What I will be referring to as the normative view in contemporary African discourse on personhood has received substantial treatment and is beginning to exhibit the sort of systematic coherence that I believe Kwasi Wiredu once anticipated.1 Much of this is due to Wiredu's own work, as well as important recent work by Polycarp Ikuenobe, whose most recent articulation and defense of the view appear in this journal.2 My aim is to engage with this way of thinking about what it (...) means to be a person with a view to repairing aspects of it deemed to be most problematic. To this end, I pursue two broad lines of contestation—the one is theoretical, contesting some of the features it takes to be conceptually required for... (shrink)

The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses (...) three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect. (shrink)

In this paper, I address a range of arguments put forward by Katrin Flikschuh (2016) casting doubts on a theoretical account ofancestral persons in the work of Ifeanyi Menkiti. She argues both that their ontological status is uncertain and that they areontologically redundant. I argue that she does not succeed in convincing us to settle for a practical justification of ancestors. Ithen supplement Menkiti’s life-history account of post-mortem persistence with Searle’s account of social ontology with a viewto theoretically justify belief (...) in the existence of ancestral persons. (shrink)

Thesis -University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

There has been significant work done in contemporary African philosophy on what it means to be a person. Moreover, there is significant consensus that a traditional African conception of person not only emphasises the social aspects but also entails that in political reasoning higher premium is placed on the duties individuals have to others and the community at large, as opposed to whatever rights they may have. In contrast, not much work has been done to unpack the precise relationship between (...) that conception of social person and the normativity of needs in political thought, although such a relationship is often assumed. I want to explore the idea of person behind the experience and practice of communalism in traditional African communities and by so doing suggest how the resulting understanding of person in traditional thought, particularly in the work of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwasi Wiredu, might offer theoretical grounding for an African political philosophy that foregrounds needs. Beyond all these, however, I offer some perspective on the nature and normativity of needs. I finish off by suggesting how grounding needs in this traditional African idea of person provides us with ways of responding to some doubts about the normativity of needs in general. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan has recently developed the embodied mind theory of identity in place of the other standing theories, which he examines and consequently rejects. This paper examines the performance of his theory on cases of commissurotomy or the split-brain syndrome. Available experimental data concerning these cases seem to suggest that a single mind can divide into two independent streams in ways that are incompatible with our intuitive notion of mind. This phenomenon poses unique problems for McMahan's theory that we are (...) essentially minds. I attempt to use his considered response to these cases as a weapon against his own embodied mind theory by highlighting some of the tensions in McMahan's response. In particular, I argue that in reaching his conclusion McMahan admits to something quite contrary to the very spirit of his own theory and that it is a powerful point in its support that one of the theories McMahan rejects can deal very well with these cases. (shrink)

Thesis -University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

Jeff McMahan's impressive recent defence of the embodied mind theory of personal identity in his highly acclaimed work The Ethics of Killing has undoubtedly reawakened belief that physical continuity is a necessary component of the relation that matters in our self-interested concern for the future. My aim in this paper is to resist this belief in a somewhat roundabout way. I want to address this belief in a somewhat roundabout way by revisiting a classic defence of the belief that enormous (...) changes in the contents of a person's psychology does not preclude justified fear of future pain. I have in mind Bernard Williams' The Self and the Future (1970) in which he argues, against the psychological view, that physical continuity is necessary for survival. I examine Williams' second thought experiment which ostensibly supports that intuition and afterwards defend two related claims. First, I argue that a close examination of the second thought experiment reveals that one's prior commitments to a particular criterion of personal identity can influence one's response to that thought experiment. Second, I argue that Williams' second thought experiment is set out in questionbegging terms. I do not claim, however, that the intuition under consideration lacks justification; I only claim that Williams' second thought experiment does not provide the needed support. (shrink)

