Professor K. Anthony Appiah was educated at the University Primary School at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi; at Ullenwood Manor, in Gloucestershire, and Port Regis and Bryanston Schools, in Dorset; and, finally, at Clare College, Cambridge University, in England, where he took both B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the philosophy department.
His Cambridge dissertation explored the foundations of probabilistic semantics, bringing together issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind; once revised, these arguments were published by Cambridge University Press as Assertion and Conditionals. Out of that first monograph grew a second book, For Truth in Semantics, which dealt with Michael Dummett’s defenses of semantic anti-realism. Since Cambridge, he has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Harvard universities and lectured at many other institutions in the United States, Germany, Ghana and South Africa, as well as at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris; and from 2002 to 2013 he was a member of the Princeton University faculty, where he had appointments in the Philosophy Department and the University Center for Human Values, as well as being associated with the Center for African American Studies, the Programs in African Studies and Translation Studies, and the Departments of Comparative Literature and Politics. In January 2014 he took up an appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he teaches both in New York and in Abu Dhabi and at other NYU global centers.
Publications
BOOKS
- As If: Idealization and Ideals (Harvard University Press, 2017)
- A Decent Respect: Honor in the Life of People and of Nations. The Hochelaga Lectures at the University of Hong Kong Law School, 2013-2014 (University of Hong Kong, 2015) (with Puja Kapai)
- Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity (Harvard University Press, 2014)
- The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010)
- Experiments in Ethics (Harvard University Press, 2008)
- Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006)
- The Ethics of Identity (Princeton University Press, 2005)
- Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2003)
- Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Princeton University Press, 1996) (with Amy Gutmann)
- In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford University Press, 1992)
ARTICLES
- “Presidential Address 2017, Boundaries of Culture,” 132 PMLA 513 (2017)
- “Dignity and Global Duty,” 90 B.U. L. Rev. 661 (2010) Abstract
- “Keynote Address: Global Citizenship,” 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2375 (2007)
CHAPTERS
- Afterword, in Cosmopolitanisms 271 (Bruce Robbins and Paulo Lemos Horta, eds., New York University Press, 2017)
- Culture, Identity, and Human Rights, in Fragile Freedoms: The Global Struggle for Human Rights97 (Steven Lecce et al. eds., Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Foreword, in Chinua Achebe, The African Trilogy vii (Penguin Classics, 2017)
- Law of Honor, in Law, Reason, and Emotion 165 (M.N.S. Sellers, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2017)
- Race and Africana Social and Political Frames, in 34 Conversations in a Time of Crisis 271 (George Yancy, ed., Oxford University Press, 2017) (with Molefi Kese Asante et al.)
- The Diversity of Diversity, in Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society 161 (Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor, eds., Princeton University Press, 2017)
- Misunderstanding Cultures: Islam and the West, in Toward New Democratic Imaginaries—Istanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics 201 (Seyla Benhabib and Volker Kaul, eds., Springer, 2016)
- Respecting Gay People: Justice and the Interpretation of Scriptural Traditions, in Justice Through Diversity?: A Philosophical and Theological Debate 551 (Michael J. Sweeney, ed., Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
- The Evolution of Meaning, in Washington’s Rebuke to Bigotry 107 (Adam Strom et al. eds., Facing History and Ourselves, 2015)
- Capitalism and Human Progress, in Performance and Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business, and Society 99 (Subramanian Rangan, ed., Oxford University Press, 2015)
- Race, Ethnicity, and Philosophy, in Debating Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Identity : Jorge J. E. Gracia and His Critics 48 (Iván Jaksic, ed., Columbia University Press, 2015)
- The Case for Contamination, in Religion, Postcolonialism, and Globalization: A Sourcebook 141 (Jennifer Reid, ed., Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
- Expressive Neutrality, in Political Neutrality: A Re-Evaluation 83 (Roberto Merrill and Daniel Weinstock, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
- Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction, in A Language and Power Reader: Representations of Race in a Post-Racist Era 247 (Robert Eddy and Victor Villanueva, eds., Utah State University Press, 2014)
- Odupon Kesee Atutu (A Great Tree Has Fallen. Asante-Twi), in Chinua Achebe: Tributes and Reflections 110 (Nana Ayebia Clarke and James Currey, eds., Ayebia Clarke Pub Limited, 2014)
- Stereotypes and the Shaping of Identity, in Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law 55 (Duke University Press, 2001) (with Reva B. Siegel, Robert C. Post, Judith Butler and Thomas C. Grey)
SHORT ARTICLES
- “Surreal Anthropology,” N.Y. Rev. Books, Mar. 8, 2018, at 8 (review)
- “Race in the Modern World: The Problem of the Color Line,” Foreign Aff., Mar. 2015, at 1