraca in thePhilosophy of Culture(1992) and, withAmy Gutmann, Color Conscious (1996), a pairof essayson race and publicpolicy. He is alsoan editorof Transition. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 619 In a worldof cosmopolitanpatriots, people would accept the citizen's responsibilityto nurturethe cultureand the politicsof theirhomes. Many would,no doubt,spend their livesin the placesthat shapedthem; and thatis one of the reasonslocal cultural practices would be sustainedand transmitted.But manywould move; and thatwould mean that cultural practiceswould travelalso (as they have alwaystravelled). The result wouldbe a worldin whicheach localform of humanlife was the result of long-termand persistentprocesses of culturalhybridization: a world, in thatrespect, much like the worldwe live in now. Behind the objectionthat cosmopolitanismis parasiticthere is, in anycase, an anxietywe shoulddispel: an uneasinesscaused by an exag- geratedestimate of the rate of disappearanceof culturalheterogeneity. In the globalsystem of culturalexchanges there are, indeed,somewhat asymmetricalprocesses of homogenizationgoing on, and thereare forms of humanlife disappearing.Neither of thesephenomena is particularly new,but their range and speed probablyis. Nevertheless,as forms of culturedisappear, new formsare created,and they are createdlocally, whichmeans they have exactly the regionalinflections that the cosmopol- itancelebrates. The disappearanceof old culturalforms is consistentwith a rich varietyof formsof humanlife, just becausenew culturalforms, whichdiffer from each other, are beingcreated all the timeas well.

Cosmopolitanismand patriotism,unlike nationalism, are both senti- mentsmore than ideologies.Different political ideologies can be made consistentwith both of them. Somecosmopolitan patriots are conserva- tive and religious;others are secularizersof a socialistbent. Christian cosmopolitanismis as old as the mergerwith the RomanEmpire, through whichStoicism came to be a dominantshaping force in Christianethics. (On my father'sbedside were Cicero and the Bible.Only someone igno- rant of the historyof the churchwould see this as an expressionof di- vided loyalties.)But I am a liberal, and both cosmopolitanismand patriotism,as sentiments,can seem to be hard to accommodateto lib- eralprinciples. Patriotismoften challengesliberalism. Liberals who proposea state thatdoes not takesides in the debatesamong its citizens'various concep- tionsof the good life are held to be unableto valuea statethat celebrates itself,and modernself-described patriots, here in America,at least,often desirea publiceducation and a publicculture that stoke the firesof the nationalego. Patriotsalso seem especiallysensitive these daysto slights to the nationalhonor; to skepticismabout a celebratorynationalist histo- riography;in short,to the criticalreflection on the statethat we liberals, withour instrumentalconception of it, arebound to engagein. No liberal shouldsay, "My country, right or wrong"because liberalism involves a set of politicalprinciples that a statecan fail to realize;and the liberalwill 620 K7lvameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots haveno specialloyalty to an illiberalstate, not leastbecause liberals value peopleover collectivities. This patrioticobjection to liberalismcan also be made,however, to Catholicism,to Islam,to almostany religiousview; indeed, to any view, includinghumanism, that claims a highermoral authority than one's own particularpolitical community. And the answerto it is to affirm,first, that someonewho lovesprinciple can also love country,family, friends; and, second,that true patriots hold the stateand the communitywithin which they live to certainstandards and havemoral aspirations for them,and thatthose aspirations may be liberal. The cosmopolitanchallenge to liberalismbegins with the claimthat liberalshave been too preoccupiedwith morality zlvithin the nation-state. John Rawls'sA Theoryof Justicen which began the modernreformulation of philosophicalliberalism, left the questionsof internationalmorality to be dealtwith later:how to developthe Rawlsianpicture in an interna- tionaldirection is a currentpreoccupation of professionalpolitical philosophy.The cosmopolitanis likelyto arguethat this orderof prioritiesis all wrong.3 It is all verywell to arguefor, fight for,liberalism in one country- yourown; but if thatcountry, in its internationaloperations, supports (or even tolerates)illiberal regimes elsewhere, then it fails,the cosmopolitan willargue, because it doesnot sufficientlyweigh the livesof humanbeings as such. Liberalstake it to be self-evidentthat we are all createdequal, thatwe eachbear certain inalienable rights, and then seemalmost imme- diatelyto becomepreoccupied with lookingafter the rightsof the local branchof the species,forgetting this is a cosmopolitancritique that theirrights matter as humanrights and thus matteronly if the rightsof foreignhumans matter, too.4 This is surelymore of an objectionto the practiceof liberalismthan to its theory(and, as I shallargue later, cosmopolitans have a reasonfor caringabout states, too). At the heartof the liberalpicture of humanity is the idea of the equal dignityof all persons:liberalism grows with an

3. Like most philosopherswho have thought aboutjustice recently,I have learned a great deal from reading Rawls.This essay obviouslydraws sustenancefrom his work and the discussionsit has generated;indeed, hisA Theoryof Justzce (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) was the most importantbook I read the summer I was deciding whetheror not to be a philosopher! I find it hard, however,to relate the position I am taking here explicitly to what I understandof his currentviews; and so, much as I would have liked to do so, I have found it best not to take them on. 4. We liberalsdon't all agree on where the rights come from. I favor an "antirealist" view in which human rights are embodiedin legal arrangementswithin and between states rather than one in which they somehow exist as antecedentsor are grounded in human nature or divine ordinance. o

