Contrary to the widespread view that Hegel excluded Africa from what he called world history proper, the specifically African element of Egypt was indispensable to his account of the pivotal dialectical moment that saw spirit's release from its immersion in nature. Hegel's racist caricature of Africans in the early part of the lectures was not gratuitous, something that commentators can leave to one side. It was integral to his dialectical account of world history because it served to generate the contradiction (...) that saw the Persian Empire give way to Greece. This understanding is confirmed by the newly completed four-volume edition of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of World History in the Gesammelte Werke. These new volumes also enable us to gain critical insight into how the editors of the first two published versions of the lectures, Eduard Gans and Karl Hegel, sought in their different ways to shape the reception of Hegel's lectures. (shrink)

Mongolian philosophical underpinnings of well‐being were expressed in the form of mythology, shamanism and Mongolian Buddhism before the development of modern nursing in Mongolia. Among these forms, the philosophical underpinnings of well‐being, mythology and shamanism were formed as a result of the roots of Mongolian philosophy, whereas Buddhism spread relatively late. As a result of Mongolian mythology, an alternative approach called dom zasal was formed, and it remains one of the important foundations of the idea of well‐being among people. Among (...) the various concepts of shamanism, the concept of sunesu best expresses the underpinning of well‐being, and the idea that healing and nursing care can be provided not only by those living in this world but also by spirit beings. Since Mongolians still use these ideas even in modern times, it should be noted that following them too narrowly may conflict with concepts based on scientific evidence. Along with the development of Buddhist philosophy in Mongolia, the Oriental philosophical underpinnings of well‐being have spread. One of the most important concepts is the five basic elements of life (tavan mahabhutas) and three elements of the body (khii, shar and badgan). While developing the concepts of life and the body, the arga‐bileg model (yin‐yang in Chinese), developed at the theoretical level in Chinese philosophy, has become a popular basis for culture and customs among Mongolians. Therefore, it has been difficult to judge whether the origin of the arga‐bileg model is Mongolian or Chinese; however, this is undeniably an important underpinning for well‐being in both countries. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem Method The Question of Ancient Egypt Ancient Egyptian Concepts of “Philosophy” The First Definition of a “Philosopher” in World History Hieroglyphic Signs and Philosophy The Dynamic Character of Egyptian Thinking on “Existence” The Egyptian Conception of the Universe Egyptian Logic The Being and Essence of the Cosmos and of Humans The Metaphysical Problem of “Evil” Maat, the Keystone of Egyptian Philosophy Conclusion.

African Religion and Culture: Honoring the Past and Shaping the Future.

The first essay of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals seeks to uncover the roots of Judeo-Christian morality, and to expose it as born from a resentful and feeble peasant class intent on taking revenge upon their aristocratic oppressors. There is a broad consensus in the secondary literature that the ‘slave revolt’ which gives birth to this morality occurs in the 1st century AD, and is propogated by the inhabitants of Roman occupied Judea. Nietzsche himself strongly suggests such a view. (...) However, in a telling later passage from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that the hsitorical Zarathustra—a Bronze age iranian religious thinker—was the first to consider the opposite of Good vs. Evil; that “Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality” (EH, 'Destiny', §3). However, Nietzsche does not discuss Zarathustra or Zoroastrianism in his critique of moral values and their origin. This creates a prima facie tension. If at least part of what essentially characterises 'morality' preceded Judeo-Christianity, are moral values only contingently related to the feelings of ressentiment essential to Nietzsche’s story of the slave revolt? If the answer is 'yes', then the scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality may be somewhat limited. If the answer is 'no', then we require an answer as to why Nietzsche's genealogy—if it is an exercise in ascertaining the “real history of morality” (GM, Pref: §7)—does not extend further back in history. In this paper, I explore how the extent of Nietzsche's knowledge of Zoroastrianism informs his critique of slave morality in On the Genealogy of Morals. I argue that Nietzsche views the historical Zarathustra—like Socrates and Plato—as a forerunner of ‘morality’ in his creative conception of good and evil in metaphysical terms. From here, it is argued that the proposed tension can be dissolved by viewing Judeo-Christian morality merely as the latest and paradigmatic expression of slave morality. (shrink)

This paper focuses on evaluating Odera Oruka’s role as an expert witness in customary law for the Luo community during the Nairobi, Kenya-based trial in 1987 to decide on the place of the burial of S.M. Otieno. During that trial, an understanding of Luo burial and widow guardianship (ter) practices was essential. Odera Oruka described the practices carefully and defended them against misunderstanding and stereotype. He revisited related topics in several delivered papers, published articles, and even interviews and columns in (...) the Kenyan newspapers. The paper will raise the questions: How does Odera Oruka’s role as expert on Luo customs fit in with his sage philosophy project? In his testimony at the trial and subsequent public addresses and published work, does he accomplish two important goals, the first being defending African traditions against prejudice and anti-African bias, and secondly, does he champion reform of traditions when reform is needed? And, can Odera Oruka’s participation in the famous trial avoid seeming ethnic chauvinism and marginalization of women? My conclusion is that he achieves the first goal, but some problems remain in the achievement of the other goals. While he often asserted the need to evaluate traditions and to jettison those that have become unhelpful, in this context he evaluated traditions so strongly that the need for evaluation and possible change was muted. (shrink)

In this study, the idea of the local African community as a social structure ensuring the security of its members is presented. An understanding of the concept of security is first briefly discussed, followed by the meaning of the concept of the local African community. The chapter also makes an a priori distinction between what one can call “moderate” and “radical” types of communal life and two case studies exemplifying them are presented. The chapter aims to analyze the trade off, (...) in terms of provision of security, including economic security, by local communities, for the shaping of a democratic political culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most importantly, however, this chapter also highlights the rationality that underpins the seemingly low-quality democratic political activities of members of local African communities. (shrink)

This essay criticizes some strategies of Hegel scholarship, especially the non-metaphysical school and its recent metaphysical successor. My main claim is that these approaches are rhetorically opaque, and thus vulnerable to a certain anticolonial argument. In place of these strategies, I recommend and illustrate a more historically perspicuous approach that is sensitive to concerns about the role of European philosophy in the Americas.

In this dissertation, I seek to explain G.W.F. Hegel’s view that human accessible conceptual content can provide knowledge about the nature or essence of things. I call this view “Conceptual Transparency.” It finds its historical antecedent in the views of eighteenth century German rationalists, which were strongly criticized by Immanuel Kant. I argue that Hegel explains Conceptual Transparency in such a way that preserves many implications of German rationalism, but in a form that is largely compatible with Kant’s criticisms of (...) the original rationalist version. After providing background on Hegel’s relationship to the traditional rationalist theory of concepts and Kant’s challenge to it, I claim that Hegel’s central task is to provide a theory of conceptual content that allows a relationship to the objective world without being dependent on the specifically sensory aspect of the world, which Kant’s theory of concepts required. Since many interpreters deny that Hegel’s use of the term “concept” is comparable to other historical philosophers (or our own), I first show that Hegel’s critique of standard conceptions of concepts presupposes an agreement of subject matter. I then show how Hegel’s account of the “formal concept” provides the skeleton for a view of conceptual content that relies on negative relations between terms, rather than a relation to sensibility, to provide content. Hegel’s account of conceptual content is completed when he shows how a universal term is further specified so that it can determine singular objects. This occurs in its adequate form in a teleological process. I argue that Hegel’s account of teleology in the Science of Logic is an attempt to explain how and where Conceptual Transparency obtains. A teleological process is one in which a concept constitutes an object, and this means that a concept is perfectly adequate to express that thing’s nature and not merely to represent it. However, in the final chapter, I show that Hegel’s concept of teleology is meant paradigmatically to illuminate how human purposive processes have constituted a social world that is conceptually accessible to us. In this way, the primary “province” of Hegel’s rationalism is the human constructed world. (shrink)

This paper examines how a delusive social imaginary of criminal-justice has underpinned contemporary U.S. mass incarceration and encouraged widespread indifference to its violence. I trace the complicity of this criminal-justice imaginary with state-organized violence by comparing it to an imaginary that supported colonial violence. I conclude by discussing how those of us outside of prison can begin to resist the entrenched images and institutions of mass incarceration by engaging the work and imagining the perspective of incarcerated people.