In his Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life , Jeff McMahan defends what he calls the embodied mind view of identity, and then puts forward several arguments in support of the view that physical continuity of the brain is crucial to our survival. He ultimately denies that psychological continuity is of any importance. His strategy is to recommend, by means of thought experiments, intuitions that support the importance of physical continuity of the brain and then argue against (...) the plausibility of the notion of psychological continuity to which psychological theorists appeal. This paper is specifically concerned with the alleged importance of physical continuity to our survival. It responds to the positive and negative aspects of McMahan’s case by arguing that thought experiments that recommend the psychological view are far more compelling than he allows them to be and that psychological theorists can make do with a notion of psychological continuity that is immune to his criticisms. (shrink)

The first and only jurisprudence textbook to put African ideas, authors, and texts into conversation with those from the Western tradition, now with revised and expanded discussions of especially natural law theory, legal realism, postmodernism, critical legal studies, critical race theory, feminism, and the philosophy of punishment, along with new lists of additional readings and of web resources. 430 pp.

Can an African ubuntu moral theory ground individual freedom and human rights? Although variants of ubuntu moral theory answer in the negative, asserting that the duties individuals owe the collective are prior to individual rights (since African thought places more emphasis on the collective), Metz’s recent articulation in this Journal of an African ubuntu moral theory promises to ground the liberal ideal of individual liberty. I pursue three distinct lines of argument in establishing the claim that Metz’s project fails to (...) convince - that individual freedom and rights cannot be successfully grounded in a moral theory that already regards some extrinsic value (that is, communal harmony) as the most fundamental moral value. First, I suggest that Metz’s attempt to ground human rights in his ubuntu moral theory raises the problem of where the fundamental value lies in his theory. That is, in seeking to integrate two potentially-conflicting and non-instrumental values in his theory, Metz substantially modifies his original ubuntu ethical principle in such a way that the communitarian/ubuntu status of the theory is undermined. Second, I argue that, even if Metz’s theory were sufficiently communitarian/ubuntu-like, it could not possibly ground individual freedom as a non-instrumental value. Third, I argue that Metz employs a tendentious reading of the concept of human rights; in particular, that he erroneously construes rights as duties. Since this last argument rests on a subtle distinction between individual rights and duties, I try to suggest how the distinction can be made in spite of the fact that these concepts are strongly related. Although I do not directly address Metz’s treatment of specific human rights issues in South Africa, throughout I contend that these theoretical lapses cast enormous doubts on his overall project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Menkiti's Moral Man by Oritsegbubemi Anthony OyowePolycarp IkuenobeOYOWE, Oritsegbubemi Anthony. Menkiti's Moral Man. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2022. xii + 221 pp. Cloth, $100.00Oyowe critically examines the various threads in, issues raised by, and implications of Menkiti's maximal conception of personhood, against the backdrop of various criticisms, including his own. He indicates that, as "a repentant critic," he does "not deny the merits of (...) these criticisms," but he is "convinced that there are resources in Menkiti's general account for tackling them."In chapter 1, Oyowe examines how Menkiti uses the idea of community to foreground his normative view of personhood, in order to illuminate the African idea that one is a person because of, and through relationships with, other persons in a community. This indicates that one's existence or [End Page 356] identity has necessary external elements of cultural belonging, in addition to internal intrinsic elements. These cultural elements require ontological progression that involves a process of social-moral incorporation into communal practices and norms. Oyowe argues that while this conception is plausible, it raises questions regarding oppressive cultures and their effects on individuals. He indicates that the kind of person that emerges from this conception is a "soft" social entity.Chapter 2 examines the issue of the nature of the relationship between persons (as soft social entities) and community, and the implications