The purpose of this paper is an interpretation of the social and political thought of the Solidarity movement in the light of the political philosophy of communitarianism. In the first part of the paper, the controversies between liberalism and communitarianism are characterized in order to outline the communitarian response toward the authoritarian/totalitarian challenge. In the second part, the programme of a self-governing republic created by Solidarity is interpreted in the spirit of communitarianism. I reconstruct the ideal vision of (...) human being expressed in of ficial trade union’s documents and essays of Solidarity’s advisers e.g., Stefan Kurowski and Jozef Tischner, and the efforts of the movement for telling the truth about history and its vision of Polish history. Also, I interpret the programme of Self-Governing Republic adopted during the First National Convention of Delegates of Solidarity. In these programmatic documents of Solidarity, one may find ideas characteristic both of the communitarian and liberal political philosophy. However, the liberal ones—including, primarily, the guarantee of human and citizens’ rights, and of individual liberties—were subordinated to the postulate of reconstructing the national and social community. In the course of transformation after 1989, these communitarian elements of Solidarity programme, incompatible with liberal ideological agenda, have been erased. (shrink)

This article aims to introduce various ways of reading Nietzsche as social & political philosophy that has not received attention in the South Korean research group. In South Korea, researchers tend to rely on German-tradition philosophies to overcome the split between the community and the individual(the universal and the individual). Yet, Nietzsche has been classified as a radical individualistic philosophy and excluded from the discourse. Or he only has been referred to indirectly through French philosophers represented by Foucault (...) and Deleuze. This was widely accepted by Nietzsche researchers that, through Nietzsche, it is hard to construct positive arguments about community and society. But since the 21st century, Anglophone researchers have started to examine established readings and shed new light on Nietzsche’s social & political aspects. This article organizes and criticizes their recent arguments. First, I will point out the main opinions of traditional individualism reading and clarify issues that will be contested by the Communitarian Nietzsche reading (Chap. 2). Next, I will introduce the Communitarian reading that emerged by pointing out problems of individualism reading focused on the issues (Chap. 3.1) and check their drawbacks (Chap. 3.2). And then, I will account for two alternative readings that accommodate Communitarian reading’s good point and get over its problems (Chap. 4&5). Finally, I will try to analyze their arguments and check fallacies in alternative readings (Chap. 6). (shrink)

It is often claimed that liberalism is falsely and perniciously universalist. I take this charge seriously, exploring three positions: the communitarians’, Rorty’s, and that of “comprehensive” liberalism. After explaining why universalism is thought impossible, I examine the communitarian view that value is determined within communities and argue that it results in a form of relativism that is unacceptable. I next discuss Richard Rorty’s liberal acceptance of “conventionalism” and explain how, despite his rejection of universalism, Rorty remains a liberal. I (...) then present a defense of universalism, based in part on arguments that parallel Thomas Nagel’s arguments in defense of a “view from nowhere” and Jean Hampton’s objectivist arguments against Rawls’s moves to a “merely political” theory. That defense requires that we can distance ourselves from our ends to make moral judgments shorn of all partialities. (shrink)

There is a kernel of truth in the claim that Western, and especially Anglo-American-Australasian, normative philosophy, including that relating to the philosophy of education, is individualistic; it tends to prize properties that are internal to a human being such as her autonomy, rationality, pleasure, desires, self-esteem, self-realization and virtues relating to, say, her intellect. One notable exception is the idea that students ought to be educated in order to be citizens, participants in a democratic and cosmopolitan order, but, (...) compared to non-Western traditions, this social element is thin. What is striking about other philosophical backgrounds in the East and the South, such as sub-Saharan reflection on the proper ends of education, is that they are typically much more communitarian, and are so in ways that differ from dominant forms of communitarianism in the West. I argue that since geographical terms such as ‘Western’, ‘African’ and the like are best construed as picking out properties that are particularly salient in a region, it is fair to conclude that individualism is Western and not African, or, more carefully, that it is much more Western than it is African, and that converse remarks go for communitarianism. What this means is that, if I am correct about a glaring contrast between philosophies of education typical in the West and in sub-Saharan Africa, and if there are, upon reflection, attractive facets of communitarianism, then countries such as the UK, the US and Australia in some real sense must become less Western in order to take them on. (shrink)

It is clear that environmentalist are failing in their efforts to avert a global ecological catastrophe. It is argued here that Aldo Leopold had provided the foundations for an effective environmental movement, but to develop his land ethic, it is necessary first to interpret and advance it by seeing it as a form of communitarianism, and link it to communitarian ethical and political philosophy. This synthesis can then be further developed by incorporating advanced ideas in ecology and human (...) ecology. Overcoming the division between the sciences and humanities and granting a place to narratives as a highly developed form of eco-semiosis, these provide the foundation for a new grand narrative committed to creating an ecological civilization, a civilization organized to augment the life of ecosystems, including human ecosystems, by augmenting the conditions for its members to flourish and develop their full potential to augment life. (shrink)

