Kwame Anthony Appiah

We often think identity is personal. But the identities that shape the world, our struggles, and our hopes, are social ones, shared with countless others. Our sense of self is shaped by our family, but also by affiliations that spread out from there, like our nationality, culture, class, race and religion. Taking these broad categories as a starting point, Professor Appiah challenges our assumptions about how identity works. In eloquent and lively chapters, he weaves personal anecdote with historical, cultural and literary example to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves. We all know there are conflicts among identities; but Professor Appiah explores how identities are created by conflict. Identities are then crafted from confusions - confusions this book aims to help us sort through. Religion, Appiah shows us, isn't primarily about beliefs. The idea of national self-determination is incoherent. Our everyday racial thinking is an artefact of discarded science. Class is not a matter of upper and lower. And the very idea of Western culture is a misleading myth. We will see our situation more clearly if we start to question these mistaken identities. This is radical new thinking from a master in the subject and will change forever the way we think about ourselves and our communities.

Rethinking Identity

The Lies That Bind

From the best-selling author of Cosmopolitanism comes this revealing exploration of how the collective identities that shape our polarized world are riddled with contradiction.We often think identity is personal. But the identities that shape the world, our struggles, and our hopes, are social ones, shared with countless others. Our sense of self is shaped by our family, but also by affiliations that spread out from there, like our nationality, culture, class, race and religion.Taking these broad categories as a starting point, Professor Appiah challenges our assumptions about how identity works. In eloquent and lively chapters, he weaves personal anecdote with historical, cultural and literary example to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves. We all know there are conflicts among identities; but Professor Appiah explores how identities are created by conflict. Identities are then crafted from confusions - confusions this book aims to help us sort through. Religion, Appiah shows us, isn't primarily about beliefs. The idea of national self-determination is incoherent. Our everyday racial thinking is an artefact of discarded science. Class is not a matter of upper and lower. And the very idea of Western culture is a misleading myth. We will see our situation more clearly if we start to question these mistaken identities. This is radical new thinking from a master in the subject and will change forever the way we think about ourselves and our communities.

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year As seen on the Netflix series Explained From the best-selling author of Cosmopolitanism comes this revealing exploration of how the collective identities that shape our polarized world are riddled with contradiction. Who do you think you are? That’s a question bound up in another: What do you think you are? Gender. Religion. Race. Nationality. Class. Culture. Such affiliations give contours to our sense of self, and shape our polarized world. Yet the collective identities they spawn are riddled with contradictions, and cratered with falsehoods. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Lies That Bind is an incandescent exploration of the nature and history of the identities that define us. It challenges our assumptions about how identities work. We all know there are conflicts between identities, but Appiah shows how identities are created by conflict. Religion, he demonstrates, gains power because it isn’t primarily about belief. Our everyday notions of race are the detritus of discarded nineteenth-century science. Our cherished concept of the sovereign nation—of self-rule—is incoherent and unstable. Class systems can become entrenched by efforts to reform them. Even the very idea of Western culture is a shimmering mirage. From Anton Wilhelm Amo, the eighteenth-century African child who miraculously became an eminent European philosopher before retiring back to Africa, to Italo Svevo, the literary marvel who changed citizenship without leaving home, to Appiah’s own father, Joseph, an anticolonial firebrand who was ready to give his life for a nation that did not yet exist, Appiah interweaves keen-edged argument with vibrant narratives to expose the myths behind our collective identities. These “mistaken identities,” Appiah explains, can fuel some of our worst atrocities—from chattel slavery to genocide. And yet, he argues that social identities aren’t something we can simply do away with. They can usher in moral progress and bring significance to our lives by connecting the small scale of our daily existence with larger movements, causes, and concerns. Elaborating a bold and clarifying new theory of identity, The Lies That Bind is a ringing philosophical statement for the anxious, conflict-ridden twenty-first century. This book will transform the way we think about who—and what—“we” are.

The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity

This landmark work challenges the separatist doctrines which have come to dominate our understanding of the world. Appiah revives the ancient philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, which dates back to the Cynics of the 4th century, as a means of understanding the complex world of today. Arguing that we concentrate too much on what makes us different rather than recognising our common humanity, Appiah explores how we can act ethically in a globalised world.

