From this viewpoint, Nussbaum's attempt at defining universally what a person is capable of becomes quite pertinent and potentially a vital step in linking individual communities into a global network. While the internet has already linked much of the world together, but these connections have been created in a laissez-faire manner. I feel that her capabilities approach is a noble attempt at achieving one of the goals of cosmopolitanism, blurring the line the between "us" and them "less". Interestingly, this connects back to my previous post in which I spoke of the dehumanization of enemies by nations and more relevantly socio-economic groups. The idiom that democracies never go war with each other seems to be rooted in cosmopolitism and as such this may be the answer to that problem. So the next question is, how do we achieve this in America? Well a great first answer is in education...which we have already discussed is a problem for many constituencies in America. Unfortunately, it is our current foreign policy, which revolves around defense of freedom via multi-billion dollar pieces of technology, that is taking precedence over the funding of our schools and hence enlightenment of Americans. So we seem to be stuck in at somewhat of an impasse. For some odd reason in America once you make it out of the primary education system into the realm of secondary education, you are in the best place to be in the world. Not all of these schools are working hard to promote this expanded worldview and dialogue extolled by Appiah, but some are, like good old UNC-Asheville and many other liberal arts schools. Many students avoid these schools looking for short-term returns on a education that perceived to be more valuable for getting a job. With the interest of forging a better world community, I suppose it is the duty of individuals like us, to spread the merits of the liberal arts experience via word of mouth and by our actions.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Liberal Arts Degrees for All!!!
Cosmopolitanism is not a novel concept, it predates Christ by hundreds of years and takes its name from the Ancient Greek language. Although we demonstrate quite a bit of arrogant to call our global human community a city of the universe....Kwame Anthony Appiah seeks to reenter cosmopolitanism into the discussion of how to unite a world of clashing ideas and norms, and maintains that it is revelvant, “this neglected and attractive tradition of thought deserves serious attention as a habitable middle ground between liberalism and relativism”. And he does so with simple goal of "making it harder to think of the world as divided between..."us" and them"" because conversations across boundaries will be inevitable. In doing so he will question some abstract yet simultaneously abstract yet fundamental questions like, "how real are values?" and "What do we owe strangers by virtue of our shared humanity?" At the very least, Appiah seeks to open a meaningful dialogue between cultures concerning values rather than sink to a cultural relativism, that refuses to engage with other cultures for the very fact that their perspectives are different and therefore have no place in each others' respective domains.
I may just be fan-boying this video just cuz I like it, but I think it is a great example of cultural cosmopolitism.
From this viewpoint, Nussbaum's attempt at defining universally what a person is capable of becomes quite pertinent and potentially a vital step in linking individual communities into a global network. While the internet has already linked much of the world together, but these connections have been created in a laissez-faire manner. I feel that her capabilities approach is a noble attempt at achieving one of the goals of cosmopolitanism, blurring the line the between "us" and them "less". Interestingly, this connects back to my previous post in which I spoke of the dehumanization of enemies by nations and more relevantly socio-economic groups. The idiom that democracies never go war with each other seems to be rooted in cosmopolitism and as such this may be the answer to that problem. So the next question is, how do we achieve this in America? Well a great first answer is in education...which we have already discussed is a problem for many constituencies in America. Unfortunately, it is our current foreign policy, which revolves around defense of freedom via multi-billion dollar pieces of technology, that is taking precedence over the funding of our schools and hence enlightenment of Americans. So we seem to be stuck in at somewhat of an impasse. For some odd reason in America once you make it out of the primary education system into the realm of secondary education, you are in the best place to be in the world. Not all of these schools are working hard to promote this expanded worldview and dialogue extolled by Appiah, but some are, like good old UNC-Asheville and many other liberal arts schools. Many students avoid these schools looking for short-term returns on a education that perceived to be more valuable for getting a job. With the interest of forging a better world community, I suppose it is the duty of individuals like us, to spread the merits of the liberal arts experience via word of mouth and by our actions.
From this viewpoint, Nussbaum's attempt at defining universally what a person is capable of becomes quite pertinent and potentially a vital step in linking individual communities into a global network. While the internet has already linked much of the world together, but these connections have been created in a laissez-faire manner. I feel that her capabilities approach is a noble attempt at achieving one of the goals of cosmopolitanism, blurring the line the between "us" and them "less". Interestingly, this connects back to my previous post in which I spoke of the dehumanization of enemies by nations and more relevantly socio-economic groups. The idiom that democracies never go war with each other seems to be rooted in cosmopolitism and as such this may be the answer to that problem. So the next question is, how do we achieve this in America? Well a great first answer is in education...which we have already discussed is a problem for many constituencies in America. Unfortunately, it is our current foreign policy, which revolves around defense of freedom via multi-billion dollar pieces of technology, that is taking precedence over the funding of our schools and hence enlightenment of Americans. So we seem to be stuck in at somewhat of an impasse. For some odd reason in America once you make it out of the primary education system into the realm of secondary education, you are in the best place to be in the world. Not all of these schools are working hard to promote this expanded worldview and dialogue extolled by Appiah, but some are, like good old UNC-Asheville and many other liberal arts schools. Many students avoid these schools looking for short-term returns on a education that perceived to be more valuable for getting a job. With the interest of forging a better world community, I suppose it is the duty of individuals like us, to spread the merits of the liberal arts experience via word of mouth and by our actions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment