Kwame Anthony Appiah(1954 — ?)
Kwame Anthony Appiah
États-Unis, Royaume-Uni
6 min read
Anglo-Ghanaian philosopher born in 1954, professor at New York University, specializing in ethics, identity, and cosmopolitanism. He advocates an ethics of obligations toward all human beings, beyond national and cultural borders.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1954 in London, raised in Kumasi, Ghana, to an English mother and a Ghanaian father
- Published 'Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers' in 2006, a major work on cosmopolitan ethics
- Professor of philosophy and law at New York University (NYU) since 2014
- Published 'The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity' in 2018, a critique of fixed identities (nation, religion, race, culture)
- Writes the ethics column 'The Ethicist' for The New York Times Magazine
Works & Achievements
A foundational essay on African identity and a critique of the notion of race, award-winning and widely studied.
A reflection on the place of race in American politics and morality.
An analysis of how collective identities shape our lives without having to limit our individual freedom.
His most famous work, defending an ethics of obligation toward all of humanity.
A study of the role of honor in the great moral changes of history.
A series of radio lectures on the illusions tied to religion, nation, race, and culture.
A book that deconstructs the major categories of identity and their misleading narratives.
Anecdotes
Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Kumasi, Ghana, in an extraordinarily cosmopolitan family: his father, Joe Appiah, was a Ghanaian politician and lawyer, and his mother, Peggy Cripps, was an Englishwoman, the daughter of a British government minister. Their 1953 marriage made headlines on both sides of the world.
His great-aunt by marriage was none other than the wife of the king of the Ashanti, and his British maternal great-grandfather had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Appiah likes to say that he embodies the very cosmopolitanism he theorizes about: a man of many roots who feels at home everywhere.
For years, Appiah also wrote detective novels. Under his own name, he published three mystery novels in the 1980s and 1990s, showing that a renowned philosopher could also have fun crafting crime plots.
Since 2015, Appiah has written the weekly column “The Ethicist” in the New York Times Magazine, where he responds to the moral dilemmas readers send him. Every week, thousands of people submit to him matters of conscience drawn from their everyday lives.
In 2012, President Barack Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal at the White House, honoring a thinker capable of making philosophy accessible and of reflecting on questions of identity in a globalized world.
Primary Sources
Cosmopolitanism begins with the simple idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we must concern ourselves with the fate of all human beings.
Collective identities give shape to our lives, but they should not become prisons: what matters is each person's freedom to shape their own existence.
Race is a notion that corresponds to nothing in the world; what we call races are fictions to which we have given a social reality.
Our identities — nation, class, culture, religion, race — often rest on errors and stories that we would do well to reexamine.
Key Places
City where Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in 1954, before growing up in Ghana. It marks his British maternal roots.
Ashanti city where Appiah spent his childhood, in his father's house. It nourished his reflection on African identity and culture.
Where Appiah studied philosophy and earned his doctorate at Clare College. His training there was shaped by the philosophy of language.
University where he has taught philosophy since 2008. There he developed his work on ethics and identity.
University where Appiah has been a professor of philosophy and law since 2014. It is his current workplace in Manhattan.