This paper compares criticisms of Singapore’s meritocracy, especially against its impact on income disparities and class divisions, with Michael Sandel’s critique of the meritocratic ethic in the United States. Despite significant differences in their history and politics, meritocracy has similar dysfunctions in both societies, allowing us to draw theoretical conclusions about meritocracy as an ideal of governance. It then contrasts Sandel’s communitarian critique of meritocracy with recent Confucian promotion of political meritocracy and meritocratic justice and argues that the Confucian (...) principle of “promoting the virtuous and talented” is different from the contemporary conception of meritocracy. Textual evidence indicates that a Confucian understanding of “merit” is contrary to the technocratic expertise of contemporary meritocracies. Furthermore, pre-Qin Confucian texts do not support a conception of justice that emphasizes individual desert; they address distributive problems from the perspective of needs and sustaining social relations. The texts also support limiting the reign of merit when it results in inequalities that cause suffering, inhibit personal cultivation of some groups, or undermine social relations. The paper concludes with an assessment of Singapore’s on-going attempts to improve its meritocracy from a Confucian perspective. (shrink)

In this article I investigate the extent to which Bhikhu Parekh believes that a person's cultural/religious background must be preserved and whether, by implication, religious schooling is justified by his theory. My discussion will explore—by inference and implication—whether Parekh's carefully crafted multiculturalism, enriched and illuminated by numerous practical insights, is socially tenable. I will also consider whether, by extension, it is justifiable, on his line of reasoning, to cultivate cultural and religious understandings among one's own children. Finally, I will contend (...) that Parekh, notwithstanding his cautious, even‐handed approach, commits several important errors, including conflating the culture of the parents with that of the children and insisting that cultural and religious persons ought to be allowed to defend their views in the public square on religious grounds. (shrink)

Reprint of an article initially appearing in Educational Philosophy and Theory (2015).

The failure to effectively confront major challenges facing humanity, most importantly, the global ecological crisis, it is argued, is due to the failure of those analysing the root causes of these challenges to engage with and invoke political philosophy to find a way out, and concomitantly, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics actually operative in the current world-order. It is claimed that this is due to a tacit (...) acceptance of a cultural dualism manifest in the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, with the humanities having been marginalized by the sciences. To overcome this dualism and marginalization of the humanities, and to defend communitarian ethical and political philosophy in a way that both challenges mainstream thinking and engages with the world as it is, with the potential to inspire and orient people for effective action, it is shown how communitarian ethical and political philosophy can be defended and developed through ecology incorporating the notion of ecopoiesis. It is shown how this can serve to create an effective counter-hegemonic culture, integrated as a dialogic grand narrative, uniting and orienting people to create a multi-polar world-order as an ecological civilization. (shrink)

In this article I spell out a conception of dignity grounded in African moral thinking that provides a plausible philosophical foundation for human rights, focusing on the particular human right not to be executed by the state. I first demonstrate that the South African Constitutional Court’s sub-Saharan explanations of why the death penalty is degrading all counterintuitively entail that using deadly force against aggressors is degrading as well. Then, I draw on one major strand of Afro-communitarian thought to develop (...) a novel conception of dignity as the view that what is special and inviolable about human nature is our capacity for harmonious relationships. I argue that a principle of respect for the dignity of such a capacity entails that the death penalty is an indignity but that deadly force in self- or other-defense need not be, and I contend that this African- inspired principle promises to do no worse than the more Western, Kantian principle of respect for autonomy at accounting for a broad range of human rights. (shrink)

Law is ‘sovereign’, it has been said. Since the poet Pindar expressed this fulminating thought in the 6th century B.C., the whole western tradition, from Aristotle to Cicero, from Heidegger to Schmitt, hasn’t stopped raising questions about the ambivalent relationship connecting law, strength and violence...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide, and in Africa, given the lack of resources, they are likely to be even more acute. The usefulness of Traditional African Healers in helping to mitigate the effects of pandemic has been neglected. We argue from an ethical perspective that these healers can and should have an important role in informing and guiding local communities in Africa on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Particularly, we argue not only (...) that much of the philosophy underlying Traditional African Medicine is adequate and compatible with preventive measures for COVID-19, but also that Traditional African Healers have some unique cultural capital for influencing and enforcing such preventive measures. The paper therefore suggests that not only given the cultural context of Africa where Traditional African Healers have a special role, but also because of the normative strength of the Afro-communitarian philosophy that informs it, there are good ethical reasons to endorse policies that involve Traditional Healers in the fight against COVID-19. We also maintain that concerns about Traditional African Healers objectionably violating patient confidentiality or being paternalistic are much weaker in the face of COVID-19. (shrink)

Michael Sandel has been one of the most powerful critics of liberalism in the past decades. His work, especially in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, exposes some of the fundamental flaws of Rawlsian liberalism and shows the need for a community-based framework in order for us to adequately understand and appreciate the concept of the individual and just society. Confucians can endorse many of Sandel’s critiques of liberalism. From a Confucian perspective, however, Sandel’s version of communitarianism is nevertheless too (...) thin for a robust communitarian society. Confucians maintain a thick notion of community and take it to be vital to human flourishing. In this essay, I first discuss a key point where Confucians converge with Sandel as an example of the common ground between the two philosophies before turn to one important difference between them. The key point of convergence is about the circumstances of justice; the difference is on harmony. Harmony lies in the very center of the Confucian notion of community, whereas it has been given no place in Sandel’s conception of community. This essay offers a Confucian critique as well as an endorsement of Sandel’s communitarian philosophy. It also extends a friendly invitation to Sandel for him to take harmony into his conception of community. (shrink)

