The Ethics of Identity

Reading this book is like taking a walk with a familiar-looking stranger through a misty landscape. It's a meandering walk when you sometimes lose sight of each other only to meet again at the next bend. Appiah was born in Ghana where his father was a well-known member of the opposition. Steeped in the heritage of the Enlightenment Kwame Anthony Appiah is a defender of liberal values which, contrary to popular wisdom, he doesn't regard as something typically "Eurocentric". He is a true cosmopolitan but at the same time critical of many multicultural views, including Kymlicka's efforts to bridge the gap between individual rights and group autonomy. In his eyes, the notion of "cultural identity" warrants an especially critical scrutiny. Some of his discussions take you places where a limited knowledge of classical as well as contemporary philosophy leaves you wanting. One critic jokingly described Appiah as splitting hairs where others aren't aware any hair could grow. At times it is a demanding read but ultimately, not least due to his fluent and relaxed style, a very rewarding one as well. Like writers as Stephen Jay Gould, who would make it a habit of bringing you the latest news on baseball, Appiah is not all highbrow. His satire of an imagined "hug-a-Dyspeptic-today initiative" is positively hilarious (p. 140). He uses this device to drive home the point that it's not all that obvious what actually constitutes a cultural group; and to question that if such a group exists, it therefore automatically deserves recognition and respect. Ethics of Identity is not for the faint of heart. Chock-full of ideas and references to anybody, or so it seems, who has anything to say on the subject, plus a dense section of notes, it's a weighty contribution to the thorny discussion on cultural pluralism versus individual autonomy.

Even if a philosopher is preaching to the choir, one can still admire the artistry involved and even learn a few new tunes. I will admit that one reason that I enjoy reading Kwame Anthony Appiah's books so much is that I have always found in him a kindred--if far more brilliant and eloquent--soul. Like him, I have long believed that the fundamental moral unit is the individual and that political systems exist primarily for the benefit of individuals and not groups. Like Appiah, however, and unlike some liberals, I do not want to deny or minimize the importance of conducting one's ethical projects in the context of social groups. More fundamentally, like Appiah, I have long harbored a deep suspicion of packing too much content into and weight on particularly trendy concepts nor have I ever been attracted to thinkers who engage in dense theorization. Though I have not read his writings specifically in the philosophy of language, I suspect that he, like I, is drawn more to Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Austin than Carnap, Russell, and Quine, though I'm sure he has read both. But just as Wittgenstein was concerned to show the fly the way out of the flybottle, that Ryle was trying to attend us to systematically misleading expressions, and Austin was trying to show us that performatives destroyed all assumptions of those who wanted to divide all statements into sense and nonsense, he is suspicous of lofty concepts and ideas that seem to promise more than they can deliver. So, "culture," "human rights," and all particularly engaged theorizing fails to pass the smell test with him. He writes the books that I feel that I would write if I were better read, far more intelligent, and more disciplined. Another characteristic that I love in Appiah is the fact that he is a generalist. No doubt he possesses a specialist's knowledge of a host of issues without philosopy, but as someone educated in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition I know how narrow much English language philosophy of the past sixty years has been. For much of that period, American or British philosophers had either of two options: embed oneself in the analytic philosophy that dominated the American and British universities during that time or turn to Continental Philosophy, which usually meant some combination of Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Jaspers. Or one could become a historian of philosophy. Appiah has taken a different route. Though firmly schooled in logic and the philosophy of language, he has felt free to head off in about any direction he wanted. He has read the standard contemporary English language political philosophers, for instance--Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, Raz, Oakeshott--but supplements this with specific legal theory and an impressive knowledge of the anthropological literature. He doesn't completely avoid what previously was styled Continental Philosophy, but his own alternative to what was styled Analytic Philosophy came from working out fro

