Q0626

“Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values;…” — Kwame Anthony Appiah (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of…)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006). Theme: otherness.

English

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.
Thinker Kwame Anthony Appiah
School Africana Philosophy
Source Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006)
Theme Otherness
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006) and files it under Africana Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah (b. 1954) is a British-Ghanaian philosopher who has taught at Princeton, NYU, and elsewhere.

How to read this passage

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Frantz Fanon and Kwame Anthony Appiah), otherness is framed through Africana Philosophy and Platonic Moral Philosophy. Some passages define otherness; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through otherness, ethics.

Concepts in this quote

Otherness
Otherness appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat otherness as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.
Ethics
Ethics appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat ethics as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Kwame Anthony Appiah. (n.d.). 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. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0626

MLA: Kwame Anthony Appiah. “Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0626.

Chicago: Kwame Anthony Appiah. “Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0626.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about…”?

The passage is attributed to Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006). The archive attributes this English wording to Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006) and files it under Africana Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Kwame Anthony Appiah mean by otherness?

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Frantz Fanon and Kwame Anthony Appiah), otherness is framed through Africana Philosophy and Platonic Moral Philosophy. Some passages define otherness; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through otherness, ethics.

Explore Kwame Anthony Appiah on otherness

Same thinker

More from Kwame Anthony Appiah

  1. The version of cosmopolitanism that I favor is exactly about balancing universality and difference.
  2. Relativism of that sort isn't a way to encourage conversation; it's just a reason to fall silent.
  3. A value is like a fax machine: it's not much use if you're the only one who has one.
  4. Cosmopolitans begin with a sense of one thing we all certainly share, which is our fallibility. Nobody has reason to be confident that they're right about everything.
  5. We have obligations to others that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by ties of kith and kind; and we must take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives.

All quotations by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Same theme

More on otherness

  1. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  2. All real living is meeting.
  3. By contrast, the majoritarian system might be said to be, in principle, based on consent without consensus.
  4. Superiority? Inferiority? Why not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the other, to explain the other to myself?
  5. Our ambition is to help build a Civilization of the Universal, a rendezvous of giving and receiving among the cultures of the world.

Browse the otherness theme