The late Kenyan philosopher, Henry Odera Oruka, identified six schools of thought on what African philosophy is or could be, namely, ethno-philosophy, philosophic sagacity, nationalisticideological philosophy, professional philosophy, hermeneutic philosophy, and artistic or literary philosophy. The first four are the generally well known and well explained schools of African philosophy. In this article, we seek to reflect on the implications of the four trends on education in Africa. This enterprise is informed by the conviction that philosophy of education, while it (...) deals with some issues that are peculiar to education, can benefit immensely from other philosophical discourses. Consequently, African philosophy of education can derive substantial benefit from interaction with debates on African philosophy. (shrink)

The historical debate, in African philosophy, on personhood has been characterised by radical and moderate communitarianism seen through the scholarship of Menkiti and Gyekye and continues contemporarily with scholars considering its implications on contemporary conceptions of rights.Responding to Chemhuru’s compatibilist view that, he maintains, safeguards and guarantees individual rights, I showcase how his conception of the community as prior to the individual betrays his project. Using the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights to contextualise rights discourse in Afro-communitarianism, (...) Chemhuru avers that once collective rights have been gained, individuals can claim their rights. I critique this position to suggest that Chemhuru undermines his own project of compatibilism through placing the community prior to the individual. Using the Civil Union Act as a legislative framework that safeguards and guarantees individual human rights, I test Chemhuru’s compatibilist view. I conclude by highlighting the divergences between constitutionalism and Afro-communitarianism. (shrink)

This article explores the question of the empirical in the context of its related notion of experience, inasmuch as the latter explicitly brings into play issues about subjectivity. The article focuses directly on the ideas of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben concerning infancy and experience, voice and speech, and bare life and politics. In doing so, an argument is made that questions Agamben's recourse to a particular form of linguistic model and makes evident the limitations that such a model poses (...) for an understanding of significant transformations in modern forms of sovereignty regarding the socio-political articulation of highly domesticated voices. The study aims to provide some sociological and social theoretical ground for a consideration of the voice of infancy in contemporary forms of biopolitical sovereignty. In doing so, it suggests that infancy is more than a figuration of experimentation, inasmuch as its voice (hovering between babble and the comprehensible) may resonate across an empirical domain, which is reconfigured through such a voice (or voices) heard, taken seriously and touching others. (shrink)

This book focuses on under-explored and often neglected issues in contemporary African environmental philosophy and ethics. Critical issues such as the moral status of nature, African conceptions of animal moral status and rights, African conceptions of environmental justice, African relational Environmentalism, ubuntu, African theocentric and teleological environmentalism are addressed in this book. It is unique in so far as it goes beyond the generalized focus on African metaphysics and African ethics by exploring how these views might be understood differently in (...) order to conceptualize African environmental ethics. Against the background where environmental problems such as pollution, climate change, extinction of flora and fauna, and global warming are plain to see, it becomes useful to examine how African conceptions of environmental ethics could be understood in order to confront some of these problems facing the whole world. This book will be of value to undergraduate students, graduate students and academics working in the area of African Philosophy, African Environmental Ethics and Global Ethics in general. (shrink)

The idea of moral status has been examined in various applied ethical discourses such as medical ethics and environmental ethics. However, little has so far been done in terms of appraising these fundamental disciplines from an African philosophical perspective. I venture into this fairly novel area of African environmental ethics as I seek to examine an African understanding of the moral status of nature. As I take a pluralist approach to the idea of moral status of nature in African environmental (...) philosophy, I seek to argue that both living and non-living beings in the environment ought to be granted moral status. I make use of the teleological view of existence to provide various reasons why nature should be considered as having moral or ethical standing such that human beings should have ethical obligations that are independent of their duties and obligations towards fellow human beings. Overall, I seek to espouse a uniquely African view of the moral status on nature, one that fundamentally differs from other views dominant much of Western philosophical thinking. (shrink)

The question of what an African ecofeminist environmental ethical view ought to look like remains unanswered in much of philosophical writing on African environmental ethics. I consider wha...

The question of what an African ecofeminist environmental ethical view ought to look like remains unanswered in much of philosophical writing on African environmental ethics. I consider wha...

