This Bob Jones Memorial Lecture was delivered at the 2009
International Affairs Conference, held on Star Island, Isles of Shoals,
New Hampshire, on July 18, 2009.
Let me begin with a simple claim. We live today in a globalized world that
challenges us morally. While globalization may be a fuzzy concept, globalization
is indeed something very real, something we can see and measure, and it is certainly
a force that shapes our choices and expectations. Globalization challenges us
in terms of our identity, our responsibilities, and our ways of thinking about
government and accountability.
Intense flows of capital, of information, of people, and of pollution raise
profound issues of human concern and human values. Just think of the money you
hold in your hand and the air that you breathe. Think of the clothes you wear
and the food you eat. If you do not understand these basic goods as in some
way connected to the global economy and the global environment, you are missing
an essential fact.
Let me give you a familiar narrative of globalization. Here is how Noah
Bopp, the director of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership, makes
this point about our deep connection to global forces. He hands each of his
students a piece of chocolate—usually a Hershey's Kiss or a Milky Way bar.
His first question: Where does this chocolate come from? The answer: the world's
greatest cocoa producer is the Ivory Coast (followed by Ghana, Indonesia, and
Nigeria). Cocoa and other food products frequently come from far away, under-developed
places. His second question: How did this chocolate get here? Answer: It was
harvested on farms with varying labor standards. Some of these labor standards
would be familiar and acceptable to us, but others would reveal practices including
child labor, and still others would seem exploitive, perhaps even approaching
slave-labor practices. Finally, the chocolate needs to be transported across
the ocean, subject to trade rules, tariffs, and taxes before it is available
to buy. So, question three: Who makes these economic arrangements and rules?
Answer: legislators (official representatives of governments) and lobbyists
(representatives of industry, labor, and other interest groups). When these
rules are decided, some benefit and some pay. As you can see, there is a lot
that has to happen before you eat that piece of chocolate. Many choices are
made. And many of these choices are connected to the global economy.
Ethics is a systematic reflection on choices. Ethics is the response to Socrates
first question: How should one live? It is about the values and standards we
use to stake our claims and make our judgments. Of course the first target of
our analysis is the individual: single actors making decisions. But ethics is
also about structures. Ethical inquiry empowers us to evaluate morally the social
arrangements and institutions that define the contexts within which we make
choices. In the example I just gave, we can evaluate individual choices about
chocolate production and consumption; but we can also evaluate the arrangements
that produce the range of choices available to us.
Let me give you a scenario as example of this expansive view of ethics. It
goes like this: "My mother is sick. I cannot afford medicine. So I steal
the medicine from a pharmacy that will not even know it is gone. Is stealing
the medicine in this circumstance the right thing or the wrong thing to do?"
Well, we can discuss this case in terms of my individual actions, whether I
am a thief and villain, a rescuer and a hero, or both. Ethical questions are
frequently raised as dilemmas like this. In many situations, there is a genuine
need to choose between two competing and compelling claims, and ethical reasoning
can help to sort these out. But my point here is that we can also expand the
inquiry to ask a broader question beyond just the narrow question of whether
to steal or not to steal. We can also ask: What kind of community denies medicine
to sick people who cannot afford it? Is there something unfair or unethical
about this system?
Peter
Singer is one of the best known contemporary philosophers to challenge us
to think this way. In his new book The
Life You Can Save, Singer reminds us of our essential connection to
those who share our planet and how our choices affect both our individual moral
standing and our capacity to shape our collective arrangements in a morally
desirable way. Here is how Singer describes our situation (this is a direct
quote taken from his website):
If we could easily save the life of a child, we would. For example, if we
saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all we had to do
to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, we would do so.
The fact that we would get wet, or ruin a good pair of shoes, doesn't really
count when it comes to saving a child's life.
UNICEF, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, estimates
that about 27,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related
causes. [This is happening on our watch!] Yet at the same time almost a billion
people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that
are not at all necessary. (You are not sure if you are in that category? When
did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available
for nothing? If the answer is "within the past week" then you are
spending money on luxuries while children die from malnutrition or diseases
that we know how to prevent or cure.)