Despite the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of liberal democracy celebrated by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history”, a growing number of scholars and political activists point to its inherent shortcomings. However, they have tended to dismiss it on the basis of one or two of its salient weaknesses. While this is a justifiable way to proceed, it denies the searching reader an opportunity to see the broad basis for the growing rejection of liberal democracy among (...) African political theorists. Consequently, in this article, I argue that from an African perspective, the almost hegemonic status of liberal democracy can be challenged on at least five grounds, namely, logical inconsistency, impracticability due to the largely communalistic outlook of many africans, inconsistency between affirmation and action, violation of the right to ethnic identity, and the moral imperative to assert the right to cultural emancipation. -/- I conclude by calling upon African and Africanist political theorists to utilise indigenous African political thought, coupled with emancipatory aspects of political thought from other parts of the world, to design practicable models of democracy for contemporary African states. I further conclude that in order to promote genuine inter-cultural dialogue on democratisation, people from Western cultures ought to acknowledge the equality of all cultures, and to recognise that systems of governance are part and parcel of those cultures. (shrink)

The idea that intentionality is the distinctive mark of the mental or that only mental phenomena have intentionality emerged in the philosophical tradition after Franz Brentano. Much of contemporary philosophy is dedicated to a rejection of the view that mental phenomena have original intentionality. In other words, main strands of contemporary philosophy seek to naturalize intentionality of the mental by tracing it to linguistic intentionality. So in order to avoid the problematic claim that a physical phenomenon can in virtue of (...) its own physical structure mean exactly one thing, they adopt a form of holism. Nevertheless, contemporary philosophers are attracted to a naturalist story about the emergence of the logical space. In this work, I am interested in the naturalism and the holism advocated by Wilfrid Sellars and developed by the Pittsburgh school. It is not only a view that I find theoretically attractive but I also admire it for its fecund engagement with the history of philosophy, especially the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and, as I will argue, Abū Nas̩r Muḥammad al-Fārābī (Alfarabi). (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Hegel’s Philosophy of World History with respect to colonialism. For Hegel, freedom can be recognized and practised only in classical, Christian and modern Europe; therefore, the world’s other peoples can acquire freedom only if Europeans impose their civilization upon them. Although this imposition denies freedom to colonized peoples, this denial is legitimate for Hegel because it is the sole condition on which these peoples can gain freedom in the longer term. The article then considers (...) whether Hegel’s basic account of freedom can be extricated from his Eurocentric and pro-colonialist interpretation of the course of history. The article argues that matters are more complicated because that interpretation has significant connections with Hegel’s conception of freedom as self-determination. (shrink)

The financial crisis that currently besets Europe not only disturbs the life of many citizens, but also affects our economic, political and philosophical theories. Clearly, many of the contributing causes, such as the wide availability of cheap credit after the introduction of the euro, are contingent. Analyses that aim to move beyond such contingent factors tend to highlight the disruptive effects of the neoliberal conception of the market that has become increasingly dominant over the last few decades. Yet while the (...) financial sector has received most of the blame, and rightly so, few commentators seem willing to take into account the role played by representative democracy in its current form. Even if it is granted that actual democratic policies fall short of what they ought to achieve, contemporary representative democracy itself is seldom regarded as part of the tangle it was supposed to resolve. David Merill touches upon this issue when he notes, in the preceding issue of thisBulletin, that ‘the economic dilemmas faced today may be ultimately the consequences of state failure’. The state that has failed to regulate the markets is described as ‘weak’ and ‘subject to external blows, blind to its ends, merely one actor among many in the events of the day’ (Merill 2012: 28). Yet Merill does not seem to consider this weakness to be an inherent feature of the constellation of which contemporary democracy is a part.There are, of course, excellent reasons not to take this path. First, representative democracy has in many cases proved to be the best way of preventing small elites from acquiring political power, and many of the impressive social and political achievements of the twentieth century are the result of democratic processes. (shrink)

There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial (...) allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality. (shrink)