Kwame Anthony Appiah has always sought to take seriously both the individual and the context in which she is embedded. In this book, Appiah takes a hard look at the ways we shape ourselves as distinct individuals, and he continues to defend the right of the individual to forge a plan of life over and against her community's tug of conformity - but, he insists, not with indifference to the community's influences and interests. For we are always embedded in sets of social relations. However, those relations do not preclude the freedom to become who we are. They shape us; they do not determine us. And, for Appiah, even when we take-up the obligation before us to shape ourselves, to shape our own identities and plans of life, we must take heed not to so over-determine them as to preclude meaningful and fluid engagements with others whose identities are very different. Appiah calls for each of us to have a healthy identity, but to attenuate it enough to permit the Other to engage with us fully, as a fellow human being. This he calls "identity lite" - for better or worse. The Ethics of Identity should be one of the final words in the old liberal/communitarian debate - a debate that has been, largely, between straw men. Its call for a "rooted cosmopolitanism" speaks directly to the deficiencies in both utopian versions of cosmopolitanism and dystopian versions of Volkish communitarianism. Appiah's call for the liberal state to engage in soul-making is likely to be one of the controversial proposals in the book (in fact, I already know it is in certain academic circles). For Appiah argues that a state, any state, has an interest in the cultivation of such virtues in its citizens as are harmonious with the values and moral commitments upon which it rests. To some, this will sound like a call for a program of state propaganda and coercion. To others, it will be merely an acknowledgment of the truth of any configuration of power in or through the state apparatus. Since we are stuck with such configurations, why not give the liberal, democratic state a role to play in the production (education) of liberal, pluralistic, tolerant citizens, just as illiberal, undemocratic states go about doing the opposite? A good question. It is worth reading the book to find out where Appiah takes us on this point, and many others. As soul-making has been something that certain conservatives, such as George Will, have called for (See Will's Statecraft as Soulcraft) it will be interesting to see if, oddly, Appiah has "gone conservative." I think not, however. I think that he has simply found some common ground in the interminable culture wars. Whatever the case, the discussions and debates will be interesting.

There have been various attempts, in the past couple of decades, to carve out a case for group rights; the argument has been that old-school liberalism, with its emphasis on the individualism, is inadequate, because it can't accommodate "difference." Appiah's book politely and subtly demolishes this line of argument. For one thing, he calls into question the assumption that diversity (as opposed to the freedoms that make it possible) is a value in itself. He challenges what he calls the "preservationist ethic," which would preserve dying ways of life in formaldehyde. He reminds us that Locke and the other founding theorists of liberal individualism were writing after a long period of religious factionalism and bloodshed spawned by a fixation with differences; that there is something to be said for the affirmation of Sameness, of a shared humanity. And he further reminds us that not all identity groups are deserving of respect: in the case of what he terms "abhorrent identities," we should be quite content for those identities (e.g., a Nazi identity or, in a case he discusses, the Christian Identity Movement) to disappear. In a critique of what has been called the politics of recognition, Appiah raises concerns about what he terms "the Medusa Syndrome" - in which official recognition (of a tribe, an ethnic community) ends up turning the object of its concern into a fixed and freeze-dried state. This book is a major contribution to political theory, but it would be hard to parse its arguments in partisan-political terms. As Appiah says in the book's preface, he writes "neither as identity's friend nor as its foe." What he does succeed in demonstrating is that the precepts of pre-postmodern liberalism - a creed that takes the individual as the ultimate unit of concern - have been widely underestimated. The book is also a pleasure to read; characters from Stendhal, George Eliot, Tolstoy, and Dickens weave in and out of the pages; he has a gift for illustrating points with a pertinent bit of poetry - Horace, Donne, Philip Larkin (and, new to me, the contemporary poet Carl Dennis). All of which sets the book apart from the sometimes horribly mechanistic language of contemporary political philosophy. Finally, he has an admirable impatience with cliché and cant. Parts of the book can be a little dense (including a long discussion of Kant's "two standpoints"); I wouldn't recommend even academics to take this book to the bench. And I find some of his discussions -- particularly those having to do with education -- frustratingly unburdened by a sense of the real-world challenges. But this is one of the most rewarding books on liberalism (small-l liberalism) I've read in years.

"The Ethics of Identity" is an ambitious attempt to make liberal political theory safe for the discourse of identity, and vice-versa. As a graduate student in political science, I was impressed by the way it grappled with current political philosophy while cutting a path very much its own. Appiah's voice is so inviting and level sounding that one is not always aware how deep the blade has been drawn. On the other hand, those hoping for a real engagement with the work of Continent thinkers like Levinas will be disappointed. Despite a qualified endorsement of cosmopolitanism, the book is definitely oriented toward the Anglo-American philosophic tradition. At the same time, the book's rigor and originality will make it worth reading by those interested in the future of political philosophy.