After the discovery of the origins of the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to be possibly wet markets in Wuhan, China, the normative questions of what ought to be the ethical relations between human beings and non-human animals have started to attract renewed interest among environmentalists. Although these are not new questions in environmental philosophy, the impact of COVID-19 across the world is challenging human beings to seriously reconsider some of these often-neglected questions. In this article, I examine COVID-19 as (...) essentially an environmental ethical challenge. Specifically, I consider the extent to which the relationships between human and non-human animals can effectively impact the health and lives of humanity and the environment at large. I then provide some alternative ways by which human beings ought to re-think their relationships with non-human animals to avoid future catastrophes like COVID-19. I argue that the African view of animal ethics could at least provide a valuable lens through which to view correct relations between human beings and non-human animals. Ultimately, I set forth and defend an African environmental ethic for the right relations between human beings and animals and to show how such an ethic better places humanity in confronting future zoonoses. (shrink)

This critical reader addresses African environmental ethics in a unique way by drawing from a variety of authors with diverse perspectives on underexplored and often neglected issues in African philosophy and ethics. Central issues in contemporary African environmental ethics are addressed such as: The moral status of nature, Ubuntu and the Environment, African conceptions of animal moral status and rights, African conceptions of environmental justice, African relationalism, theocentric and teleological environmentalism. The book goes beyond the generalised focus on African metaphysics (...) and African ethics by exploring further how these views might be understood differently in order to conceptualise plausible African environmental ethical perspectives. (shrink)

Sub-Saharan Africa is characteristically confronted with poverty, hunger, disease, drought, war, climate change and inequality among other problems. However, the advent of the fourth industrial revolution presents an opportunity for Africa to solve some of these problems through technological innovations offered by information technology, internet of things, networks, robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and superintelligence. These have been absorbed and engrained into human lives and completely changing the way humans live. It is therefore clear that the 4IR is an inescapable (...) reality. Yet the ethical reflection on the relations that ought to exist between human beings and technology seems to be philosophically absurd. One might not expect ethical considerability to be extended beyond humans to include things that cannot directly be harmed such as technologies, although use of technologies has ethical implications on humans and the environment. I argue for the need for introspection on relations between humans and technology. By reflecting from the perspective of African ethics, I consider the positive impact of the fourth industrial revolution in Africa and seek to critically analyse the ethical issues, dilemmas and controversies associated with it. (shrink)

While a relativist view of environmental ethics could be quite difficult to justify, it is also difficult to be so strict about the quest for global environmental justice. At the same time, even though the reality of environmental degradation is plain to see, most African traditional communities, and even their respective states at large, still wallow in poverty such that they remain in need of developing themselves if they are to reach the level of development of the countries in the (...) global North. More so, the majority of indigenous and mostly poor and underrepresented African people in the global South are faced with disproportionate amounts of environmental benefits and burdens compared to their counterparts in the global North. In this article, I therefore seek to examine a normative framework for conceptualising global environmental justice within different environmental, social, political and economic contexts. I consider how best environmental benefits and burdens could be fairly distributed across communities with different environmental, social, political and economic advantages. In the end, I appeal to John Rawls’s conception of distributive justice as a framework for arriving at an acceptable view of global environmental justice that takes into account the circumstances of the global South. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

The development of transplantation technology increasingly places before society a multitude of diverse, complex ethical and legal problems. The subject is the more complex because of the various divergent interests involved. There are the interests of the donor of organs, who has a right to protection of his legal position, and those of the patient in need of an often lifesaving organ. There are also the interests of the donor’s relatives, after his death, and those of the transplantation surgeons. The (...) international dimension of transplantation technology makes the picture even more complicated. Though this article is devoted to the European situation, the problems are similar all over the world. (shrink)

Catastrophic risk raises questions that are not only of practical importance, but also of great philosophical interest, such as how to define catastrophe and what distinguishes catastrophic outcomes from non-catastrophic ones. Catastrophic risk also raises questions about how to rationally respond to such risks. How to rationally respond arguably partly depends on the severity of the uncertainty, for instance, whether quantitative probabilistic information is available, or whether only comparative likelihood information is available, or neither type of information. Finally, catastrophic risk (...) raises important ethical questions about what to do when catastrophe avoidance conflicts with equity promotion. (shrink)

In this chapter, we revisit some of these central and unresolved practical problems facing contemporary African philosophy. We have identified racism, poverty, religion, gender, Afrophobia, sexuality, democracy and environment as some of the topical and contentious issues in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. Although these issues have been extensively dealt with in the literature in philosophy in general, they have largely been understood from different Western philosophical persuasions. Even though some African philosophers have considered these issues, there is still a lack of (...) robust conversations on the possible directions that humanity, especially from the African perspective ought to take on each of these important issues prompting the need for further interrogation into these. We, therefore, seek to consider how these issues might be conceptualised in sub-Saharan Africa without necessarily reproducing Western philosophical paradigms. For each of these topics, we show how it constitutes a problem to contemporary Africa by drawing the reader’s attention to the reality of each of the problems in contemporary Africa such as colour prejudice, discrimination, poverty, religious extremism and violent conflicts, human rights violations, gender inequality and violence, intolerance, xenophobia and Afrophobia, bad governance, state capture and the ecological crisis. We then analyse how each of the problems has so far been articulated, understood and circumscribed within the African philosophical traditions. In the end, we seek to propose how to ground new philosophical perspectives by which to understand these issues beyond the existing contemporary philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A promise to do some action seems to create a binding obligation to do that action. And yet, paradoxically, an obligation seems not to be a fact that we can create or bring into existence; we can create an obligation only by creating or bringing into existence something else. The only way to avoid the paradox is to show that the act of promising creates something other than an obligation, which nonetheless binds us to perform the action in question. After (...) considering and rejecting various options such as the promisee's expectation and the promisor's resolve, Prichard locates the bindingness of a promise in a prior general promise, which allows the noises we make when promising to generate an obligation to perform the promised action. (shrink)

What are 'emotions'? This book offers a balanced survey of facts and theory.

Science Without Numbers caused a stir in 1980, with its bold nominalist approach to the philosophy of mathematics and science. It has been unavailable for twenty years and is now reissued in a revised edition with a substantial new preface presenting the author's current views and responses to the issues raised in subsequent debate.

An English language translation accompanies the original Greek text of Aristotle's book about the nature of the state, constitutions, revolutions, democracy, and oligarchy.

Suppose that a decision-maker's aim, under certainty, is to maximise some continuous value, such as lifetime income or continuous social welfare. Can such a decision-maker rationally satisfy what has been called "continuity for easy cases" while at the same time satisfying what seems to be a widespread intuition against the full-blown continuity axiom of expected utility theory? In this note I argue that the answer is "no": given transitivity and a weak trade-off principle, continuity for easy cases violates the anti-continuity (...) intuition. I end the note by exploring an even weaker continuity condition that is consistent with the aforementioned intuition. (shrink)

To the question ‘What does it mean to act or to do something?’, replies that it is not easy to identify a common character in actions. Begins by examining the position of Cook Wilson, who maintains that ‘to do something’ means to originate, cause, or bring into existence, either directly or indirectly, some not yet existing state either in oneself or some other body. Although Prichard agrees that usually action involves causing something, he observes that causing a change is not (...) itself an activity. In moving one's hand, one performs that indefinable mental activity of willing some change. The movement of the hand is the effect of the action, not the action itself, a fact overlooked by thinkers like Locke. Turning to the nature of the desire behind one's willing, Prichard rejects the view that this desire is actually a desire for the change willed. Despite forceful objections, Prichard maintains that this desire is the desire for the willing of that change. (shrink)

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

This volume is a wonderful introduction to Foucault and a testimony to the deep humanity of the man himself.

In this paper we briefly examine and evaluate Quine’s physicalism. On the supposition, in accordance with Quine’s views, that there can be no change of any sort without a physical change, we argue that this point leaves plenty of room to understand and accept a limited autonomy of the special sciences and of other domains of disciplinary and common-sense inquiry and discourse. The argument depends on distinguishing specific, detailed programs of reduction from the general Quinean strategy of reduction by explication. (...) We argue that the details of the relations of particular sciences, disciplines and domains of discourse depend on empirical evidence and empirical-theoretical developments and that the generalized approach of reduction by explication is also subject to related empirical-theoretical constraints. So understood, physicalism lacks much of the controversial force and many of the implications sometimes associated with it. (shrink)

Prichard's concern here is whether a person's obligation depends either on features of his or her situation or on features of his or her thoughts about that situation. Related to this contrast between the objective view and the subjective view is the issue of whether an obligation is an obligation to do some action. To the latter issue, Prichard responds that an obligation is not an obligation to do something, but an obligation to set ourselves to do something; as a (...) consequence, it is necessary to modify the terms of Prichard's primary concern. This modification diminishes the force of the objective view and does nothing to eliminate the central difficulty in the subjective view, namely, that the obligation to do some action is said to depend not on the character that the action would have, but on our belief that it would have that character. The belief that some general character picks out obligations derives from the mistaken habit of regarding the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as equivalent to ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’. Having highlighted this mistake, Prichard holds that in instances where we have considered the circumstances fully, our thoughts about the situation decide whether we ought to perform a given activity. (shrink)