A Decent Respect: Honour in the Life of People and of Nations
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Description
Professor K. Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and Honorary Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Formerly, he was the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values Emeritus at Princeton University. His work has spans numerous fields, including the philosophy of mind and language, ethics, political philosophy and African and African-American Studies. Among his many publications are The Honour Code, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture; Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (with Amy Gutmann); The Ethics of Identity: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; and Experiments in Ethics. In his two public lectures entitled “How Do I Save My Honour?” and “A Decent Respect to the Opinion of Mankind”, Professor Appiah considers what philosophy has to say about civic honor and shame, and whether and how, if so, do they matter in the life of nations. He charts the role that the two concepts play in shaping the moral behavior of individuals and of nations, and how they might be applied to achieve what he calls ‘the actualization of moral judgments,’ in essence, motivating people and nations to do what they ought to do. In his first lecture, Professor Appiah explores the role of honour in the civic life of democracies. In the second, he explores the role of honour in the global ethical discourse across nations. In the seminar, “Does National Education Have a Role to Play in Hong Kong?”, he discusses the role of civic education from the perspective of practical philosophy with a panel of distinguished persons. In it, he argues that civic participation constitutes a significant part of a democratic society and that moral education is essential in shaping the common life of the citizenry. He proposes that the possession of values is a process of acquisitions of knowledge and an accumulation of experiences, and that all of these must be built step-by-step. He concluded that this is the reason why moral education of children is significant and that it is via the acquisition of knowledge that a child can form a rational view and make reasonable choices.
Publication Date
2015
Recommended Citation
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, "A Decent Respect: Honour in the Life of People and of Nations" (2015). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 29.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/29
