Kwame Anthony Appiah: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you think there’s a risk that people just feel inadequate, that they know somewhat what’s the right thing to do, but they ask you. You confirm their intuition, and then they’re like, “Oh my goodness, I already knew I’m not up to that, but now society is really telling me I’m not up to that,” and they just go away feeling bad? Possible. As I say, I get zero information beyond the letter, and perhaps surprisingly, people don’t often communicate with me or try to communicate with me about what I’ve said, especially the people who asked the question. So, it’s possible that it makes people feel bad, but what I imagine is that there are many reasons why people write in. One is they just want to, as it were, write it down. They’ve got a problem. They think, “If I just write out this question, I’ll get clearer about what my situation is, and maybe this guy will even help me get a little bit clearer.” But I think a lot of them are people who’ve had an argument with somebody about what they should do, and they want me to take sides. Now, they don’t explicitly say that, and they don’t tell me what the other side is, usually, though occasionally somebody says, “Well, my wife thinks this, and I think that.” So I think sometimes the function of my answer is for it to be something that on Sunday morning gets slapped down on the breakfast table. “See, he agrees with me.” Or that gets hidden away because I don’t agree with you, and you don’t want your whoever it is you’re arguing with to know that the Times ethicist has taken their side. But as I say, I think it’s really important that I don’t believe that anybody who was in serious difficulty should think of writing to the New York Times and waiting perhaps months for an answer is a sensible way to seek a solution. The main function of the column from my point of view, as I say, is to get out ideas for thinking about the big things that happen in everybody’s life. Questions about confidentiality, loyalty, the balancing of interests, what difference your relationship with a person makes to what you owe to them — these sorts of things, which I think philosophy has a lot to say about, and it’s useful for people to think about, whether or not they’re currently facing a question of that kind. What do you think is the next undervalued moral revolution on its way, say within the next decade?…

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