CriticalInquiry Spring1997 621 increasingappreciation of the inadequacyof an older picturein which dignityis the possessionof an elite. Not everypremodern society made its elite hereditary,as the eunuchswho ran the Ottomanempire would haveattested. But it is only in the modernage that the idea has grown thatevery one of us beginslife with an equalentitlement to respect,an entitlementthat we may,perhaps, lose throughmisbehavior but thatre- mainswith us otherwisefor all our lives. This idea of the equal dignityof all personscan be cashedout in differentways, but it undergirdsthe attachmentto a democracyof unlim- ited franchise;the renunciationof sexismand racismand heterosexism; the respectfor the autonomyof individuals,which resists the state'sdesire to fit us to someone else's conceptionof what is good for us; and the notion of human rights rights possessedby human beings as such thatis at the heartof liberaltheory. It wouldbe wronghowever to conflatecosmopolitanism and humanism becausecosmopolitanism is notjust the feelingthat everybody mat- ters. Forthe cosmopolitanalso celebratesthe fact that thereare different localhuman ways of being;humanism, by contrast,is consistentwith the desirefor globalhomogeneity. Humanism can be madecompatible with cosmopolitansentiments, but it can also live with a deadeningurge to unl ormlty. A liberalcosmopolitanism of the sort I am defendingmight put its pointlike this: we valuethe varietyof humanforms of socialand cultural life;we do not wanteverybody to becomepart of a homogeneousglobal culture;and we knowthat this meansthat there will be localdifferences (bothwithin and betweenstates) in moralclimate as well.As long as these differencesmeet certaingeneral ethical constraints as long, in particular,as politicalinstitutions respect basic human rights we are happyto let thembe. Partof whatthe equaldignity of all personsmeans for the liberalis thatwe respectpeople's autonomous decisions for themselves,even when they are decisionswe judge mistaken-or simplychoices we wouldnot makefor ourselves.This is a liberalprinciple that fits well with the cosmo- politanfeeling that humancultural difference is activelydesirable. The requirementthat the staterespect basic human rights is, as a result,very demanding.It rulesout statesthat aim to constrainpeople beyond what is necessaryto enablea commonlife. Voluntaryassociations that are the productof autonomousaffiliations may demanda very great deal of people,as long as theyretain the rightof exit (a rightthat it is one of the state'sproper purposes to sustain).Thus I can bind myselfwith a vowof obedience,as long as I retainmy autonomy:as long as, thatis, if I finally decide that I can no longer obey,whoever I have bound myselfto is obligedto releaseme. Broadfreedom of contract and the state'sen- forcementof contractsfreely made is rightlyseen as a liberalpractice, 622 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots givingforce to the autonomousdecisions of free individuals;but not ev- erycontract can be enforcedby a statethat respects autonomy-in particular,contracts to giveup one'sautonomy.5 In short,where the state'sactions enable the exerciseof autonomous decision,my sort of liberalwill cheer it on. Cosmopolitanismcan also livehappily with this liberal individualism. The cosmopolitanideal-take yourroots with you is one in whichpeople are free to choosethe local formsof humanlife withinwhich they will live.

Patriotism,as communitarianshave spent much time remindingus recently,is aboutthe responsibilitiesas well as the privilegesof citizenship. But it is also and aboveall, as I havebeen suggesting,not so much a matterof action of practicalmorality as of sentiment;if thereis one emotionthat the veryword brings to mind it is surelypride. When the nationalanthem plays, when the nationalteam wins, when the national armyprevails, there is thatshiver down the spine,the electricexcitement, the thrillof being on the winningside. But patriotsare surelyalso the first to suffertheir country'sshame; patriots suffer when their country elects the wrong leaders or when those leaders prevaricate,bluster, pantomime,or betray"our" principles. Patriotism is about what the nineteenth-centuryLiberian scholar-diplomat Edward Blyden once so memorablycalled "the poetry of politics,"which is the feelingof "people with whomwe are connected."6It is the connectionand the sentiment thatmatter, and thereis no reasonto supposethat everybody in thiscom- plex, ever-mutatingworld will find theiraffinities and theirpassions fo- cusedon a singleplace. Myfather's example demonstrates for me, moreclearly than any ab- stractargument, the possibilitiesthat the enemiesof cosmopolitanism deny.We cosmopolitans can be patriots,loving our homelands(not only the stateswhere we wereborn but the stateswhere we grewup and the stateswhere we live);our loyaltyto humankind so vast, so abstract,a unity doesnot depriveus of the capacityto carefor livesnearer by.

5. A (lifetime)vow of obedience even if, because I receive somethingin return for my vow,it may look like a legal contract should be enforced only if enforcingit is consistent with respecting the autonomy of the person who made the vow. There are difficult issues here. On the one hand, moralpersons are historicallyextended in time, and treating someone as a single moral person requiresholding one's later "stages"responsible for the commitmentsof earlier "stages."On the other, there are moral limits on what people can bind their later selves to do: and one relevantlimit is that we may not bind our later selves to abstainfrom rationalethical reflection. (An enforceablelifetime vow of obedience looks awfullylike a contractto enslave oneself, which would presumablybe unconstitutionalin the United States.But it turns out to be quite hard to saywhat's wrong with offering"freely" to be a slave in return for some benefit, if you believe in freedom of contract.) 6. EdwardW. Blyden, Chrzstianity,Islam, and theNegro Race (London, 1887), pp. 226, 227. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 623

But my father'sexample makes me suspiciousof the purportedly cosmopolitanargument against patriotism (my fathers Ghanaian patriotism,which I wantto defend)that alleges that nationality is, in the words of a fineessay by MarthaNussbaum, "a morally irrelevant characteristic." Nussbaumargues that in "concedingthat a morallyarbitrary boundary suchas the boundaryof the nationhas a deep and formativerole in our deliberations,we seemto be deprivingourselves of anyprincipled way of arguingto citizensthat they should in factjoin hands'across the "boundariesof ethnicityand classand genderand race.a7 I can saywhat I thinkis wronghere only if I insiston the distinction betweenstate and nation.8Their conflation is a perfectlynatural one for a modern person even after Rwanda,Sri Lanka,Amritsar, Bosnia, Aserbaijan.But the yokingof nationand statein the Enlightenmentwas intendedto bringthe arbitraryboundaries of statesinto conformitywith the "natural"boundaries of nations;the idea thatthe boundariesof one could be arbitrary,while the boundariesof the other were not, is easy enoughto grasp,once we are remindedof it. Not thatI wantto endorsethis essentially Herderian way of thinking: nationsnever preexist states.9 A nation hereis a looseand unphilosoph- ical definition-is an "imaginedcommunity" of culture:or ancestryrun- ningbeyond the scaleof the face-to-faceand seekingpolitical expression for itself.l°But all the nationsI can thinkof that are not coterminous with statesare the legacyof older state arrangements as Asanteis in whathas become Ghana; as arethe Serbianand Croatiannations in what used to be Yugoslavia. I want,in fact,to distinguishthe nationand the stateto makea point entirelyopposite to Herder's,namely, that if anythingis morallyarbitrary it is not the state, but the nation.Since humanbeings live in political ordersnarrower than the species,and since it is withinthose political ordersthat questionsof publicright and wrongare largelyargued out anddecided, the factof beinga fellowcitizen-someone who is a member of the sameorder is not morallyarbitrary at all.That is whythe cosmopolitancritique of liberalism'sfocus on the stateis exaggerated.It is ex- actlybecause the culturalvariability that cosmopolitanism celebrates has cometo dependon the existenceof a pluralityof statesthat we need to takestates seriously.

7. Martha Nussbaum, "Patriotismand Cosmopolitanism,"Boston Review, Oct.-Nov. 1994, pp. 3, 6. 8. The tendency in the anglophone world to sentimentalizethe state by calling it the nation is so consistentthat if, earlier,I had referred to the state team or the state anthem, this would have made these entities seem cold, hard, and alien. 9. For discussionof Herder'sviews, see my In My Father'sHouse: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture(New York, 1992), chap. 1. 10. The expression"imagined community" was given currencyby BenedictAnderson, lmagined Communities:Refections on the Origin and Spreadof Nationalism (London, 1983). 624 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots

The nation,on the other hand,is arbitrary,but not in a sense that meanswe candiscard it in our moralreflections. It is arbitraryin the root senseof thatterm because it is, in the OxfordEnglish Dictionary's lapidary formulation,"dependent upon will or pleasure.''1lNations often matter moreto peoplethan states: monoethnic Serbia makes more sense to some thanmulticultural Bosnia; a Hutu(or a Tutsi)Rwanda makes more sense to othersthan a peacefulshared citizenship of Tutsiand Hutu;only when Britainor Francebecame nations as well as statesdid ordinarycitizens cometo caremuch about being Frenchor British.l2But noticethat the reasonnations matter is that they matterto people.Nations matter morally,when they do, in otherwords, for the samereason that football and opera matter:as thingsdesired by autonomousagents, whose autonomous desireswe ought to acknowledgeand take accountof, even if we cannotalways accede to them. States,on the otherhand, matter morally, intrinsically. They matter not becausepeople care about them but becausethey regulateour lives throughforms of coercionthat will alwaysrequire moral justification. Stateinstitutions matter because they are both necessary to so manymod- ern human purposesand because they have so great a potentialfor abuse.As Hobbesfamously saw, the state, to do its job, has to have a monopolyof certainforms of authorizedcoercion, and the exerciseof thatauthority cries out for (butoften does not deserve)justification even in places,like so manypostcolonial societies, where many people have no positivefeeling for the stateat all. Thereis, then, no need for the cosmopolitanto claimthat the state is morallyarbitrary in the waythat I havesuggested the nationis. There are manyreasons to thinkthat livingin politicalcommunities narrower thanthe speciesis betterfor us thanwould be our engulfmentin a single world-state:a cosmopolisof whichwe cosmopolitanswould be not figu- rativebut literalcitizens. It is, in fact,precisely this celebration of cultural variety-within statesas well as betweenthem that distinguishesthe cosmopolitanfrom some of the otherheirs of Enlightenmenthumanism. It is becausehumans live best on a smallerscale that we shouldde- fend notjust the statebut the county,the town,the street,the business, the craft,the profession,the familyas communities,as circlesamong the many circlesnarrower than the human horizonthat are appropriate spheresof moralconcern. We should, in short,as cosmopolitans,defend the right of othersto live in democraticstates, with rich possibilitiesof associationwithin and acrosstheir borders; states of whichthey can be patrioticcitizens. And, as cosmopolitans,we can claimthat right for ourselves.

11.Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. "arbitrary." 12. See, for example, LindaColley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992). CriticalInquiry Spring1997 625

The fundamentalthought of the cosmopolitanismI defend is that the freedomto createoneself the freedomthat liberalism celebrates- requiresa rangeof sociallytransmitted options from which to inventwhat we have come to call our identities.Our familiesand schools, our churchesand temples,our professionalassociations and clubs,provide two essentialelements in the tool kit of self-creation:first, they provide ready-madeidentities- son, lover,husband, doctor, teacher, Methodist, worker,Moslem, Yankee fan, mensch- whoseshapes are constitutedby normsand expectations,stereotypes and demands,rights and obliga- tions;second, they give us a languagein whichto thinkabout these iden- titiesand withwhich we mayshape new ones. Let me offeran exampleto give concretenessto these abstractions. Seventeenth-centuryEngland endowed English people with gender identitiesas menand as women;beginning with these ready-made identities, and drawingon a host of ideas aboutsex, gender,and sociallife, the urbanmen who createdthe Mollyculture of London- whichis one ancestorof modern WesternEuropean gay identities- shaped a new identityas a Molly,which interpreted sexual desire for men in a man as evidencethat he was,in certainrespects, a kind of woman.l3This is, of course,much too simple-mindeda story:what actually happened is that the Mollyidentity shaped a newgender option for peoplewho were mor- phologicallymale, an optionthat led themto expresstheir sexual desire for other men by feminizingthemselves, cross-dressing, and givingeach otherwomen's names. But,as this caseshould make absolutely clear, our sociallives endow us with the full richnessof resourcesavailable for self-creation:for even whenwe are constructingnew and counternormativeidentities, it is the old and the normativethat provide the languageand the background.A new identityis alwayspost-some-old-identity (in the now familiarsense of postin whichpostmodernism is enabled by the very modernismit chal- lenges).l4If, like some of our fellowmammals, we lived with a parent only long enough to be physicallyindependent, we wouldhave a hugely impoverishedrange of such conceptualimplements and institutional frameworksfor exploringour autonomy. These conceptualand institutionalcontributions are hugely important,but it wouldbe a philosopher'smistake not to mentionthat it is sociallife, shaped(but not determined)by the state- particularlyin the formof the modernmarket economy- thathas provided the material conditionsthat have enabled this exploration for a largerand largerpro- portionof people,especially in the industrializedworld.

13. See Rictor Norton, MotherClap's Molly House: The Gay Subsulture in England,1700- 1830 (London, 1992). 14. See my "Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?" CrsticalInquiry 17 (Winter 1991): 336-57. 626 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots

Amongthe resourcesthus made available in our contemporaryform of sociallife is somethingthat we can call a nationalidentity, a formof identitythat is centralto the possibilityof a modernpatriotism. And I wantto ask now how we are to understandnational identity and more particularlywhat, for a cosmopolitanpatriot, the role of a nationalcul- turemight be in it.

Here is one modelof the role of the nationalculture: we mightcall it the tribalfantasy. There is an ideal-which is to say imaginary type of a small-scale,technologically uncomplicated, face-to-face society, wheremost interactions are with people whom you know,that we usually calltraditional. In sucha societyalmost every adult speaks the samelan- guage.All sharea vocabularyand a grammarand an accent.While there willbe some wordsin the languagethat are not knownby everybody- the namesof medicinalherbs, the languageof some religiousrituals- mostare knownto all. To sharea languageis to participatein a complex set of mutualexpectations and understandings,but in sucha societyit is not only linguisticbehavior that is coordinatedthrough universally knownexpectations and understandings.People will share an understandingof manypractices marriages,funerals, other rites of passage- and willlargely share their views about the generalworkings not only of the socialbut also of the naturalworld. Even those who are skeptical aboutparticular elements of beliefwill nevertheless know what everyone is supposedto believe,and they willknow it in enoughdetail to behave veryoften as if theybelieved it, too. A similarpoint applies to manyof the valuesof suchsocieties. It may wellbe thatsome people, even somegroups, do not sharethe valuesthat are enunciatedin publicand taught to children.But, once more, the standardvalues are universallyknown, and even thosewho do not share themknow what it wouldbe to act in conformitywith them and probably do so muchof the time.In sucha traditionalsociety we mayspeak of its sharedbeliefs, values, signs, and symbolsas the commonc?4lture; not, to insiston a crucialpoint, in the sensethat everyone in the groupactually holdsthe beliefsand values,but in the sensethat everybody knows what theyare and everybodyknows that they are widelyheld in the society. Thereis a secondcrucial feature of the commonculture in the tribal fantasy:it is thatthe commonculture is, in a certainsense, at the heartof the cultureof everyindividual and everyfamily.l5 And by this I meannot just that,for eachindividual, the commonculture encompasses a signifi- cantproportion of theirculture-the sociallytransmitted beliefs, values,

