Word: appiah
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Appiah’s father was a Ghanaian independence leader; his mother, Peggy Cripps, was the daughter of a British knight. Of his own many identities—a U.S. citizen, an African-American, a gay man—Appiah refuses to prioritize any one in particular. Echoing his argument in “The Ethics of Identity,” Appiah told me he believes no identity should be “determinative of absolutely every choice” one has to make...
...chapter on “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” Appiah tries to make philosophical sense out of the fact that most people are averse to female circumcision but not to its male counterpart. Appiah uses this apparent contradiction to ask the larger question of how the liberal cosmopolitanism he advocates “might justify tolerance for illiberal practices that are grounded in local traditions...
...comes to the conclusion that the harm done by involuntary circumcision must be weighed against its “contributions to the meanings of particular African…identities.” Appiah spends pages analyzing the alternatives and justifying his own notion of cosmopolitanism through the lens of the liberal philosophical tradition. He makes philosophical sense out of common sense, bending and plying theories of great thinkers of the past and present to assemble a comprehensive assessment of the meaning of identity...
...Appiah weaves extensive quotations and citations of philosophers from Socrates to Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel (to whom he respectfully refers, on first reference, as simply “Sandel”) into his very readable and occasionally colloquial prose—dotted with words that go untransliterated and untranslated...
...intellectual worth of cultural productivity is worth studying,” Appiah said, “and it’s worth studying in itself, not because of what it does for our mind or even that it teaches us about reality, but because interacting with works of great achievement is valuable...