I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions. Progress in philosophy consists, I think, in a clearer delineation of the conceptual options, not in reaching determinate conclusions.

I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions. Progress in philosophy consists, I think, in a clearer delineation of the conceptual options, not in reaching determinate conclusions.

There are many people of cosmopolitan temperament who are not from the elites of their societies or the world; and while, for a variety of reasons, I think a cosmopolitan spirit does naturally go with city life, that's the life of a very large proportion of human beings today. And I don't think rural people can't be cosmopolitan, in my sense.

Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another

One of the central challenges for global conversation today is to find ways of getting to understand very different views about gender and sexuality. But we should start by recognizing that these issues are subjct to disputation within every society as well as across societies. We need a global conversation that recognizes that we have these very different views. Next, try to agree on fundamental rights: things we think every person is entitled to. Finally, if we're convinced that what a government or a society elsewhere is doing to some people is badly wrong and the conversation gets nowhere.

The version of cosmopolitanism that I favor is exactly about balancing universality and difference. Many people who believe rightly in universality, want, wrongly, I think, to impose their vision of the world on others. They think not just that there are universal truths but that they already know what they are. And they don't think they have anything to learn, as a result, from others. They don't converse, they try to convert.

I've long had the idea that the factors that are most important in determining what we believe, how we live, and what we accomplish are matters of accident. That is, we did not choose where to be born, who our parents would be, or what we would look like. Yet those factors play an enormous role in almost everything about is. W/regard to issues of cosmopolitanism, the most obvious point is that how we identify ourselves in terms of nationality, cultural subgroups, and religion are all pretty much a function of where we were born.