The Life You Can Save—both the book and this website—seek
to change this. If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme
poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations
fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn't take a
huge sacrifice.
Singer's view is not without controversy and it has many critics. As you can
see, he emphasizes individual action and agency as a first step toward systemic
reform. But I raise this argument with you now to make a larger point. Singer's
argument rests on the idea that a "planetary focus" is necessary given
the observable integration of global systems that define our social lives. You
and I are connected to every child in the world according to Singer. As such,
he argues, "all humans, even all sentient beings, should be the basic unit
of concern for our ethical thinking."
Singer's argument is, at its root, cosmopolitan. The word "cosmopolitan"
means, literally, "citizen of the world." As a philosophical position
it makes strong claims for the equal regard and the equal moral worth of every
human being.
Making the case for cosmopolitanism, Martha
Nussbaum invokes the ancient Greek and Stoic idea of concentric circles.
In her lead essay of her edited book, For
Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, she describes cosmopolitanism
like this: "The first circle encircles the self, the next takes in the
immediate family, then follows the extended family, then, in order, neighbors
or local groups, fellow city dwellers, and fellow countrymen—and
we can easily add to the list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical,
professional, gender, or sexual identities. Outside all of these circles is
the largest one, humanity as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will
be to 'draw the circles somehow toward the center' (Hierocles
1st to 2nd century CE)."
For cosmopolitans, humanity itself serves as the ultimate reference point.
This is not to say that cosmopolitans neglect local needs; in fact, as Nussbaum
herself writes, "Politics, like child care, will be poorly done if each
thinks herself equally responsible for all, rather than giving the immediate
surroundings special attention and care. To give one's own sphere special care
is justifiable in universalist terms." In this way, "our loyalty to
humankind does not deprive us of the capacity to care for people closer by."
In other words, it is good for everyone that we rescue the child drowning in
front of us first; it is good for everyone that parents take care of their own
children first and give them special attention and care; and it is good for
everyone that homeowners take good care of their own homes first, and so on.
But this special attention to those to whom we are most immediately connected
does not absolve us of an approach that holds at its core the strong moral argument
in favor of the equal regard for all human beings.
In explaining cosmopolitanism, Nussbaum does not negate patriotism; but she
does emphasize its limits and questions the strength and intensity of its moral
claims. The problem with patriotism, according to Nussbaum, is that it often
creates arbitrary boundaries that skew our priorities. It tends to blind us
to other important connections.
Patriotic sentiments do not necessarily disagree with the ends of cosmopolitanism,
but priorities nearly always differ. A patriotic perspective prioritizes national
interests first, and it anchors those interests and values in a specific time
and place. A patriotic perspective questions cosmopolitanism principally because
of its thinness. As Benjamin
Barber writes, "we live in this particular neighborhood, that block,
that valley, that seashore, this family. Our attachments start parochially and
then grow outward. To bypass them in favor of an immediate cosmopolitanism is
to end up nowhere." For some like Barber, universal human values are best
served by enhancing local attachments and local communities.
Standard philosophical discussions of cosmopolitanism usually pit cosmopolitanism
against communitarianism. In this comparison, cosmopolitans emphasize universal
values while communitarians emphasize particular circumstances and commitments.
Cosmopolitans emphasize equal regard for all human beings while communitarians
argue that the rights and duties of individuals are determined by membership
and identity within a given community. Cosmopolitans seek out and celebrate
shared human values while communitarians remain skeptical of moral claims that
exceed immediate personal connection, local authority, and fixed boundaries.
I think that pitting cosmopolitanism against patriotism in this way can be
a false choice. And this is the major point in this talk that I wish to test
with you. Anthony
Appiah uses the terms "cosmopolitan patriots" and "rooted
cosmopolitans" to make this point. He writes, "the cosmopolitan patriot
can entertain the possibility of a world in which everyone is a rooted cosmopolitan,
attached to a home of his or her own, with its own cultural peculiarities [and]
taking pleasure from the presence of other, different places that are home to
other different people." Or to put it slightly differently, our commitment
to humanity can be expressed through our great pride in our own local customs
and folkways, with simultaneous appreciation of the rich customs and folkways
of others.
