ABSTRACT Schmidt introduces the Aristotelian term “koinonia” as denoting a political community which aims to achieve a common good for society as a whole. A good that promotes the flourishing of every party involved. In addition, Schmidt adopts further insight about the term by engaging more thoroughly in discourse about it, realising that this easily extends to the term taking on tenets of communities such as a family. Within family, the terms address even more specific relationships, such as husband and (...) wife, parents and children, sibling relationships, etc. Essentially, Aristotle’s premise of common good persists even in these specific relationships, so much so that Schmidt highlights the pillars which sustain the pursuit of the common good. These pillars are justice, fairness and reciprocity, all grounded in good will and fellowship. This goodwill and fellowship among African parents in a community is to assist each other in raising children in the community and ensure they are grounded in African values, hence the African proverb “a single hand cannot raise a child”. In fact, biological parents may draw from the knowledge of the elderly in the community who can assist in instilling values in the youth. The importance of this is that the elderly in African communities are valued not only as those who sustain order in the community, but are also the custodians of African value systems which younger generations should ideally be grounded in. With the introduction of technology, the digital divide seems to be presenting a challenge when it comes to the solidarity of African parents, as a village, raising their children. Hence, a strategy is required for modern African parents to not abandon this solidarity afforded by their cultural values. The communal way of raising their children should persist in order to preserve the African value of parental solidarity in raising children, even in the midst of what technology and the digital divide presents to the African community. (shrink)

La filosofía feuerbachiana supone un relevante paso en la superación de cierta tradición filosófica basada en categorías meramente especulativas y metafísicas, y ello a partir de una concepción ética y antropológica que enraíza directamente con la perspectiva del reconocimiento recíproco. No obstante, el peso que adquiere la dimensión afectiva en la propuesta ética de Feuerbach problematiza, de hecho, la posibilidad de considerar la perspectiva del reconocimiento como contenido normativo de la moral a la hora de formular pretensiones de universalidad. En (...) este sentido, el presente trabajo trata de reflexionar sobre la actualidad del pensamiento feuerbachiano a partir de la reconstrucción de dicha perspectiva recognoscente, teniendo en cuenta tanto sus límites como posibilidades. (shrink)

This essay discusses Hegel’s theory of “abstract” respect for “abstract” personhood and its relation to the fuller, concrete account of human personhood. Hegel defines (abstract) personhood as an abstract, formal category with the help of his account of free will. For Hegel, personhood is defined in terms of powers, relations to self and to others. After analyzing what according to the first part of Philosophy of Right it is to (abstractly) respect someone as a person, the essay discusses the implications (...) for private property and market. Then the paper turns to discuss pathologies of ideologies that stress these aspects only. Finally, the essay discusses the way inwhich Hegel’s full social theory aims to overcome such pathological tendencies; most notably in his theory of Family and the State. (shrink)

This article examines the role of class divisions in critical social theory through Habermas’ theory of law and democracy. It begins with Hegel’s view that social freedom involves reconciliation with the modern division of labor, which in turn requires membership in ‘estates’, and his thoughts on their role in the state. While subsequent Left Hegelian thinkers reject these institutions as authoritarian, the melancholic tenor of much Frankfurt School social theory stems partly from their view that class divisions are not only (...) entrenched, but also ‘latent’ and therefore not amenable to reconciliation through the political process that Hegel envisions. Habermas’ conception of ‘interchange roles’ between the system and the lifeworld as sites of reification, but potentially of democratic contestation, synthesizes these lines of thought, by conceptualizing how the political mediation of class-based interests can be an ongoing possibility amidst a condition of latent class conflict. (shrink)

By comparison with other parts of his philosophy, Hegel'sAestheticshas been slighted by Anglo-American philosophers. All the more welcome then are two recent essays by Robert Pippin, which promise to go well beyond received notions. WithHegel's Idealism, Pippin published what is by any measure one of the most original of recent treatments. Shortly thereafter came a penetrating study of the idea of the modern, which allotted a central role to artistic modernism, and since then he has published various essays actively engaging (...) our post-Kantian legacy. Readers will therefore have heightened expectations of Pippin's turn to Hegel's aesthetics, or rather, as he himself signals, the philosophy of art — unlike some he clearly approves of the shift from Kantian questions of aesthetic taste to Romantic speculations on art, indeed on Art as cultural absolute.They will hardly be disappointed. Yet in the event they will find themselves negotiating texts that are at once dense and elliptical, much of the argument being conducted via footnotes, its implications—what it commits the author to in theory and in practice — not evident straightaway. If Hegel's position is complex, Pippin's turns out to be no less so. While I can hardly do justice to its intricacies, I do consider it both important and controversial, whether as interpretation of Hegel or as an approach to modernist abstraction. (shrink)