Kwame Anthony Appiah (1955) is a British-Ghanaian philosopher and writer. A son of Ghanaian politician Joe Appiah and children’s book writer Peggy Cripps, he was born in London but spent his childhood in Ghana. He returned to the United Kingdom to study. He earned his Ph. D. in philosophy at Clare College, Cambridge University.
Appiah taught philosophy as well as African and African American studies at the University of Ghana and at Cambridge. He has worked in the United States since 1981 and is currently a Professor of Philosophy at New York University.
According to the jury, In my father’s house (1992), and the more recently published The ethics of identity and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers belong to Appiah’s most important publications. In my father’s house, Appiah shows how the African identity and heritage resonate in African American history. In his moral manifesto Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers, Appiah argues that art and literature should play a larger role in our cultural-societal consciousness, and he deals with our stereotypes about ‘the West and the rest.
