Diese Studie möchte eine existenzphilosophische Vorarbeit zu einer Phänomenologie der Normativität leisten. Durch Auslegungen vor allem griechischer, mittelhochdeutscher und klassischer deutscher Dichtung werden zunächst die Grundbegriffe von Faktizität und Existentialität herausgearbeitet. Auf dieser Grundlage erfolgt sodann die Beschreibung von Anlass und Gestalt normativer Praxis. Diese Beschreibung wird endlich als anthropologische Grundlage philosophischer Ethik vorgeschlagen.

Reproduit quatre conférences faites en 1946 et 1947 sous ce titre au Collège de philosophie, et interroge la notion de temps comme limitation même de l'être fini ou comme relation de l'être fini à Dieu (Electre).

_''Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain.'_ - _ Bertrand Russell Nearly forty years since its first publication, History of Western Philosophy_ remains unchallenged as the ultimate introduction to its subject, while claiming classic status in its own right. It is the bestselling philosophy book of the twentieth century and one of the most important philosophical (...) works of all time. This compact and affordable paperback edition makes this comprehensive and brilliantly-written text readily available for a new generation of readers. As part of our commitment to Russell publishing, the delux version of this bestselling title will continue to be available. 1961: 848pp: Pb: 0-145-07854-7: £16.99. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

Influential moral theories in the contemporary West face problems making sense of the conflict between the interests of animals and people’s interests in culture. They have trouble explaining either the existence of strong direct duties to animals or the importance of people’s right to culture (and frequently both). In this chapter I aim to advance a relational ethic, grounded on the African philosophical tradition, that offers a promising alternative. I contend that duties toward animals and rights to culture are potentially (...) conflicting normative branches springing from the common root of a demand to prize communal relationship. In addition to showing that communion makes good sense of the strength of some direct duties to animals and the moral significance of culture, I argue that it accounts well for how to understand the way in which they can clash and how to address it practically. (shrink)

The issues explored in The Feminist Classroom are as timely and controversial today as they were when the book first appeared six years ago. This expanded edition offers new material that rereads and updates previous chapters, including a major new chapter on the role of race. The authors offer specific new classroom examples of how assumptions of privilege, specifically the workings of unacknowledged whiteness, shape classroom discourses. This edition also goes beyond the classroom, to examine the present context of American (...) higher education. Drawing on in-depth interviews and using the actual words of students and teachers, the authors take the reader into classrooms at six colleges and universities - Lewis and Clark College, Wheaton College, the University of Arizona, Towson State University, Spelman College, and San Francisco State University. The result is an intimate view of the pedagogical approaches of seventeen feminist college professors. Feminist scholars have demonstrated that American higher education has long represented a white, male, privileged minority. The professors here bring together the twin upheavals that have challenged this tradition: namely a rapidly changing student body and the more inclusive knowledge of feminist and multicultural scholarship. They uncover the voices, concerns and experiences of groups hitherto marginalized in higher education: women, people of color and working class students. Through concrete examples of classroom practice, the work of these professors challenge the traditional split between knowledge and pedagogy that has long characterized higher education. (shrink)

English-speaking research on morally right decisions in a healthcare context over the past three decades has been dominated by two major perspectives, namely, the Four Principles, of which the principle of respect for autonomy has been most salient, and the ethic of care, often presented as a rival to not only a focus on autonomy but also a reliance on principles more generally. In my contribution, I present a novel ethic applicable to bioethics, particularly as it concerns human procreation, that (...) I argue is a promising alternative to these two approaches. According to this new moral theory, an act is right just insofar as it treats people’s capacity to commune with respect, where communing is a matter of identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them. This ethic is inspired by relational ideals of communion and harmony from the African philosophical tradition, but is shown to be attractive to a broad, indeed global, audience, with regard to its implications for the morality of reproduction. (shrink)

Reprint of a mildly revised article that initially appeared in the Journal of Animal Ethics (2017).

A mildly revised version of an article first published in the Journal of Political Philosophy (2007).

When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that ...

