Kwame Anthony Appiah has worked in many areas of philosophy and literary and cultural studies, beginning with doctoral work in the theory of meaning, where he developed an account of the probabilistic semantics of conditionals. Since then, he has explored the intellectual history of modern African ideas about race, culture and identity, done work on the nature of social identities and their role in ethical life, and explored questions about global ethics, defending a 'rooted cosmopolitanism.'
He has sought to bring philosophical ideas to a wider audience in books like Cosmopolitanism and The Honor Code (which discusses the role of honor in bringing about moral change). In his 2016 Reith lectures, he discussed misunderstandings about social identity, and he writes a weekly column, The Ethicist, for the New York Times.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, Laurance Rockefeller University Professor Emeritus at Princeton, an honorary fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2012.
Professional position
- Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law, Department of Philosophy, New York University
Subject groups
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Other
Other interests
