The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah is this year’s winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, a $500,000 prize awarded by the Library of Congress recognizing work in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes.
Appiah, a professor of philosophy and law at New York University, is an author of more than a dozen books and is known for scholarly contributions to philosophy relating to ethics, language, nationality and race. His books include “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” (1992) and “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen” (2010).
He is also, as “The Ethicist,” the columnist for The New York Times Magazine who responds to reader-submitted moral dilemmas and interpersonal arguments with ethical frameworks. Recent columns have responded to a reader who wrote a novel inspired by an adulterous friend and another who wanted straight women to stop calling their friends “girlfriends.”
In a statement, Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, called Appiah’s philosophical work “elegant, groundbreaking and highly respected.” Timothy Frye, a Columbia University professor and a member of the Library’s Scholars Council, praised Appiah’s “moving effortlessly” between academic and public discourse on subjects including privilege and power.
“His academic work is rooted in philosophy, but the range of topics that he has addressed in his research and public writing is astonishing,” Frye said.
Appiah, 70, said in an interview that the variety was thanks to figures like his longtime friend and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. as well as the British philosopher Dorothy Emmet, who encouraged him to apply his analytic philosophy to whatever interested him.
“Being trained in philosophy has helped me to answer these questions, but they’re not philosophers’ questions,” he said. “They’re questions anybody might have thinking about their lives.”
The Kluge Prize has recently gone to the political theorist Danielle Allen and the historians George Chauncey and Drew Gilpin Faust. It is given to those whose scholarship has impact inside and outside of academia.
In addition to the monetary award, the library will develop programming on the theme of “Thinking Together” to display Appiah’s work for the public.
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