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."
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