Satchel Sturtz
Introduction and Chapter One Reflection Cosmopolitanism has been around for a very long time. This word means citizen of the world and the concept behind it is that people around the globe are more grouped than singular. People identify with one community and are working towards one common goal. They are not actively working towards a specific goal, but that of bettering the community being lived in. Cosmopolitanism is extremely community based and, if achieved, could be very successful. However, in the modern day world the six billion people around the globe are all broken up into a countless number of completely separate communities. This goes completely against the whole idea of a cosmopolitan society. This is easily the biggest challenge faced today related to cosmopolitanism. On page 8 Appiah starts talking about two kinds of moral disagreements. I think that these two kinds of disagreements can be seen as absolute disagreements and personal disagreements. For example, a person who is not religious may not see why a Muslim person would travel to Mecca. This person does not think it is wrong for the Muslim person to go to Mecca, but he would not go himself. This is a personal disagreement. An absolute disagreement would be if a Muslim woman was stoned to death for breaking a law. The people who performed this action clearly agree with it, however, I not only would not perform this action, but I disagree with it entirely and thing it is wrong which is what makes it an absolute disagreement. This section was titled “Beyond the Shattered Mirror” which was a very memorable title and also quite fitting. I think this goes back to hardships faced in modern times related to cosmopolitanism. Today’s world is so broken up into so many different communities. Everyone seems to feel misunderstood and it seems that many people want nothing more than world peace, which surely will not be achieved anytime soon. Putting the world back together into one community is like picking up a bunch of shattered pieces of glass off of the floor and putting a mirror back together. At the end of chapter one, there is a very thought provoking quote by Burton. “There is no good, there is no bad; these be the whims of mortal will,” (Appiah 11). I agree with this quote. It
