Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher and novelist. He was born in London, and educated at Bryanston School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. His father was Ghanaian barrister Joe Appiah , and his mother was Peggy Cripps, a daughter of Sir Stafford Cripps.

He has taught philosophy and African and African-American studies at Cambridge, Duke, Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton Universities. He is currently Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton (with a cross-appointment at the University Center for Human Values). In 1992, Appiah published In My Father's House, which won the Herskovitz Prize for African Studies in English.

Appiah's early philosophical work dealt with semantics and theories of meaning, but his more recent books have tackled philosophical problems of race and racism. His fiction consists of drawing-room detective stories; none of his four novels has gained a wide audience. The first, Avenging Angel , dealt with Cambridge University.

See also

• African philosophy