Readers of The New York Times Magazine send him their moral problems every week: a cheating spouse, a dishonest boss, an awkward inheritance. The man answering is a philosopher who grew up in Kumasi, the son of a Ghanaian nationalist and the daughter of a British chancellor of the exchequer. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s life is itself an answer to many of the questions he writes about.
Two families
Appiah was born in London in 1954. His father, Joe Appiah, was a Ghanaian lawyer and politician who worked with Kwame Nkrumah in the independence struggle and later became one of his opponents. His mother, Peggy Cripps, was the daughter of Sir Stafford Cripps, a senior figure in Britain’s Labour government. Their 1953 marriage in London made headlines in Britain, where a wedding between a senior politician’s daughter and an African nationalist was front-page news.
Kumasi
The family settled in Kumasi, where Appiah grew up. Peggy Appiah became a well-known writer of Ghanaian folk tales and children’s books, including collections of Ananse stories. The household mixed Asante tradition and British education, and Appiah has written about how his father’s family and his mother’s family both shaped him.
Cambridge and America
Appiah studied at the University of Cambridge, where he earned his doctorate in philosophy. He went on to teach at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard and Princeton, and later at New York University. His early work was in the philosophy of language, but he became best known for writing on identity, race and ethics.
Cosmopolitanism
His 2006 book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers argued that people can be loyal to their own communities while caring about humanity as a whole. It drew on his own family and on Ghanaian examples. It is one of the most widely read philosophy books of its time.
The Lies That Bind
In 2018 he published The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity, based on his BBC Reith Lectures of 2016. He examined creed, country, colour, class and culture, arguing that identities are real and useful but often built on myths about where we come from.
The Ethicist
Since 2015, Appiah has written The Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine. The column brings serious philosophy to everyday problems, and his answers are known for their patience and their refusal to give easy verdicts.
A Ghanaian voice in philosophy
Appiah has won many honours, including the National Humanities Medal in the United States. Ghanaians may not always recognise him as one of their own, but his work keeps returning to Kumasi, to Asante proverbs and to his father’s world. He is proof that a childhood in the Garden City can lead to the most famous advice column in America.