This article argues that Hegel’s dialectic of wealth and power in the stage of social development called ‘culture’ (Bildung) reveals that even in moments of profound social alienation, Spirit (Geist)—the labor of constructing identity and freedom— remains. This stands in sharp contrast to Heidegger’s theory of alienation and Dasein’s ‘publicity’ (Offentlichkeit), which paints modern social existence as a profound threat to the very ‘Being’ and ‘possibilities’ of human life. The supposed threats of inauthenticity and mass existence are, from a Hegelian (...) perspective, failures of adequate social phenomenology. The desiring, affective subject is not absorbed in ‘they’ (das Man) but is, instead, the negativity that constantly transforms culture and the structure of social selfhood. (shrink)

At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, and (...) allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician. (shrink)

The works by the American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, as well as the poetry of John Keats, especially his “Ode to a Nightingale,” offer new ways to reimagine our relation to the earth, to the dead and to language’s continued vitality. Beginning with a brief overview of some of the major tenets of Campbell’s guiding force of the “monomyth,” which gathers all the various world mythologies as inflections of one universal story, the essay then moves into a discussion of Keats’ poem (...) in order to reveal the power of poetic utterance in reconfiguring a vital mythology. If there is to be a renewed mythos, it may come out of a revisioned care of language itself as a transport vehicle towards the transcendent or invisible realms of being that poetry exposes us to through its aesthetic and linguistic corridors. The purpose of yoking mythology to poetry is to realign consciousness along a mytho-poetic axis of insight and understanding. (shrink)

Autopoietic societies have produced three major images of civilization: the Greco-Roman, the Eurocentric Western, and the Settler Society type. The most important incarnation of the latter to date has been America. This article explores the deep-going differences between American and European ideas of civilization. It examines how the American kind of autopoietic civilization expresses itself in preternaturally distinctive conceptualizations of nature and freedom, life and death, order and chaos, city and ecumene. The article discusses the political and social implications of (...) this. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

Hegel’s philosophy is in tension with liberalism, containing both liberalizing tendencies and rejecting liberal norms. I explore this tension by investigating the relationship between religion, fanaticism, and world history in Hegel’s discussion of Islam. Drawing on recent work that considers Hegel’s treatment of race and world history, I show that he views Islam as a form of fanaticism that is antithetical to Christian Europe. This rejection of Islam stands in contrast to his treatment of the French Revolution, which is a (...) fanaticism that can be incorporated into world history. I conclude that Hegel does not provide resources for narrating a history of a more inclusive Europe, but that interrogating his philosophy offers strategies for thinking askew the liberal “problem-space” and reconsidering identities formed in opposition to the Islamic fanatic. Such an interrogation reveals the assumptions at work in contemporary debates about the liberalization of Islam. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders certain of Kierkegaard's criticisms of Hegel's theoretical philosophy in the light of recent interpretations of the latter. The paper seeks to show how these criticisms, far from being merely parochial or rhetorical, turn on central issues concerning the nature of thought and what it is to think. I begin by introducing Hegel's conception of "pure thought" as this is distinguished by his commitment to certain general requirements on a properly philosophical form of inquiry. I then outline Hegel's (...) strategy for resolving a crucial problem he takes himself to face. For his account of the nature of thought depends upon the idea of a form of inquiry in which nothing whatsoever is presupposed; but this idea appears basically paradoxical inasmuch as the mere act of beginning to inquire in a certain way embodies an assumption about how it is appropriate to begin. Turning to Kierkegaard, I consider a key objection to the effect that Hegel's strategy for resolving this paradox depends on the incoherent idea of a purely reflexive act of thinking. Finally, I draw out some central features of the alternative account of "situated" thought and inquiry which Kierkegaard presents as distinctively Socratic. (shrink)

Hegel’s theory of freedom is complex and sweeping, and while most interpreters of Hegel will readily agree that it is the centerpiece of his political philosophy, perhaps also of his social philosophy and philosophy of history, they will just as readily disagree about what exactly the theory claims. Such interpretive disagreements have fueled, in large part, the resurgence of interest in Hegelian philosophy over the last few decades.