The great paradox of patriotic sentiment, it seems to me, is that it is so
personal and particular and also so common and universal. It seems to me quite
possible to find one's way to an embrace of all humanity through one's love
of his or her homeland. After all, the most common experiences we have are our
attachments to family, to friends, to place, to region and to country. By committing
to our own, we can recognize and appreciate the similar commitments of others.
We love Star Island. Others love Aspen. Our particular love can help us appreciate
the loyal attachments that others have to their people and their special places.
This idea is expressed by Isaiah
Berlin in his reflections on the idea of pluralism. Pluralism, it seems
to me, captures this sense of a thin universalism that is recognizable across
the patchwork of cultures that are so different in color, shape, and form. Commenting
on the German philosopher J.G.
Herder, Berlin writes: "[Herder] believed that the desire to belong
to a culture, something that united a group or a province or a nation, was a
basic human need, as deep as the desire for food or drink or liberty; and that
this need to belong to a community where you understood what others said, where
you could move freely, where you had emotional as well as economic, social,
and political bonds, was the basis of developed, mature, human life. Herder
was not a relativist, though he was often so described: he believed there were
basic human goals and rules of behavior, but that they took wholly different
forms in different cultures, and that consequently, while there may have been
analogies, similarities, which made one culture intelligible to another, cultures
were not to be confused with each other—mankind was not one but many, and
the answers to the questions were many, though there may be some central essence
to them which was one and the same."
Communitarians argue that ethics flourish within an enclosed space, within
defined relationships. Michael
Walzer calls these relationships "thick." By thick relationships
he means relationships between those who share history, culture, and community.
By thin relationships, he means those who have no direct connection, distant
strangers who live within other communities. Ethics is usually discussed in
terms of agents or actors working within boundaries, in thick relationships.
Now here is where things get really interesting. The reality of globalization
is that old relationships and boundaries seem up for grabs. Globalization raises
many ambiguities now about basic concepts of identity and responsibility. To
whom are we really connected today and what difference do these connections
make?
It is this gray area between "thick" and "thin" relationships
that I want to explore with you in the rest of this talk. My sense is that these
distinctions are less obvious than they used to be.
Identity
Is there a world community as cosmopolitans suggest? If so, what experiences
hold it together? Peter Singer's work is a brave attempt to change conventional
views on these questions. He wants us to understand that, first, moral commitments
extend to the least well-off wherever they are and whatever the nature of our
connection to them might be; and second, that our identity should be shaped
by our responses to these least well-off. In his book One
World: The Ethics of Globalization, Singer challenges the conventional
thick/thin distinction. He writes: "If the group to which we must justify
ourselves is the tribe or nation, then our morality is likely to be tribal or
nationalistic. If however, the revolution in communications has created a global
audience, then we might feel the need to justify our behavior to the whole world."
Basing our identity on the thin, two-dimensional images delivered to us by the
global media make a weak argument, but still, Singer makes a strong bid for
a sense of meaningful global connection through the shared images made ubiquitous
by the internet, real time satellite television, and new technologies ranging
from Google Earth to
Twitter.
Singer's work has been criticized by realists for its emphasis on mere perception
and for its palliative quality. Giving to the poor may have short term effects
and make us feel better, but in reality, the realists argue, the nature of our
relationship stays the same and root problems are not solved. Realists contend
that cosmopolitan arguments of this type have led to band-aid approaches to
humanitarianism; and despite the best of intentions, these approaches may be
doing as much harm as good. For all of Singer's good intentions, they conclude,
the charity and aid approach may be enabling exploitive conditions to continue
by not forcing genuine systemic change.
The notion of world community as a moral construct has been well rehearsed
for generations, and not even the common threat of atomic and nuclear weapons,
and more recently, the threat of global warming, has given it much traction.
