Articles on the life and work of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950, philosopher and thinker from India, and his views on Ramakrishna, 1836-1886, Hindu saint, and his life.

In theories which contribute to the understanding of uncertainty in entrepreneurial action, scholars have traditionally attributed a negative connotation to uncertainty. This paper seeks to posit an understanding of uncertainty derived from Greek and Indian philosophy, where action of the human agent is not deterred by uncertainty, and rather, occurs despite uncertainty. This idea may be beneficial in making future entrepreneurs less apprehensive about uncertainty, by helping them locate the lessons from philosophy. I look at existing ideas that explore uncertainty (...) in entrepreneurial motivation, and present a multidisciplinary approach which sees uncertainty as a force that increases intent of action, rather than deterring it by drawing on the understanding of consequence and action in Aristotelean thought and Hindu philosophy, and extend the concepts of tuche and karma to posit a theoretical position which sees uncertainty as a factor that encourages entrepreneurial action and motivation. The understanding of uncertainty in management literature has been approached primarily from two disciplinary positions - economics and organisational theory. In economics, the classical understanding of uncertainty which commenced with Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), was largely abandoned in later years for a more quantifiable approach of calculating risk. Uncertainty, characteristically nebulous and difficult to grapple with, is unquantifiable. It is defined, in fact, by Knight, as something which cannot be predicted and quantified. Thus, in academics, where almost all disciplines try to make sense of the way the world works, uncertainty has always been a problematic concept. (shrink)

This article expands on existing models of analyzing business ethics of monetization in video games using the concept of categorical imperatives, as posited by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. A model is advanced to analyze and evaluate the business logics of video game monetization using a Kantian framework, which falls in the deontological category of normative ethics. Using two categorical imperatives, existing models of game monetization are divided into ethical or unethical, and presented using the case example of Star Wars: Battlefront (...) II. This analysis aims to provide video game developers and businesses with ethical guidelines for game monetization which may also be profitable for them in the long term. Within the framework of video game monetization, a deontological analysis is relevant due to the fact that the game developer is engaged in a continuous role of making the game more playable/payable. This article applies Kantian business ethics to the context of a new sector, that of video game businesses, and thereby presents a broader ethical perspective to video game developers, which will help them monetize games in an ethical manner which is also profitable in the long run. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the growing reliance on discourses of autochthony in nationalisms throughout the world. Native-ness is increasingly being made a key criterion for claiming national sovereignty over territory, as well as the more amorphous – but no less consequential – claim to national membership. By examining the crucial colonial genealogy of autochthonous discursive practices, I argue that claims to autochthony are metaphysical and, as such, deeply depoliticizing of the exclusions they produce. Drawing upon historical studies showing how (...) imperial-states deployed autocthonous discourses to divide those they categorized as Natives and Migrants from one another in an effort to maintain their imperial rule, I show the continuities of such practices in the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Despite their rhetoric, I argue that contemporary, nationalist discourses of autochthonies have not – and cannot – succeed in realizing decolonization, precisely because of their reliance on modes of political, economic, and social exclusion based on the separation of people categorized as either Native-Nationals or as Migrants. The material force of ideas of Native-Nationalism, because they are premised on territorial sovereignty and not on the end of practices of expropriation and exploitation across the planet, are part of the worldwide relations of ruling and not threats to it. (shrink)

Examines how liberal society enables racism and other forms of discrimination.

v. 1. Opponents' position (Pūrvapakṣa) -- v. 2. Pramā-lakṣaṇa-siddhānta.

Study of inference in Nyāyamañjarī of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, fl. 850-910, work on Nyaya philosophy.

The Human-Animal Boundary shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the question "what is human?" with the question "what is animal?" The objective is to expand the imaginative scope of human-animal relationships by combining perspectives from different disciplines, traditions, and cultural backgrounds.

