Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

In this seminal exploration of the nature and future of African philosophy, Paulin J. Hountondji attacks a myth popularized by ethnophilosophers such as Placide Temples and Alexis Kagame that there is an indigenous, collective African philosophy, separate and distinct from the Western philosophical tradition. Hountondji contends that ideological manifestations of this view that stress the uniqueness of the African experience are protonationalist reactions against colonialism conducted, paradoxically, in the terms of colonialist discourse.

Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader sets out a timely and powerful agenda for contemporary African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American philosophy.

" -- Africa Today "The excellence of this book lies in the wealth of perspectives that it brings to the discussion on what constitutes philosophy, rationality, ...

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Recent anthropological analyses of Chinese attitudes towards privacy fail to pay adequate attention to more ordinary, but more widely shared ideas of privacy – ideas that, moreover, have changed dramatically since the 1980s as China has become more and more open to Western countries, cultures, and their network and computing technologies. I begin by reviewing these changes, in part to show how contemporary notions of privacy in China constitute a dialectical synthesis of both traditional Chinese emphases on the importance of (...) the family and the state and more Western emphases on individual rights, including the right to privacy. This same synthesis can be seen in contemporary Chinese law and scholarship regarding privacy. A review of recent work in philosophical ethics demonstrates that information ethics in China is in its very early stages. In this work, privacy is justified as an instrumental good, rather than an intrinsic good. I argue by way of conclusion that privacy protections will continue to expand in China, in part under the pressures of globalization, increasing trade with and exposure to Western societies, and the increasing demands for Western-style individual privacy by young people. Even so, I argue that these emerging conceptions of privacy will remain distinctively Chinese – i.e., they will retain a basic consistency with traditional Chinese values and approaches. (shrink)

This article uses the NetCorps Jordan project as a case study of the ways in which Information Technology transforms social and economic life at the grass roots. Particular attention is paid to the role of gender in shaping such processes. In the end, this essay explores the motivations, the hopes and the results of one Arab country’s IT4 D experiment using the narratives of the participants as a guide. It is clear from the analysis below that culture, context and gender (...) play a significant role in who gets to do what with IT. (shrink)

Critical research is becoming increasingly accepted as a valid approach to research in information systems. It is deemed to be particularly suitable for situations where researchers want to address conspicuous injustice, such as in areas of development or the digital divide. Critical research in information systems (CRIS), I will argue, is a possible approach to some of the ethical problems arising in the context of information and communication technology (ICT). It can be sensitive to the question of culture and therefore (...) suitable for researching cross-cultural ethical questions in ICT. It is often unclear, however, what exactly critical research stands for and to what extent critical approaches are applicable across cultural boundaries. This paper will address these problems by proposing a definition of critical research as focused on changing the status quo and aiming for emancipation. It will then look at the question whether different cultures are compatible and comparable and what the role of culture in research on information systems is. The paper will then return to the question whether the critical intention to emancipate and empower humans is an expression of cultural imperialism or whether there are valid ways of promoting emancipation across cultural divides. (shrink)

One‐third of all human deaths are due to poverty‐related causes, to malnutrition and to diseases that can be prevented or cured cheaply. Yet our politicians, academics, and mass media show little concern for how such poverty might be reduced. They are more interested in possible military interventions to stop human rights violations in developing countries, even though such interventions – at best – produce smaller benefits at greater cost. This Western priority may be rooted in self‐interest. But it engenders, and (...) is sustained by, a deeply flawed moral presentation of global economic cooperation. The new global economic order we impose aggravates global inequality and reproduces severe poverty on a massive scale. On any plausible understanding of our moral values, the prevention of such poverty is our foremost responsibility. (shrink)

It will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of political economy come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of totality of human life-activities — the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need. Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Svetaketu abstained from food for fifteen days. Then he came to his father and said, `What shall I say?' (...) The father said: `Repeat the Rik, Yagus, and Saman verses.' He replied, `They do not occur to me, Sir.' The father said to him... `Go and eat! Then wilt thou understand me.' Then Svetaketu ate, and afterwards approached his father. And whatever his father asked him, he knew it all by heart.... After that, he understood what his father meant when he said: `Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire.' He understood what he said, yea, he understood it. Chandogya-Upanishad, VI Prapathaka, 7 Kanda When you love a man you want him to live and when you hate him you want him to die. If, having wanted him to live, you then want him to die, this is a misguided judgment. `If you did not do so for the sake of riches, you must have done so for the sake of novelty.' Confucius, Analects, Book 12. 10. (shrink)

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to important differences between Japanese and the Western views. This paper is based on our discussions with Rafael Capurro – a dialogue now represented by two separate but closely interrelated articles. The companion paper is broadly focused on the cultural and historical backgrounds of the concepts of privacy and individualism in “Western” worlds; our main theme focuses on different concepts of privacy in Japan and their sources in related aspects (...) of Japanese culture. The interrelationship between our two papers is apparent in our taking up identical or similar topics in each paper. Reading our two papers in conjunction with each other will bring about deeper and broader insights into the diverse values and worldviews of Japan and Western cultures that underlie concepts of privacy that at a surface level appear to be similar. (shrink)

This paper argues that information should be made transparent as a means to close the global digital divide problem. The usual conception of the digital divide as a bifurcation between the information rich and poor in fact does a poor job at describing the reality of the situation, which is characterized by multiple dimensions of digital divides in many contexts. Taking the lead from Albert Borgmann, it is recognized that the so-called information poor do possess a rich resource of information (...) which needs to be fully accounted for in order to solve the global digital divide problem. In addition, making information transparent means, following the theory of development of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, that information should be made available and accessible through a system of representation. Floridis account of information ethics thus needs to be supplemented by the realization that members of infosphere, which in his view consist of information objects, should be made transparent in order that the global digital divide be ameliorated. In other words there should be a system of information about information, namely semantic representation of objective information which enables the locals to make full use of their available informational resources. (shrink)

In this critical response to Charles Ess’ ‚Ethical Pluralism and Global Information Ethics’ presented in this Special Issue of Ethics and Information Technology, it is firstly argued that his account of pros hen pluralism can be more accurately reformulated as a three layered doctrine by separating one acceptance of diversity at a cultural level and another at an ethical theoretic level. Following this clarificatory section, the next section considers Ess’ political and sociological reasons for the necessity and desirability of pros (...) hen pluralism, criticising the former reasons as social scientifically problematic, while elaborating on the latter as more persuasive. In the last section, I discuss how pros hen pluralism may be realised, making three arguments in particular. First, Ess’ requirement for sensitivity to cultural diversity is to be interpreted as differentiated and extended sensitivity. Second, his discussion of shared responses to central ethical problems is ambiguous and needs further elaboration and clarification. Third, his focus on dialogue and Socratic education is persuasive, although excessive optimism is not reasonable. (shrink)

The author agrees with James Moor that computer technology, because it is ‘logically malleable’, is bringing about a genuine social revolution. Moor compares the computer revolution to the ‘industrial revolution’ of the late 18th and the 19th centuries; but it is argued here that a better comparison is with the ‘printing press revolution’ that occurred two centuries before that. Just as the major ethical theories of Bentham and Kant were developed in response to the printing press revolution, so a new (...) ethical theory is likely to emerge from computer ethics in response to the computer revolution. The newly emerging field of information ethics, therefore, is much more important than even its founders and advocates believe. (shrink)

We highlight the important lessons our contributors present in our collective project of fostering dialogues both between applied ethics and computer science and between cultures. These include: critical reflexivity; procedural (partly Habermasian) approaches to establishing such central norms as “emancipation”; the importance of local actors in using ICTs both for global management and in development projects – especially as these contribute the trust essential for the social context of use of new technologies; and pluralistic approaches that preserve local cultural differences (...) alongside shared norms. May Thorseth then contextualizes our work vis-a-vis broader philosophical discussions of deliberation and democracy. (shrink)

A global information ethics that seeks to avoid imperialistic homogenization must conjoin shared norms while simultaneously preserving the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. I argue that a global information ethics may fulfill these requirements by taking up an ethical pluralism – specifically Aristotle’s pros hen [“towards one”] or “focal” equivocals. These ethical pluralisms figure centrally in both classical and contemporary Western ethics: they further offer important connections with the major Eastern ethical tradition of Confucian thought. Both traditions understand ethical (...) judgment to lead to and thus require ethical pluralism – i.e., an acceptance of more than one judgment regarding the interpretation and application of a shared ethical norm. Both traditions invoke notions of resonance and harmony to articulate pluralistic structures of connection alongside irreducible differences. Specific examples within Western computer and information ethics demonstrate these pluralisms in fact working in praxis. After reviewing further resonances and radical differences between Western and Eastern views, I then argue that emerging conceptions of privacy and data privacy protection laws in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand in fact constitute a robust, pros hen pluralism with Western conceptions. In both theory and in praxis, then, this pluralism thus fulfills the requirement for a global information ethics that holds shared norms alongside the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. (shrink)

``The diversity of cultures in this world isreally important. It's the richness that wehave which, in fact, will save us from beingcaught up in one big idea''.Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web)addressing the 10th International World WideWeb Conference, Hong Kong.