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test for nationality bias among members of the Brazilian philosophical community. Faculty members and postgraduate students from philosophy departments at seven Brazilian universities evaluated texts attributed to authors of European and Latin American nationalities. Results showed a clear preference for French nationality over Brazilian. They were inconclusive, however, when contrasting other Latin American nationalities with European nationalities, which likely relates to the academic background of the participants. These overall results support (...) the claim that Brazilian academic philosophers are highly critical of Brazilians who produce theories of their own. The paper calls on philosophers to carefully consider the ways in which Eurocentrism impacts their very ability to reason. (shrink)

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

The “end of history” by Fukuyama is mainly based on Hegel’s treatise of the end of history and Kojeve’s corresponding interpretation. But Hegel’s “end of history” is a purely philosophical question, i.e., an ontological premise that must be fulfilled to complete “absolute knowledge.” When Kojeve further demonstrates its “universal and homogeneous state,” Fukuyama extends it into a political view: The victory of the Western system of freedom and democracy marks the end of the development of human history and Marxist theory (...) and practice. This is a misunderstanding of Hegel. Marx analyzes, scientifically, the historical limitation of Western capitalism and maintains, by way of a kind of revolutionary teleology, the expectation of and belief in human liberation, which is the highest historical goal. His philosophy of history is hence characterized by theoretical elements from both historical scientificalness and historical teleology. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Jacques Lacan’s concept of mourning from his treatment of Hamlet in Seminar 6, “Desire and Its Interpretation,” to its transformation in the tenth Seminar on “Anxiety.” It is a transformation that occurs in tandem with Lacan’s reconception of anxiety as lack of the lack and his reshaped conception of the objet a as object/cause of desire. The key point is the way that Lacan’s renovated conception upends the common sense notion of mourning, that which (...) assumes that suffering the death of a loved one means accommodating oneself to an absence where there was previously a presence. On the contrary, says Lacan, part of what is most deeply to be mourned is the lack in the Other around which the love relation was constructed. The paper concludes by asking to what extent Lacan’s account of mourning should be distinguished from those of both Hegel and Freud. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLove is the basis for a moral psychology of forgiveness. I argue for an account of love based on Roy Bhaskar's conception of its five circles, and of the ethical nature of human beings as concrete universals/singulars. Linking this to work of ‘The Forgiveness Project’, I argue that forgiveness can be understood metaphysically in terms of its relation to love of self, of the other, of the relation of self and other, of self, other and the wider community, and of (...) self and other in their ontological depth as unique individuals. Forgiveness involves both a ‘giving to’ and a ‘giving up’, and this can lead to a profound sense of identity between a victim and a perpetrator. Forgiveness is different for each person; it may draw upon a public/legal setting as a proxy for universal judgement; and it confronts social-structural and political elements which may block its development. (shrink)

Scholars who write about Fanon's engagement with Hegel in Black Skin, White Masks divide into roughly two groups. One group takes it that Fanon engages with Hegel to critique his philosophical views. This group takes it that Fanon views Hegel as irrelevant to the Black struggle against modern, anti‐Black racism. It is easy to see why this reading is natural and tempting, given the widely held belief that Hegel's philosophy is essentially racist. The second group believes that Fanon relies on (...) Hegel to explain the predicament of Black people who face racial discrimination. Indeed, some in this group believe that Fanon relies on Hegel to justify his call to violence in The Wretched of the Earth. I side with the second group. Fanon's engagement with Hegel is not a critique, but a thoughtful application of Hegel's thought that illustrates the connection between self‐consciousness, autonomy, and interpersonal recognition. In this article, I'll explain the positions of both camps and provide reasons to think the second camp has a better take on Fanon's reading of Hegel. (shrink)

This article locates Hegel’s understanding of the nature of knowledge in various contexts (Hegel’s logical system, Kantian idealism, the Enlightenment ideal of encyclopaedia) and applies it specifically to his systematic classification of histories. Here Hegel labels Herodotus an “original” historian, and hence incapable of the broader vision and self-reflexive method of a “philosophical” historian like Hegel himself. This theoretical classification is not quite in accord with Hegel’s actual appropriation of material from Herodotus’s narrative for his own purposes. These appropriations point (...) in complex ways to dimensions of the “Father of History” which are proto-Hegelian, as well as to other dimensions which are not. (shrink)

