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The ethics of identity / Kwame Anthony Appiah.

By: Appiah, Anthony [author].
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock : Princeton University Press, 2007Description: xviii, 358 pages ; 24 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9780691130286 .Subject(s): Ethics | Group identity -- Moral and ethical aspects | Identity (Psychology) -- Moral and ethical aspectsAdditional physical formats: Electronic version:.: The ethics of identity.DDC classification: 170 Also available in electronic form.
Contents:
The ethics of individuality -- Autonomy and its critics -- The demands of identity -- The trouble with culture -- Soul making -- Rooted cosmopolitanism.
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Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
General Lending MTU Bishopstown Library Lending 170 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00163584
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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 clichés 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.

Originally published: 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-339) and index.

The ethics of individuality -- Autonomy and its critics -- The demands of identity -- The trouble with culture -- Soul making -- Rooted cosmopolitanism.

CIT Module EDUC 8031 - Core reading

Also available in electronic form.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Preface (p. ix)
  • Chapter 1 The Ethics of Individuality (p. 1)
  • The Great Experiment
  • Liberty and Individuality
  • Plans of Life
  • The Soul of the Servitor
  • Social Choices
  • Invention and Authenticity
  • The Social Scriptorium
  • Ethics in Identity
  • Individuality and the State
  • The Common Pursuit
  • Chapter 2 Autonomy and Its Critics (p. 136)
  • What Autonomy Demands
  • Autonomy as Intolerance
  • Autonomy Agonistes
  • The Two Standpoints
  • Agency and the Interests of Theory
  • Chapter 3 The Demands of Identity (p. 162)
  • Learning How to Curse
  • The Structure of Social Identities
  • Millet Multiculturalism
  • Autonomism, Pluralism, Neutralism
  • A First Amendment Example: The Accommodationist Program
  • Neutrality Reconsidered
  • The Language of Recognition
  • The Medusa Syndrome
  • Limits and Parameters
  • Chapter 4 The Trouble with Culture (p. 114)
  • Making up the Difference
  • Is Culture a Good?
  • The Preservationist Ethic
  • Negation as Affirmation
  • The Diversity Principle
  • Chapter 5 Soul Making (p. 155)
  • Souls and the State
  • The Self-Management Card
  • Rational Well-Being
  • Irrational Identities
  • Soul Making and Stereotypes
  • Educated Souls
  • Conflicts Over Identity Claims
  • Chapter 6 Rooted Cosmopolitanism (p. 213)
  • A Worldwide Web
  • Ruthless Cosmopolitans
  • Ethical Partiality
  • Two Concepts of Obligation
  • Cosmopolitan Patriotism
  • Confrontation and Conversation
  • Rivalrous Goods, Rivalrous Gods
  • Traveling Tales--Globalizing Human Rights
  • Cosmopolitan Conversation
  • Acknowledgments (p. 273)
  • Notes (p. 277)
  • Index (p. 341)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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 .

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