Language and the African Philosophical Traditions

Are there universal principles, categories, or forms of reasoning that apply to all aspects of human experience—irrespective of culture and epoch? Numerous scholars have explored this very question from Africana perspectives: Kwasi Wiredu (1996) explored the philosophical issue of whether there are culturally defined values and concepts; Hallen and Sodipo (1986) examined the question of whether there are unique African indigenous systems of knowledge; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1994) evaluated the role of colonialism in the language of African literature; Oyerò nkẹ ́ ́ Oyěwumi (1997) argued that “gender” is a Western cultural invention that is foreign to Yorùbá systems of sociation; and Helen Veran (2001) argued that even though science, mathematics, and logic are not culturally relative, “certainty” is nonetheless derived from cultural practices and associations. Building on these and other works, this essay argues that: (i) incommensurability of “worldviews,” “perspectives,” “paradigms,” or “conceptual schemes” springs from deeper, more fundamental cognitive categories of logic that are coded into natural languages; and that (ii) consequently, as long as African reflective reasoning is expressed solely (or predominantly) in European languages, the authenticity of the “African” in African philosophy is questionable.

Four images of projectification: an integrative review

PurposeThe aim of this article is to give an overview of the development and current state of projectification research. The inquiry was driven by a threefold research question: How has projectification been understood and defined over time, what has the trajectory of the development been and what are the main trends and emerging ideas?Design/methodology/approachThe article is an integrative literature review of research done on the notion of projectification to date. An interdisciplinary, integrative literature review was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science as primary sources of data collection. The full data set consists of 123 journal articles, books, book chapters and conference contributions. With the data set complete, a thematic analysis was conducted.FindingsAmong other things, the review outlines the development and scope of projectification research from 1995 until 2021 and discusses four emerging images of projectification: projectification as a managerial approach, projectification as a societal trend, projectification as a human state and projectification as a philosophical issue. These characteristics emphasize some common features of each of the images but also imply that the way projectification is understood changes depending on the paradigmatic perspective taken by the researcher, the time and place in which the observation was made and the level of observation.Originality/valueThe authors have outlined and discussed four images of projectification – projectification as a managerial approach, projectification as a societal trend, projectification as a human state and projectification as a philosophical issue – where each image represents a special take on projectification with some prevalent characteristics. By doing this, the authors provide a systematic categorization of research to date and thus a basis upon which other researchers can build when furthering the understanding of projectification at large.

Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People. London and New York: Verso, 2019, 224 pp., ISBN 9781788731003

What makes humans and nonhumans ecological beings in the wake of the Anthropocene? Timothy Morton’s Humankind invites us to consider this philosophical issue as intrinsically aesthetic, ethical, and political. Through his illuminating terminology, Morton argues that becoming human is to understand that we are in fact embedded in the network of solidarity and kindness with nonhumans. Being ecological, for Morton, means being spectral and capable of appreciating the spectrality, pleasure, and beauty of nonhuman beings. In our relationship with nonhuman beings, we are the actants who should overcome our troubled anthropocentrism and mull over what makes us humans, physically and experientially. By putting Marxism, object-oriented ontology, and political ecology into dialogue, Morton revisits the implicit inclusion of nonhuman beings in Marxism, revealing that Marxism can still serve as a critical resource of thinking through a kind of communist existence shared by all ecological beings.

LIFE AS PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUE IN LEIBNIZ’S PHILOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE

Лейбниц - автор интересной философской концепции, в основе которой - идея предустановленной Богом гармонии мира и учение о монадах. Цель статьи - показать, как состояние науки того времени повлияло на осмысление феномена жизни, предложенное немецким философом. Leibniz is the author of interesting philosophical concept in the base of which are the idea of harmony preset by God and the doctrine of monads. The purpose of the article is to show, how the state of science of that time influenced the understanding of the phenomenon of life, proposed by the German philosopher.

THE NATURE OF NORMATIVE MORAL JUDGMENTS

Moral judgements have been a crucial subject-matter of a discussion in the domain of normativity. Many thinkers argue moral judgments are necessarily action-guiding, which prescribe what one ought to do and what ought to be the case. The moral statement “killing is wrong” is prescriptive and locates in the purview of first-order ethical questions. Moral realists widely accept that moral judgments represent propositions, therefore they are subject to truth and false conditions. Thus, moral conclusions can be derived logically from valid premises. How to derive the conclusion “killing is wrong”? How to justify the statement? What does “wrong” mean in this context? This kind of philosophical issue has been labeled as the second-order questions, which is in the purview of metaethics. This article is devoted to the subject of normativity and the nature of moral judgments advocated by metaethicists David Copp and Ralph Wedgwood. The purpose of this article is to outline the current debate on the nature of normative moral judgments. In conclusion, I shall agree with both Copp and Wedgwoodon two points. One, normative moral judgment can be subject to cognition. Two, there are true and false beliefs about particular moral facts which constitute the significant part of the reality we live in.

Culture in Western Diplomacy

What could be more antithetical than the alliance of the words “culture” and “political power”? Yet, for over fifty years, the process of European integration has been linking these opposing concepts. European culture, ‘a sort of UFO’ for most Europeans and it has become a major political and philosophical issue. Given their political and strategic importance so-called ‘geo-cultural’ issues have been called upon to constitute, along with geopolitical and economic issues, a governance axis. The European Union’s current mode of cultural action, intrinsic to national policies, is unable to address these issues. Indeed, the EU should completely rethink its conception and political implication of culture, and recognize its great importance, both for the success of European integration, and for the new civic relationships which are developing today in local, national and global communities.

MODERN CINEMA AS A REFLEXIVE FIELD OF AMBIUTOPISM

The relevance of the study is justified by several points. First of all, it lies in the fact that the topic of ambiutopianity, as well as separately utopia and dystopia, is an eternal philosophical issue, reflected in social practice. The desire of some to live in an ideal society and the denial of such an opportunity by others demonstrates the eternal clash of radical doctrines of the existence of society, which are reflected in ambiutopic cinema. It is also relevant that the phenomenon of ambiutopicity is considered in its cinematic refraction, and today cinema is one of the sought-after forms of art that characterizes it as an important component of the everyday, real world. The process of complicating the genres of utopia and dystopia in cinema and the emergence of a new genre of ambiutopia, in which an ambivalent combination of utopianism and dystopianism are achieved, charged with all their pros and cons, is traced. Formulated and studied are the typological features of anti-utopia such as: pseudocarnival, the hero’s eccentricity, the ritualization of life and its destruction, ideological and semantic allegoricality.

Conflict in the Expansion of Care

This chapter argues that early Confucians were aware of the conflict between the private and the public, but their solution was to identify and develop the constructive aspect of the private and use what was cultivated from the private to suppress the conflict. Most late modern and contemporary Western liberal thinkers have switched their focus and are primarily concerned with how to protect the private against intrusions from the public. In contrast, early Confucians and Plato (in the Republic) were primarily concerned with intrusions to the public good from the private. But both Plato and modern liberals insist on the sheer divide between the private and the public. To look further into how early Confucians addressed the issue of the conflict between the private and the public may shed light on the universal philosophical issue of the private versus the public. With a fuller understanding of the Confucian rationale on this issue, the chapter then applies the Confucian idea of expanding care to other political and moral issues.