15. I should hasten to add that it would be preposterousto claim that most of the societies that have been called traditionalfit anythinglike this pattern, though we might suppose that, for example, congeries of related hunter-gatherergroups, speaking closely related dialects, might have fit such a pattern. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 627

signs,and symbolsthat populatetheir mentallives and shapetheir be- havior but that,whatever other sociallytransmitted skills or beliefsor valuesor understandingsthey have, the commonculture provides a ma- jority of those that are most importantto them.lfiWhere the common cultureof a groupis also, in this way,at the heartof an individual'scul- ture, I shallsay that thatindividual is centeredon the commonculture; beingcentered on a commonculture means, in part,that those who are centeredon it thinkof themselvesas a collectivityand thinkof the collec- tivityas consistingof peoplefor whoma commonculture is central.l7 Now the citizensof one of those large "imaginedcommunities" of modernitywe call nationsare not likelyto be centeredon a common cultureof this sort.There is no singleshared body of ideasand practices in Indiathat sits at the heartof the livesof most Hindusand most Mos- lems; that engagesall Sikhsand excitesevery Kashmiri;that animates everyuntouchable in Delhi and organizesthe ambitionsof everyBrah- min in Bombay.And I am inclinedto saythat there is not nowand there has neverbeen a centeringcommon culture in the UnitedStates, either. The reasonis simple:the UnitedStates has always been multilingualand has alwayshad minoritieswho did not speakor understandEnglish. It has alwayshad a pluralityof religioustraditions, beginning with Ameri- can Indianreligions, and IberianCatholics, and Jews, and Britishand DutchPuritans, and includingnow manyvarieties of Christianity,Juda- ism, Islam,Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Bahai, and so on. Manyof these religioustraditions have been quite unknownto each other.More than this,Arnericans have also alwaysdiffered significantly even amongthose who do speakEnglish, from north to south and east to west,and from countryto city,in customsof greeting,notions of civilityand in a whole host of other ways.The notionthat whathas held the UnitedStates together historicallyover its great geographicalrange is a citizenrycen- tered on a commonculture is to put it politely not sociologically plausible. The observationthat Americans are not centeredon a nationalcul- turedoes not answerthe questionwhether there is an Americannational culture.Comments about Arnerican culture, taken as a whole,are rou- tine,and it wouldbe takingon a fairlysubstantial consensus to denythem all. Americanculture is, for example,held to be individualist,litigious, raciallyobsessed. I think each of these claimsis actuallytrue because

16. My dictionary- American Heritage Dictionary III for DOS, 3d ed. (Novato, Calif., 1993)-defines culture (in part) as "the totality of socially transmittedbehavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions,and all other products of human work and thought."The focus on social transmissionin definingculture is extremelyimportant. 17. I don't think we should require that people can'tbe mistakenabout exactly who is in the group or exactly what is in the common culture, but I think that the less they are right about either of these things the less it makes sense to speak of the group as really centered on a common culture. . . * .

628 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPat7iots whatI meanwhen I say thatAmericans are not centeredon a common cultureof the UnitedStates is not whatis deniedby someonewho says thatthere is an Arnericanculture; such a personis describinglarge-scale tendencieswithin American life that are not invariablyparticipated in by- and are certainlynot equallyimportant to all Arnericans.I do not meanto denythat these exist. But for sucha tendencyto be partof what I am callingthe common culture it wouldhave to derivefrom beliefs and valuesand practices(almost) universally shared and knownto be so; and for it to centerthe livesof Arnericans,a common culture would then have to be at the coreof the individualcultures of mostAmericans. I wantto deny that there is any commonculture that centers most Americansin this way. Atthe sametime, it wasalways true that there was a dominantculture in these UnitedStates. It was Protestant,it spokeEnglish, and it identi- fiedwith the high culturaltraditions of Europeand, more particularly, of England.This dominantculture included much of the commonculture that centeredmost membersof the dominantclasses-the government and businessand culturalelites but it wasfamiliar to manyothers who were subordinateto them.And it was not merelyan effect but also an nstrumentot tnelr c bomlnatlon.

The United Statesof America,then, has alwaysbeen a societyin whichpeople have been centeredon a varietyof commoncultures. Rec- ognizingthat we in Americaare not centeredon a nationalcommon cul- tureis, as I havesaid, consistent with recognizing that (with, no doubt,a few exceptions)American citizens do have a commonculture. What is interestingand importantis that for many Arnericansthat American core and, in particular,the attachmentto the constitutionalorder and the rightsit conveys is not whatcenters their lives. They supportthose institutions,they favorthem. Many people have come here preciselybe- cause they exist; but, still, these valuesare instrumentalin their lives. Whatthey desirecentrally, what shapes their lives, is whatthe American freedomsmake possible your experiencein a temple or mosqueor church;my life with my familyand the culturalriches of New YorkCity or Boston;her searchfor philosophicalunderstanding; their existence in a lesbiancommune. They need America-they willdefend it, especially, againstforeigners who deploreits materialismor its vulgarity but it is not at the heartof theirdreams. We have come to a crux: for if this is the situation,shouldn't the cosmopolitanwho is an Americanpatriot resent these fellow citizens for whomtheir country is a mereinstrument, a means,not an end? Myan- sweris no. Forthe Frenchand Americanrevolutions invented a formof patriotismthat allows us to love our countryas the embodimentof principles,as a means to the attainmentof moralends. It is true that the patriotalways values more than what the statemakes possible for me and CriticalInquiry Spring1997 629

mine,but if amongthe idealswe honorin Americais the enablingof a certainkind of humanfreedom, then we cannot,in consistency,enforce attachmenteither to the stateor to the principles.In valuingthe autono- mouschoices of free people,we valuewhat they have chosen because they havechosen it: a forcedattachment to a fine principledoes not diminish the principle,but the forcemakes the attachmentunworthy.

