Ethics and IdentityMaster ClassIn-Person
Tuesday, Nov 26, 2024
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
51 W 52nd St
New York, NY 10019
Wachtell Lipton was founded on a handshake in 1965 as a small group of lawyers dedicated to providing advice and expertise at the highest levels. They have achieved extraordinary results following the distinctive vision of their founders — a cohesive team of lawyers intensely focused on solving their clients’ most important problems.
Ethics, in its broadest sense, is the study of what it is to live a good life. This course will explore the role of social identities—such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, profession, religion, and nationality—in shaping and evaluating a person's life. We’ll begin with a quick discussion of the nature of ethics and notions around success, based on Aristotle’s definitions, and consider the idea of individuality, which might affect our thinking about the ethical bearing of social identities. With these philosophical ideas in hand, we can then discuss how contests over identity arise, and how they play a role in shaping the lives of individuals and communities.
PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, RACE & GENDER STUDIES
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Emeritus at Princeton. Born in London, he grew up in Kumasi, Ghana, and received his BA and PhD degrees in philosophy at Cambridge. He has taught at the University of Ghana, Cambridge, Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, and Princeton Universities. In 2012, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has written the New York Times column The Ethicist since 2015. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and Experiments in Ethics. His most recent book is The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity.