美中全球议题对话项目

The root idea of cosmopolitanism is being a citizen of the world, in contrast to a citizen of a particular country or a member of a local community. Samuel Scheffler has formulated two conceptions of cosmopolitanism. The first is a doctrine about justice, holding that all humans are equal and should be treated equally, regardless of their actual citizenships. The second conception of cosmopolitanism is about culture and the self, opposed to the idea, among others, that people’s identity largely depends on their membership in a determinate cultural group. These conceptions are not entirely distinct, as Scheffler has noted, but they help us think more clearly about what aspect of cosmopolitanism we concentrate on. 

Although the idea of cosmopolitanism has a long history, traceable at least to Stoic philosophy, a more recent wave of scholarly interest in cosmopolitanism was ignited by Martha Nussbaum’s article “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” (1994). Against Richard Rorty’s February 1994 op-ed in the New York Times, which calls for patriotism in the United States, Nussbaum argued that that this emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and subversive of some of the worthy goals that patriotism sets out to serve. Nussbaum argued that such goals would be better served by the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world. The contemporary Confucian philosopher Tu Weiming is well-known for a similar view of the concentric circles in a person’s life. Although Tu’s view is not presented in the context of debates of cosmopolitanism and patriotism, his anthropocosmic view deals with similar issues and, in it, we find similar tensions and similar desires to bridge various levels of life that pull on us in different ways. Whereas Nussbaum’s inspirations come from Stoics and Kant, Tu’s is primarily grounded on neo-Confucianism. Nevertheless, Nussbaum and Tu share an important common ground, holding that external concentric circles are of higher value, and advocating for progressing from the inner to the outer circle. In doing so, however, they both fail to give adequate recognition of the intrinsic value of the inner circle and hence fall into a form of biased idealism. 

Life in the inner circles has its own good independently of other circles. Familism is a good on its own; so is patriotism. In families, we are born, get nurtured, and grow. In families, we exercise love and intimate human relationality. Thus, the family has or should have a special place in our hearts and in our lives. Similar things can be said of one’s country. Under normal circumstances, one’s country provides security and a stable environment for one’s existence, along with one’s family. Usually, it is also the main source of one’s cultural heritage and identity. For these reasons and more, families and countries are sources of important value to the good life. While what is morally good can be commended to all in the scope of humanity as Nussbaum maintains in the name of cosmopolitanism, it is not to be commended only this way. Family life is a moral good; so is patriotic life. These types of good exist independently of the good of cosmopolitanism.

In the literature of cosmopolitanism, authors often use words like “allegiance,” “loyalty,” and “love” to describe the need to adjust one’s attachment from one scope (e.g., country) to another (e.g., the human world). When a person transforms from being a patriot to a cosmopolitan, as advocated by Nussbaum, they switch the focus of their allegiance, loyalty, and even love, from their country to the entire humanity. One may hold that family love and love for humanity are two kinds of love. Different kinds of love can also compete with each other. One crucial feature of defining such attachment as allegiance, loyalty, and love is that they are not fixed, but nor is it unlimited. On the one hand, one’s allegiance and loyalty to/love for a country can grow or fade; one can expand allegiance, loyalty, and love from one country to more countries and even to the entire humanity. However, such moves are not unlimited. One cannot maintain allegiance and loyalty to everything, even including the whole universe, as one may sense in the picture of the unity between heaven and humanity (tianren heyi天人合一) by Tu Weiming. For allegiance and loyalty to everything amounts to allegiance and loyalty to nothing. Nor can one spread love to everyone and everything in the world without lessening the intensity of love to a particular person or social group in one’s inner circles of existence. 

This does not amount to saying that one should not execute these extensions of the concentric circles in life. It does suggest, however, that the theory is not complete without taking into consideration the cost in each step of the way. It may also suggest that it can be reasonable for some people not to go all out toward the phase of the unity with Heaven and humanity because it may be too costly for taking them too far away from their family, community, and country respectively. It is on such ground that one can justify more or less family-centered classic Confucianism against anthropocosmist neo-Confucianism, from which Tu Weiming’s version of the Confucian vision of life is drawn. The ideal life for classic Confucian thinkers is more localized, more centered on family life. In some sense, Tu’s shift from life mostly in the inner concentric circles to more and more outer concentric circles is in the same direction as Nussbaum’s shift from patriotism to cosmopolitanism.

Kwame Anthony Appiah has proposed “cosmopolitan patriotism.” Appiah differs from Nussbaum on two counts. First, for Appiah, a cosmopolitan does not have to renounce or overcome patriotism, as Nussbaum’s position appears to suggest. Appiah’s cosmopolitans remain connected to their respective cultures and countries. Appiah’s cosmopolitan patriots would accept their civic responsibility to nurture the culture and the politics of their homes. Yet, they would not confine their efforts for a good society within the bounds of their own country or prioritize their own country. Unlike Nussbaum, Appiah does not take people’s national identities as “a morally irrelevant characteristic.” For him, people’s local identities are significant because humans live best on a smaller scale. Meaningful lives take place in the many communities in which we live: the country, the county, the town, the street, the business, the craft, the profession, the family. Before reaching the level of a common humanity, all these circles are appropriate spheres for our moral concern. Appiah maintains that the freedom to create oneself requires a variety of local identities, including professional and other social identities. These affiliations can greatly enrich people’s existence as cosmopolitans. In a world of cosmopolitan patriots, as presented by Appiah, cultures are nurtured, localities are maintained, and national politics are sustained. 

So, taking into consideration how pursuing various values may incur costs one way or another, what should we do? Naturally, one may think of the need to balance the pursuit of various values in the good life. Obviously, different cultures, and even different people, may balance pursuits differently. I have called such balance in each culture “cultural configurations of values.” In dealing with competing values, each culture attempts to configure values in a way that it considers the most optimal combination or configuration. Different cultures may configure values differently. Ancient Chinese addressed the challenge of holding competing values together in the good life in term of he, usually rendered in English as harmony. 

The four virtuous practices are ren 仁 (human-heartedness), yi 義 (rightness, appropriateness), li 禮 (ritual propriety), and zhi 智 (wisdom); the five virtuous practices also include an additional sheng 聖 (sageliness), which is held to extend beyond humanity and to connect with heaven. Various virtues have their respective value and serve different needs in life and society. However, according to the author of the Wuxing, what makes these virtues most valuable is not each virtue alone, but a good balance and integration of various virtues in harmony. The harmonious practices of the four virtues are the human way. The harmonious practices of the five virtues are the heavenly way, adding a spiritual dimension to the human world. This important coordinating role of harmony makes it the virtue of the virtues. A good person not only possesses various good virtues respectively but also possesses and practices them in a harmonious way.

The author of the Wuxing did not elaborate on what precisely harmony among virtues is to be achieved. But we can understand harmony in the broad context of the conception of harmony in ancient Chinese philosophy. Harmony in this sense is to be understood not as an idealism of serene coexistence of different things; rather it is an active process of mutual accommodation, back-and-forth adjustment, and reciprocal finetuning of various demands towards an optimal configuration. It is conceivable that people may find different optimal configurations of value allocation in their lives. When the pursuits of these goods cannot be realized at the same time, one needs to strike a balance that one thinks appropriate. Even within the same cultural tradition, people may have varied focuses. In the end, each of us has to find ways to balance or harmonize these various pursuits in our own ways that we think most worthwhile. 

Classic Confucians, as prescribed by classic thinkers, take family life as the foundation of a meaningful life. Such a Confucian can actively contribute to communal life, be a passionate patriot, love humanity as a whole and be a cosmopolitan, and also be an anthropocosmist, feeling a deep connection with the universe. However, at the end of the day, their life is most deeply rooted in their family life. This line of argument poses a reason to be cautious with Tu Weiming’s move from inner to the outer circles of life towards oneness with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, because it risks making us less rooted in our families, local communities, countries, and even humanity. 

Returning to the “cosmopolitan” approach to scholarships in the United States mentioned at the beginning of this paper, scholarships in Singapore often prioritize Singaporeans, and scholarships for international students are often associated with a contract to work in Singapore after graduation. Hence, philosophically, Singapore’s scholarships are mainly justified on patriotic rather than cosmopolitan grounds. Even with a cosmopolitan approach to scholarships in the United States, many (or even most) scholarship awardees choose to work and make contributions to the United States. In effect, these unconditional scholarships also benefit the country. So, one could argue that, perhaps in an indirect way, patriotism is not entirely absent after all.

This essay is an excerpt of a longer paper, written as part of the author's participation in the Georgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues' U.S.-China Research Group on Cosmopolitanism, that will be published in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture.

Li Chenyang is a professor in the School of Humanities and served as the founding coordinator and then director of the philosophy program at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.