for individual autonomy, practical reasoning, and moral agency. Oyowe argues that the pertinent issue is not whether the individual should have moral or ontological priority over the community or vice versa, but the aspect of individuality that is conducive to what we cherish about the community. This is because Menkiti presupposes that in order to be a maximal person, one must have intrinsic capacities for moral agency to take on communal functions and duties. But the community creates the conditions for individuals to express individuality and autonomy, engage in practical reasoning, and make the choice to conform with communal norms in order to be recognized as persons.So, the maximal conception of personhood raises issues about the nature of entities that deserve a moral status. Chapter 3 examines the moral status of infants, people with cognitive impairment, the senile, nonhuman animals, and the moral duties that people have toward these entities. If we understand personhood as failing to extend moral status to these entities, such a view might be charged with speciesism and anthropocentrism. Oyowe argues that a plausible interpretation of personhood, in the context of the communal priority of duties, suggests that people have certain responsibilities toward human and nonhuman nonpersons. This interpretation is grounded in Menkiti's distinction between "deserving justice"—which is not based on having certain intrinsic properties, moral capacities, or cognitive abilities—and "being a person." Because Menkiti insists that persons ought to be able to use their capacities to perform requisite communal duties, personhood must involve an obligation to consider the interests of nonpersons and a community of respect for those who deserve justice.Chapter 4 examines the dilemma created by the social architecture of a community's cultural traditions, institutions, expectations, norms, and practices that are necessary for personhood and social identity. While such architecture is capable of supporting the achievement of personhood, it could also be restrictive. He uses Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, to illuminate how the structures for recognizing persons that are oppressive of and biased against women could be disguised. Although Menkiti does not address this issue, his conception of personhood highlights the problem of social justice for women because relevant social architecture may exclude women from equal and full communal recognition and participation. An appreciation of this problem [End Page 357] introduces an alternative way of understanding social justice in terms of communal recognition or lack thereof.In chapter 5, Oyowe uses the intuitions underlying Locke's distinction between "person" and "human being" to illuminate Menkiti's account of personhood. Person and human being are not identical because they have different persistent conditions. Persons persist by virtue of mental capacities and practical relevance that are developed after one is identified as a human organism. This raises the issues of (a) whether being a... (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between the African communitarian conception of personhood and gender. Defenders of this conception of personhood generally hold that an individual is defined in reference to the community, or that personhood is something that is acquired in community. Such characterisations often ignore the role, if any, that gender plays in that conception of personhood. Our aim in this paper is to critically explore the relationship between the two. In doing this we advance a number of claims. (...) First, we point out that the supposed gender-neutrality of the African communitarian idea of personhood is a more general feature of African philosophy that, for instance, evinces a general lack of attention to issues of gender violence and discrimination. Second, we briefly survey the literature on the communitarian idea of personhood in African thought, in particular the views of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwasi Wiredu. Our aim is to demonstrate our hypothesis that this idea of personhood is often construed as a gender-neutral concept. Third, we argue that the relational and community-based nature of the communitarian idea of personhood indicates that it is in fact a gendered notion. We conclude that the assumed gender-neutrality is in conflict with the gendered nature of the communitarian idea of personhood. Fourth, we explore a probable objection to our claim that the communitarian idea of personhood is gendered and therefore vulnerable to gender inequality, by examining Ifi Amadiume’s position that the notion of gender in traditional African cultures was fluid and indicated complementarity rather than inequality between the sexes. We argue that Amadiume’s case is not convincing. (shrink)