This book develops some of the most important themes of Sen's works over the last decade. He argues in a rich and subtle approach that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than their resources or welfare.

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to differences between Japanese and Western conceptions. It starts with a reconstruction of the genealogy of Western subjectivity and human dignity as the basic assumptions underlying Western views on privacy. An analysis of the Western concept of informational privacy is presented. The Japanese topic of ‘‘denial of self” (Musi) as well as the concepts of Seken, Shakai and Ikai (as analyzed by the authors of the companion piece on privacy (...) in Japan) give rise to intercultural comparisons. The paper addresses the question of privacy in cyberspace and mass media. Finally the question of freedom of speech is related to the Japanese concepts of Ohyake and Watakusi. (shrink)

This is an introduction to a set of papers on Computer Ethics from the conference ETHICOMP95. Taken as a whole, the collection of papers provides arguments and concepts to launch a new development in computer ethics: ‘Global Information Ethics’. A rationale for globalization is provided, as well as some early efforts which move in that direction.

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be avoided. (...) She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

What will be the future of social science? Where exactly do we stand, and where do we go from here? What kinds of problems should we be addressing, with what kinds of approaches and arguments? In Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science, Mark Turner offers an answer to these pressing questions: social science is headed toward convergence with cognitive science. Together they will give us a new and better approach to the study of what human beings are, what human beings do, (...) what kind of mind they have, and how that mind developed over the history of the species. Turner, one of the originators of the cognitive scientific theory of conceptual integration, here explores how the application of that theory enriches the social scientific study of meaning, culture, identity, reason, choice, judgment, decision, innovation, and invention. About fifty thousand years ago, humans made a spectacular advance: they became cognitively modern. This development made possible the invention of the vast range of knowledge, practices, and institutions that social scientists try to explain. For Turner, the anchor of all social science - anthropology, political science, sociology, economics - must be the study of the cognitively modern human mind. In this book, Turner moves the study of those extraordinary mental powers to the center of social scientific research and analysis. (shrink)

Are the “culture wars” over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world’s foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. “We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban,” Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for (...) the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant’s analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak’s book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality. (shrink)

A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

ETHICS: A PLURALISTIC APPROACH TO MORAL THEORY, FIFTH EDITION provides a comprehensive yet clear introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. Additionally, the book presents a conceptual framework of ethical pluralism to help students understand the relationship among various theories. Lawrence Hinman, one of today's most respected and accomplished educators in ethics and philosophy education, presents a text that gives students plentiful opportunities to explore ethical theory and their own responses to them, using (...) fascinating features such as the Ethical Inventory sections that appear at the beginning and the end of the text. End-of-chapter discussion questions, and the use of current issues and movies help students retain what they've learned and truly comprehend the subject matter. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

A stimulating appraisal of a crucial contemporary theme, this comprehensive analysis of globalizaton offers a distinctively cultural perspective on the social theory of the contemporary world. This perspective considers the world as a whole, going beyond conventional distinctions between the global and the local and between the universal and the particular. Its cultural approach emphasizes the political and economic significance of shifting conceptions of, and forms of participation in, an increasingly compressed world. At the same time the book shows why (...) culture has become a globally contested issue - why, for example, competing conceptions of ′world order′ have political and economic consequences. (shrink)

Has philosophy anything of value to offer Africa? Has Africa anything of value to offer contemporary philosophy? This text answers yes to both of these questions and deals with the question of human freedom and the problem of liberation in the context of postcolonial contemporary Africa.

Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

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_Internet_ is een van de eerste boeken waarin het filosofische inzicht -van Plato tot Kierkegaard - betrokken wordt op het debat over de mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van het internet. Dreyfus laat zien dat de onstoffelijke, 'vrij zwevende' websurfer zijn oorsprong vindt in Descartes' scheiding van geest en lichaam, en hoe Kierkegaards inzichten in de opkomst van het moderne leespubliek vooruitlopen op de nieuwsgierige, maar elk risico vermijdende internet-junkie. Uitgaande van recente onderzoeken naar het isolement dat veel internetgebruikers ervaren, toont Dreyfus (...) aan hoe het internet, door zijn nadruk op privé-ervaringen, gebruikers berooft van wezenlijke, belichaamde vermogens zoals vertrouwen, stemmingen en betrokkenheid bij met anderen gedeelde lokale aangelegenheden. _Internet_ is verplichte kost voor iedereen die on line is en is geïnteressseerd in onze plaats in de 'e-revolutie'. (shrink)

In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as (...) a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations. (shrink)