But if forceis not the answerthere is, of course,another possibility. Whynot argueout democraticallya common culture on whichto center our nationallife? My firstanswer is that we do not have to do so. The questionpresupposes that whatwe reallyneed is sharedcore values,a centeringcommon culture. I think this is a mistake.What I think we reallyneed is not citizenscentered on a commonculture but citizens committedto commoninstitutions, to the conditionsnecessary for a common life. Whatis requiredto live togetherin a nationis a mutualcommitment to the organizationof the state the institutionsthat providethe over- archingorder of our commonlife. But thisdoes not requirethat we have the samecommitment to those institutions,in the sense that the institu- tionsmust carry the samemeaning for all of us. Welive alreadywith examplesof this situationso familiarthat they are easily forgotten.The First Amendment,for example, separates churchand state.Some of us are committedto this becausewe are religious;we see it as the institutionalizationof a Protestantinsistence on freedomof conscienceor, because we are Catholicsor Jewsor Moslems, we do not wantto be pressedinto conformityby a Protestantmajority. Someof us are atheistswho wantto be left alone.We can live together withthis arrangement provided we all are committedto it for our different reasons. There is a usefulanalogy here with much massculture and other mass-producedgoods. People in Londonand in Lagos,in NewYork and NewDelhi, listen to MichaelJackson and drinkCoca-Cola. They exist, in part,as an audiencefor his work,as consumersof thatdrink. But nobody thinksthat whateither of these productsmeans in one place must be identicalwith whatit meansin everysite of its consumption.Similarly, the institutionsof democracy-elections, public debates, the protection of minorityrights have differentmeanings to differentpeople and groups.Once more, there is no reasonto requirethat we all valuethem in the sameway, for the samereasons. All thatis requiredis that every- bodyis willingto playthe game. A sharedpolitical life in a modernnation is not like the life of the tribalfantasy. It can encompassa greatdiversity of meanings.When we teachchildren democratic habits we are creatinga sharedcommitment to certainforms of socialbehavior. We can call this a politicalculture, if we like. But the meaningscitizens give to theirlives, and to the political withintheir lives, in particular,will be shapednot only(through the pub- 630 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots lic school)by the statebut alsoby familyand church,reading and televi- sion,and in theirprofessional and recreationalassociations. If American politicalculture is whatAmericans have in common,it is prettythin gruel. And,so I am arguing,none the worsefor that.

This sanguineconclusion will cause manypatriots to object."In a worldof changingchallenges, shared institutions (shared laws, for example)need interpretingto fit new situations(new cases). And in thinking about these new cases, doesn'tappeal have to be made to shared values,to substantialprinciples, even, in the end, to deep metaphysical convictions?''l8If we are to decide,say, whether to permitabortions, this argumentsuggests, we mustdecide first whether our sharedcommitment to the preservationof innocenthuman life a commitmentsome derive from the thoughtthat we are all childrenof a loving God appliesto the fetusin its firstthree months. For many thoughcertainly not all Americanswould oppose abortion if it wereuncontroversially clear that it wasthe killingof an innocenthuman being.l9 Don't our difficultiesin discussingthis questionflow, in part, from preciselythe lack of shared valuesthat I am arguingwe mustaccept? I am not sure that the answerto this last questionis yes. I suspect that the difficultiesabout abortion have at least as muchto do with the refusalof those who oppose it to acknowledgehow large a part views aboutthe controlof women'ssexuality indeed,of sexualityin general play in shapingthe intensityof some of their responses.But this, too, mayturn in the end on deep differencesabout metaphysical and moral questions;so, in the end, I agree that these will sometimeshave to be faced. It is here that the politicalvalues of the Americanrepublic must cometo havesome weight of theirown: our democratictraditions require us to engagerespectfully with our fellowcitizens who disagreewith us. In this sense,a politicalculture-the sharedcommitment to the political institutionsof the republic,the contentof a commoncitizenship is more thanan agreementto abideby the Constitutionand the laws,by thejudg- mentsof courts,by the decisionsof democraticallyelected lawmakers. It alsoinvolves a shared andevolving senseof the customarypractices of politicalengagement in the publicsphere. Now I admitthat thereare circumstancesin whichsuch a sense of commoncitizenship is unavailableto some.While Jim Crowlaws held in the AmericanSouth, it is hardto see whyAfrican Americans should have

