Kwame Anthony Appiah

New York University | NYU · Department of Philosophy

Humanistic disciplines have family resemblances rather than a simple shared common aim or method, and, like literal family resemblances, these have an explanation that comes from their historical relationships to one another. Philosophy, in particular, is closely connected to the sciences it has spun off over the centuries, but remains distinct fro...

This chapter identifies three domains of philosophical questions about work. First, an ontological issue: What is work? This question is both historical and conceptual, as questions in social ontology usually are. Second, an ethical issue: How does work fit into the good life? The hard problem here is to substitute, in new economic conditions, for...

This chapter explores some of the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, from above, and ethnic identity and nationalism, from below, in the light of some of the other chapters in this book. To do so, it sketches a general account of identity, with its three components: criteria of membership, psychological identification, and the treatm...

Modern sociology and anthropology proposed from their very beginnings a scientific study of religion. This paper discusses attempts to understand religion in this ‘scientific’ way. I start with a classical canon of anthropology and sociology of religion, in the works of E. B. Tylor (1832–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)....

So begins Constantine Cavafy's classic poem of November 1898, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” in Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard's assured translation. Cavafy was a writer who tested all manner of boundary conditions. His every identity came with an asterisk. He was a Greek who never lived in Greece. A government clerk of Greek Orthodox upbringing,...

This article aims to explain why the idea of the West is, for historical and philosophical reasons, an obstacle to dealing with the dangers posed by radical Islamists. Every proposed theory of the West has to account for the great internal cultural diversity both of European cultures and of those influenced by them around the world; and every serio...

Is it supposed to train students, or transform them? Can these two perspectives be reconciled?

I want to explore briefly some of the difficulties with the idea of liberal neutrality and to defend a particular ideal of neutrality that takes social identity as its focus.1 The basic ideal is that governmental action, including but by no means limited to legislation, should not exhibit prejudice towards some social identities or partiality towar...

Some three score years ago, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess found himself dissatisfied with ‘what are called “theories of truth” in philo-sophical literature’.1 ‘The discussion has already lasted some 2500 years’, he wrote. ‘The number of participants amounts to a thousand, and the number of articles and books devoted to the discussion is much...

There is a famous paradox about democracy: most forms of participation make no obvious difference to political outcomes and yet people act anyway. I argue that they are more likely to act politically if they have certain attitudes and commitments; and that productive attitudes of the right kind can be sustained by a culture in which two kinds of ho...

This volume of the Townsend Papers in the Humanities commemorates the twenty-fifth year of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. As such, the volume is an attempt to capture the breadth and depth of lectures and events presented by the center. Many are revised versions of lectures and presentati...

Conversations Between Philosophy and Anthropology A Philosophical Background Moral Relativism: The Dialogue Between Anthropology and Philosophy Envoi References

This article aims to explain why the idea of the West is, for historical and philosophical reasons, an obstacle to dealing with the dangers posed by radical Islamists. Every proposed theory of the West has to account for the great internal cultural diversity both of European cultures and of those influenced by them around the world; and every serio...

In March 2010, in Geneva, the UN's Human Rights Council (HRC) voted by a narrow margin to accept a nonbinding Resolution on “Combating Defamation of Religions.” (Hereafter, “the Resolution.”) Resolutions like this one have been offered regularly at the HRC and in the General Assembly, have the support of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (...

IT is a Truism that in the United States of America "we live in a multicultural society." But the obviousness and apparent clarity of this truism, like the apparent clarity and obviousness of most such truisms, dissolves upon inspection. To begin with what is perhaps the least patent difficulty, what people normally have in mind when they pronounce...

Michael Ignatieff draws on his extensive experience as a writer and commentator on world affairs to present a penetrating account of the successes, failures, and prospects of the human rights revolution. Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, this revolution has brought the world moral progress and broke...

This article argues against the view that affirmative action is wrong because it involves assigning group rights. First, affirmative action does not have to proceed by assigning rights at all. Second, there are, in fact, legitimate “group rights” both legal and moral; there are collective rights—which are exercised by groups—and membership rights—w...

This paper responds to the four critiques of my book Experiments in Ethics published in this issue. The main theme I take up is how we should understand the relation between psychology and philosophy. Young and Saxe believe that “bottom line” evaluative judgments don’t depend on facts. I argue for a different view, according to which our evaluative...

Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life,...