Realists continue to point to two essential weaknesses. Global problems almost
always come down to collective action problems; we have the problem of many
hands, that is, there are no direct, assigned, and enforceable responsibilities;
we have free riders and reduced incentives for actors to take on responsibilities.
Related to this we also have the problem of interests; many global issues seem
too distant to be considered of primary interest; hence they are put to the
side. Is there any way out of this? I believe there is.
Amartya
Sen takes a very different tack, offering a new approach. He focuses on
the concept of global identity that would bring with it a sense of global responsibility.
Sen describes identity as "social capital"—"a sense of belonging
that can be a resource." The key to Sen's insight here, however, is that
each of us does not possess just one identity. Each of us holds multiple identities.
We don't belong to one group; we belong to many. "A person's citizenship,
residence, geographic origin, gender, class, politics, profession, employment,
food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, et cetera,
makes us a member of a variety of groups. Each of these collectivities, to which
this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of
them can be taken to be the person's only identity or singular membership category."
According to Sen, the error in much conventional thinking about identity is
the assumption of "singular identification." The values and allegiances
we hold are as multiple and varied as these identities. These values and allegiances
affect our actions in tangible ways. Consider an example like the following.
A single individual could say: I am a British. I am a Muslim. I am a woman.
I am a professor. I am a feminist. Clearly, there are many sets of values in
play in an example like this. Claims of national loyalty, religious obligation,
professional codes of conduct, and solidarity around an issue of social justice
and concern might all come into play. This is the way life is actually lived,
isn't it?
Sen shows us that identity is such a powerful motivator that it should be
considered central to our social and political analysis. As an example of this
power, he relates the story of the Hindu-Muslim riots in India in the 1940s
which he witnessed "through the eyes of a bewildered child." Massive
identity shifts followed divisive politics. Because of political turmoil and
manipulation, he says, "A great many person's identities as Indians, as
Sub-continentals, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give
way suddenly to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities.
The carnage that followed had much to do with the elementary herd behavior by
which people were made to 'discover' their newly belligerent identities, without
subjecting the process to critical examination. The same people were suddenly
different." The same people were suddenly different. How many times have
we seen this? In recent years, ethnic wars were inflamed as Yugoslavs become
Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians. Rwandans became Tutsis and Hutus. On the brighter
side, we have also seen identities evolve in peaceful ways. The centuries-old
blood rivalries of Europe have evolved into a European Union, complete with
common flag and passport. The same people can become different in positive ways,
just as maps can change along with the political arrangements that these changes
represent.
Sen's goal is to get us to see the positive side of identity formation and
multiple identities. Sen argues that "we have substantial freedoms regarding
the priority to give to the various identities that we have." In other
words, identity can be a choice.
Picking up on Sen's sense of opportunity, I think of cosmopolitan claims less
in terms of global community and more in terms of the universal aspects of my
various personal identities. I am a citizen, yes—so of course I can ask
myself, what can I do for my country? But I can also ask myself, what can I
do for both my country and for the world? I am also a consumer, and an advocate,
and a professional. I belong to various networks that touch upon global and
universal concerns. Perhaps the best way to activate my cosmopolitan sensibilities,
such as they are, is through these multiple channels that make up my identity.
In Walzer's terms, these are my "thick" relationships. Maybe the best
way to serve "thin" claims (to those distant) is through activating
my "thick" relationships (those close in) in the direction of a cosmopolitan
sensibility.
Responsibility
How then do we take this still very abstract idea and put it into practice?
Let's think in terms of our responsibilities. If, as cosmopolitans claim, that
every human being has a right to equal moral worth, then how might we think
of our duties toward them. Clearly, we cannot feasibly provide equal treatment—so
then, what is the alternative?
Perhaps it is helpful for us to think individually and collectively about
"perfect" and "imperfect" duties. Perfect duties are direct
assignments—these are the things that we consider imperative personal obligations
for which we bear direct responsibility. So, and an example would be, I have
an obligation not to torture. This is a perfect duty: it is my direct responsibility.
