Cosmopolitanism

In our everyday and political lives, agreeing on practices is more important than agreeing on principles. This underlies Americans’ willingness to be governed by the US Constitution, for example. While there may be some shared American values, for the most part Americans agree about some basic points of democracy without agreeing why.

Appiah claims that it is extremely difficult to change someone’s mind through reasoned arguments across boundaries because the reasons provided will be so steeped in our own judgments. What’s more, most of what we do in life does not spring from reason but from cultural routine. When we are spurred to change, it’s from a gradual shift in point of view, as when Appiah’s father’s perspective on male circumcision was changed as a teenager by pressure from girls. When changes happen in cultures, conversations may happen, but it isn’t agreement on values that creates the shift.

We can live together without agreeing on values, but we can also clash with one another because we do agree on values. Appiah reviews current conflicts between parties who actually agree on values: Palestinians and Israelis on the significance of Jerusalem, for instance, or pro-choice and pro-life activists on the value of human lives.