This essay contrasts Nietzsche’s remarks on elite education with W.E.B. Du Bois’ demand for democratized education. The essay takes their remarks as springboards for a twenty-first century philosophy of education rather than an historical account of their philosophies. Both thinkers cultivated Kant and Hegel’s dream that the spirit of freedom guided by reason would unite all the world’s peoples. Both held that education was key to realizing the dream. Their judgments about qualifying for education separated them. Nietzsche insisted that only (...) the elite should receive the fullest measure of education. Du Bois believed that in the future virtually every human being would receive a university-level education. The essay’s principal point is to show how contemporary technology can make Du Bois’ dream a reality. An African philosopher’s working model demonstrates a path to universal university education. (shrink)

The aim of the work is to examine the relationship between the concepts of “immanence” and “politics” in the works of Hegel and Deleuze. Both Hegel and Deleuze are thinkers of immanence and they explicitly think this concept in relation to the problem of political practice. As I show, they attempt to “ground” politics in immanence. The purpose of this work is to prove that there exists an inherent paradox in the undertaking to “ground” politics in immanence. Both philosophers are (...) confronted with a paradox that emerges from this “grounding”. The paradox appears in the form of natural violence. Both authors fail to contain this violence through arguments. In order to show this, I examine the relationship between two further concepts: history and the state. I compare Hegel’s and Deleuze’s formulations of world-history and universal history, tracing the analogies and differences in how they think the relationship of the state to history. Based on the conclusions I then focus on the relationship of politics to immanence. The paradox of natural violence, I show, emerges from the relationship of the state at the “end of history”. (shrink)

The main claim in this article is that the traditionally Western and currently dominant understandings of the figures of “Nature” and “Animal” underlie and structure different forms of oppression and should be critically confronted. The racial-sexual subjugation of the colonized African draws symbolically on the older Western symbolic subjugations of Animal and Woman. In the Great Chain of Being of Western metaphysics it is Woman’s sexual body that links humans to the domain of the animal, and Man’s intellect that distinguishes (...) and separates humans from that same domain. Situated in the border between human and Animal, Woman merges with the chaos and fleshiness of Animal and Nature. With the emergence of race as a category of classification and colonial justification, the African is placed at the furthest remove from Western Man, the epitome of reasonable humanity. African Woman, in particular, is seen as the Animal Other. The colonial-“civilizing” project thus institutes a certain flight from Nat... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of sport. In the book, Suits investigates two fundamental issues in general p...

In recent years Duncan Kennedy has turned to the question, what is Contemporary Legal Thought? For the most part, his answers have focused on the modes of legal argument he believes are indigenous to Contemporary Legal Thought in the United States, and possibly, at a transnational or global level as well. In this article, I bracket the question of content and ask instead, if we are interested in exploring the category of a legal ‘contemporary’, how do we do so? What (...) historiographic methods are well-suited to the task of constituting ‘Contemporary Legal Thought’? My focus here is entirely on legal structuralism, the historical method I associate with Kennedy’s work beginning in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, legal structuralism was under assault and quickly fading from the repertoire of available styles of doing history on the left. By the turn of the century, legal structuralism appeared to have vanished. I think that this was regrettable and unnecessary, and in this article I argue for a return to structuralist historiography. I do not pretend, however, that this return entails a second coming of the totalizing, originary center. Rather, I encourage thinking about legal structuralism in the way that I understand Roland Barthes, Hayden White, and to a large extent Duncan Kennedy himself to have thought about it: as a style. And as a style, legal structuralism is worth reawakening, a style back in style once more. (shrink)