But I could also say, I have an obligation not to allow torture to happen; I
have a duty not to allow the conditions of torture to prevail. This is not my
sole obligation and it is not directly assigned, but it is nevertheless a duty
for which I have some responsibility.
A standard example for making this point might be something like the famous
case of Kitty
Genovese. Kitty Genovese was a twenty-eight year old woman who lived in
Kew Gardens, Queens in 1964. One night on her way home, she was stabbed several
times and left to die. Her case became infamous because it was alleged that
38 people passed her by as she lay bleeding in the street. No one helped her.
Presumably, each passer-by thought someone else would help; and each didn't
want to get involved. Whatever the precise details, this scenario helps to make
the point about perfect and imperfect duties. We all share the basic duty not
to kill. Yet we also share the duty not to allow the conditions of harm, and
when harm is done, to mitigate the negative effects of it.
In looking at the forces of globalization today, we see several obvious cases
of harm where both our direct and indirect participation in the mitigation of
harms seems inevitable. We have already discussed poverty. Yet clearly issues
of environmental protection, financial management, labor exploitation, and ongoing
human rights catastrophes and genocides need to be addressed in ways that speak
to our perfect and imperfect duties.
Important debates are to be had about priorities. Some argue that we ought
to give priority to those harms in which we are most directly implicated. So
for example, we ought to provide economic relief to those in the United States
who could benefit from a substantial upgrade in standard of living. Or we ought
to consider more carefully those who we may harm directly through our purchases
of chocolate or clothing or coffee. Others, like Peter Singer, continue to argue
for helping the least well-off no matter what our connection to them might be.
Singer argues that efficiency dictates this priority: since we can't help everyone,
we ought to help those worst off. Period.
It seems to me that arguments of this type are a luxury. They are the result
of a battle already won, between people who recognize the obligations of the
sort I have described. My concern today is with those who are not sensitized
to the concept of moral obligation or who willfully ignore it. The current financial
crisis is a good example of this lack of sensitivity, awareness, and concern
for basic duties. The crisis was precipitated by a collapse of individual ethics
as well as a systemic failure of responsibility. It seems to me that the crisis
is not a product of error or the lack of expert knowledge. Basic economic and
banking rules are known. The crisis is failure of will on some levels, and of
systemic rot on others.
In the current financial crisis we see both bad actors and good, all acting
within a system that had rotted at its core. In some ways, the experience of
the crisis is similar to the familiar, perhaps overused story about the frog
and the pot of water. We know that if a frog jumps into a pot of water that
is boiling hot, he jumps out—no harm done. But if the frog starts out in
the pot, all comfortable, and then the pot is slowly brought to a boil, he will
stay put enjoying the warmth, not realizing any danger until it is too late.
The water will boil and he will die.
Ethics really begins with awareness and sensitivity to our responsibilities.
These responsibilities are both personal and systemic, close in and far away,
"thick" and "thin." It seems to me that one response to
the problems we are looking at—global problems like poverty, genocide,
and environmental degradation—is to raise consciousness (awareness), and
to use our various identities and capacities to change the organizations of
which we are a part. We will not make much progress until we conceive of our
interests in terms of global responsibilities. We will not make progress until
we realize that our self-interests imply the performance of both perfect and
imperfect duties. In some ways, we are all like the auditor looking at worrisome
trends before the meltdown in the credit markets, or the FEMA director before
hurricane Katrina. It is up to us to do our own small part; yet it is also up
to us to see our decisions in light of the systems and institutions within which
we live. If we don't speak up and act, we are like the frog who is content for
awhile in his warm water, not knowing he is about to boil.
Finally, just one more point about responsibility. As a realist, I am sensitive
to the limits of what we can be responsible for. What I want to argue is that
there are moral claims that are universal, even if we do not agree upon specifics.
