Ascending Beyond Atomism and Overcoming “the Paradox of Our Times”

An Arendtian Argument for Moral Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Rather than understand the inherent oneness of our world from the macro perspective, as if one were looking down on the planet from space, we, as persons of “the West”, operate at a much lower altitude. On the whole, we struggle to conceptualize the world from an elevated perspective where those arbitrary, historically constructed geographic and moral boundary lines fall into oblivion. Instead, our views are confined to those entities/people closest us – our respective nations, immediate communities, streets, families and selves. This limited view is the product of a number of things; however, I suggest that this minimized perspective is largely the result of a radical individualism that has permeated life in the West.