Ethics in a World of Strangers

Cosmopolitanism

An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy

Thinking It Through

Ivor Agyeman-Duah

Peggy Appiah

Proverbs of the Akans

Bu Me Be

Un mundo en el que las comunidades se mantienen escindidas unas de otras ya no parece constituir una opción seria. Menos aun lo es un mundo que, como el nuestro, exagera el poder de la diferencia en desmedro del valor de la semejanza. En 'Cosmopolitismo. La ética en un mundo de extraños', Kwame A. Appiah propone recuperar el concepto filosófico de hombre como "ciudadano del mundo", aquel que no se identifica sólo con su patria ni considera al resto de los humanos como "extranjeros": un ideal cosmopolita que se remonta a la antigüedad clásica y que subyace en algunos de los principales logros morales del Iluminismo, como la Declaración de los derechos del hombre o la propuesta kantiana de una "liga de Naciones". Appiah sostiene que "el cosmopolitismo no debería ser visto como un logro sofisticado, ya que comienza por la sencilla idea de que en la comunidad humana, de la misma manera que en las comunidades nacionales, necesitamos desarrollar el hábito de la coexistencia: la conversación en su sentido más antiguo, la convivencia, la asociación". La conversación -las inevitables conversaciones entre quienes pueden no estar vinculados por el parentesco, la nacionalidad o el modo de vida- y la progresiva familiaridad con las diferencias son las herramientas -afirma el autor- para lograr ese "cosmopolitismo parcial", ese modo de pertenecer a la vez al lugar en el que estamos y a la comunidad humana que nos incluye. Con estilo fluido pero con argumentos precisos, con pinceladas de su propia biografía multicultural y con ejemplos de la filosofía y de la literatura, Appiah invita a pensar el cosmopolitismo no como una solución, sino como "una aventura y un ideal".

la ética en un mundo de extraños

Cosmopolitismo

Idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models to make sense of the world, and life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. Our beliefs, desires, and sense of justice are bound up with these ideals, and we proceed "as if" our representations were true, while knowing they are not. In this elegant and original meditation, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests that this instinct to idealize is not dangerous or distracting so much as it is necessary. As If explores how strategic untruth plays a critical role in far-flung areas of inquiry: decision theory, psychology, natural science, and political philosophy. A polymath who writes with exceptional clarity, Appiah defends the centrality of the imagination not just in the arts but in science, morality, and everyday life. "Appiah is a writer and thinker of remarkable range... [He] has packed into this short book an impressive amount of original reflection... A rich and illuminating book." --Thomas Nagel, New York Review of Books "Appiah is the rare public intellectual who is also a first-rate analytic philosopher, and the characteristic virtues associated with each of these identities are very much in evidence throughout the book." --Thomas Kelly, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Idealization and Ideals

As If

Verkenning van het begrip identiteit op basis van geloof, land, kleur, klasse en cultuur.

een nieuwe kijk op identiteit

De leugens die ons binden

In the past few decades, scientists of human nature—including experimental and cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary theorists, and behavioral economists—have explored the way we arrive at moral judgments. They have called into question commonplaces about character and offered troubling explanations for various moral intuitions. Research like this may help explain what, in fact, we do and feel. But can it tell us what we ought to do or feel? In Experiments in Ethics, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah explores how the new empirical moral psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical ethics. Some moral theorists hold that the realm of morality must be autonomous of the sciences; others maintain that science undermines the authority of moral reasons. Appiah elaborates a vision of naturalism that resists both temptations. He traces an intellectual genealogy of the burgeoning discipline of "experimental philosophy," provides a balanced, lucid account of the work being done in this controversial and increasingly influential field, and offers a fresh way of thinking about ethics in the classical tradition. Appiah urges that the relation between empirical research and morality, now so often antagonistic, should be seen in terms of dialogue, not contest. And he shows how experimental philosophy, far from being something new, is actually as old as philosophy itself. Beyond illuminating debates about the connection between psychology and ethics, intuition and theory, his book helps us to rethink the very nature of the philosophical enterprise.

