Jay Harris (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)
First-Year Seminar 65J | Fall Term | Monday, 9:45-11:45 AM
Enrollment limited to 12 | CANVAS SITE
Personal identity is, to say the least, a slippery concept. Yet insofar it constitutes who and what we are—whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not—identity has deep ethical and political implications, and “identity politics” is one of the most significant contemporary dimensions in political and social thought. This class, which is structured around Anthony Appiah’s 2005 book The Ethics of Identity, delves into the ethical, social, and political questions around identity. Each section of the book will be complemented by readings that put the issue in a larger context. These texts include a few of the foundational philosophical works for contemporary debates around identity, contemporary philosophical analyses of the underlying issues, and critiques of the discussion of identity as understood by philosophers like Appiah. The purpose of the seminar is not to try to answer the questions, but to have a rich and open discussion of the issues, and help shape a richer and more nuanced private and public deliberation on identity and ethics beyond the classroom.