18. This is an objectionCharles Taylor proposed to me in privateconversation. 19. Innocenthere should presumablybe understood,as it is in discussionsof just killing in warfare,to mean "posingno harm"and not "guiltless."It seems prettyclear that we can't blame the fetus even if its existence threatens the life or well-being of the woman who bears it. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 631 felt a commitmentto the customarypractices of the Americanrepublic (evenif they couldand did feel attachmentto mostof the principlesex- pressedin the Constitutionprecisely because they were at odds withthe practiceof Jim Crow).It is, of course,just becausecitizens are entitledto participationin the politicalculture of theirstate that the effectiveexclu- sion of blacksfrom voting was inconsistent with democratic political morality.It follows,I concede,that if the state'sactions so repudiateyou and if, as a result,you are unableto acceptand participatein the political culturein this sense,your fellowcitizens cannot expect you to conform to the law. Herethen is a pointwhere defenders of a centeringnational culture mightfind a new startingpoint. Why not admit,they might say, that you mustguarantee at leastthis much: that citizens are trained in (andimmi- grantstaught and requiredto assentto) the essentialsof the politicalculture?And if that is desirable,will it not be best achievedby centering Americanson a broadercommon culture: by centeringevery American on sharedvalues, sharedliterary references, shared narratives of the Americannation? Oncemore, to the firstquestion, I answeryes, sure.And to the second I say no. If the politicalculture carries some weight for us, we will acceptthe lawsand the termsof debatethat it entails,and we willstruggle withinthat framework for justice, as eachof us understandsit. If, as some claimis trueof abortion,there are central debates that we cannotresolve withinthis framework,this is certainlya problemwe wouldnot face if everyAmerican was brought up withthe samemetaphysical convictions. But constraininga quarterof a billionAmerican citizens into a life centeredon a commonculture culturalAmericanism, let us callit would be too high a priceto payfor the dissolutionof this conflict.If, afterall, the disputesabout abortion seem contentious, think how bitter would be the argumentif we insisted as the Billof Rightswisely insists we should not on a singlereligion (or even, moremodestly, a singleview of family life) to teachall our children. Americancitizenship, in otherwords, does requireus to acceptthe politicalculture; and, as the case of AfricanAmericans shows, it is importantthat that culture has builtinto it the possibilityof change.But if, as a resultof the processesof democracy,laws are passedthat are deeply repugnantto you as is perfectlypossible in a societynot centeredon a strongcommon culture you maywell reachthe pointwhere you con- siderthat you havebeen, in the phraseI used earlier,repudiated by the state.The priceof havingno commonculture to centerour societyis that possibility;but the cosmopolitanpatriot believes that the creationof a commonculture rich enough to excludethis possibilitywould exact a higherprice. This is somethingthat many in the world Catholicbishops in Ireland,Buddhist politicians in SriLanka, ayatollahs in Iran,Commu- nist Partymembers in China do not believe.They want to live in socie- 632 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots ties whereeveryone has a commoncultural center, where every political disputecan be resolvedbecause everyone has been constrainedto accept a commonsense of the meaningof life.The politicalculture of theAmeri- can stateexcludes this visionbecause it is (in the understandingof the termlong forgottenin our publicdebates) a liberalpolitical culture, one that valuesindividuals and celebrates,with cosmopolitanism,the great varietyof whatindividuals will choose when given freedom. There mustbe somewho believethe rhetoricabout the murderof infantsthat (in my judgment)pollutes the debateabout abortion.For them,perhaps, religious duty transcends the demandsof citizenship.But I do not see thatone can resolvea disagreementwith them by findinga commonmetaphysics of the personon whichto centerthe next generation of Americans;it is preciselyour disagreementsabout that which ac- countfor someof the intensityof the debate. Surely,however, most of those who believeabortion should not be legaldo not reallythink that the abortionof a first-trimesterfetus is really exactlythe same as the killingof a livingchild. If theydid believethat, they wouldsurely not even contemplateexemptions for rape and incest,for even thoseof us who favorlaws allowing choice would not favora rape- exceptionfor infanticide.Like many who favorchoice, I believe,as I say, that some of the intensityof the debateabout abortion has to do with attitudesabout sexuality and womenthat the feminismof the last few decadesand the practicalsuccesses of the womenssmovement have chal- lenged. I thinkthis is a fair thing to arguein the debatesabout choice. But I also think the politicalculture we have inheritedin Americare- quiresus to take on their meritsthe argumentsof those who oppose choice,and, where the disagreementsflow from fundamentally different visionsof the humangood, I do not see thatit profitsus to denyor ignore this fact. So, unlikemany who favor the liberalismof our Constitutionand the politicalculture that surroundsit, I do not favorsilence in the public sphereabout the religiousviews that underliesome of our deepestdis- agreements.Our laws and customsrequire us not to imposereligious ideason eachother, but theyalso encourage us to debateamong equals. Finally,we shouldbe skeptical,for historicalreasons, about the creationof a nationalcommon culture to centerour lives;for us to center ourselveson a nationalculture, the statewould have to takeup the cud- gels in definingboth the contentof that cultureand the means of its dissemination.I have already argued that this would create deep schisms in our nationallife. Buthistory suggests an evendeeper difficulty. Collec- tive identitieshave a tendency,if I may coin a phrase,to go imperial, dominatingnot only people of other identitiesbut the other identities whoseshape is exactlywhat makes each of us whatwe individuallyand distinctivelyare. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 633

In policingthis imperialismof identity an imperialismas visiblein nationalidentities as anywhereelse it is crucialto rememberalways that we are not simplyAmericans or Ghanaiansor Indians or Germans but that we are gay or straightor bisexual,Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist,Confucian and also brothersand sisters;parents and children;liberals, conservatives, and leftists;teachers and lawyersand auto- makersand gardeners;fans of the Padresand the Bruins;aficionados of grungerock and amateursof Wagner;movie buffs; PBS-aholics, mystery readers;surfers and singers;poets and pet lovers;students and teachers; friendsand lovers.The statemakes much possible for all of us, and we owe it at least the consistentsupport to whichit is entitledin virtueof thosepossibilities; it wouldbe a grandirony if the pricewe paid for the freedomthe statecreates was to allowit to subjectus to new tyrannies. This is an especiallypowerful thought here in the UnitedStates. For so manyhave loved America, in part,exactly because it hasenabled them to choose who they are and to decide, too, how centralAmerica is in their chosenidentity. Those of us who are Americansnot by birthbut by election,and who love this countryprecisely for thatfreedom of self- invention,should not seek to compelothers to an identitywe ourselves celebratebecause it wasfreely chosen. I havebeen arguing,in essence,that you canbe cosmopolitan celebratingthe varietyof humancultures; rooted loyalto one localsociety (or a few) that you count as home; liberal convincedof the value of the individual;and patriotic celebratingthe institutionsof the state(or states)within which you live.The cosmopolitanismflows from the same sourcesthat nourishthe liberalism,for it is the varietyof humanforms of life thatprovides the vocabularyof the languageof individualchoice. And the patriotismflows from the liberalismbecause the statecarves out the spacewithin which we explorethe possibilitiesof freedom.For rooted cosmopolitans,all this is of a singlepiece. But I havealso been arguingthat we do not need to insistthat all of our fellowcitizens be cosmopolitans,or patriots,or loyalto the nation; we need themonly to sharethe politicalculture of the state.And sharing that politicalculture does not requireyou to be centeredon it and cer- tainlydoesn't require you to be centeredon a culturewider than the political.20What is essentialis only thoughthis is, in fact,a greatdeal that all of us sharerespect for the politicalculture of liberalismand the constitutionalorder it entails. This formulacourts misunderstanding: for the wordliberal has been

20. I think that in the United States that grasp of the political culture probablyre- quires knowing (some) English. But since English, like the rest of the political culture, needn'tcenter your life, speakingand even loving other languagesis consistentwith partici- pating in the politicalculture. 634 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots both divestedof its originalcontent and denieda solidnew meaning.So let me remindyou againthat, for me, the essenceof this liberalculture lies in respectfor the dignity and autonomyof individualpersons.2l Thereis muchto be saidabout the meaningof autonomyand of dignity; thereis much to be said, too, abouthow, in practice,individuals are to live withother values, political and not, thatwe cherish.This is not the placefor thatexploration. But let me sayone thing:since I believethat the statecan be an instrumentfor autonomyI do not sharethe current distastefor the statethat drivesmuch of whatin Americais now called conservatism;and so I am often a liberalin the more colloquialsense as well. The point,in sum,is this:it is importantthat citizens should share a politicalculture; it is not important(in America,without massive coer- cion, it is not even possible)that the politicalculture be importantto all citizens,let alonethat it matterto all of them in the sameway. (Indeed, one of the greatfreedoms that a civilizedsociety provides is the freedom not to preoccupyyourselfwith the political.)Only politicians and political theoristsare likelyto thinkthe best stateis one whereevery citizen is a politician(and when Western theorists think this, it maybe becausethey areoverinfluenced by the viewof politicstaken by somein the smallself- governingtown of Athensin the fifthcentury B.C.E.). Not beingpolitical is not the sameas beingunsociable (though that is somethingwe shouldbe legallyfree to be also!).Many people express concernfor theircommunities by actingthrough churches and charities, and, as observersof Americasince Tocqueville have pointed out, thisis a distinctivelyAmerican tradition. Part of whatmakes this traditionattrac- tive is that it reflectselective affinities rather than state-imposedobli- gation.

