LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Noted philosopher and author Kwame Anthony Appiah will explore current ethical questions and suggest a new approach to living a moral life during a March 17 lecture at the University of Louisville.
The New York University professor will discuss “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers” in a free, public talk beginning at 6 p.m. in Bigelow Hall, Miller Information Technology Center, on the Belknap Campus. A reception afterward will be in the Schneider Hall art galleries.
Drawing from his award-winning 2006 book of that title, Appiah is expected to examine how people can celebrate their common humanity while practically managing their differences.
Appiah’s speech is the 2014 UofL Phi Beta Kappa lecture; sponsors are UofL’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Kentuckiana, an honor society that fosters academic excellence and promotes education in the liberal arts and sciences.
Appiah, who received a 2012 National Humanities Medal at the White House, formerly taught at Princeton, Harvard, Duke, Cornell and Yale universities and the University of Ghana. He is past board chair of the American Council of Learned Societies and past president of PEN American Center, a human rights organization.
Widely published in philosophy and in African and African American literary and cultural studies, he has written novels and books including “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen,” “Experiments in Ethics” and “The Ethics of Identity.” He and Henry Louis Gates Jr. edited “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience.”
For more information, contact Tom Byers at 502-608-6103, 502-852-8977 or tom.byers@louisville.edu.