The local food movement is, increasingly, becoming a part of the modern American landscape. However, while it appears that the local food movement is gaining momentum, one could question whether or not this trend is, in fact, politically and socially sustainable. Is local food just another trend that will fade away or is it here to stay? One way to begin addressing this question is to ascertain whether or not it is compatible with liberalism, a set of influential political theories (...) that have shaped and continue to shape our political system. In this paper, I argue that the local food movement is partially compatible with forms of liberalism that accept the limited application of the principle of neutrality, as there are two directions or trends within local food: (1) The systems based direction and (2) the individual focused direction. The systems based direction is not compatible while the individual focused movement is largely compatible with liberalism. I go on to argue that the two directions form a dialectic that increases the political and social sustainability of the movement as a whole. Conceiving of the individual focused and the systems focused directions as in opposition to one another is, itself, a mistake. (shrink)

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one (...) of the most influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

Abstract. Kant's political philosophy in general is characterized by two aspects which sometimes compete with each other and sometimes supplement each other: an individualist element on the one hand and a social or "communitarian" element on the other hand. This paper deals with Kant's theory of private property. It attempts to show something that is usually overlooked in the secondary literature: that Kant has two, not just one argument for property. One is based on his theory of freedom (...) and expresses the individualist aspect of his thinking. The other argument is based on Kant's principle of right and expresses the social aspect of his political thought. Despite some problems with his arguments the complexity of Kant's theory remains impressive. (shrink)

John Macmurray (1891-1976) was born in Scotland and began his philosophical education in a Scottish university. As an academic philosopher, following in the footsteps of Caird’s Scottish idealism - a reaction against the debate between Hume’s scepticism and Reid’s ‘commonsense’ – Macmurray holds that a university education in moral philosophy is essential for producing virtuous citizens. Consequently, Macmurray’s philosophy of human nature includes a ‘thick’ description of the person, which is more holistic that Cartesianism and emphasizes the relation (...) of persons. Hence, Macmurray focuses on community, but, as this chapter reveals, he is not a communitarian in the contemporary sense; rather, he shares Caird’s focus on philosophy as the means to living well. Thus, he opposes increasing specialization in university education and highlights the limits of science, which, Davie notes, is representative of the Scottish metaphysic of Macmurray’s era. Macmuray is the last in this line of the Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In this article, I draw attention to the value of community in John Mbiti’s philosophy using his famous axiom by reconciling the tension between the individual and community his philosophy envisages. To do this, I offer a reconstruction of Mbiti’s communitarian axiom: “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.” Mbiti is considered one of the forerunners of the communitarian debate in African philosophy. His axiom, which describes his idea of Afro-communitarianism, (...) accounts for the importance of individual and community in thinking about social existence in African thought. However, Mbiti’s argument for the direct influence of the community in the formation of the individual is taken to mean the supremacy of the community over the individual. Mbiti’s concept of community has implications for the idea of personhood in that it raises the question of individual agency. This has affected the reception of Mbiti’s contribution to the idea of community in African political thought. While Mbiti’s contributions to Afro-communitarianism transcend the discourse of personhood, I argue that maximising the potential of his idea requires reconstruction and a critical analysis of his axiom. In doing that, I demonstrate that a possible relationship exists between the “I” and “we” in his axiom that represents a harmony between the community and individual and does not suggest a primacy of either but the significance of community. This analysis will enable fair engagement with Mbiti’s conception of community. (shrink)

Hegel’s definition of ‘free will’ and ‘person’ gets over a phenomenological or psychological definition of these concepts. My essay explains how Hegel justifies the placing of his theory of free will in a philosophy of Mind analyzing the concept of ‘recognition’ in the Phenomenology as a section of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences as well as the main steps of The practical Spirit, the second part of the section Psychology. With regard to this last science my essay clarifies the (...) essential differences between freedom of the will and freedom of choice. These differences only explain how the free will could develop as objective Spirit in the third science involved by Hegel towards a proper definition of freedom, i.e. the philosophy of Right. In the philosophy of Right as a part of Hegel’s System of philosophical sciences the free will finds its own adequate reality and the concept of a person can be explained without the mistakes caused by a phenomenological or psychological approach to it. Against some interpretations which identify Hegel’s definition of free will with communitarian practices, the final part of my essay focuses on the importance of the concept of a person to explain the general structure of the philosophy of Right. (shrink)

The ‘liberal-communitarian’ debate arose within anglophone political philosophy during the 1980s. This essay opens with an account of the main outlines of the debate, showing how liberals and communitarians tended to confront each other with opposing interpretations of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice (1999; originally published in 1971) and Political Liberalism (2005; originally published in 1993). The essay then proceeds to discuss four forms of ‘liberalism after communitarianism’: Michael Freeden’s account of liberalism as an ideology; Joseph Raz and (...) Will Kymlicka’s perfectionist liberalisms; the liberalism of value pluralists such as Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams; and Judith N. Shklar’s liberalism of fear. It concludes with the suggestion that there are times when liberals of every kind should set aside their ideology, even if only temporarily, in order to listen to their interlocutors with truly open minds. (shrink)

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level (...) his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

[PERSONHOOD IN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY]. W artykule została omówiona i poddana analizie debata między dwoma współczesnymi afrykańskimi filozofami Ifeanyim A. Menkitim z Nigerii oraz Kwame Gyekyem z Ghany. Debata ta dotyczy typowych dla niektórych afrykańskich kultur sposobów myślenia o istocie człowieczeństwa, tj. o byciu człowiekiem (osobą, person). Prezentowane przez tych filozofów koncepcje nie odnoszą się do żadnych konkretnych afrykańskich ludów, lecz raczej są pewnymi wzorcami idealnymi, czy też abstrakcyjnymi. Zdaniem Menkitiego w tradycyjnym myśleniu afrykańskim jednostka (individual) stopniowo nabywa pełnię człowieczeństwa (...) w oczach swojej wspólnoty wpierw poprzez internalizację obowiązujących w niej norm, a następnie przez ich przestrzeganie w dorosłym życiu. Jak wskazuje, Afrykanin jest przy tym człowiekiem bardziej w przekonaniu i w odbiorze innych niż w swoim własnym. Ale nawet jego własne przeświadczenie o byciu człowiekiem jest kreowane przez myślenie zbiorowe. Z taką perspektywą nie zgadza się Gyekye, który uważa, że człowieczeństwo nie jest u Afrykanów czymś konstytuowanym bądź potwierdzanym przez zbiorowość. W przekonaniu Gyekyego, w myśleniu afrykańskim człowieka czynią pewne symptomatyczne dlań z natury atrybuty fizyczne i umysłowe oraz towarzyszący im instynkt społeczny (sociality), który, jak mniema, jest również przyrodzony. Choć Afrykanin jest, według Gyekyego, bytem głęboko wspólnotowym, posiada również pewien potencjał niezależności od wspólnoty (lokalnej, etnicznej, religijnej), której jest członkiem. Z opisu Menkitiego wynika zaś, że przeciętny Afrykanin nie jest aktywnym sprawcą rzeczywistości i indywidualnym interpretatorem świata, w którym żyje. Artykuł opublikowany w: "Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria", nr 3 [71]: Status człowieka. Problemy filozoficzne, naukowe i religijne, red. Jacek Hołówka, s. 259-282. (shrink)

I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient sub-Saharan beliefs and practices, actions (...) are right insofar as they respect relationships in which people both share a way of life, or identify with one another, and care for others’ quality of life, or are in solidarity with each other. I argue that while considerations of identity and solidarity each provide some reason for a state university to pursue blue-sky knowledge as a final end, they do not provide conclusive reason for it to do so. I abstain from drawing any further conclusion about whether this provides reason to reject the Afro-communitarian moral theory or the intuition that blue-sky knowledge is a proper final end of public higher education. I do point out, however, that the dominant Western moral theories on the face of it do no better than the African one at accounting for this intuition. (shrink)

My paper characterizes religious beliefs in terms of vagueness. I introduce my topic by providing a general overview of my main claims. In the subsequent section, I develop basic distinctions and terminology for handling the notion of religious tradition and capturing vagueness. In the following sections, I make the case for my claim that religious beliefs are vague by developing a general argument from the interconnection between the referential opacity of religious belief content and the long-term communitarian history of (...) the precisification of what such content means. I start from describing an empirical example in the third section, and then I move to settle the matter in a conceptually argumentative frame in the fourth one. My conclusions in the final section address a few of consequences relevant to debates about religious epistemology and religious diversity. (shrink)

I consider what prima facie attractive communitarian ethical perspectives salient among indigenous African peoples entail for distributive justice within a state, and I argue that they support a form of economic egalitarianism that differs in several important ways from varieties common in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy. In particular, the sort of economic egalitarianism I advance rivals not only luck-oriented variants from the likes of Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen and theorists inspired by them such as Richard Arneson, Carl (...) Knight and Nir Eyal, but also more ‘social’ kinds advocated by Elizabeth Anderson, Samuel Scheffler and Jonathan Wolff. Although I do not argue that these broadly Kantian egalitarianisms are less plausible than the Afro-communitarian version, I do aim to establish that it should be taken as seriously as they, at this stage of the debate. (shrink)

The language of rights pervades modern social and political discourse and yet there is deep disagreement amongst citizens, politicians and philosophers about just what they mean. Who has them? Who should have them? Who can claim them? What are the grounds upon which they can be claimed? How are they related to other important moral and political values such as community, virtue, autonomy, democracy and social justice? In this book, Duncan Ivison offers a unique and accessible integration of, and introduction (...) to, the history and philosophy of rights. He focuses especially on the politics of rights: the fact that rights have always been, and will remain, deeply contested. He discusses not only the historical contexts in which some of the leading philosophers of rights formed their arguments, but also the moral and logical issues they raise for thinking about the nature of rights more generally. At each step, Ivison also considers various deep criticisms of rights, including those made by communitarian, feminist, Marxist and postmodern critics. The book is aimed at students and readers coming to these issues for the first time, but also at more knowledgeable readers looking for a distinctive integration of history and theory as applied to questions about the nature of rights today. (shrink)

This essay attempts to assess recent communitarian charges that liberalism cannot provide for genuine bonds of community or fraternity. Along with providing an analysis of fraternity, I argue that there is more common ground here than supposed by communitarians and l iberals alike. Communitarians often fail to see that liberal concerns for liberty and equality function as substantive constraints on the moral worth of fraternal bonds. On the other hand, insofar as liberals ignore fraternity, or see it as a (...) purely derivative ideal, they too make an important error. (shrink)

I critically discuss contemporary work in African, i.e., sub-Saharan, moral philosophy that has been written in English. I begin by providing an overview of the profession, after which I consider some of the major issues in normative ethics, then discuss a few of the more noteworthy research in applied ethics, and finally take up the key issues in meta-ethics. My aim is to highlight discussions that should be of interest to an ethicist working anywhere in the world, focusing on (...) ideas characteristic of the sub-Saharan region that are under-appreciated not merely for the purpose of comparative ethics, but also for substantive ethical argumentation. In particular, I maintain that there are kinds of communitarian and vitalist approaches to morality commonly held by sub-Saharan philosophers that international scholars should take seriously as genuine rivals to utilitarian, Kantian, contractarian, and care-oriented outlooks that dominate contemporary Euro-American discussion of ethically right action. (shrink)

According to René Girard, all religious traditions - and so every tradition- originate from a communitarian violence towards a randomly chosen individual. I provide an introductory construal of Girard’s proposal in the first section of my paper. In the second section, I will address a conceptual view of the theory by making explicit its principles and their inferential relations. In the third section, I will explain how philosophers of language address slurs and hate-speech. Particularly, I will apply such materials (...) to Girard’s assumption that the three friends’ discourses to Job are instances of hate-speech. My purpose is to defend the use of a presuppositional account of derogatory epithets in the philosophy of religion, and to argue for the legitimacy of reading a number of religious statements which cement a social group into a “we” in opposition to an individual who is individuated as an instance of a “not-we” as slurs. In the fourth section, I will argue that, if Girard is right in thinking that speech-hate and the use of slurs are means for the identification of a scapegoat within a group, then Girard’s theory needs to be adjusted in order to accommodate some obvious difficulties. Finally, in the fifth section, I will sum up my conclusions and then provide a few suggestions for defending the theory. (shrink)

Since the 1980’s, a key issue in political philosophy has been the debate between communitarian philosophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor, and those who support forms of liberal individualism, such as that found in Rawls’s Theory of Justice. In this debate, reference has quite often been made to Aristotle. This is particularly so in the case of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is frequently seen as presenting a neo-Aristotelian view. Nevertheless, it is not clear (...) whether MacIntyre always presents a plausible interpretation of Aristotle’s arguments. What is most important concerns the historical foundations of the concept of the Aristotelian tradition. If, as I argue in this paper, MacIntyre articulates an unhistorical view of what he calls the ‘Aristotelian tradition’, then his is a forced view of methodology that must fail. However, if this ‘embedded’, historicist methodology fails, then MacIntyre’s argument loses its strength. He would have to support it by using rationalistic methodology, since all his historicist methodology is unhistorical, but this would mean using argumentative resources that he does not have, since he has rejected the possibility that philosophical theory must be based on recognised first principles available to us all. (shrink)

This anthology makes it possible to follow the lines of a 20-year debate between liberal and communitarian theories. The extensive introductory essay provides the reader with a broad overview. The anthological section includes a significant selection of what this debate has produced. The choice includes essays by Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Charles Larmore, Kenneth Baynes, Ronald Dworkin, and Philip Selznick aimed at addressing the philosophical issues of the debate: the relationship between the good and the right and (...) the relationship between liberal society and community. A second group of essays, by Bernard Williams, Michael Sandel, Michael Moore, Jeremy Waldron, addresses the more particular issue of the relationship between morality and law, drawing inspiration from controversial judgments of American courts on abortion and homosexual practices. (shrink)

Scrutiny (1932-1953) was one of the most important critical reviews of the last century. Its editors and contributors included F. R. Leavis, Q. D. Leavis, Denys Thompson, L. C. Knights, D. W. Harding, W. H. Mellers, H. A. Mason, among others. In recasting Scrutiny’s critique of mass culture by way of Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981), I hope to show that the Scrutiny project not only dramatizes the conflicts internal to what MacIntyre calls emotivist culture, but provides a new way (...) of looking at the group’s relation to the culture industry, its purported elitism, and its deep ties with a communitarian rather than socialist politics. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between and synthesis of Anarchist political philosophy with the ethical systems of the late Roman Stoics. Utilizing a dialectic virtue model, reminisce of Hegelian development, the analysis centers around the ways in which stoic virtue theory can be applied within anarchist social structure and the consequences of such a combination. Anarchism provides a particularly flexible framework for implementation; such a system’s loose structure, with the primary thesis of anti-statism, varies greatly between individuals and groups. (...) Stoic ethics share in anarchism’s need to reconcile the individual moral agent with their role in the moral community, and this connection is one in which the individual sovereignty and the wider community may be brought into a greater degree of flourishing. Stoicism is oft perceived as mostly conservative, yet not out of necessity, while Anarchism’s progressive libertarian nature allows for wide interpretation. A Dialectic Virtue Theory can be utilized as a vehicle to connect these two traditions—Stoicism being it’s exemplar, and Anarchism's natural freedom of interpretation and practice. Virtue will then be explored as something which, when pursued in earnest, increases the flourishing of the individualist as well as the communitarian. Individual Liberty will take center stage, and as we will see this is echoed in the stoic conceptions of self-discipline; to discipline one’s own individual attainment of virtue will have ripple effects when given the space to do so, and since this discipline does not come from a higher authority (ie. the state), this maps particularly well to anarchist political thought. Hereby the individual is given the utmost freedom to develop their own ethics of virtue while contributing positively to the generalized virtue of the larger community, and both grow evermore sophisticated via this dialectical exploration. This thesis asserts that the system which can be constructed from these traditions is not only preferable, but logically sound, just, and attainable. This then ushers in the newest in a long line of anarchist variance which we shall now call Anarcho-Stoicism. (shrink)