Experiments in Ethics

Alisa Solomon

Orhan Pamuk

Jianying Zha

Wayne Koestenbaum

Ruben Martinez

Xi Xi

This is the first issue of a literary review which aims to present challenging and innovative modern world literature.

False Start

Venue

Al trasladarse del campo de la obligación moral al de la realización ética, la reflexión de los filósofos modernos ha retornado a cuestiones que absorbieron la atención de los antiguos: la cuestión acerca de qué vida deberíamos llevar y de cómo una vida bien vivida debe ser algo más que una vida que satisfaga nuestras preferencias. Una vez que tomamos en serio estos interrogantes, nos vemos obligados a reconocer que las herramientas con que construimos nuestras vidas incluyen muchas formas y muchos recursos provistos por la sociedad: entre ellos, el más obvio es el lenguaje, pero también hay otras incontables instituciones privadas y públicas. Lo que ha resultado ser especialmente complejo, sin embargo, es el intento de dar cuenta de esas formas sociales que ahora llamamos identidades: géneros y orientaciones sexuales, etnias y nacionalidades, profesiones y vocaciones. Ésa es justamente la tarea que Anthony Appiah emprende en esta obra, que parte de la afirmación según la cual, en tiempos en los que el discurso sobre la identidad puede sonar a mera "moda", las cuestiones que presenta ese discurso no son en absoluto ajenas al canon más alto de la filosofía política: el controvertido dominio de la "autonomía", los debates en torno de la ciudadanía y la identidad, el papel que debe desempeñar el Estado respecto de la realización ética, las negociaciones entre la parcialidad y la moral, las perspectivas que encierran las conversaciones entre las comunidades éticas. "Si hay algo que caracteriza a mi aporte, afirma Appiah, es que siempre parte de la perspectiva del individuo dedicado a hacer su propia vida -reconociendo que hay otros que están involucrados en el mismo proyecto- y que se preocupa por preguntar qué significa la vida social y política para este proyecto que compartimos." Determinar de qué manera obtendremos algún sentido de la relación entre identidad e individualidad -entre el 'qué' y el 'quién'- es el tema de esta obra que continúa, así, "una conversación que ha atravesado media historia". "La ética de la identidad es fundamental para la conducta individual precisamente por las elecciones ineludibles acerca de las prioridades respecto de nuestras muchas filiaciones; acerca de ello, véase el bello análisis de Kwame Anthony Appiah en 'La ética de la identidad'." Amartya Sen, 'Identidad y violencia', Katz Editores, 2007 "'La ética de la identidad' es una obra maravillosamente directa. Hace exactamente lo que se propone. Explora las demandas de la ‘individualidad’ y rechaza las concepciones extremas sobre los requerimientos de la autonomía. Appiah tiene cosas sabias y originales que decir sobre la inevitabilidad del modo en que el Estado liberal afecta la vida íntima de los ciudadanos. Concluye con una firme defensa del cosmopolitismo arraigado. Sus argumentos no son técnicos ni agresivos: son directos y transparentes." Alan Ryan, The New York Review of Books

La ética de la identidad

Kwame Anthony Appiah è nato a Londra, è cresciuto in Ghana, ha un passaporto britannico e vive negli Stati Uniti, dove è considerato nero. Suo padre era un membro dell’aristocrazia militare dell’Impero ashanti, nel territorio che oggi corrisponde ai confini della Repubblica del Ghana, e sua madre veniva da una famiglia anglicana della campagna inglese. Che cos’è l’identità? E perché è così importante? Abbiamo l’abitudine di pensare che l’identità sia personale, ma le identità delineano per noi il perimetro del mondo, delle nostre speranze e delle nostre lotte. Il modo in cui percepiamo noi stessi è plasmato dalla nazionalità, dal colore della pelle, dalla cultura, dalla classe sociale e dalla religione. E la concezione che abbiamo dell’identità è abbastanza recente, perché ha origine nell’Ottocento e si è consolidata dopo il 1945. Da allora abbiamo creato tribù, gruppi chiusi che tendono a respingersi reciprocamente. Appiah decostruisce le etichette di cui ci serviamo per riconoscerci all’interno di un gruppo nella società, e che tuttavia possono trasformarsi facilmente in strumenti di discriminazione e abuso di potere. Così svela il nostro errore più grave e più diffuso: esageriamo le differenze tra noi e gli altri e ci difendiamo dal contatto con chi consideriamo diverso. Le storie che svelano la complessità nascosta dietro queste etichette vengono dalla vita quotidiana, dalla storia e dalla letteratura. E tutte hanno qualcosa in comune: i confini ideali che individuano l’identità nascono sempre da un conflitto. E da pregiudizi che questo libro intende smascherare.

