The 1953 marriage of the philosopher Anthony Appi is African father and British mother helped inspire the movie

Guess who's coming to dinner and stories of his multi-racial multinational family

Infuse his thinking now on subjects like human identity ethics in a world of strangers and how moral revolutions happen as part of our

Civil conversations project

I wanted to hear how he might weigh in on moral confusions and stalemates in the contemporary U.S.

Now an American citizen

Anthony Appi believes that we are called to nothing less than

Managing the Republic together and his prescriptions for this are down to earth our starting point with others

He says it doesn't have to be dialogue it can be conversation in the old-fashioned sense of simple association

Seeking familiarity around mundane human qualities of who we are

Sometimes people think that you know the only way to

Deal with these big differences between religions or around moral questions is to kind of face up to the difference directly

But I think often as it were

Sideling up to it is better and sideling up to it can be done by not facing Islam

But facing you know Laila and Ahmed and Mohammed with whom you don't talk about religion most of the time you talk about soccer or you talk about

Rock music whatever is you you have in common as an interest

I'm Christopher and this is on being

Kwame Anthony Appia is the Lawrence S. Rockefeller University professor of philosophy at Princeton University

I spoke with him in 2011

He's gained renown in and beyond philosophical circles for his readable books including

Cosmopolitanism and the honor code

That 2010 book looked at the ingredients of moral change in various societies across time the end of footbinding in China

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