Let us take a crash course in diplomacy. I speak not of actual diplomats, mind you, though they could stand to learn as much as the fellow next door. We're talking here about a diplomacy for a new age, the—dare I use that tired cliché?—age of globalization. This diplomacy is essentially a set of principles for how to act and interact humanely in a world of six-and-a-half billion strangers, almost all of who will disagree with you about all sorts of hair-raising issues if given half the chance. This is serious stuff. I'm talking about the little disagreements that make the wheels of global society wobble and fall off and basically prove the essential discordance of life. Never mind world peace. If those pro-life Mormons in downtown San Jose can't even stand the sight of the lesbian Green Party couple in the flat upstairs, how can we ever expect peace and understanding to develop between people from entirely different countries and cultures?

This is precisely the conundrum that Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah tackles in his latest book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. The issues raised are apt, the conflicts undeniable; Appiah challenges his readers to break down traditional boundaries of communication in order to achieve the kind of international understanding that the Greek Cynics first wrote about millennia earlier. In a global era, Appiah argues, all human beings are primarily fellow citizens of the world, not the terrorists or fundamentalists more commonly featured in today's newspapers. A future era of international understanding is certainly a worthy goal, yet the feasibility of Appiah's idealism is less clear. Racial, cultural, religious, and a million other disputes have always, and probably always will, plague mankind. What new solution could this philosopher possibly offer for us?

In a word: cosmopolitism.

Cosmopolitism is, quite literally, a set of moral standards for living in a global world. Appiah admits straight off that these standards will be difficult to meet, and perhaps even hard to comprehend. If mutual understanding between conflicting parties were easy to achieve, people wouldn't have such a hard time achieving it. Appiah believes that his philosophy of cosmopolitanism, if adopted, would usher in an age of greater understanding between all people, neighbors and international strangers alike. But Appiah is no preacher of free love and universal tolerance. That would be moral relativism, something that he believes is as evil as bigotry and fanaticism. Likewise deplorable is the person who professes to love all countries and yet has no pride for his or her own. Though Appiah wants peace between countries, such peace should not come at the price of losing a healthy sense of nationalism and cultural pride. Appiah respects local customs and beliefs, challenging his readers to think about what these customs and beliefs mean to the people who hold them.

Indeed, some of the best writing in the book appears when Appiah describes his Asante family in Ghana. Because Appiah has the benefit of real experience, his stories about Ghanaian customs and beliefs are not simply novelty items, but human stories told to make a point. Appiah takes pains to show that Asante beliefs about spirits and witchcraft are as common and natural in Ghanaian society as Christian beliefs about God and angels in the United States. A cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world, would not be content to simply brush off Asante beliefs as "their way" and continue down his or her own, but would take the time to talk to a Ghanaian and try to understand how he or she thinks. Cosmopolitism is, above all, a philosophy of open conversation.

Of course, conversation only goes so far. What will really bring the people of the world together (eventually) is what Appiah calls the "primacy of practice." Put simply, it goes something like this: if you're exposed to a new thing long enough, it becomes natural, as long as it's not something inherently evil. The civil rights and women's movements in the United States are good examples of this, and Appiah unobtrusively notes that he believes the same will eventually happen with gay rights. Appiah points to his own Methodist, Cicero-reading father, who genuinely and unabashedly believed that the spirits of his ancestors assisted him on a daily basis, as a prime example of how the primacy of practice can bring together seemingly disparate beliefs in a freethinking man. People are wonderfully good at becoming accustomed to new things—including beliefs—as long as they remain open to them. Appiah dredges out, and refutes, the old saying, "From where I stand, I am right. From where you stand, you are right." If we were to accept it, he argues, then we would have no common ground on which to discuss our differing beliefs and reach a shared understanding of what is right.

This is the crux of Appiah's philosophy: he believes in concrete rights and wrongs that are shared by all people; hence the disdain for moral relativism. He's optimistic about the likelihood that people will, eventually, come to a set of shared beliefs if given enough exposure to each other. This is because he believes that all cultures already agree on certain moral universals. As he points out, most everyone accepts that universal wrongs, like murder, rape, and incest are, well, wrong. And most of us can very well distinguish between these sorts of absolute wrongs and the mere taboos of our local culture, like not being allowed to eat red peppers on Wednesdays or to shake a woman's hand when she is menstruating. It is the ability to make this distinction that allows one to sit down with someone from across the world and agree with him or her about what it means to be a good human being.

All of these arguments comprise roughly the first half of Appiah's book. At the halfway point, having already explained the essence of cosmopolitanism and given a few solid arguments for why it might succeed, Appiah turns his attention instead to showing what is not cosmopolitanism. This makes for a rather dramatic change in subject matter, though Appiah's narrative voice is slick enough that it hardly produces a discordant jar. While the arguments of the first half of the book are carried through on the strength of the many intriguing biographies, personal anecdotes, and other little stories that Appiah liberally intersperses with his points, the second half is more concerned with specific issues on which Appiah elaborates with some detail.

For example, he spends an entire chapter talking about "cosmopolitan contamination," the well-known phenomenon whereby McDonalds and Starbucks are taking over the world. This is done in order to soothe the fears of anticosmopolitans who fear that these chain stores will destroy local culture wherever they go. Appiah explains that cosmopolitan contamination is inevitable. Local cultures have always changed and adapted in response to the influence of invading foreigners (whether military or commercial). To resist natural cultural evolution would be anticosmopolitanism of the most futile kind. A second related chapter continues this argument as it pertains to "cultural property." Appiah points out that in a global culture, works of ancient and historical significance belong to everyone, not to any single country or culture. It is absurd for countries less than a century old to claim that all ancient artifacts unearthed within their borders are national property. "Whose culture is it, anyway?" Appiah asks rhetorically.

Cosmopolitanism concludes with a chapter entitled "Kindness to strangers," which I thought made for a rather fitting end. When all is said and done, this is a well-written book, but it's hardly likely to change global policy in the near future. Appiah's cosmopolitanism is a moral philosophy as much meant to benefit the person who holds it as it is meant to uplift global society. It's a vague feeling of curiosity and openness. Or something. I'm not really sure, but somehow I feel like I can become a better person now that I've read about it. Or at least become a more interesting one at cocktail parties, if I actually went to cocktail parties. And if I can't and I won't, well, at least I've learned some pretty interesting things about Asante culture.

Jenny Jin would like to recommend Moon Called by Patricia Briggs as an entertaining specimen of modern fantasy mixed with classic Victorian romance.