Communitarians reject the impartial and universal viewpoint of liberal morality in favor of the "situated" viewpoint of the agent's community, and elevate political community into the moral community. I show that the preeminence of political community in communitarian morality is incompatible with concern for people's lives in the partial communities of family, friends, or others. Ironically, it is also incompatible with the communitarian thesis about the situated nature of moral agency. Political community is preeminent in communitarianism because of (...) its unargued-for assumption that a good society is a morally unified society. I further argue that the ability to take the impartial standpoint is essential to the ability to make particular commitments that have an intrinsic human importance. (shrink)

ENGLISH: The author investigates whether the model prevalent today of an “humble reason” - based on fallibilism and epistemic humility - is the most appropriate to express the theological truth, even in the light of the debate within the contemporary theism (rational theology). To answer this question it is necessary to examine the epistemological status of “human truth” and the “truth of faith”, in order to develop a common approach to sciences, philosophy and theology. Finally, the author shows how (...) the communitarian dimension and the “choice” (a call for freedom) are inherent to theology understood as “critical faith”, whose peculiarity is to posit itself without nostalgia in the middle between fideism, rationalism and a certain relativism. From the path, finally, it emerges the proposal of a new “cristeologia”. ITALIAN: Il rapporto tra fede e ragione è la questione meta-teologica per eccellenza. L’autore si propone dunque d’indagare se il modello oggi prevalente di “ragione umile” – basato su fallibilismo e umiltà epistemica – sia il più adeguato per esprimere le verità teologiche, anche alla luce del dibattito interno al teismo contemporaneo (teologia razionale). Per rispondere a questa domanda è necessario esaminare lo statuto epistemologico della verità umana e della verità di fede, per poter elaborare un metodo comune alle discipline scientifiche, filosofiche e teologiche, capace di trovare un equilibrio tra fideismo e positivismo teologico. Dopo una breve panoramica storica dei rapporti tra fede e ragione nel pensiero occidentale (con particolare attenzione alla dottrina dei praeambula fidei), l’articolo cercherà di mostrare come, nel paradigma della verità relazionale e del fallibilismo sia necessario integrare il problema delle fonti, dell’autorità, del concetto di ispirazione e della nozione di “rivelazione”, giacché contraddistinguono la teologia rispetto alla filosofia. Si mostrerà infine come la dimensione comunitaria e della scelta (appello alla libertà) siano connaturate alla teologia intesa come fede critica, la cui peculiarità è di collocarsi senza nostalgie nel mezzo tra fideismo, razionalismo e un certo relativismo. Dal percorso emergerà infine la proposta di una nuova "cristeologia". (shrink)

This paper examines the liberal society that Popper lauds, that aims to be truly open, and discusses why another, more communitarian kind of society, particularly societies in Africa, may also reflect the quest for intellectual openness that is Popper’s ideal. Moreover, this paper avers reasons why Popper should be comfortable with such a liberal-communitarian mix. The inter-subjectivity in his critical rationalism is a balance of an explicit individualism, and an implicit social element (Afisi, 2016a). Popper is indeed an (...) author of such a balance. For a society to be truly open requires the careful recognition and protection of individual freedom. However, the extent to which individuals are free to perform actions that they desire without external constraints, and the level of their individuality in relation to others when performing such actions, remain a contentious issue between liberals and more communitarian thinkers. Popper’s critical rationalism provides the necessary impetus to this contention through his view of freedom that I contend can best be viewed as carefully balanced, a view which combines individuality with a social element that upholds community values necessary for openness of society. With this combination, Popper’s politics of liberalism provides an effective model of how a truly open society can be achieved. The values inherent to Popper’s liberalism including those concerning intellectual openness, individual freedom, mutual respect, measured self-respect, welfarism, humanitarianism, accountability, critical debates and feedback from the citizens, together concern the conditions for a society to be truly open. There are many competing thoughts as to what openness might be in Popper’s philosophy. The present study of Popper does not presume to address them all. The focus here is specifically on using Popper’s idea of critical rationalism to balance relations between liberal politics of individual rights and freedom, and communitarian politics of the common good, as it relates to situations about how socio-economic and political conditions in Africa societies should be structured. While I contend that Popper’s works in political philosophy focused centrally on Western political tradition, and not about Africa in its strict sense, significant lessons can be distilled from Popper that can offer suggestions on social reforms in Africa. This paper explores Popper’s project of the open society across the plurality and differences of societies, so that his liberal ideas of individual freedom are not undermined, and the progress of the communitarian idea of the common good, that Africa societies are built upon, is also well enhanced. Liberal individualism and community values inherent to communitarianism are both well accommodated within Popper’s critical rationalism. (shrink)

In the current debate in political philosophy, the so-called communitarian thinkers intend to offer an alternative to the dominant liberal thought. The ideal of ethicalcommunity as way of life in society in which intersubjective relationships are ruled by laws conceived as public laws, reintroduces the question of virtue in the scope of social and political life, with the requirement of an ethical style of doing politics.