Come riconoscere le false verità che ci dividono in tribù

La menzogna dell'identità

"En el testamento espiritual que dejó a sus hijos, mi padre nos instó a recordar siempre que éramos 'ciudadanos de mundo': utilizó exactamente estas palabras. Por ello, hoy quiero hablar de uno de los ideales filosóficos estoicos, un ideal que puede ayudar a la comunidad global en los años por venir, dado que resulta particularmente útil cuando nos enfrentamos a conflictos basados en identidades religiosas, étnicas, raciales y nacionales, tan característicos de nuestro mundo. El ideal al que me refiero, claro está, es el cosmopolitismo."

Mi cosmopolitismo

La filosofía moral ha pretendido explicar, durante siglos, cómo la conducta humana es resultado de decisiones correctas tomadas por individuos que actúan responsablemente como agentes morales. Sin embargo, se ha encontrado con un material difícil: las personas no son tan correctas ni reflexivas, ni tan disciplinadas como los moralistas lo hubieran querido. Y, en oposición a los filósofos morales, las investigaciones recientes de los psicólogos cognitivos, los neurocientíficos o los teóricos evolucionistas han arrojado resultados que no son demasiado alentadores para ratificar aquellos puntos de vista: cuanto más aprendemos acerca de la fuente de nuestras acciones y juicios, más difícil parecería relacionar esas conductas y sentimientos con los valores y los principios que los moralistas imaginaban como rectores de la vida. La aparente contradicción entre el antiguo proyecto de la ética filosófica y los descubrimientos de las modernas ciencias del comportamiento es puesta bajo una nueva luz en este libro, que muestra de qué modo las investigaciones empíricas y la tradición de la ética clásica deben verse como un diálogo antes que como una confrontación. Appiah -uno de los más lúcidos pensadores contemporáneos- elabora aquí una versión del naturalismo que, al trascender los debates centrados en la relación entre la psicología y la ética, entre intuición y teoría, reformula la naturaleza misma de la empresa filosófica y ofrece una renovada manera de reflexionar sobre la ética de la tradición clásica. "En este libro de prosa deslumbrante, Appiah argumenta en favor de restablecer el vínculo entre la filosofía moral y las ciencias, tanto naturales como sociales. El importante argumento de Appiah promete transformar más de un campo del saber." Cass Sunstein "Una encantadora y penetrante obra, plena de historias, bromas y anécdotas." Jeremy Waldron, The New York Review of Books, 8 de octubre de 2009

Experimentos de ética

Amy Gutmann

In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most vexing problem. Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life. Gutmann examines alternative political responses to racial injustice. She argues that American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice. Whether policies should be color-conscious, class conscious, or both in particular situations, depends on an open-minded assessment of their fairness. Exploring timely issues of university admissions, corporate hiring, and political representation, Gutmann develops a moral perspective that supports a commitment to constitutional democracy. Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race.

The Political Morality of Race

Color Conscious

The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America. In this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race. In My Father's House is especially wide-ranging, covering everything from Pan Africanism, to the works of early African-American intellectuals such as Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the ways in which African identity influences African literature. In his discussion of the latter subject, Appiah demonstrates how attempts to construct a uniquely African literature have ignored not only the inescapable influences that centuries of contact with the West have imposed, but also the multicultural nature of Africa itself. Emphasizing this last point is Appiah's eloquent title essay which offers a fitting finale to the volume. In a moving first-person account of his father's death and funeral in Ghana, Appiah offers a brilliant metaphor for the tension between Africa's aspirations to modernity and its desire to draw on its ancient cultural roots. During the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appeared on television to make his now famous plea: "People, can we all get along?" In this beautiful, elegantly written volume, Appiah steers us along a path toward answering a question of the utmost importance to us all.

