Educating for world citizenship

Abstract

This is a review essay of Martha Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, which defends many recent educational innovations by appealing to the ideal of a cosmopolitan education. My review focuses on four topics: (a) Nussbaum’s ideal of world citizenship and its underlying moral cosmopolitanism; (b) the worry that cosmopolitan education undermines commitment to our democracy; (c) possible tensions between critical reflectiveness and cosmopolitan education; and (d) the value of identity politics.