Can America ever become such a beloved community as Martin Luther King Jr. imagined it, a society free of prejudice where racial differences would be erased and forgotten?
Afro-American scholar and philosopher K. Anthony Appiah considers the idea of a community founded on the principles of inclusion, hope, and mutual respect, a community that transcends the polarizing rhetoric of racism.
Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, including history, literature, and philosophy—as well as the author’s own experience of life on three continents—Cosmopolitanism is a moral manifesto for a planet we share with more than six billion strangers. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Foreign Affairs review)
Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: 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?
Recorded in 1998 at Cambridge Forum
Speakers
K. Anthony Appiah
K. Anthony Appiah is a philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Appiah currently holds an appointment at the NYU Department of Philosophy and NYU’s School of Law.