83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

The Greek statesman Demosthenes is credited with saying "I am a citizen of the world," and the idea that we should take a cosmopolitan view of our common humanity is a compelling one. Not everyone agrees, however; in the words of former British Prime Minister Theresa May, "If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere." On the other side of the political spectrum, groups who share a feature of identity — race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and others — find it useful to band together to make political progress. Kwame Anthony Appiah is a leading philosopher and cultural theorist who has thought carefully about the tricky issues of cosmopolitanism and identity. We talk about how identities form, why they matter, and how to negotiate the difficult balance between being human and being your particular self.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Kwame Anthony Appiah received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cambridge University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and of Law at New York University. He is the author of numerous academic books as well as several novels. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the recipient of a number of major awards, including the National Humanities Medal of the United States. He currently writes the New York Times Magazine column "The Ethicist", and frequently writes for The New York Review of Books. (Note that in the podcast intro I mistakenly said he was "born and raised" in Ghana; he was actually born in London, moving to Ghana when he was six months old.)


Jaksot(416)

142 | Charlie Jane Anders on Stories and How to Write Them

142 | Charlie Jane Anders on Stories and How to Write Them

Telling a story seems like the most natural, human thing in the world. We all do it, all the time. And who amongst us doesn't think we could be a fairly competent novelist, if we just bothered to take...

12 Huhti 20211h 26min

141 | Zeynep Tufekci on Information and Attention in a Networked World

141 | Zeynep Tufekci on Information and Attention in a Networked World

In a world flooded with information, everybody necessarily makes choices about what we pay attention to. This basic fact can be manipulated in any number of ways, from advertisers micro-targeting spec...

5 Huhti 20211h 17min

140 | Dean Buonomano on Time, Reality, and the Brain

140 | Dean Buonomano on Time, Reality, and the Brain

"Time" and "the brain" are two of those things that are somewhat mysterious, but it would be hard for us to live without. So just imagine how much fun it is to bring them together. Dean Buonomano is o...

29 Maalis 20211h 27min

139 | Elizabeth Anderson on Equality, Work, and Ideology

139 | Elizabeth Anderson on Equality, Work, and Ideology

Imagine two people with exactly the same innate abilities, but one is born into a wealthy family and the other is born into poverty. Or two people born into similar circumstances, but one is paralyzed...

22 Maalis 20211h 19min

138 | Daryl Morey on Analytics, Psychology, and Basketball

138 | Daryl Morey on Analytics, Psychology, and Basketball

You might think that human beings, exhausted by competing for resources and rewards in the real world, would take it easy and stick to cooperation in their spare time. But no; we are fascinated by com...

15 Maalis 20211h 16min

AMA | March 2021

AMA | March 2021

Welcome to the March 2021 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). With an expanding number of questions, it's become ...

10 Maalis 20213h 11min

137 | Justin Clarke-Doane on Mathematics, Morality, Objectivity, and Reality

137 | Justin Clarke-Doane on Mathematics, Morality, Objectivity, and Reality

On a spectrum of philosophical topics, one might be tempted to put mathematics and morality on opposite ends. Math is one of the most pristine and rigorously-developed areas of human thought, while mo...

8 Maalis 20211h 32min

136 | Roderick Graham on Cyberspace, Race, and Cultural Conservatism

136 | Roderick Graham on Cyberspace, Race, and Cultural Conservatism

The internet has made it so much easier for people to talk to each other, in a literal sense. But it hasn't necessarily made it easier to have rewarding, productive, good-faith conversations. Here I t...

1 Maalis 20211h 23min

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