We notice a number of interesting overlaps between the views on personhood of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Marya Schechtman. Both philosophers distance their views from the individualistic ones standard in western thought and foreground the importance of extrinsic or relational features to personhood. For Menkiti, it is ‘the community which defines the person as person’; for Schechtman, being a person is to have a place in person-space, which involves being seen as a person by others. But there are also striking differences. (...) Schechtman sees this aspect as expanding the scope of personhood to infants and those who are severely mentally disabled. Menkiti thinks that there is a line to be drawn at some point between those humans that are persons and those who are not. We consider the cases offered in questioning how the dispute between the two views should be resolved. (shrink)

Menkiti’s Moral Man provides an original interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of person, and one that carries significant implications for his metaphysics and moral philosophy. It offers fresh insights on moral agency, moral status, and justice as well as the ontology of living and post-mortem persons in community.

A textbook written mainly for final year law students taking Jurisprudence at an African university, but that would also be of use to those in a political philosophy course. It includes primary sources from both the Western and African philosophical traditions, and addresses these central questions: what is the nature of law?; how should judges interpret the law?; is it possible for judges to be objective when they adjudicate?; how could the law justly allocate liberty and property?; who is owed (...) duties of justice or moral treatment more generally?; who is obligated to advance justice, say, by aiding others?; how should wrongful harm be compensated?; why and when should lawbreakers be punished? (shrink)

Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe. 2022. Menkiti's Moral Man. London: Lexington Books.

Appealing to African values associated with ubuntu such as communion and reconciliation, elsewhere I have argued that they require compensating those who have been wronged in ways that are likely to improve their lives. In the context of land reform, I further contended that this principle probably entails not transferring unjustly acquired land en masse and immediately to dispossessed populations since doing so would foreseeably lead to such things as capital flight and food shortages, which would harm them and the (...) broader society. Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe has recently argued against my claim that land reform should be enacted in a way expected to benefit victims of colonialism while not greatly burdening innocent third parties, instead supporting the return of land to its rightful owners regardless of how the manner in which it were done would affect people’s quality of life. Here I expound Oyowe’s argumentation and respond to it in defence of my initial position, appealing to examples from southern Africa to illustrate. (shrink)

In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe aims to provide a sympathetic interpretation of the works of Ifeanyi Menkiti as they address personhood, community, and other facets of morality. In my contribution I maintain that, while Oyowe’s Menkiti is more plausible than the way Menkiti has often been read, there are still respects in which the account of personhood advanced invites criticism. One criticism is that it is implausible to think that personhood is constituted by others recognizing one (...) as a person. Instead, insofar as community constitutes one’s personhood, it is insofar as one lived up to norms of interpersonal morality. A second criticism is that there are intuitively some dimensions of personhood that are not constituted by the community or other-regard at all. In particular, I argue that there are moral duties to oneself that exist and that are not well captured by any sensible understanding of the view that community alone constitutes personhood, such that part of what it is to be a full person is to treat oneself in certain ways. In sum, personhood, while admittedly social, is not as social as Oyowe’s Menkiti believes. (shrink)

In an article previously published in this Journal, Anthony Oyowe critically engages with my attempt to demonstrate how the human rights characteristic of South Africa’s Constitution can be grounded on a certain interpretation of Afro-communitarian values that are often associated with talk of ‘ubuntu’. Drawing on recurrent themes of human dignity and communal relationships in the sub-Saharan tradition, I have advanced a moral-philosophical principle that I argue entails and plausibly explains a wide array of individual rights to civil (...) liberties, political power, criminal procedures and economic resources. Oyowe’s most important criticism of my theory is in effect that it is caught in a dilemma: either the principle I articulate can account for human rights, in which case it does not count as communitarian, or it does count as the latter, but cannot account for the former. In this article, I reply to Oyowe, contending that he misinterprets key facets of my theory to the point of not yet engaging with its core strategy for deriving human rights from salient elements of ubuntu. I conclude that Oyowe is unjustified in claiming that there are ‘theoretical lapses’ that ‘cast enormous doubts’ on my project of deriving human rights from a basic moral principle with a recognizably sub-Saharan and communitarian pedigree. (shrink)