Flusser is a moral philosopher worthy of careful study and criticism. This paper is my attempt to critically investigate this crucial, moral, aspect of his writings. To focus attention on the significance of his moral theory, I shall compare Flusser with Hegel, a comparison that is not accidental as both philosophers tried to explain “evil” in dialectical terms by elaborating on myths derived from the Book of Genesis. Hegel discusses the issue in his version of the Story of the Fall (...) of Man and Flusser does so in his interpretation of the Story of Creation. The contribution of both is obviously important, but I think Flusser’s narrative can achieve what Hegel set out as his aim but failed to accomplish. Flusser’s understanding of evil reflects on and fosters the exercise of a particular moral virtue, namely, modesty. There is little doubt that, for Flusser, the moral individual lives a heroic life. Is Flusser providing “the cure” to evil? There is no way of knowing it in advance. In the last analysis, this is a matter for each reader to decide. (shrink)

This paper attempts a response to two suggestions regarding the roots of and solutions to Africa’s social, economic and political concerns. Rather than trying to provide answers to the question “who should be blamed for the quagmires of Africa?”, the paper tries to provide further explanations of the problems using a specific case study of two pan-African scholars, Henry Kam Kah and Okori Uneke. Although their suggestions about the situation of Africa have received popular acceptance among scholars, this paper disputes (...) the viability of their assumptions and conclusions. Even if it is true that Africa is an innocent victim of colonial or post-colonial causes, their arguments fall short of providing a foundation for future, positive development. Instead, this paper attempts to go beneath superficial first layer investigations to identify a more meaning way forward for the people of post-colonial Africa. (shrink)

Indigenous cultural possessions constitute a diverse global issue. This issue includes some culturally important, intangible tribal objects. This is evident in the Australian copyright cases viewed in this study, which provide examples of disputes over traditional Indigenous visual art. A proposal for the legal recognition of Indigenous cultural possessions in Australia is also reviewed, in terms of a new category of law. When such cultural objects are in an artistic form they constitute the tribe's self-presentation and its mechanism of cultural (...) continuity. Philosophical arguments for the legal recognition of Indigenous intellectual `property' tend to assume that the value of Indigenous intellectual property is determinable on external criteria. (shrink)

The article suggests that Simmel’s thought should be interpreted as a coherent series of continuous attempts to solve philosophically the dilemmas entailed in the German ideal of Bildung. By analysing Simmel’s three short essays on Italian cities, and by placing them in the context of both his own intellectual development and the intellectual context of his time, the article will show how ideas expressed in these essays reflect this basic character of Simmel’s thought. In other words, far from being independent (...) momentary images, Simmel’s essays on Italian cities reflect his concern with whether and how culture in general, and works of art in particular, may help modern personality reconcile itself with the world. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper argues for the restricted viability of the concept of style in the history of science. Since historians of science borrow this term from art history or the sociology of knowledge, the paper outlines its emergence and function in these disciplines, in order to show that the need for ever subtler stylistic distinctions in historical description inevitably leads to the dissolution of the concept of style itself.“Style” will be defined in predominantly cognitive or technical terms when imputed to (...) an individual; in social or moral terms when thought to be carried by some collective entity. Both descriptions are given normative interpretations. A good individual style, then, is regarded as the pledge for valid knowledge or insights of a “higher order,” while a collective style, understood as the vehicle of successful intra group communication, involves the acceptance of certain rhetorical norms and/or socially shared values that are supposed to structure that style. “National styles” belong to the latter category; the emergence of this dubious notion can best be explained in sociological terms.If historians of science insist on adopting the concept of style, they will have to agree on its meaning. The paper concludes, therefore, with a rough typology of its most frequent meanings and uses. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Gillian Rose's social and political theory of modernity. For Rose, modernity not only construes `the autonomous moral subject as free within the order of representations and unfree within its preconditions and outcomes' (1996: 57), it is also `the working out of that combination' (ibid.). The implications of this view are explored below, concentrating in particular on the way Rose tackled the aporias and contradictions of modern sociology and social theory. Its conclusion is twofold. First, (...) that Rose retrieves the absolute as fundamental to the meaning of social and political critique, and second that, in the face of demands for radical political action, not least in Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach, it is the religious dimension of our political experience that has been consistently overlooked. It is my argument that, in her concept of `the broken middle', Rose does not overcome the gap between theory and practice, but she does comprehend it as a way of life, one characterized by human struggling and failing. This way of life calls us to `mind the gap'. (shrink)