I begin by arguing that our model of religion is often based on Christianity. A Christian model of religion is going to look for gods and creeds, churches, priests, prayer, collective worship, moral codes, each of which is absent in some of the things we might want to call religions. And it may well ignore dietary and sumptuary rules or cult for an...

A Citizen of the WorldThe Idea of CosmopolitanismEducation for the Global CommunityImpact of Context and Community on ChildrenCosmopolitan IdealsObjections to CosmopolitanismThe Fundamentalist Challenge

This chapter analyses the concept of identity developed by Amartya Sen in recent work, especially in the book Identity and Violence. It discusses the relationship between identity and solidarity, arguing that, the former is necessary but by no means sufficient for the latter, so that, contra what Sen sometimes suggests, identities are not simply fo...

This chapter asks why domestic and international political disputes are so difficult to resolve once they have religious stakes. The chapter's answer centers on the centrality of religious identity and its role in integrating other aspects of personal identity, underwriting ethical commitments, and defining the national community. When it is a sali...

This paper analyzes the concept of identity developed by Amartya Sen in recent work, especially in the book Identity and Violence. It discusses the relationship between identity and solidarity, arguing that the former is necessary but by no means sufficient for the latter, so that, contra what Sen sometimes suggests, identities are not simply forms...

african philosophy;african literature;identities;philosophical writings;wole soyinka

If "slavery" is defined broadly to include bonded child labor and forced prostitution, there are upward of 25 million slaves in the world today. Individuals and groups are freeing some slaves by buying them from their enslavers. But slave redemption is as controversial today as it was in pre-Civil War America. In Buying Freedom , Kwame Anthony Appi...

Why has the age of globalization also been an era of ethnocide? Arjun Appadurai's answer begins from the thought that modern national sovereignty always presupposes the idea of "some sort of ethnic genius." Globalization threatens this idea by blurring the lines between Us and Them, increasing uncertainty about the meaning of national belonging. Ap...

Many liberals endorse an ideal of neutrality for the state when it comes to its relations with people of distinct identities. One model in the United States has been a certain understanding of the First Amendment, with its careful balancing of free exercise, on the one hand, and nonestablishment, on the other. In recent work I have defended such a...

Through most of the twentieth century, life scientists grew increasingly sceptical of the biological significance of folk classifications of people by race. New work on the human genome has raised the possibility of a resurgence of scientific interest in human races. This paper aims to show that the racial sceptics are right, while also granting th...

This chapter discusses how throughout the former colonies of the British empire in Africa, as well as the Caribbean and the United States, the English language is a marker of a cultural legacy that many Africans and people of African descent have inherited, but also a legacy to which they have made an abiding contribution. It is of course a legacy...

This book features a collection of essays that seek to provide accurate and well-developed characterizations of the epistemological and metaphysical concerns that shaped the conceptual languages and philosophical thought of sub-Saharan Africa. A common theme between the essays is that a word shared by different cultures can have different extension...

This article summarizes my views on epistemological problems in African studies as I have expressed them previously in different contexts, mainly my book In My Father's House (1992), to which I refer the reader for further details. I start with an attempt to expose some natural errors in our thinking about the traditional-modern polarity, and thus...

My father died, as I say, while I was trying to finish this book. His funeral was an occasion for strengthening and reaffirming the ties that bind me to Ghana and “my father’s house” and, at the same time, for straining my allegiances to my king and my father’s matriclan—perhaps, even tearing them beyond repair. When I last saw him alive, my father...

Understanding Reparation. A Preliminary Reflection. – This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the moral logic of claims for group reparation for large-scale historical abuses of human rights such as slavery, apartheid, colonialism, and genocide. I begin with the rationale for reparation in individual cases. In the model case, a perpetrator wron...

Understanding Reparation. A Preliminary Reflection. – This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the moral logic of claims for group reparation for large-scale historical abuses of human rights such as slavery, apartheid, colonialism, and genocide. I begin with the rationale for reparation in individual cases. In the model case, a perpetrator wron...

Applying his philosophical ideas to the critical issues of democracy, culture, and development in Africa today, Hountondji addresses three crucial topics: the nexus between scientific extraversion and economic dependence; the nature of endogenous traditions of thought and their relationship with modern science; and the implications—for polit...

Anthony Appiah's essay on liberal education in the United States begins by identifying a distinctive feature of classical liberalism - namely, that the state must respect substantial limits with respect to its authority to impose restrictions on individuals, even for their own good. Nevertheless, Appiah points out, the primary aim of liberal educat...