The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity

by Kwame Anthony Appiah

This profound commitment to the social equality of people with a variety of talents can sound quixotic, but it draws on a deeper philosophical picture. The central task of ethics is to ask: what is it for a human life to go well? The answer, I believe, is that living well means meeting the challenge set by three things: your capacities, the circumstances into which you were born, and the projects you yourself decide are important. Making a life, my friend the philosopher and legal scholar Ronald Dworkin once wrote, is “a performance that demands skill,” and “is the most comprehensive and important challenge we face.”55 But because each of us comes equipped with different talents and is born into different circumstances, and because people choose their own projects, each of us faces his or her own challenge, one that is, in the end, unique. So there is no sensible answer to the question of whether one person meets her challenge better than another. Did Bertrand Russell have a better life than Mozart? The only sane answer is that Russell was a better philosopher and Mozart a better musician.