The introduction to “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers” defines two key threads of discourse to identify what I will label the “Cosmopolitanism-ness” of an object. The author then begins the book proper with a set of biographical allegories focusing primarily on the object Sir Richard Francis Burton. The first chapter ends with a response to the attacks on the WTC Towers in NYC on September 11, 2001.
The first thread of Cosmopolitanism and hence the first quality of objective Cosmopolitanism-ness, is the obligation of valuing all human life; even that beyond our “kith and kind” (Appiah, xiii), equally. The acceptance of equality in human value has a somewhat selfish extension. The second thread extends a willingness to examine the values of other humans, institutions or politic. One would not do this to adopt these values wholesale, but one would hope to learn and gain from the difference in texture between world-views.
The initial biographical allegory of Sir Richard Francis Burton rolls off of the page like Famous Dead White Guy 101. The chap seemed to have had a nearly divine gift with languages. I lost count at six. He was violent and apt to duel well with a saber. He translated texts, and he wrote an epic poem, a qasida. Going to Medina and Mecca on Hajj Burton was certainly not limiting his audacity. In the face of this polyglot our first day of studying Mandarin … I just have to say it reads like we are doing it wrong.
All of these facets of Burton seem perfectly inline with the newly defined attribute Cosmopolitanism-ness. W.H. Wilkins description of Burton is pull-quoted for effect, “A Mohammedan among Mohammedan, a Mormon among Mormons, a Sufi among the Shazlis, and a Catholic among the Catholics.” Burtons’ ravenous appetite for experience, language and literature is so dramatic that it is almost unseemly. Could Burton be showing signs of a proto-Cosmopolitanism-ness?
I knew it was coming before I read it. Burton was an abject racist. I don’t know how I knew it. I hadn’t ever read anything about Burton previously that I can recall. These days I just wait for the “but owned slaves” or “enjoyed taking family to lynchings” when I read about old white guys. His moral hierarchy for which he placed one ethnic group/skin-pigment-affiliation above another (although they were all below him) was based on his sophisticated classical education and his near maniacal life of experience. One cannot use the ignorant as an excuse for this man.
Oddly this predestined and typical flaw of his is the only thing that makes him approachable to me. This Anti-Zelig (Allen, 1983) is practically indiscernible to me from a modern action hero when presented with no flaws. His narrative needed a tragic if predictable negative. So it seems that Burton manages to both pass and fail the test for proto-Cosmopolitanism-ness at the same time. Perhaps we would be best describing his quasi-proto-Comsopolitansim-ness.
As an aside, I am glad the author is quoting Herodotus for power. He has been called the Father of (Western) History. A perhaps more reasonable sobriquet is The Father of Chronological Quasi-Historical Narrative. Croesus and Solon were both dead for hundreds of years before Herodotus was born. Any historic source for conversations between Croesus and Solon had been lost to time (xxix). Here Herodotus is story-telling rather than fact recital.
Works Cited:
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. (W.W. Norton, NYC, 2007) p. xiii.
Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey De S