You will notice, now,that I havebeen arguingfor a form of state and of societythat is prettyclose to the modelof a multiculturalliberal democracy,and, you mayask, Where now is yourmuch-vaunted cosmopolitanism?After all, the worldis full of people-Chinese partyleaders, Hindunationalists, British Tories who insistprecisely on centeringall

21. Despite recent communitarianarguments to the contrary,I do not think that the liberalrespect for autonomyis inconsistentwith recognizingthe role of society in creating the options in respectto whichfree individualsexercise their freedom.As Taylorhas argued so powerfully,it is in dialogue with other people'sunderstandings of who I am that I de- velop a conception of my own identity;and my identity is cruciallyconstituted through conceptsand practicesmade availableto me by religion,society, school, and state and medi- ated to varyingdegrees by the family.But all of this can, in my view,be acceptedby someone who sees autonomyas a centralvalue. See my "Identity,Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societiesand SocialReproduction," in Multiculturalism:Examining "ThePolitics of Recognition," ed. Amy Gutmann(Princeton, NJ., 1996), pp. 149-63. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 635 citizenson a single culturethat extendsbeyond the narrowlypolitical. t)o I not wantto makeallowances for this option,too? WhenI firstthought about this question,T was temptedto bite the bullet and say yes. But I didn'tbelieve it; and I now understandwhy I must answerno. Cosmopolitanismvalues human varietyfor what it makespossible for free individuals,and some kindsof culturalvariety constrainmore than they enable. In otherwords the cosmopolitantshigh appraisalof varietyflows from the humanchoices it enables,but variety is not somethingwe valueno matterwhat.22 There are othervalues. You canhave an enormousamount of diversitybetween societies, even if they areall, in somesense, democratic.23 But the fundamentalidea thatevery societyshould respecthuman dignityand personalautonomy is more basicthan the cosmopolitanlove of variety;indeed, as I say,it is the au- tonomythat variety enables that is the fundamentalargument for cosmo-

* . po ltanlsm. A societycould in theorycome to be centeredon a singleset of values withoutcoercion. I mightbe skepticalabout the virtuesof sucha homog- enizedsociety as a placefor me to live (evenif the cultureit wascentered on was in some sense mine) I would thinkit mightrisk manycultural andeconomic and moral perils because it mightrequire in the end a kind of closingoneself off fromthe restof the world.But those in sucha society wouldno doubthave things to say in response-or mightrefuse to dis- cussthe matterwith me at all-and, in the end, theymight well find their considerationsmore weightythan mine. Freelychosen homogeneity, then, raisesno problemsfor me; in the end, I wouldsay good luck to them. But whatBritish Tories and Hinduchauvinists and Maoistparty bosseswant is not a societythat chooses to be uniformSbut the imposition of uniformity.That the cosmopolitanpatriot must oppose. One finalcorollary of the groundingof cosmopolitanismin individual freedomis worthinsisting on. Cosmopolitansvalue cultural variety, but we do not askother people to maintainthe diversityof the speciesat the priceof theirindividual autonomy. We can't require others to provide us with a culturalmuseum to tour throughor to visiton satellitetelevi- sion'sendless virtual safari; nor can we demandan assortmentof Shangri- Lasto enlargethe rangeof our ownoptions for identity.The optionswe need in orderfor our choicesto be substantialmust be freelysustained, as mustthe humanvariety whose existence is, for the cosmopolitanan endlesssource of insightand pleasure.But, as I saidat the start,there is

22. This is one reason why I think it is not helpful to see cosmopolitanismas express- ing an aestheticideal. 23. There is no reason to think that every society needs to implement the idea of popular choice in the same way;so different democraticinstitutions in different societies are consistentwith the basic respectfor autonomy,too. 636 KzlvameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots no ground for thinkingthat people are rushingtoward homogeneity, and, in fact,in a worldmore respectful of humandignity and personal autonomysuch movement toward homogeneity as thereis wouldproba- bly slowdown.

Skepticismabout the genuinelycosmopolitan character of the viewI havebeen defendingmay flow in partfrom the thoughtthat it seemsso mucha creatureof Europeand its Enlightenment.24So it maybe as well to insistin closing,as I did at the start,that my own attachmentto these ideas comes, as much as anything,from my father,who grew up in Asante,at a time when the independenceof its moralclimate from that of EuropeanEnlightenment was extremelyobvious. Of course,he also wenton to livein Londonfor manyyears and acquiredthere the training of an Englishlawyer; and, of course,the schoolhe wentto in Ghanawas a Methodistschool, a colonialvariant of the Englishboys' public school, wherehe wastaught to thinkmorally through Cicero and Caesaras much as throughthe New Testament.It would be preposterousto claim,in short,that he cameto his cosmopolitanismor his patriotismor his faith in humanrights and the ruleof lawunaffected by Europeancultural tra-

. . ( ,ltlons. But it wouldbe equallyfatuous to deny that the view he arrivedat hadroots in Asante(indeed, as one travelsthe world,reviewing the liberal nationalismsof SouthAsia and Africa in the midcentury,one is strucknot onlyby theirsimilarities but alsoby theirlocal inflections). Two things, in particular,strike me aboutthe localcharacter of the sourceof my father's increasingcommitment to individualrights: first, that it grewout of expe- rienceof illiberalgovernment; second, that it dependedon a senseof his owndignity and the dignityof his fellowcitizens that was almost entirely the productof Asanteconceptions. The firstpoint aboutexperience is crucialto the casefor liberalism. It is the historicalexperience of the dangersof intolerance religiousintolerance in Europein the seventeenthcentury, for example,for Locke;racial intolerance in the colonialcontext for Gandhi(or for my father) thatoften lies behindthe skepticismabout the state'sinterven- tions in the lives of individualsthat itself underliesmuch liberalsenti- ment. My father saw the colonialstate's abuses of his fellowsand, in particular,the refusalto pay themthe respectthat was their due; he was imprisoned,later, by KwameNkrumah, without trial (and then released aftera yearand a halfin detentionwith as littleexplanation as whenhe

