Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions. The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves. What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are. Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the clichs and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.

誇梅•安東尼•阿皮亞，生於英國倫敦，長於加納庫馬西，母親是藝術史學傢、作傢，父親是加納阿桑特地區的律師、外交官和政治傢。誇梅有著混血和跨文化的成長背景，認同世界主義的觀點。他於英國劍橋大學獲得哲學博士學位，曾在康奈爾大學、哈佛大學、耶魯大學等處任教，現為勞倫斯•S.洛剋菲勒大學哲學教授和普林斯頓大學人類價值中心哲學教授。同時他還是文化理論傢和小說傢，研究領域包括政治和道德理論、語言與思想的哲學、非洲知識史等。2010年他入選《外交政策》雜誌全球頂尖思想者榜單，2012年被美國總統奧巴馬授予國傢人文奬章。代錶作有《榮譽法則：道德革命是如何發生的》、《世界主義：陌生人世界裏的道德規範》、《在我父親的房子裏：文化哲學裏的非洲》、《文化政治學，倫理政治學》等。《認同倫理學》是其2005年的作品。