- ContributedJason D. Hill
Title: Becoming A Cosmopolitan
Author: Jason D. Hill
Reviewed by: Calvin Bowen
JASON HILL, a Jamaican who is assistant professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University in the United States, has produced an impressive study on how human beings can take on a new personality through greater awareness of the power of the mind in rising above inhibiting constraints of race, colour and nationality.
"Becoming a Cosmopolitan" is a scholarly treatise on the development of human personality, written from the perspective of a philosopher who has made a thorough analysis of the subject.
It reads like a doctoral thesis - and might indeed be based on the paper which he wrote for his Ph.D., which he earned from Purdue University.
Dr. Hill describes cosmopolitans as persons who, against their origins, choose a transnational identity. Identifying with the world as home and with human beings (not as foreigners or strangers), they reject the rigid and provincial designations of race and national identity.
"Cosmopolitanism", he writes, "combats provincialism, parochialism, ethnic and racial peculiarities, and the narrowness of identity and vision concomitant with them. It hails the findings of common ground in a shared human identity. It recognises that human identity is made and lived".
Intellectual journey
As an erudite and articulate advocate of the cosmopolitan life, he takes us on an intellectual journey through the realm of philosophy, examining the writings of philosophers ancient and modern, on such profound and fundamental issues as the development of self and the process of becoming something better and nobler.
How the transformation can be accomplished and what are the guiding principles that can motivate the conversion to this new way of life is set out in an almost conversational style that renders the philosophical language and the flow of logic easy to follow.
His interest and, indeed, introduction to the subject was aroused when, on arriving in the United States as a young man of 20 years, he soon became aware that the American society was obsessed with notions of race and ethnicity.
A note on the book jacket states: "He observed, for example, the reluctance of West Indians to join 'black causes' for fear of losing their identity. He began to ask himself what sort of world he wanted to live in: a quest that in time led him to the idea of the cosmopolitan".
Describing himself as a moral cosmopolitan, he explains the thinking that influenced his decision not only to accept that he needed a new understanding of himself and his relationship with others, but to set out this notion of self-transformation in a book.
Cosmopolitanism, he points out, is not a new concept. It has been enunciated by philosophers and scholars from the earliest times, dating back to the era of Socrates and Plato and other thinkers of the age. As a moral force for good, he sees it as having special validity in the modern world.
Background
Dr. Hill is a member of a well-known Jamaican family. He is the grandson of Frank Hill, of journalism, politics and trade union fame. His father is the former Reverend Phillip Hill, now known as Blessed St. John of Jesus. Another member of the family is Professor Robert Hill, son of Frank Hill's younger brother, Stephen, and himself a scholar and man of letters, noted for his research work on National Hero Marcus Garvey.
After graduating magna cum laude from Georgia State University, Jason Hill was granted exemption from the master's degree programme to do his Ph.D. at Purdue University in Indiana. On the strength of his doctoral dissertation, he was granted a fellowship at Cornell University on which he is now engaged.
"Becoming a Cosmopolitan" is the first of a trilogy on sex, religion and politics being written by him. Before emigrating to the United States, he worked at The Gleaner as a reporter.
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
