Kwame Anthony Appiah

But in a diverse society with legacies of inequality, that's easier said than done.

To maintain equality, should a society ignore the differences among people, or should it emphasize difference? Some philosophers, like Chandran Kukathas and Kwame Anthony Appiah, say that liberalism already protects people of all cultures.

If everyone has individual liberties, we don't need to do anything special for particular groups.

Thinkers in this tradition advocate for less intervention from the state, which is why some argue against measures like affirmative action, saying that it's an overcorrection that could create unfair advantages.

To keep peace and defend human rights everywhere, but still respect a culture's freedom to do things their own way.

To philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, cosmopolitanism really means universality plus difference.

He thinks being a citizen of the world means viewing cultural differences as a source of value, not conflict.

But it also means accepting the moral obligation to help people everywhere simply because they're people.

And in the UK, I'm the only black professor in philosophy right now.

Before me, there was Anthony Appiah.

So there's a good chance I was only the second.

I don't know if Appiah was the first, but I can't.

So as the editor of this, I, um, reading everyone's pieces, um, so many folks, as Hussein did, um, went to etymology and definition of the word.

So like, um, starts with Anthony Appiah going back to the Latin and Greek roots of civis and, uh, polis.

Polis mean, uh, for a city in Greek, but also then becoming the base of the word for polite, which is als- often confused with civility.

Um, but so many folks did that.

[laughs] Um, get to, get to the meaning.

[laughs] Um, but, uh, and I think the benefit of that, uh, with this particular book was that it laid bare that we come into this with a lot of assumptions, and it laid out those assumptions, and sometimes it would, uh, back up those assumptions.

So A- Anthony Appiah, um, who's just brilliant, is, is always looking for ways that we can sort of keep moving along, that, um, nothing will ever be perfect.

But, uh, pr- you know, one of the, um, uh, examples he used, um, from a British TV show was just, you know, a dad and, uh, his, his, uh, son's friend just like, "Okay, you know, we're not gonna agree, but it's okay.