We do not have a specific global consensus on human rights practices (especially
when it comes to issues like gender rights and labor rights, for example). Yet
we do recognize abstract principles as universally valid (for example, the right
to life as expressed in anti-genocide conventions and the aspirations to be
free from fear and from want). While we cannot possibly be responsible for deciding
and delivering on what is maximally good, perhaps we can work harder at deciding
and delivering on what is minimally due. The maximal good can probably only
be relevant within a given "thick" community. But perhaps what is
minimally due can be relevant to something as "thin" and vague as
a global community. (And here again I am thinking about the basic norms around
global concerns such as poverty, genocide, and environmental preservation.)
Governance/America
In this final section of my talk, I would like to bring the conversation home,
to America. I have already made the point that it might be a category mistake
or at least self-limiting to think in narrow terms about our identity as Americans.
Surely for many of us, our patriotic sentiments are strong, meaning we recognize
the moral claims of our citizenship. But we also act in capacities beyond our
identity as American citizens. Our businesses, religious institutions, advocacy
organizations, and professional networks have global reach and significant power.
Our capacity to stand for cosmopolitan values and action within these structures
is also significant.
As Americans we have a strong tradition of enlightened self-interest that
speaks to this capacity and opportunity. America's national identity is itself
a paradox: it is a blend of universalism and particularism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism.
Why? Because America's founding was based on universalist principles. "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…" To be an American
patriot today is to be, in some sense, a cosmopolitan.
This is not to say that there are not titanic struggles over "what America
owes the world." But it is to say that the United States has always had
within its DNA the appeal above local community and nation, the appeal above
government itself—an appeal to natural law, the creator, or in other words,
the cosmopolitan commitment to reason and equal justice for all.
American history shows us examples of American-style patriotism and cosmopolitanism
in ascendance. The theme of American exceptionalism is spun out in two varieties:
the Promised Land and the Crusader State. Historian Walter
McDougall, in his book of this title, gives us the two main narratives of
America's role in the world; the first being a new Jerusalem in a new world,
the city on the hill free from the corruption of the old world, and meant to
avoid entangling alliances and crusades to remake the world. The second is the
Wilsonian vision of the United States as vindicator, as the champion of democracy
and human rights, and the engine of progressive change around the world. McDougall
makes the point that both traditions are very much with us, deep in the American
grain.
As a realist with a traditional notion of national interest, McDougall argues
that a certain type of trouble begins when the focus of U.S. foreign policy
shifts to making the world a better place. Since the end of World War II, he
has noticed a drift to what he calls "global meliorism," the proposition
that "morality enjoins the United States to help others emulate it, and
that the success of the American experiment itself ultimately depends on other
nations escaping from death and depression."
Global meliorism is a dangerous proposition, according to McDougall. Left
unchecked, it is an open-ended commitment to make the world democratic. It involves
economic development, environmental preservation, and the guarantee of rights
worldwide. The problem with these desirable goals is that they are impossible
to achieve, and in fact, from an ethical perspective, the pursuit of them may
do more harm than good. The pursuit of those interests should be accomplished
in ways that are true to American principles and ideals, but the goal of the
United States should remain the promotion of American interests, not the improvement
of mankind globally. In short, McDougall fails to see many of America's meliorist
efforts as in America's enlightened self-interest. Instead, he sees something
close to an arrogant crusade.
I see things a bit differently. My view is that remedies to global challenges
such as environmental degradation and poverty are today less about meliorism
and its romantic dreams to improve the world and more about pragmatism and sustainability.
It is becoming harder and harder, if not impossible, to separate the interests
of others from our own interests. The pragmatic thing to do—and the ethical
thing to do—is to recognize that our interests are tied up with the interests
of others in new and potentially creative ways. Foreign affairs do not have
to be a zero-sum game. And this is a trend to be embraced and leveraged rather
than avoided.
Now with this said, there is one more important lesson to be extracted from
realism that reminds us of limitations and cautions us about expectations. McDougall
puts it this way: "Do not to confuse ethics or morality with the quest
for purity." As a realist myself, I think this is an essential point, not
be underestimated. Ethics and morality properly conceived should be interest-sensitive,
aware of its limits, and based on non-perfectionist expectations. Ethics, like
politics, is built on the understanding that life is full of impurities and
competing claims. Sometimes, the best we can do is find ways to live with irreconcilable
differences.