In 1971, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter introduced his study of Nietzsche as an investigation into the history of modern nihilism in which “contradiction” forms the central thread of the argument. For Müller-Lauter, the interpretive task is not to demonstrate the overall coherence or incoherence of Nietzsche’s philosophy, but to examine Nietzsche’s “philosophy of contradiction.” Against those such as Karl Jaspers, Karl Löwith and Martin Heidegger, Müller-Lauter argued that contradiction is the foundation of Nietzsche’s thought, and not a problem to be corrected or (...) cast aside for exegetical or political purposes. For Müller-Lauter, contradiction qua incompatibility (not just mere opposition) holds a key to Nietzsche’s affective vision of philosophy. Beginning with the relationship between will to power and eternal recurrence, in this paper I examine aspects of Müller-Lauter’s account of Nietzsche’s philosophy of contradiction specifically in relation to the counter-interpretations offered by two other German commentators of Nietzsche, Leo Strauss and Karl Löwith, in order to confirm Müller-Lauter’s suggestion that contradiction is indeed an operative engine of Nietzsche’s thought. Indeed contradiction is a key Nietzschean theme and an important dynamic of becoming which enables the subject to be revealed as a “multiplicity” ( BGE §12) and as a “fiction” (KSA 12:9[91]). Following Müller-Lauter’s assertion that for Nietzsche the problem of nihilism is fundamentally synonymous with the struggle of contradiction experienced by will to power, this paper interprets Nietzsche’s philosophy of contradiction in terms of subjective, bodily life (rather than in terms of logical incoherences or ontological inconsistencies). Against the backdrop of nihilism, the “self” (and its related place holder the “subject”), I will argue, becomes the psycho-physiological battlespace for the struggle and articulation of “contradiction” in Nietzsche’s thought. (shrink)

The War on Terror is an ambiguous term that has been used to circumvent the international laws of warfare. Instead of moving toward peace by way of limited warfare, and instead of preserving the independence of war and peace, War on Terror advances by masking itself in a fog of peace; it proliferates by overlapping the logic of “war-time” and “peace-time” operations. The fog of peace—as it shall herein be called—is a condition wherein the uncertainty qua “fog” of war,2 along (...) with its militarized logic, overlaps with and eventually replaces civilian peace-time-and-spaces. The War on Terror is thus not a limiting of war by way of the conventional modern mechanisms of international law and diplomacy; it is a continuation of war by other means, including the use covert, often black-boxed methods of information-capture and surveillance. Globally, states are expanding the powers of intelligence organs and deploying covert mass surveillance programs in the name of counter-terrorism. In this manner, counter-terrorism policies become instruments enabling states to become predatory, especially in relation to civilians. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, peace-time has unwittingly become colonized by the logic of war. (shrink)

Following Nietzsche’s call for a philosopher-physician and his own use of the bodily language of health and illness as tools to diagnose the ailments of the body politic, this book offers a reconstruction of the concept of political physiology in Nietzsche’s thought, bridging gaps between Anglo-American, German and French schools of interpretation.

This study investigates the value of sharing. The primary data are the parent–child discourses regarding the value of sharing. The discourses are subsequently subjected to discourse analyses. The study also involves a semi-structured interview with the same parents who were a part of the discursive study as well. The data of the interview were subjected to thematic analyses. The aim of conducting the interview was to validate the discursive findings. The study provides exemplary discourses highlighting the issues of sacrifice and (...) reciprocity in sharing. (shrink)

We conduct an experiment to investigate the degree to which deviations from exponential discounting can be accounted for by the hypothesis of hyperbolic discounting. Subjects are asked to choose between an earlier or later payoff in a series of 40 choice questions. Each question consists of a pair of monetary amounts determined by compounding a given base amount at a constant rate per period. Two bases (8 and 20 dollars), three compounding rates (low, medium and high) and three delays (2, (...) 4, and 6 weeks) are each used. There are also 2 initial periods (Today and 2 weeks) and there are two separate questionnaires, one with lower “realistic” compounding rates and the other with higher compounding rates, typical of those used in previous studies. We analyze the detailed patterns of choice in 6 groups of 6 related questions each (in which the base and rate is fixed but the initial period and delay varies), documenting the frequency of patterns consistent with exponential discounting and with hyperbolic discounting. We find that exponential discounting is the clear modal choice pattern in virtually all cases. Hyperbolic discounting is never the modal pattern (except in the sense that constant discounting is a special case of hyperbolic discounting). We also estimate a linear probability model that takes account of individual heterogeneity. The estimates show substantial increases in the probability of choosing the later option when the compounding rate increases, as one would expect. There are small, sometimes significant, increases in this probability when the delay is increased or the initial period is in the future. Such behavior is consistent with hyperbolic discounting, but can account for only a small proportion of choices. Overall, deviations from exponential discounting appear to be due to error, or to other effects not accounted for by hyperbolic discounting. Principal among these is an increase in later choices when the base is larger. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an area of great interest, yet little is known about how CSR is perceived and practiced in the professional sport industry. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, including a survey, and a qualitative content analysis of responses to open-ended questions, to explore how professional sport executives define CSR, and what priorities teams have regarding their CSR activities. Findings from this study indicate that sport executives placed different emphases on elements of CSR including a focus on (...) philanthropic activities and ethical behaviors. The data suggest that professional sport executives view CSR as a strategic imperative for their business. Sport executives indicated that a number of factors influenced the practice of their CSR including: philanthropy (altruistic giving), an emphasis on the local community, partnerships, and ethical concerns. We also examine important organizational variables for sport (winning, revenues, and team value) and highlight their relationship with reported CSR involvement. We discuss the implications of the findings and propose recommendations for both theory and practice. (shrink)

