A01=Kwame Anthony Appiah
Affair
African Americans
Alasdair MacIntyre
Author_Kwame Anthony Appiah
Bernard Williams
Category=QDTQ
Citizenship
Collective identity
Conscience
Consideration
Cosmopolitanism
Critique
Defection
Deliberation
Despotism
Duty
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Ethics
Explanation
Form of life (philosophy)
Freedom of speech
Governance
Identity (social science)
Immigration
Individual
Individualism
Institution
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jeremy Bentham
John Stuart Mill
Legislation
Legitimacy (political)
Liberal democracy
Liberalism
Modernity
Monism
Morality
Multiculturalism
Narrative
National identity
Nationality
Negative liberty
Obligation
On Liberty
Oppression
Paternalism
Patriotism
Personal autonomy
Philosopher
Philosophy
Political philosophy
Politics
Prejudice
Princeton University Press
Public sphere
Racism
Rationality
Religion
Religious identity
Requirement
Rhetoric
Ronald Dworkin
Self-help
Seminar
Skepticism
Slavery
Social Practice
Spouse
Superiority (short story)
Theory
Thought
Toleration
Well-being
Product details
- ISBN 9780691130286
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jan 2007
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions. The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves. What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities.
As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are. Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the cliches and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His books include two monographs in the philosophy of language as well as the widely acclaimed "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture", "Cosmopolitanism" [Norton], and, with Amy Gutmann, "Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race". He has also edited or co-edited many books, including (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience". His most recent book is "Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy".