Africa in the Philosophy of Culture

In My Father's House

"[Appiah's] work reveals the heart and sensitivity of a novelist. . . .Fascinating, erudite and beautifully written."—The New York Times Book Review In this groundbreaking work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, hailed as "one of the most relevant philosophers today" (New York Times Book Review), changes the way we understand human behavior and the way social reform is brought about. In brilliantly arguing that new democratic movements over the last century have not been driven by legislation from above, Appiah explores the end of the duel in aristocratic England, the tumultuous struggles over footbinding in nineteenth-century China, the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery, and the horrors of "honor killing" in contemporary Pakistan. Intertwining philosophy and historical narrative, he has created "a fascinating study of moral evolution" (Philadelphia Inquirer) that demonstrates the critical role honor plays a in the struggle against man's inhumanity to man.

The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen

Que peut-on apprendre sur la morale en étudiant les révolutions morales ? Historiens et philosophes ont découvert bien des choses sur la science en examinant avec attention les révolutions scientifiques. La morale, ainsi que le soutenait Emmanuel Kant, est en fin de compte pratique ; elle concerne ce que nous faisons. Aussi, comme toute révolution est un changement profond en un bref laps de temps, une révolution morale doit impliquer une transformation rapide du comportement moral et non pas simplement des sentiments moraux. Kwame Anthony Appiah, professeur de philosophie à l'Université Princeton, examine quelques révolutions morales, la tombée en désuétude du duel, l'abandon du bandage des pieds en Chine, la fin de la traite négrière dans l'Atlantique, pour cerner ce qu'elles ont en commun. Le premier trait est qu'il ne s'est passé aucun retournement d'opinion suite à des arguments nouveaux politiques, religieux ou moraux. Ceux-ci, hostiles à chacune de ces pratiques étaient bien connus depuis longtemps ; le duel avait toujours été meurtrier et irrationnel, le bandage des pieds cruellement mutilant, l'asservissement une atteinte à la dignité humaine de l'esclave. L'important est ailleurs ; dans chacune de ces transitions le rôle central est revenu à quelque chose que l'on nommait très naturellement " honneur ". Ainsi des conceptions de l'honneur national et de l'honneur d'ouvriers très éloignés des plantations du Nouveau Monde ont respectivement occupé une place éminente dans la fin du bandage des pieds et de l'esclavage moderne. Ce qui s'avère essentiel, c'est dans chaque cas le rôle des identités sociales et plus exactement la lutte pour la reconnaissance ; nous avons besoin que d'autres personnes nous reconnaissent en tant qu'êtres conscients et nous témoignent que nous les reconnaissons. Appiah restaure donc, au coeur de la philosophie politique et morale, la notion aujourd'hui négligée d'honneur, essentielle à notre réflexion sur la question de savoir ce qu'est vivre une vie humaine réussie. Tant le respect et l'amour-propre ou respect de soi sont clairement des biens humains cruciaux.

comment adviennent les révolutions morales

Le code d'honneur

Thinking it Through is a thorough, vividly written introduction to contemporary philosophy and some of the most crucial questions of human existence, including the nature of mind and knowledge, the status of moral claims, the existence of God, the role of science, and the mysteries of language. Noted philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows us what it means to "do" philosophy in our time and why it should matter to anyone who wishes to live a more thoughtful life. Opposing the common misconceptions that being a philosopher means espousing a set of philosophical beliefs--or being a follower of a particular thinker--Appiah argues that "the result of philosophical exploration is not the end of inquiry in a settled opinion, but a mind resting more comfortably among many possibilities, or else the reframing of the question, and a new inquiry." Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, Thinking It Through is organized around eight central topics--mind, knowledge, language, science, morality, politics, law, and metaphysics. It traces how philosophers in the past have considered each subject (how Hobbes, Wittgenstein, and Frege, for example, approached the problem of language) and then explores some of the major questions that still engage philosophers today. More importantly, Appiah not only explains what philosophers have thought but how they think, giving students examples that they can use in their own attempts to navigate the complex issues confronting any reflective person in the twenty-first century. Filled with concrete examples of how philosophers work, Thinking it Through guides students through the process of philosophical reflection and enlarges their understanding of the central questions of human life.

Kwame Anthony Appiah

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