The theme of America's quest for purity is well documented. In early 1977,
historian James
Chace wrote a New York Times Sunday Magazine article titled "How
Moral Can We Get?" In it, he discusses the dangers of President
Carter's newly announced human rights policy. "Innocence is not always
admirable," he writes, "experience is achieved at great cost."
The innocent can do great harm despite good intentions. We have many examples
from literature making this point. Chace reminds us of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark." In it, the scientist
Aylmer cannot abide the single, small facial blemish that mars the beauty of
his wife:
The mark itself is in the shape of a small red hand against her pale skin,
a symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death. These very
characteristics are, of course, the signs of mortality. But Aylmer cannot
accept them. In an attempt to enforce man's control over nature, he gives
his wife a potion he has invented to remove the flaw. The experiment appears
to succeed, for the birthmark fades away. Her beauty is perfect. But she is
dead. Thus, the quest for perfection ends in death.
This theme is echoed in Philip
Roth's novel, The
Human Stain, which purports to reflect on American society at the end
of the twentieth century. Roth writes that the essence of being human is that
"we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty,
abuse, error…there is no other way to be here." For Roth, it is the
fantasy of purity that is dangerous. We must build our ethics on the realization
of our imperfections.
One of the most effective expressions of the problem of innocence theme is
Graham
Greene's novel The
Quiet American. Greene's portrayal of the young idealistic CIA man in
Vietnam—just out of college, fresh with crew cut, textbook knowledge, and
a firm ideology—is really no match for the experienced natives. A more
sober assessment of Vietnam, complete with more experience and less lofty expectations,
might have produced a more moral course. For Greene, like McDougall, Chace,
and other realists, it is the temptation to crusade that is to be avoided, as
well as the illusion that the United States can be all things to all people.
Morality must be anchored to interest and power. Without those anchors, morality
is apt to damage.
So as we think about cosmopolitan concerns, I suggest that we be vigilant about
remaining humble in our expectations and alert to our own hypocrisy. The cosmopolitan
patriotism I have been suggesting is rooted in enlightened self-interest and
is aware of its limits. It asks that we consider our self-interests in relation
to others; it asks that we constantly remind ourselves that we do not live alone
and unconnected.
I believe it is unhealthy, unsustainable, and ultimately not in our own personal,
professional, and national interests, to think that our self-interests can be
fulfilled without considering the broad moral challenges of globalization. While
we cannot and should not presume to redeem the world as either individuals or
as a nation, surely we can see our own self-interests as formed in many important
ways by our evolving relationship to the rest of the world.
Finally, in addition to this realist argument, I would also suggest that a
cosmopolitan patriot view can be aesthetically pleasing and an interesting approach
to life. I think this idea is best expressed by T.S.
Eliot in "Little Gidding," the final poem in his Four Quartets.
I grew up just a few miles down the coast, just south of here in Marblehead.
Eliot had spent part of his boyhood in Gloucester on Cape Ann, which is almost
visible from here on a clear day. Reflecting on it later in his life, he made
sense of his attachment to place and his urge to explore further. He wrote of
his life's adventure:
We will not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time
As I travel the world myself, I see a good lesson here. We each carry our attachments
with us, and we gain perspective by our encounters with others. When we return
home from our travels, we are the same, but different. Certain local facts remain
unchanged, but we now can see them as part of something common and universal.
I am satisfied with Michael Walzer's conclusion that a moral world is not
the same as a world in which everyone acts with perfect ethical result. This
is not possible. However, it is possible to have a world in which the idea of
morality is central to decision making. Morals define the language that articulates
our actions, and actions are justified or rebuked on moral grounds. If we can
create a world where identity, empathy, responsibility, and humility are taken
seriously, we have created a way of looking at the world that makes peaceful
coexistence more possible. These values and way-of-life give us a plan of action
so that we can act for common humanity while participating deeply in our own
little patch of territory, on our own island, and in our own communities.
