‘The Ethicist’ brings the Big Questions to Clark

My Grandmother Has Alzheimer’s. Do I Need to Keep Visiting Her?

I’m Worried My Neighbors Are Neglecting Their Child. What Should I Do?

He Got Rich from Defrauding People. Do I Have to Be Polite?

These are the types of quandaries considered in “The Ethicist,” a weekly column in The New York Times Magazine authored by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. He will visit Clark University on Thursday, April 20, at 7 p.m. to present “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” a talk based on his 2006 book of the same name. Appiah will examine the question, “How is it possible to consider the world a moral community when there is so much disagreement about the nature of morality?”

Appiah’s work is grounded in a new ethics that celebrates our common humanity, while at the same time offering a practical way to manage our differences. He offers a new approach to living a moral life in the modern age, where the competing claims of “a clash of civilizations” and groundless moral relativism can make such a project seem impossible. With wit, reason, and humanity, Appiah explores some of the central ethical questions of our time.

Named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 public intellectuals, one of the Carnegie Corporation’s “Great Immigrants,” and awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama, Appiah is currently a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and the president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He previously taught at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Ghana. From 2009 to 2012, he served as president of the PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization. Appiah’s most recent books include “As If: Idealization and Ideals,” “Mistaken Identities,” and “The Lies That Bind.”

A book signing will follow immediately after the talk, which will be held in Razzo Hall. “Cosmopolitanism” and other works by Kwame Anthony Appiah will be available for purchase.

This event is sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities at Clark University as part of its spring 2023 series on cosmopolitanism.