Princeton Philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah, argues, in Sunday’s NYT Magazine, that, in the face of globalization, the best ethical stance to take on questions of cultural difference is cosmopolitanism:

The right approach, I think, starts by taking individuals – not
nations, tribes or "peoples" – as the proper object of moral concern.
It doesn’t much matter what we call such a creed, but in homage to
Diogenes, the fourth-century Greek Cynic and the first philosopher to
call himself a "citizen of the world," we could call it cosmopolitan.
Cosmopolitans take cultural difference seriously, because they take the
choices individual people make seriously. But because cultural
difference is not the only thing that concerns them, they suspect that
many of globalization’s cultural critics are aiming at the wrong
targets.

   This look suspiciously like your standard order Anglo-American liberalism – starting with individuals – but it applies those liberal principles to questions of global cultural flow and change.   Appiah is arguing against those "cultural preservationists" and purists who would try to freeze global flows and maintain some notion of "authentic culture."  I am quite sympathetic to his disparagement of the idea of cultural authenticity:

But preserving culture – in the sense of such cultural artifacts –
is different from preserving cultures. And the cultural
preservationists often pursue the latter, trying to ensure that the
Huli of Papua New Guinea (or even Sikhs in Toronto) maintain their
"authentic" ways. What makes a cultural expression authentic, though?
Are we to stop the importation of baseball caps into Vietnam so that
the Zao will continue to wear their colorful red headdresses? Why not
ask the Zao? Shouldn’t the choice be theirs?

"They have no real
choice," the cultural preservationists say. "We’ve dumped cheap Western
clothes into their markets, and they can no longer afford the silk they
used to wear. If they had what they really wanted, they’d still be
dressed traditionally." But this is no longer an argument about
authenticity. The claim is that they can’t afford to do something that
they’d really like to do, something that is expressive of an identity
they care about and want to sustain. This is a genuine problem, one
that afflicts people in many communities: they’re too poor to live the
life they want to lead. But if they do get richer, and they still run
around in T-shirts, that’s their choice. Talk of authenticity now just
amounts to telling other people what they ought to value in their own
traditions.

    But I wonder about his emphasis on individual choice.  Two questions come to mind here:

   – what happens to the social context of individuals?  Doesn’t that matter at all in the formulation of individual choice?

   – can a philosophy that emphasizes social context, like Confucianism, adapt itself to the kind of cosmopolitanism that Appiah is talking about?

    These are big questions, bigger than a single blog post can handle, but I will chew on them a bit below.

     Confucianism (and I return to this not because I am a committed Confucianist but because it is a perspective that really does offer a clear distinction from Western liberalism) would be somewhat skeptical of an individual’s capacity to make "free" choices.  The notion of free choice presumes a wholly autonomous and independent individual.  We like to think of ourselves as such; and must of modern culture celebrates and reproduces the idea and imagery of autonomous individuals.  But, Confucians would contend, we are never as autonomous and independent as we think we are.  We are always embedded in social networks and relationships; and we are always dependent upon others for the necessities of life. 

    Our dependencies may be mediated by market relationships (after all, as Adam Smith and Mencius would agree, divisions of labor require our dependence on others to produce efficiently those things we cannot produce efficiently ourselves), but that does not negate the fact of our dependence. 

   Closer to home, while the great American story is one of growing more and more independent from childhood to adulthood (I am currently watching as my daughter becomes more aware of the possibilities of her own autonomy), we never alienate ourselves completely from family, or, at least family-like, relationships.  We need others constantly to realize our personal identities and our moral goodness. 

   If, then, we are never, empirically, as autonomous and independent as we think, how can we exercise perfectly "free choice"?  We cannot.  Every choice we make has ramifications for others around us, whether through close relations with family and friends or through more diffuse relations in markets and extended social networks.  Our choices are never fully our own.

   So what does this mean for Appiah?  If, when we are thinking about cultural change, we are to start with individuals, then we should place those individuals in their relevant social contexts.  And when we encourage those individuals-in-context to make choices about cultural practices, we should also encourage them to make the social consequences of their choices a part of their decision calculus.  This would not ban all cultural change, which is impossible and undesirable in any event, but it might make the process more socially reflective.

     Can Confucianism fit into this sort of global cultural dynamism?  I think it can.  Remember, Confucianism has, over the centuries, been transformed to suit changing political and social contexts.  There is not one Confucianims but many.  There are, of course, Confucian fundamentalists who will try to freeze thought in search of the impossible-to-attain authenticity.  But there are fundamentalists to be found in all philosophies and religions.  What we need to look for are those aspects of Confucian thought that can be adapted to the flux of modern globalization.  Hall and Ames do a great job interpreting Confucianism as a whole in a manner quite suitable for our current times. And, when dealing with more specific issues like Appiah’s, we can bring out those elements of the philosophy that might add to the contemporary conversation. 

    As suggested above, the notion of individual-in-context is certainly something that we can find in Confucian thought.  Moreover, the idea of individual (or individual-in-context) responsibility and choice are not alien to The Analects:

The Master said: "Of villages, Humanity is the most beautiful.  If you choose to dwell anywhere else, how can you be called wise?" (4.1)

    Individuals must make ethical judgments all the time.  But there is a broader context, Humanity, which must be a part of their considerations.  And there are wrong or bad choices that can be made.  That is what Appiah loses in his embrace of liberalism: what standard can be used to judge the goodness of individual choices?  Is it just a matter of individual preference?  Or is there some room for Humanity?