The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop (...) Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience. In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past. But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation "looks the beast in the eye." Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world. (shrink)

This comprehensive introductory text with readings offers a historical overview of all major subdivisions of Western Philosophy perspectives--including both the analytic and Continental traditions--as well as Eastern philosophy, postcolonial philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Written in an engaging and captivating style, it makes philosophy accessible without oversimplifying the material, and shows that philosophy's powerful ideas affect the lives of real people.

An evolutionary approach to ethics supports, to some extent, the sceptical meta-ethics found by some of the Greek sophists and Nietzsche. On the other hand, a modern naturalistic account on the origin and nature of morality, leads to somewhat different conclusions. This is demonstrated with an answer to three philosophical questions: does real freedom exist?, does the good, or real virtue, exist?, does life have a meaning?

John Hospers' _Introduction to Philosophical Analysis_ has sold over 150,000 copies since its first publication. This new edition ensures that its success will continue into the twenty-first century. It remains the most accessible and authoritative introduction to philosophy available using the full power of the problem-based approach to the area to ensure that philosophy is not simply taught to students but practised by them. The most significant change to this edition is to respond to criticisms regarding the omission in the (...) third edition of the famous opening chapter. A brand new chapter, Words and the World, replaces this in the fourth edition - which now features a large number of examples and illustrative dialogues. The rest of the text has been thoroughly revised and updated to take account of recent developments in some areas of philosophy. (shrink)

Sartre explains the theory of existential psychoanalysis in this treatise on human reality.

Harmony is a concept essential to Confucianism and to the way of life of past and present people in East Asia. Integrating methods of textual exegesis, historical investigation, comparative analysis, and philosophical argumentation, this book presents a comprehensive treatment of the Confucian philosophy of harmony. The book traces the roots of the concept to antiquity, examines its subsequent development, and explicates its theoretical and practical significance for the contemporary world. It argues that, contrary to a common view in the West, (...) Confucian harmony is not mere agreement but has to be achieved and maintained with creative tension. Under the influence of a Weberian reading of Confucianism as "adjustment" to a world with an underlying fixed cosmic order, Confucian harmony has been systematically misinterpreted in the West as presupposing an invariable grand scheme of things that pre-exists in the world to which humanity has to conform. The book shows that Confucian harmony is a dynamic, generative process, which seeks to balance and reconcile differences and conflicts through creativity. Illuminating one of the most important concepts in Chinese philosophy and intellectual history, this book is of interest to students of Chinese studies, history and philosophy in general and eastern philosophy in particular. (shrink)

In this classic text, Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues. This new edition and translation of Kant's work is designed especially for students. An extensive and comprehensive introduction explains the central concepts of Groundwork and looks at Kant's main lines of argument. Detailed notes aim to clarify Kant's thoughts and to correct some commonmisunderstandings (...) of his doctrines. (shrink)

sweet-potato porridge: symbol of semen, 148 symbol (see also taboos): anthropological interpretation of, 126, 172-3; in Ndembu ritual, 125 f., 169, 172-3 ; and social relationships, 18, 42; of trees as sacrament, 171-2 taboos (see also ...

Lewis Gordon presents the first detailed existential phenomenological investigation of antiblack racism as a form of Sartrean bad faith. Bad faith, the attitude in which human beings attempt to evade freedom and responsibility, is treated as a constant possibility of human existence. Antiblack racism, the attitude and practice that involve the construction of black people as fundamentally inferior and subhuman, is examined as an effort to evade the responsibilities of a human and humane world. Gordon argues that the concept of (...) bad faith militates against any human science that is built upon a theory of human nature and as such offers an analysis of antiblack racism that stands as a challenge to our ordinary assumptions of what it means to be human. (shrink)

In _Necropolitics_ Achille Mbembe—a leader in the new wave of Francophone critical theory—theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world—a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror, as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side, or what he calls its “nocturnal body,” which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed (...) out democracy, thereby eroding the very values, rights, and freedoms liberal democracy routinely celebrates. As a result, war has become the sacrament of our times, in a conception of sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered to be enemies of the state. Despite his dire diagnosis, Mbembe draws on post-Foucault debates on biopolitics, war, and race, as well as Fanon's notion of care as a shared vulnerability, to explore how new conceptions of the human that transcend humanism might come to pass. These new conceptions would allow us to encounter the Other not as a thing to exclude, but as a person with whom to build a more just world. (shrink)

