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This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture, ...

The article aims to support the notion of philosophy emerging from culture; a notion that paves the way for the emergence of ubuntu as a philosophy from an African culture. Understanding this emergence is vital in the manner a particular human community relates with itself and other communities worldwide. Moreover, the idea of ubuntu has become a philosophy that is in dialogue with culture. Hence, from the writer’s punto de vista, this stance further strengthens the argument affirming the value of (...) African culture from which African philosophy has certainly emerged. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for a treatment of rights to be treatment against power with some concession to the responsibilities that a tutelary of rights enjoys. We owe it to legal philosophers of the Scholastic persuasion who recognized rights as the entitlements that allow a person to fulfill duties— whether these arise from nature or from contract. In this sense rights were subordinate to and enjoyed for the sake of duties that one had. One may debate this way of putting (...) things, but it had the marked advantage of clarity and showed the internal connection between rights and duties. Also in the scholastic anatomy of rights, there was such a thing as the “term” of the right—he against whom the right could be claimed, and therefore he or she upon whom a duty was incumbent to desist from transgressing the right of the tutelary. In this sense a “right to” was concomitantly “power against,” but power, in the sense of claim or entitlement. For the power to enforce, one had to look to what scholastic philosophers called the “title” of the right—and this could be natural law, positive law that, of course, included contracts. I do not think that this was bad at all, but I would like to pick up the subject today by paying attention to two leading figures: Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

This volume is the first introduction to all the main philosophical systems of the world, written by a highly successful textbook author. It is the ideal textbook for use on all courses in comparative philosophy, multicultural philosophy, and the history of philosophy. Unique in its breadth, World Philosophies introduces philosophy from the time of Ancient India, China and Greece up to the present day. These philosophical systems are viewed as attempts to provide integrated accounts of the place of human beings (...) within the wider order of things, and to determine in the light of these philosophies the proper conduct of human life. (shrink)

In spite of decolonisation, the philosophical character of European standpoint on colonisation together with its corresponding practices remains unchanged in its relations with the erstwhile colonies. It is precisely this condition which calls for the need for the authentic liberation of Africa. This speaks of a two-fold exigency. One is that the colonised people's conceptions of reality, knowledge and truth should be released from slavery and dominance under the European epistemological paradigm. Without this essential first step there cannot evolve a (...) common authentic and liberating universe of discourse. The second exigency is that the evolving common universe of discourse must take into account the rational demands of justice to the colonised arising from the unjust wars of conquest that resulted in colonial disseizing of territory as well as the enslavement of the colonised. These rational demands of justice are specifically the restoration of territory to its indigenous rightful owners and reparations to them. This two fold exigency is the indisplensable neccessity for the authentic liberation of Africa, and indeed, all the colonised people of the world. (shrink)

The essays in this book contain some of Paul Ricoeur's most fascinating ruminations on the nature of justice and the law.

Paul Ricoeur has been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of the century. Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.