Organisations that design and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly commit themselves to high-level, ethical principles. However, there still exists a gap between principles and practices in AI ethics. One major obstacle organisations face when attempting to operationalise AI Ethics is the lack of a well-defined material scope. Put differently, the question to which systems and processes AI ethics principles ought to apply remains unanswered. Of course, there exists no universally accepted definition of AI, and different systems pose different ethical (...) challenges. Nevertheless, pragmatic problem-solving demands that things should be sorted so that their grouping will promote successful actions for some specific end. In this article, we review and compare previous attempts to classify AI systems for the purpose of implementing AI governance in practice. We find that attempts to classify AI systems proposed in previous literature use one of three mental models: _the Switch_, i.e., a binary approach according to which systems either are or are not considered AI systems depending on their characteristics; _the Ladder_, i.e., a risk-based approach that classifies systems according to the ethical risks they pose; and _the Matrix_, i.e., a multi-dimensional classification of systems that take various aspects into account, such as context, input data, and decision-model. Each of these models for classifying AI systems comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. By conceptualising different ways of classifying AI systems into simple mental models, we hope to provide organisations that design, deploy, or regulate AI systems with the vocabulary needed to demarcate the material scope of their AI governance frameworks. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider how to conceptualize “diasporic” subjects, namely those whose identities and homes cannot be easily attributed, with regard to the political and racial dynamics of intra-group tensions, alliances, and divergences of interest. These concerns are important relatives to topics that Critical Race Theorists and Critical Race Feminists have readily addressed, such as the war on terror, the not-so-gradual erosion of dignity and rights protections accorded to non-citizens, and the increasing antagonism, surveillance, and brutality toward Latino and (...) Muslim migrants. As such, the former issues should become central concerns for Critical Race Theorists. In what follows, I want to introduce a framework called “interstitiality” as a way to address them. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the elements by which Muslim women who wear the hijab in the United States are managed so as to produce and distinguish "unruly" from "good" Muslim female citizens within the context of American liberation. Unlike the French state, which has regulated both the hijab and niqab through national legislation, the American liberal framework utilizes a laissez-faire approach, which relies on a range of public and private institutions to determine acceptable public presentations of the liberal female (...) subject. I refer to this form of management as "neoliberalism." Neoliberalism management works in conjunction with popular political discourses and domestic events in ways that alternately contract and expand the boundaries that allow "suitable Muslim women" in the public sphere. (shrink)

After tracing the development of the doctrines of avatāra and incarnation, the two are compared and contrasted. Some nuanced differences are: (1) Avatāras descend repeatedly, while Christ comes only once. However, we must also reckon with the Second Coming of Christ and the possibility of many incarnations. (2) The avatāra is real but perfect because it is made of "pure matter," while the incarnation is imperfect. (3) Avatāras have different purposes and, unlike the incarnation, not every Avatāra grants salivation. The (...) two concepts are not so incompatible as may appear at first, yet the differences spring from the contrasting worldviews of the respective religions. The two beliefs can also be mutually complementary. (shrink)

The veil has remained controversial in the US since 9/11, yet it has not been subject to explicit regulation. Beginning with a court case in which a Muslim woman is banned from the courtroom for refusing a judge’s order to remove her niqab, I explore the ways in which the judge’s order resembles a demand for transparency. Transparency as a norm, a mode of discourse, and a kind of comportment betrays the explicit ethos of secular-liberal political norms and practices as (...) being purely procedural. Drawing on early immigration law, the PATRIOT Act, and other laws, I argue that transparency is a demand for “unfamiliar” strangers to present themselves as familiar, or at least, as unthreatening to the dominant, homogenous population—not merely through sincerity and collegiality, but through submission and obedience. The demand for transparency is also often an impossible demand for a gendered racial and cultural recomportment, that is, to transform oneself into someone familiar—a neutral, vaguely feminist, liberal subject. I conclude that transparency remains in excess of liberal political and civic culture’s explicit scope. (shrink)