Fiscal crises have cascaded across much of the developing world with devastating results, from Mexico to Indonesia, Russia and Argentina. The extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes seems to mock our best efforts to understand the forces that drive development in the world economy. David Harvey is the single most important geographer writing today and a leading social theorist of our age, offering a comprehensive critique of contemporary capitalism. In this fascinating book, he shows the way forward for just (...) such an understanding, enlarging upon the key themes in his recent work: the development of neoliberalism, the spread of inequalities across the globe, and ’space’ as a key theoretical concept. Both a major declaration of a new research programme and a concise introduction to David Harvey’s central concerns, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

More than twenty years after its original publication, _The Case for Animal Rights _is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

In _Critique of Black Reason_ eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness—from the Atlantic slave trade to the present—to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason (...) as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion. With _Critique of Black Reason_, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future. (shrink)

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read "Writing and Difference," the classic introduction.

In Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon discusses the neurotic condition that typifies the oppressed black subject, their 'psychoexistential complex'. He argues that this neurotic condition is closely related to another, the 'psychoexistential complex' of the white oppressor. Both of these complexes sustain and are sustained by social and economic injustice. But Fanon does not delve in detail into the nature of this second neurosis, for he was primarily interested in discussing this neurosis only insofar as it helps him understand (...) the first. My aim in this paper is to provide an account of the white neurosis, and why it should be understood literally as a neurotic condition. Typical, white oppressors, not solely those who are militantly committed to oppressing others, are alienated from the world and from themselves, making their behaviour seem like that of soulless dolls, to use J.M. Coetzee's image from Age of Iron. (shrink)

The article sketches an approach to the sociology of the stranger which is based on historical semantics, on comparative studies of social structures of premodern societies and on a reconsideration of the `classical sociology of the stranger' and of marginality (Simmel, 1908; Michels, 1929 and others; Schütz, 1944; Park, 1964). The guiding hypothesis of the article is that there is a discontinuity in the modern experience of the stranger which has not been reflected sufficiently in the classical sociology of the (...) stranger. Whereas in premodern societies membership criteria are binary codes such as `kin' vs. `stranger', `friend' vs. `enemy', and elaborate arrangements were then necessary for institutionalizing a third status (e.g. for internal strangers) between the binary alternatives, the modern experience is wholly different. Modern society is no longer a membership organization. The third status (i.e. being neither `friend' nor `stranger') has become constitutive of our everyday experience of other persons. And this everyday experience is that of indifference as our normal attitude towards most persons living in the world. A modern sociology of the stranger has to explore the facets of indifference. Indifference can be described as an interactional achievement in situations of fleeting contact. And it can be examined in its macrostructural consequences in a modern societal order in which motivations for societal engagements and therefore any willingness to care for the other are unavoidably scarce. (shrink)

A "reading" of archival material on the Rani of Sirmur shows the soldiers and administrators of the East India Company constructing the object of representations that becomes the reality of India. The Rani emerges only when she is needed in the space of imperial production. Caught between the patriarchy of her husband, the Raja of Sirmur, and the imperialism of the British who deposed him, she is in an almost allegorical position. Both patriarchal subj ect- formation and imperialist object-constitution efface (...) the dubious place of the free will of the sexed subject as female. In the cracks between the production of the archives and indigenous patriarchy, today distanced by the waves of hegemonic "feminism," there is no "real Rani" to be found. (shrink)

A special issue of The Philosophical Forum , one of the most prestigious philosophy journals, is now available to a wider readership through its publication in book form. The volume includes twelve essays in three sections-- Philosophical Traditions; the African-American Tradition; and Racism, Identity, and Social Life. Contributors are: K. Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, Bernard Boxill, Frank M. Kirkland, Tommy L. Lott, Adrian M.S. Piper, Laurence Thomas, Michele M. Moody-Adams, Anita L. Allen, and Howard McGary. The (...) introduction is by John P. Pittman. (shrink)

Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with their racism. Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into moron jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider two answers to ‘What has an I.Q. of 1007’: a nation of morons; or Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as cowards, and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how skinflints, cowards, or dishonest people get on in (...) the world. But they are less funny as such. As this suggests, racist humor is ‘put down’ humor. We laugh, in part, because we find put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many contexts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within reason, it may be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why, then, all the commotion about racist humor? (shrink)

Africana Philosophy is a gathering notion used to cover collectively particular articulations, and traditions of particular articulations, of persons African and African-descended that are to be regarded as instances of philosophizing. (The notion is meant to cover, as well, the philosophizing efforts of persons not African or African-descended, efforts that are, nonetheless, contributions to the philosophizing endeavors that constitute Africana philosophy.) A central concern of the essay is the question whether there are characteristics of the philosophizing practices of persons identified (...) as members of social groups thought to comprise a geographically and historically dispersed and ethnically diverse race that do, or should, distinguish the practices by virtue of being those of persons African and/or African-descended. Is there, can there be, should there be a properly determined field of philosophy that is constituted, first and foremost, by the efforts of persons of a particular race and its ethnic groups? (shrink)

This paper addresses two issues. The first part deals with the classic question of human nature by focussing on the problem of human consciousness, in particular, the relationship between subjective and intentional consciousness. I argue for an essential link between subjectivity and intentionality by suggesting a phenomenological conception of the human condition. On this basis, the second part deals with what I call ‘humane’ ethics. This part shows that my conception of the human condition contains a humane approach to morality.

Democratic politicians face pressures unknown to the prerogative rulers of the early modern period when toleration was first formulated as a political ideal. These pressures are less often expressed as demands by groups or individuals for the permission of practices they dislike than for their restraint or outright prohibition; tolerant dispositions are less politically clamorous. The executive structure of toleration as a virtue, together with the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’, make conflicts over toleration peculiarly intractable. Political conflicts are apt to (...) take the form of mutual allegations ofintolerance; indeed, the problem of ‘tolerating the intolerant’, far from being a marginal case, is central to the theory and practice of toleration. Toleration thus exemplifies a category mistake committed in much contemporary political theory, particularly in its contractualist versions: the threshold of the political lies precisely where rational agreement proves impossible. The main prospects for democratic toleration are thus pre-emptive. The main way in which this can happen is by cultivating executive dispositions: in other words, encouraging people to detach themselves from strong evaluative commitments, so that toleration does not become politically contentious to start with. But this involves losses as well as gains. The gains in civil harmony and peace are obvious. The cost for tolerant political actors is alienation from what they have good reason to value. (shrink)

The article discusses the concept of Hegelian recognition. The four central tenets of the agonistic interpretation of Hegelian recognition are discussed. First, recognition requires participants to occupy one of the two roles such as recognizer and recognizee. Moreover, it asserts that recognition is a relation of asymmetry. The article addresses the concept of pure recognition. In this concept, the agent is able to exist as a self-conscious agent for another self-conscious agent. Furthermore, the uses and abuses of recognition are also (...) addressed. (shrink)

This article repudiates the dichotomy that African ethics is communitarian (relational) and Western ethics is individualistic. ‘Communitarianism’ is the view that morality is ultimately grounded on some relational properties like love or friendship; and, ‘individualism’ is the view that morality is ultimately a function of some individual property like a soul or welfare. Generally, this article departs from the intuition that all morality including African ethics, philosophically interpreted, is best understood in terms of individualism. But, in this article, I limit (...) myself to the literature in the African moral tradition; and, I argue that it is best construed in terms of individualism contrary to the popular stance of communitarianism. I defend my view by invoking two sorts of evidences. (1) I invoke prima facie evidence, which shows that both secular and religious moral thinkers in the tradition tend to understand it in individualistic terms. And, (2) I invoke concrete evidence, I show that the two terms that can be said to be definitive features of African ethical framework, namely: personhood and dignity, are individualistic. I conclude by considering possible objections against my defense of individualism as a central feature of African ethics. (shrink)