In 2020, an international team of intercultural philosophers and African linguists created a multilinguistic game named Adinkra. This name refers to a medieval rooted symbolic language in Ghana that is actively used by the Akan and especially the Asante among them to communicate indirectly. The Akan is both the meta-ethnic name of the largest Ghanaian cultural-linguistic group of which the Asante is an Akan cultural subgroup and of a Central Tano language of which Asante-Twi is a dialect. The Adinkra symbols, (...) which have permeated Akan life and the arts, can be found e.g. on Asante royal staffs and gold weights. They are also loosely connected to Akan proverbs. The game Adinkra aims to enhance its players’ intercultural communicative, and moral philosophical understanding by matching Adinkra symbols with Akan proverbs. It was created for educational and therapeutical purposes. This article focusses on the rules, the making of Adinkra, its aims and objectives. The objective of this article is twofold. First, it focusses on the game itself. It elaborates on what its rules are and the content of the game. It also focusses on how playing the multilinguistic game, Adinkra can enhance intercultural understanding and communication. It, furthermore, concentrates on the results of a pilot reception study of this game in the Netherlands among intercultural groups of players. This study has proven that the Adinkra game stimulates creative thinking, engagement in dialogue and reflective ethical thinking. For this reason, the authors believe that it has a lot to contribute to intercultural educational programs with a focus on intercultural communication, philosophy and arts in both Africa and the global North. Finally, a section is devoted to the question of how the Adinkra game was developed and methodologically grounded in Gadamer’s playful hermeneutics, and the theories of the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of living and (African) Indigenous Religions. Secondly, the article focusses on the game’s oral-literary storytelling context and Akan moral ideas. It then throws the searchlight on the creative, therapeutic value and its potential to serve as a ‘cultural detox’. The authors and game makers think that being introduced to an African communitarian ethos hidden in the Adinkra symbols and Akan proverbs can help its players to develop a critical eye for the highly individualistic ethos of Western culture that, among others, is promoted by neoliberal thinking and praxis. The word praxis is used by the authors in the meaning found in educational contexts. Adinkra’s players are stimulated to reflect upon a different moral idea, which can change their mindset and put them into action to contribute to social awareness and societal change. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize Enyimba’s theory of Madukakism as a philosophy of being human within the African framework and to show its implication to African environmental ethics. Enyimba’s theory Madukakism as a philosophy of being human is founded on the notion of Madukaku. Drawn from the Igbo ontological worldview, Madukaku avers that “man is supreme”, as such, possess strong anthropocentric implication on African worldview. Enyimba Maduka’s position seems logical as it draws its inspiration from (...) the place of humans in the ecosystem and African ontology. This paper argues that although human occupies a central position to preserve, care and tend nature for the unity and balance of the ontology and ecosystem, it is perceived as anthropoholism. It is anthro-poholism because, despite man’s central role (Anthropo), man is just a part of the (whole) environment, as such cannot exist outside the environment, and cannot be understood without allusion to the environment (Holism). This research is carried out with the philosophical method of analysis. (shrink)

A lively debate in the literature on moral progress concerns the role of practical reasoning: Does it enable or subvert moral progress? Rationalists believe that moral reasoning enables moral progress, because it helps enhance objectivity in thinking, overcome unruly sentiments, and open our minds to new possibilities. By contrast, skeptics argue that moral reasoning subverts moral progress. Citing growing empirical research on bias, they show that objectivity is an illusion and that moral reasoning merely rationalizes pre-existing biased moral norms. In (...) this article, I argue that both the rationalists and the skeptics fail to understand fully the role of practical reasoning by focusing exclusively on moral reasoning to the neglect of social reasoning. In the first half of the article, I argue against the skeptics by vindicating moral reasoning. I identify a Democratic Model of moral reasoning which is reliable and effective in overcoming bias. In the second part of the article, I argue against the rationalists. Drawing on a paradigmatic case of moral progress, i.e., the British abolition of the slave trade, I illustrate that moral reasoning, even when sound, is insufficient to motivate progressive action. The explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is not that the moral norm against cruelty is inert, as skeptics might suggest. Rather, it is that the moral norm against cruelty was overridden by the social norm of slavery which was tied to the British joint commitments to freedom and national honour. The debate between rationalists and skeptics centers around the moral rationality of human action, failing to recognize that human action is in fact primarily about social rationality. I defend a joint commitment account of social rationality, and offer a novel Communitarian Model of social reasoning which follows the logic of social rationality to revise social norms. I defend the reliability and efficacy of the Communitarian Model of social reasoning by applying it to the abolitionist social movement to show how Britons gave fellow Britons social reasons grounded in their joint commitments to freedom and national honour to end slavery. (shrink)