24. I should explicitly record my opposition to the view that this origin in any way discredits these ideas, either for non-Europeansor, for that matter,for Europeans.The issues I want to explore have to do with the ways in which these views can be rooted in differenttraditions. I am not interestedin the nativistproject of arguingfor these principles in the name of authenticallyAsante (or African)roots. The issues raised in the following paragraphsare thus historical,not normative. CriticalInquiry Spring 1997 637 wasarrested). As a lawyerand a memberof the opposition,he travelled Ghanain the yearsafter independencedefending people whoserights werebeing abused by the postcolonialstate. The politicaltradition of liberalismis rootedin theseexperiences of illiberalgovernment. That liberalrestraint on governmentrecommends itselfto peoplerooted in so manydifferent traditions is a reflectionof its graspof a truthabout human beings and aboutmodern politics. Just as the centralityof murderousreligious warfare in the period leadingup to Locke'sTreatises placed religious toleration at the core of Locke'sunderstanding of the liberalismhe defended,so the primeplace of the persecutionof politicaldissenters in the postcolonialexperience of tyrannymade protection of politicaldissent central to my father'sliberal- ism.25(My father worried little aboutthe state'sentanglement with religion;once, I remember,as the nationaltelevision came to the end of its broadcastday, my fathersang along with the nationalhymn that they playedsome evenings,the religioustwin of the more secularnational anthemthat they playedon others."This would be a much betterna- tionalanthem," he saidto me. And I replied,ever the good liberal,"But the anthemhas the advantagethat you don'thave to believein God to singit sincerely.""No one in Ghanais sillyenough not to believein God," my fatherreplied.26 And, now, I think he was right not to be worried aboutthe entanglement;there is no historyof religiousintolerance in Ghanaof the sort that makesnecessary the separationof churchand state;a genialecumenism had been the normat leastuntil the arrivalof AmericanTV evangelism.) But moreimportant yet, I think,to my father'sconcern with individual humandignity was its rootsin the preoccupationof freeAsante citizens both men and women with notions of personaldignity, with respectand self-respect.Treating others with the respectthat is theirdue is a centralpreoccupation of Asantesocial life, as is a reciprocalanxiety aboutloss of respect,shame, disgrace.27 Just as Europeanliberalism-

25. Such historicalcontext is important,I think, because, as MichaelOakeshott once observed,political education should instil in us "a knowledge,as profound as we can make it, of our traditionof politicalbehaviour" (Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education," "Ratio- nalismin Politics"andOtherEssays [New York,1962], p. 128). We might say:liberal institutions are to be recommended,in part, as a practicalresponse to the circumstancesof modern politicallife. 26. My father'sthought clearlywasn't so much that there aren'tany atheistsin Ghana but that their views don'tmatter. Locke, of course, agreed:"Those are not at all to be toler- ated who deny the being of a God. Promises,covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society,can have no hold upon an atheist.The takingaway of God, though but even in thought, dissolvesall" (John Locke, "ALetter ConcerningToleration," Political Writingsof John Locke,ed. DavidWootton [New York, 1993], p. 426). 27. There are scores of proverbson this theme in Bu Me Be: The Proverbsof the Akan, the more than seven thousandAkan proverbsthat PeggyAppiah, my mother,will be pub- lishing, with my assistance,in 1998. 638 KwameAnthony Appiah CosmopolitanPatriots and democraticsentiment-grew by extending to every man and (then) woman the dignity that feudal society offered only to the aristocracy,and thus in some sense presupposed aspects of that feudal understanding of dignity, so Ghanaian liberalism-at least in my father'sform-depends on the prior grasp of concepts such as animaonyam(respect). It is clear from well-knownAkan proverbsthat respect was preciselynot something that belonged in the past to everybody:Agya Kra ne Agya Kwakyereme, emu biaramu nni animaonyam(Father Soul and Father Slave Kyereme,neither of them has any respect; that is, whatever you call him, a slave is still a slave). But just as dignitas,which was once, by definition, the property of an elite, has grown into human dignity, which is the property of every man and woman, so animaonyamcan be the basis of the respect for all others that lies at the heart of liberalism.28Indeed, dignitasand animao- nyamhave a great deal in common. Dignitas,as understood by Cicero, reflects much that was similarbetween republican Roman ideology and the views of the nineteenth-centuryAsante elite: it was, I think, as an Asante that my father recognized and admired Cicero, not as a British subject.

"In the course of my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians etc.; I even know, thanks to Montesquieu,that one can bePersian; but man I have never met."29So wrote Joseph de Maistre-no friend to liberalism-in his Considerationssur la France.It is a thought that can, ironically, be made consistent with a liberal cosmopolitanism;a thought that may even lead us to the view that cosmopolitanismis, in certainways, inconsistent with one form of humanism. For a certain sort of humanist says that nothing human is alien; and we could gloss this as saying that a humanist respects each human being as a human being. Maistreis suggesting that we never really come to terms with anybody as a human because each actual person we meet, we meet as a French person, or as a Persian;in short, as a person with an identity far more specific than fellow human.30 Exactly,the cosmopolitansays. And a good thing too. But we do not have to deal decently with people from other cultures and traditions in spite of our differences; we can treat others decently, humanely,through our differences. The humanist requires us to put our differences aside; the cosmopolitan insists that sometimes it is the differences we bring to the

28. The European history is taken up in Taylor, Sourcesof the Self: The Making of the ModernIdentity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). 29. Joseph de Maistre, Conside'rationssur la France, 3d ed. (1797; Paris, 1821), pp. 102-3: 'tJ'aivu, dans ma vie, des FranZcois,des Italiens, des Russes, etc.; je sais meme, graces a Montesquieu, qu'onpeut e^trePersan: mais quant a l'homme,je declare ne l'avoir rencontre de ma vie." 30. If you communicate on the internet, think about how difficult it is not to imagine your email correspondents (who present, after all, only strings of unspoken words) as hav- ing, for example, a specific race, gender, and age. CriticalInquiry Spring1997 639 tablethat makeit rewardingto interactat all. That is, of course,to concede thatwhat we sharecan be important,too; though the cosmopolitan willremind us thatwhat we sharewith othersis not alwaysan ethnona- tionalculture: sometimes it willjust be thatyou and I a Peruvianand a Slovak-both like to fish, or have read and admiredGoethe in transla- tion, or respondedwith the same sense of wonderto a postcardof the Parthenon,or believe,as lawyerswith very different trainings, in the ideal of the rule of law. Thatis, so to speak,the anglophonevoice of cosmopolitanism.But, in the cosmopolitanspirit, let me end with a similarthought from my father's,no doubt less familiar,tradition: Kuro korv mu nni nyansa,our proverbsays. In a singlepolisthere is no wisdom.31

31. Kurois usually translatedas town,but towns were relativelyself-governing in the Asantepast, so pol?sseems a translationthat gets the right sense.