NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE I n her famous post-Cold War essay, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Martha Nussbaum lays out the cosmopolitan ethic succinctly. Cosmopolitans are those “whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.” She contrasts it to nationalism:

Once one has said, “I am an Indian first, a citizen of the world second,” once one has made that morally questionable move of self-definition by a morally irrelevant characteristic, then what, indeed, will stop one from saying, as Tagore’s characters so quickly learn to say, “I am a Hindu first, and an Indian second,” or “I am an upper-caste landlord first, and

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