“When anyone asked him where he came from, he said, ‘I am a citizen of the world.’ —Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes the Cynic”
“emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve—for example, the goal of national unity in devotion to worthy moral ideals of justice and equality”
“These goals, I shall argue, would be better served by an ideal that is in any case more adequate to our situation in the contemporary world, namely the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.”
“In a by now well-known op-ed piece in The New York Times (13 February 1994), philosopher Richard Rorty urges Americans, especially the American left, not to disdain patriotism as a value, and indeed to give central importance to “the emotion of national pride” and “a sense of shared national identity.” Rorty argues that we cannot even criticize ourselves well unless we also “rejoice” in our American identity and define ourselves fundamentally in terms of that identity. Rorty seems to hold that the primary alternative to a politics based on patriotism and national identity is what he calls a “politics of difference,” one based on internal divisions among America’s ethnic, racial, religious, and other sub-groups. He nowhere considers the possibility of a more international basis for political emotion and concern.”
“This is no isolated case. Rorty’s piece responds to and defends Sheldon Hackney’s recent call for a “national conversation” to discuss American identity.1As a participant in an early phase of that project, I was made vividly aware that the project, as initially conceived,2 proposed an inward-looking task, bounded by the borders of the nation, rather than considering ties of obligation and commitment that join America to the rest of the world. As with Rorty’s piece, the primary contrast drawn in the project was between a politics based on ethnic and racial and religious difference and a politics based on a shared national identity. What we share as both rational and mutually dependent human beings was simply not on the agenda.”
“to give support to nationalist sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hold a nation together, because it substitutes a colorful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right”
“Only the cosmopolitan stance of the landlord Nikhil—so boringly flat in the eyes of his young wife Bimala and his passionate nationalist friend Sandip—has the promise of transcending these divisions, because only this stance asks us to give our first allegiance to what is morally good—and that which, being good, I can commend as such to all human beings. Or so I shall argue.”
“We should recognize humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity, our first allegiance and respect.”
“The idea of the world citizen is in this way the ancestor and source of Kant’s idea of the “kingdom of ends,” and has a similar function in inspiring and regulating moral and political conduct.”
“One should always behave so as to treat with equal respect the dignity of reason and moral choice in every human being.”
“Stoics who hold that good civic education is education for world citizenship recommend this attitude on three grounds.”
“First, they hold that the study of humanity as it is realized in the whole world is valuable for self-knowledge: we see ourselves more clearly when we see our ways in relation to those of other reasonable people.”
“Second, they argue, as does Tagore, that we will be better able to solve our problems if we face them in this way. No theme is deeper in Stoicism than the damage done by faction and local allegiances to the political life of a group. Political deliberation, they argue, is sabotaged again and again by partisan loyalties, whether to one’s team at the Circus or to one’s nation. Only by making our fundamental allegiance that to the world community of justice and reason do we avoid these dangers.”
“Finally, they insist that the stance of the kosmou politês is intrinsically valuable. For it recognizes in persons what is especially fundamental about them, most worthy of respect and acknowledgment: their aspirations to justice and goodness and their capacities for reasoning in this connection.”