{"id":14615,"date":"2016-09-16T12:29:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T17:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=14615"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:28:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:28:58","slug":"appiah-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=14615","title":{"rendered":"Appiah speech kicks off Carolina\u2019s Human Heart initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kwame
Kwame Anthony Appiah (photo courtesy of UNC Communications).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University and \u201cThe Ethicist\u201d columnist for The New York Times, came to campus to deliver the inaugural Chancellor\u2019s Lecture in Ethics on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Parr Center for Ethics, Appiah\u2019s speech kicked off the year-long initiative Carolina\u2019s Human Heart: Living the Arts and Humanities<\/a>, which showcases the work that faculty, staff, students and alumni are doing in the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences.<\/p>\n

In his talk, \u201cEthics Among the Arts and Humanities,\u201d Appiah defended the relevance of the arts and humanities in an age seemingly more concerned with science and technology.<\/p>\n

In particular, he challenged the premise that only science can determine human values, the theme of author and neuroscientist Sam Harris in his book \u201cThe Moral Landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly science can help us answer these questions, he says,\u201d said Appiah, adding that even the notions of \u201cwell-being\u201d or \u201chuman values\u201d used by Harris aren\u2019t likely to be determined by the scientific method.<\/p>\n

While there is much to be learned about ethics from neuroscientists, \u201cethics can\u2019t be reduced to the questions those scientists are equipped to answer,\u201d Appiah said. \u201cEthics, unlike the sciences, needs to maintain its contact with the arts and humanities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sciences and the humanities are studied in different ways, with different results, he explained. The sciences focus on the general and the study of patterns, while the arts and humanities are concerned with individual artifacts, like a specific painting or poem. Because of this approach, science marches forward, always seeking to improve, while the arts and humanities examine the past for the knowledge, he said, \u201cthat is worth passing on\u201d and using to understand the present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t study Mozart in order to write more Mozart. We pass it on,\u201d Appiah said. \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is writing music now. And writing music now, you\u2019ve got Mozart in your head and in your background, and you\u2019re responding to a whole world that Mozart knew nothing about, that wouldn\u2019t have made sense to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The responsibility for passing on knowledge about the past is what ties the humanities so closely to teaching, he said. In addition to acquiring the knowledge itself, the training helps the student in application of that knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell-trained literature majors write better memos and, perhaps more importantly, movie scripts than most badly trained ones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The determination of what\u2019s worthy to be passed on in a \u201cliberal\u201d education springs from the word\u2019s Latin root, \u201cliber,\u201d meaning \u201cfree,\u201d Appiah said, with the liberal arts defined as studies \u201cbefitting a free person.\u201d But modern civilization has grown past the distinction between free and enslaved that Cicero described.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that I have no difficulty in defending the idea of the humanities as an education for free people, for free men and women, is that one of the great achievements of the modern world has been to establish a global consensus that we ought all to be free,\u201d Appiah said. \u201cIf you doubt me, you have only to listen to the voices in the streets of Cairo and of Tunis.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a question and answer session following the speech, someone challenged how it is determined what \u201cis worth passing on.\u201d The questioner pointed out that significant works had long been \u201cexcluded in very sinister ways\u201d because of where they were created and by whom, resulting in separate disciplines devoted to women\u2019s and African American studies, for example.<\/p>\n

Appiah agreed with the need for institutional restructuring, having held appointments in various African American studies departments himself from 1981 to 2001 and believing that the creation of the field made those contributions more visible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to attend to what we\u2019re doing. We have to notice what we\u2019re doing. And when someone challenges the things we\u2019re attending to \u2026 we must examine and revise our practices,\u201d Appiah said.<\/p>\n

But institutional restructuring can also mean bringing separate disciplines together, as in the current trend combining biologists, chemists, geneticists and behaviorists into the field of neuroscience. More personally, Appiah said he benefited from exchanges with his fellow faculty members who weren\u2019t philosophers but experts in art, history or drama. \u201cIllumination comes that way,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a great believer in that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The British-born Ghanaian-American philosopher, who speaks with a mid-Atlantic accent, writes novels and has a small sheep farm in New Jersey, embodies the multidisciplinary and multicultural values he<\/p>\n

champions. And he concluded his talk in that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cEthics has to live among the humanists as it draws, too, from the discovery of the scientists,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Philosophers can be \u201cgrateful to the scientist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By Susan Hudson, University Gazette<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University and \u201cThe Ethicist\u201d columnist for The New York Times, came to campus to deliver the inaugural Chancellor\u2019s Lecture in Ethics on Sept. 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