This Is What a Philosopher Looks Like

In December a gift book is circulated in the Georgetown community, and this year’s book is Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution — a big book of portraits “highlighting the work of individuals making an impact across the globe. These individuals share a profound commitment to human rights and social justice.”

The photograph of Kwame Anthony Appiah caught my eye. He is a friend of the Berkley Center, and his work, well known today, will become even better known with the passing of the years — and through his new role as a global philosopher with NYU.

"Accompanying each portrait is a micro-essay exploring the life, legacy, and singular spirit of its subject,” as Maria Popova put it on Brainpickings, and the micro-essay alongside Appiah’s portrait is eye-catching for his succinct way of framing human rights in the vocabulary of morality without hectoring or harking back to the past.

Human rights, Appiah explains, are enshrined in law, expressed in culture, and tested in the shame we feel when such rights are violated — which ought to stir us to try to change things.

That process of cultural change means developing a sense of pride in the fact that we — we Pakistanis, we Americans, we Ghanaians — have a society that is respectful of these fundamental rights. People will then feel ashamed when they discover their country has failed to respect them. I feel a profound shame as an American citizen when I think about Guantánamo.

When he was the president of PEN, Appiah worked in support of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been stifled by China’s government.

Not long after Liu got the Prize, I spoke to a Chinese exile in Washington, D.C., and, entirely unprompted, she spoke of the shame she felt about what her country was doing. Her shame at Liu’s imprisonment, mine at Guantánamo: we understood each other.

The sheep’s name is Daisy, as far as I can tell.

• 17 December 2013