Many critics of increasing freedom of trade and of movement, and the phenomena of
cosmopolitanism and globalization that result from such freedom, insist that the consequence of
greater trade and movement is a net loss of identity. Globalization is, they allege, destructive of
personal identity itself, which they see as reliant on sharply delineated differences among cultures.
This paper sets out the anti-globalist critique and then shows that cosmopolitanism and
globalization are hardly new phenomena, but have deep roots in European civilization. The threat
allegedly posed by globalization to personal identity is described and the arguments of its main
proponents given, followed by a critique of the theory of personal identity implicit in the argument
and an alternative theory of personal identity (a “focal theory”) is described; that theory is both truer
to lived human experience and fully compatible with the securing of personal identity in the context
of an increasingly globalized world of free individuals.