In this article, I explore Namita Goswami’s Subjects That Matter. Goswami has laid out an extensive excavation of the variety, depth, and breadth of antagonistic encounters between the Western world and subaltern subjects. I am interested in Goswami’s take on the production of the unknowable women of color who are constructed either as good wives, animate objects without wills of their own, or transgressors of the genre of producing women of color as oppressed. I argue that the question of heterogeneity (...) already assumes the very thing that is under question: to presuppose heterogeneity is already to presuppose its limit conditions—to already understand what difference looks like, which could preempt the possibility of infinite, or indefinite iterations. The irony is that we run the risk of assuming the very thing that we are trying not to presuppose, anticipate, or cordon off. Moreover, I question whether it is possible to encounter deep radical differences in any way other than antagonistically, since the unknown, from experience, is assumed to threaten. (shrink)

Paul Taylor’s essay ‘Black Reconstruction in Aesthetics,’ explores the questions of what reconstruction in aesthetics means. He asks how reconstruction, as a program for the post-bellum Southern United States, took up certain kinds of racially inclusive agendas even as it remained myopic to fundamental, seemingly insurmountable racial, racist, sentiments. I turn to his book to illuminate some of the myopias and seemingly intractable racisms that he seems to refer to in the essay, and then return to his essay, where he (...) answers some of those questions. I argue that he is correct in his analysis. I turn to several critics’ responses of the film Moonlight, which received rave reviews, to illustrate the point that there are similar sentiments in other current seemingly progressive contexts. (shrink)

In business ethics literature, the figure of Machiavelli is often taken as a representation of that which is dark, sinister and negative—a source of inspiration for undesirable and unethical actions. In this research, we examine the evaluation of Niccolò Machiavelli’s thought in extant studies, and posit that Machiavelli’s works consist of ideas that may appear contradictory, which, coupled with historically contextualized close reading of his texts have more to offer. In this theoretical investigation, we construct new conceptual categories of a (...) leader’s decision-making rubric and attempt to provide a structured framework that will allow us to specify the boundary conditions under which the apparent contrary views may be accommodated, by undertaking a close reading of Machiavelli’s texts. Our work contributes to business ethics literature in at least three ways. First, we present a holistic assessment of the research area that applies the tenets of Machiavelli’s writings to business ethics, management, and organizational studies, and delineate the dominant themes. We outline and substantiate the informal research networks, thought structures, and “invisible colleges” that form the intellectual framework of this research area through a bibliometric analysis and literature review. Second, we present a contextualized close reading of Machiavelli’s major treatises. Third, we reimagine the critical landscape of business ethics literature, specifically pertaining to Machiavelli’s oeuvre by shifting the single-minded focus from _The Prince_, by including _The Discourses_, which, as we show, has new and unprecedented implications for business ethics. In light of this, the parameters for ethical action by business leaders can be redrawn according to a Machiavellian schema. This marks a radical departure from the long-standing association between Machiavelli’s tenets and the absence of ethics, instead proposing a more positive and affirmative relationship between Machiavelli and business ethics. Specifically, while pointing out that the existing ethical frameworks foisted on Machiavelli’s texts do not do justice to the political philosopher’s worldview, which are complex insights into ideas of leadership, we urge researchers to incorporate the thoughts offered in this research in future investigations. (shrink)

Drawing on Heidegger and Foucault, I argue that we need to understand race as a technology. Race has three technological dimensions: instrumental, naturalizing, and concealment. Through this understanding, I hope to bridge two discourses that appear disconnected: Race as Color, Blood, and Genealogy (RC), which sees race as phenotypical or biological, and eclipses a discussion of political power, and Political Othering (PO), which eclipses race in its accounts of political ostracization. Finally, the implications of thetechnology of race can be understood (...) by turning to Heidegger’s notion of Enframing, Foucault’s notion of the racist state, and Benjamin’s articulation of the inherent violence of law. (shrink)

The January 2021 attacks on the US Capitol prompt a renewed look at the relationship between violence and Western liberal democracies. The attacks were viewed in a race-neutral frame of staging an insurrection against a procedurally elected government of a liberal democracy. Without considering the racial-political context, we are susceptible to recognizing only certain iterations of political violence while missing others altogether. In what follows, I argue that political violence against nonwhites is often not seen as violence or harm committed (...) against the polity; instead, it is frequently treated as a form of “self-defense,” enacted by white members of the polity. To illustrate my argument, I contrast the political principles and conditions under which the January 6 attacks were recognized as political violence with similar attacks in the twentieth century as they had been launched against African Americans who were attempting to participate in elections and run for office. (shrink)