Kwame Anthony AppiahEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

This episode features Part one of an interview I conducted with Kwame Anthony Appiah on March 29, 2025. Anthony is an author, intellectual, philosopher and writer. He writes The Ethicist column for the New York Times and he is a professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. Anthony has written several books including Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science , The Ethics of Identity , Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers , Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Dubois and the Emergency of Identity , and The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen . He also co-authored Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race with Amy Gutmann and The Dictionary of Global Culture with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In our interview Anthony shares why the idea of Western civilization is at best a source of confusion, and at worst an obstacle to solving some of our biggest political problems . He discusses how intellectually, Islam and Christianity are tightly connected by their shared interest in the Abrahamic faith and Aristotle, how democracy is possible everywhere but not guaranteed anywhere, and how examples of religious toleration and religious intolerance exist both in so-called Western countries and countries outside the West. Anthony shares how Confucius's view of education was more democratic than Plato and Aristotle, how Aristotle doesn't belong to the West but to anyone who chooses to read him, and how the line from Plato and Aristotle goes just as much through Baghdad as it does through Paris.

Today I’m joined by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. Professor Appiah has written widely on a range of topics, including political and moral philosophy, philosophy of language, race and identity, and African intellectual history. He also writes the weekly Ethicist column for the New York Times magazine. His latest book is ‘The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity’ which has now been translated in Dutch ('De Leugens die ons binden: een nieuwe kijk op identiteit'). We talk about the concept of identity, how identities are formed, polarization and political identities, and class identity and the myth of meritocracy. For more information, see: www.stukroodvlees.nl/srv-podcast-episode-46-rethinking-identity-with-kwame-anthony-appiah Music: Dexter Britain (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0), www.dexterbritain.com

There’s a reason we keep revisiting identity on WITHpod. From Brittney Cooper to Alex Wagner to Michael Tesler to Amy Chua and on, it’s a topic worth circling back to because it’s one of the most fundamental axes of conflict in our society today. Identities themselves are as old as we as a species are, but the concept of identity is relatively recent. Our ideas of identities are shifting and changing the more we learn about others. And sometimes, it can take full on social movements, protests, riots and bloodshed for new identities to become part of the conversation. Why is that? What do we mean when we say something is an "identity", or talk about "identity politics"? We take a step back with Kwame Anthony Appiah to examine the origins of the identities we use to define ourselves – and why it might be time to rethink our ideas of who we are. Email us at WITHpod@gmail.com Tweet using #WITHpod Read more at nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening RELATED READING: The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: The Personal is Political with Brittney Cooper (May 15) Political Tribalism with Amy Chua (June 12) Futureface with Alex Wagner (July 17) White Identity Politics with Michael Tesler (Oct 30) Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah talks with host Eric Newman about his new book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. Appiah tackles questions of cultural appropriation, how we come to feel that we possess our various identities, and why it is past time that we start restructuring our relationship to identity and our relationship to others. While Appiah’s work has long engaged questions of how we relate to others through and across difference in pursuit of a more peaceful world, these questions take on a special weight in today’s perilous times as the President inflames racial and political divisions and the commentariat ponder whether we have entered a new “Cold Civil War.” Also, Dan Lopez returns to honor poet Tony Hoagland, who died last month, by reading from and recommending his Application for Release from the Dream.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s new book The Lies That Bind confronts the question of how social identities are formed. They are incredibly important to people: we are prepared to kill and die for them. But is identity actually a mirage? Plus: Sameer Rahim on literary prizes and Alex Dean on why there’s no such thing as a Canada Brexit Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You might not think writing style matters in philosophy. But Kwame Anthony Appiah – a Click here for more about the episode... How to read philosophy (with Kwame Anthony Appiah)

A leading moral and political philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. He explores the ideas of the philosopher Hans Vahinger, who argued that our theories of the world involved understanding things “as if” what is in fact false were true. He uses Vahinger’s ideas to discuss a contemporary philosophical proposal, due to Dan Dennett, that says that human beings can be understood by way of an “intentional strategy” that “consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states …” Since, as Appiah suggests, we are not fully rational, there is a puzzle about why this should work. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29293]

With the publication of 1992’s In My Father’s House, Kwame Anthony Appiah claimed his place at the forefront of African-American literary and cultural studies. A professor of philosophy at Princeton, he discusses how Western intellectuals and leaders have exaggerated the power of difference while neglecting the power of commonality. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 11468]