In this article, I motivate for the view that the best account of the foundations of morality in the African tradition should be grounded on some relevant spiritual property - a view that I call ‘ethical supernaturalism’. In contrast to this position, the literature has been dominated by humanism as the best interpretation of African ethics, which typically is accompanied by a direct rejection of ‘ethical supernaturalism’ and a veiled rejection of non-naturalism . Here, primarily, I set out to challenge (...) and repudiate humanism as the best interpretation of African ethics; I leave it for a future project to develop a fully-fledged African spiritual meta-ethical theory. (shrink)

Literary criticism at the present moment seems ready to open its doors once again to the outside world, even if that world is only a series of other academic disciplines, each cloistered in its own way. For the reader of black African literature in French, the opening comes none too soon. The program for reading Camara Laye, Ahmadou Kourouma, and Yambo Ouologuem should never have been the program prescribed for Rousseau, Wordsworth, or Blanchot. If one is willing to read a (...) literature that might not be a rewriting of Hegel , and if the negative knowledge of recent theoretical criticism is questioned in the universality of its applications, then what is really open to a Western reader of non-Western literature? Claiming a break with his/her own culture and critical upbringing, can he/she the Other, the African, as if from an authentically African point of view, interpreting Africa in African terms, perceiving rather than projecting?The goal of breaking through the nets of Western criticism, of reading African literature in a nonethnocentric, nonprojective fashion, will remain both indisputably desirable and ultimately unattainable. No matter how many languages I learn or ethnologies I study, I cannot make myself into an African. The Western scholar’s claim to mastery of things African, albeit motivated by xenophilia rather than xenophobia, risks subjugation of the object to a new set of Western models. J. P. Makouta-M’Boukou rightly scolds Western critics who refuse to take into account the distance between themselves and African culture, and who read African literature only in function of their own cultural context.1 Wole Soyinka, more forbiddingly, complains: “We black Africans have been blandly invited to submit ourselves to a second epoch of colonisation—this time by a universal-humanoid abstraction defined and conducted by individuals whose theories and prescriptions are derived from the apprehension of their world and their history, their social neuroses and their value systems.”2 1. See J. P. Makouta-M’Boukou, Introduction à l’étude du roman négro-africain de langue française , p. 9.2. Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature, and the African World , p. x. Christopher L. Miller, Charles B. G. Murphy Assistant Professor of French and of African and Afro-American Studies at Yale University, is author of Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French . He is working at present on a study of francophone black African literature, for which he will have a Fulbright Africa Research grant. (shrink)

In her essay ‘The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities’ (1987), Sandra Harding was perhaps the first to note parallels between a typical Western feminist ethic and a characteristically African, i.e., indigenous sub-Saharan, approach to morality. Beyond Harding’s analysis, one now frequently encounters the suggestion, in a variety of discourses in both the Anglo-American and sub-Saharan traditions, that an ethic of care and an African ethic are more or less the same or share many commonalities. While the two ethical (...) perspectives are indeed sisters, in this article I argue, first, that they are not identical twins, and, more strongly, that the family resemblance between the two is significantly less than has been recognized. I highlight key differences between representative forms of an ethic of care and a sub-Saharan communitarian morality, after which I argue, second, that the latter better captures some central feminist concerns and moral considerations generally. That is, I maintain that an African ideal of community, when understood in a philosophically refined way, provides an important, relational corrective to the ethic of care. (shrink)

In this article I articulate and defend an African moral theory, i.e., a basic and general principle grounding all particular duties that is informed by sub-Saharan values commonly associated with talk of "ubuntu" and cognate terms that signify personhood or humanness. The favoured interpretation of ubuntu (as of 2007) is the principle that an action is right insofar as it respects harmonious relationships, ones in which people identify with, and exhibit solidarity toward, one another. I maintain that this is the (...) most defensible moral theory with an African pedigree at the time, and that it should be developed further with an eye to rivalling dominant Western theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism. (NB: a mildly revised version, avoiding some typos and phrases that invite misinterpretation, appeared as a chapter in Isaac Ukpokolo, ed., _Themes, Issues and Problems in African Philosophy_ London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 97-119.). (shrink)