Theorists of aesthetic value since Hume have traditionally aimed to justify at least some comparative judgments of aesthetic value and to explain why we thereby have more reason to appreciate some aesthetic objects than others. I argue that three recent theories of aesthetic value—Thi Nguyen’s and Matthew Strohl’s engagement theories, Nick Riggle’s communitarian theory, and Dominic McIver Lopes’ network theory—face a challenge to carry out this explanatory task in a satisfactory way. I defend a monotonicity principle according to which (...) the strength of our aesthetic reasons to appreciate varies monotonically with aesthetic value and claim that these theories, because they do not respect the principle, are non-monotonic. If they cannot find a plausible way to preserve the link between the aesthetic goodness of an object and our aesthetic reasons to appreciate it, these non-monotonic theories should be rejected. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is to explore the issue that despite the absence of adequate formal and systematic ways for the poor and disadvantaged people to get access to health benefit like in a rich liberal society, there are active social customs, feelings and individual and collective responsibilities among the people that help the disadvantaged and poor people to have access to the minimum health care facility in both liberal and non-liberal poor countries. In order to explain the importance (...) and functional contribution of the social norms in this respect, some examples will be illustrated from Bangladesh which is a poor liberal country. There will be two sections of the paper. In the first section, it will be exhibited how the naturally and socially disadvantaged people in a liberal society get benefit following Rawls‟ theory of distributive justice. In the second section, it will be showed that in a poor country where there are less resources of the government to provide enough services to the poor and disadvantaged people, the communal feelings and the informal social institutions play a vital role that helps the disadvantaged and poor people to get access to the health benefit. The traditional social norms impose indirect sanction on its people to come forward to help the worse off people of the country. It is depicted that Rawlsian theory of distribution does not work properly in these countries, rather the communitarian feelings is more welcomed for the benefit of the overall welfare of the society and this will be shown in the conclusion of the paper. (shrink)

This article proposes an alternative approach to social epistemology – a comprehensive approach. It argues that the dominant approaches to social epistemology, which it identifies as communitarian and veritistic, are inadequate. It observes that the nature of the emphasis that the communitarian approach places on the epistemic community foster mindless tolerance in epistemology, which makes the pursuit of the cognitive goal of truth difficult to attain. It also observes that the veritistic approach that seeks to refocus social epistemology (...) on the pursuit of the cognitive goal of obtaining truth does this at the expense of the affective goals of social epistemology. To overcome the inadequacies of the communitarian and the veritistic approaches and to ensure that social epistemology effectively pursues its cognitive and affective goals, this article offers the comprehensive approach. This approach absorbs the virtues of the communitarian and the veritistic approaches while avoiding their errors. Hence, it thrives on a view of truth that posits an objective and a subjective dimension of truth. The objective dimension ensures that the community only fosters and never impedes social epistemological projects such that social epistemology continues to pursue the cognitive goal of truth. The subjective dimension guarantees that the concern for truth does not lead to the neglect or abandonment of the pursuit of the affective goals of social epistemology. The rationale behind this approach is that for social epistemological projects and practices to remain truly epistemological and social, they must always take into consideration the cognitive and affective features of knowledge and knowers. (shrink)

The paper charts both the interpersonal connections between historical anarchist figures and the beat poets as well as the philosophical similarities between them. Almost all the beat poets were anarchists, though their politics was secondary to their attempts to transform consciousness. Among the anarchists, the romantic socialist Gustav Landauer, who was especially popular in post-war American anarchist circles, came closest to the political perspective of the beat poets. Like the beats, Landauer was a poet, a pacifist, an anarchist, a (...) class='Hi'>communitarian, a romantic, and a mystic. In northern California, the circle of anarchists surrounding Kenneth Rexroth provided support and inspiration to the early beat movement. In New York, the beats had an affinity with anarchists such as David Thoreau Wieck and the publication "Why?" (later "Resistance"), as well as Dwight Macdonald's "politics" and Holley Cantine's "Retort". (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic (...) value. (shrink)

In this article I analyse those that I consider the most powerful counterarguments that have been advanced against the non-identity objection to the idea of intergenerational harm, according to which an action cannot cause harm to a given agent if her biological identity does actually depend—in a partial but still determinant way—on the performance of this action. In doing this, I firstly go through the deontological criticisms to the person-affecting view of harm, before moving on to sufficientarian and communitarian (...) accounts of intergenerational harm. My argument is that neither of these theories manage to defuse the non-identity objection. Yet, I conclude by observing that a possible way out of the non-identity paradox might consist in developing an ethical account of intergenerational negative justice that focuses on the functional value of the natural and social structures in which humans develop their lives, rather than on their instrumental or intrinsic value. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the economic effects of a politically communitarian model of family ties towards the pension crisis in developing countries. The use of a Canadian - an individualist-oriented political economic pension system - is compared to a religiously and culturally communitarian form of family care in Bangladesh, a country slowly feeling the effects of the pension crisis. The analysis concludes, based on theoretical and economic evidence, that it is not in the social or economic interest of Bangladesh (...) or similar countries to use the same policies currently being deployed by Canada and most other OECD countries. This paper is the first of its kind to apply socioeconomic costs and benefits of developed countries’ policies and apply them to the context of a developing country—keeping in mind the cultural aspect and its implications. It aims at bringing back original ethical and moral values with a social orientation that should inspire all stakeholders to ensure family self-regulation that converge toward a solid foundation of communitarian principles. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the (...) DSM's diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)