This study examines J.S. Sanni’s argument on the role of religion in promoting silence and extortion in contemporary African (Nigerian) society, leveraging on the name of God, with a view to determining the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Sanni posits that religion (Christianity and Islam) have played crucial roles in promoting silence and extortion in Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria. He argues that the colonial debris of disempowerment, injustices, manipulation and extortion, using the instrumentality of religion, are still (...) very much part of African society today. According to him, the above manipulations, extortions and injustices, perpetrated by the colonial masters on African societies using the tool of religion, is still very much part of the contemporary African society and have only assumed new outlooks and language and consequently plunged many Africans into silence in the face of what is often presented as sacred and holy. The study examines the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. The paper adopts historical hermeneutics and textual analysis methods. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, a number of influential philosophers, psychologists and others have invoked the notion of narrative as having a central role to play in our thinking about ethics and personal identity.1 It has been argued that our sense of self is bound up with our capacity to tell a coherent story about ourselves, and that the mainstream analytic debate on personal identity has reached an impasse because the parties to it abstract the notion of a person from (...) the narratives in which persons figure as characters. It has also been argued, ethically, that we should strive to achieve the kind of unity characteristic of a narrative in our lives. However, something of a backlash against these narrative theories now seems to be developing, exemplified in recent work by, for instance, Galen Strawson, Peter Lamarque and John Christman.2 My intention here is to defend the value of the narrative approach from some of the most common recent criticisms. It would perhaps be better, though, to say ”a’, rather than ”the’, narrative approach; thinkers as different as Dennett and MacIntyre have both insisted on the importance of narrative, but the substantive claims that they make for it are very different.3 What I shall be defending is an approach to personal identity and ethics, drawn mainly from MacIntyre and Taylor, in which narrative plays a central role. In §1, I will elucidate the concept of narrative that MacIntyre introduced in After Virtue and show why this is central to thinking about the identity of persons across time. In §2, I shall consider and reject various objections to this narrative account of personal identity. I hope to show that some of the prominent criticisms of narrative theory simply don’t apply to this conception, properly understood. However, I don’t want to claim that the dispute over narrative is based purely on misunderstanding. One centrally important aspect of the dispute is a first-order ethical one about the extent to which we should seek for a unity based on narrative coherence in our lives, and in §§3 and 4, I will offer a defence of Taylor’s claim that an ethical life must aspire to, and to some extent achieve, narrative unity. (shrink)

Introduction : Fanon now -- Reading fanon anti-piously : on the need to appropriate -- The struggle within humanism : Fanon and Said -- The humanism effect : Fanon, Foucault, and ethics without subjects -- The futures of postcolonial criticism : Fanon and Kincaid -- "Enough of this scandal" : reading Gilroy through Fanon, or who comes after "race"? -- "Any decolonization is a success" : Fanon and the African spring -- Conclusion : singularity and solidarity : Fanonian futures.

Book synopsis: Reissued in 1997 with corrections and a new Afterword, this book fully explores for the first time an idea common to Plato and Aristotle, which unites their treatments - otherwise very different - of love and friendship. The idea is that although persons are separate, their lives need not be. One person's life may overflow into another's, and as such, helping another person is a way of serving oneself. The author shows how their view of love and friendship, (...) within not only personal relationships, but also the household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

The proper relationship between phenomenology and naturalism has reemerged as a pressing issue following interdisciplinary developments in the cognitive sciences. Most solutions opt for a naturalized phenomenology, rather than a phenomenological naturalism. This article takes up the latter approach, confronting the implications of Merleau-Ponty's reformulation of Husserl's paradox of subjectivity. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's formulation—which I term “the paradox of madness”—reveals a deep, ontological contingency in what Husserl took to be necessary transcendental structures of consciousness and world, revealing that these (...) transcendental structures are in fact embedded in and contaminated by the very world they constitute and disclose. (shrink)

Prominent evolutionary psychologists have argued that our innate psychological endowment consists of numerous domain‐specific cognitive resources, rather than a few domain‐general ones. In the light of some conceptual clarification, we examine the central in‐principle arguments that evolutionary psychologists mount against domain‐general cognition. We conclude (a) that the fundamental logic of Darwinism, as advanced within evolutionary psychology, does not entail that the innate mind consists exclusively, or even massively, of domain‐specific features, and (b) that a mixed innate cognitive economy of domain‐specific (...) and domain‐general resources remains a genuine conceptual possibility. However, an examination of evolutionary psychology's ‘grain problem’ reveals that there is no way of establishing a principled and robust distinction between domain‐specific and domain‐general features. Nevertheless, we show that evolutionary psychologists can and do live with this grain problem without their whole enterprise being undermined. (shrink)

Mentalizing - the ability to understand oneself and others by inferring the mental states that lie behind overt behavior - develops during childhood within the context of a secure attachment relationship. It is crucial to self-regulation and constructive, intimate relationships. Failure to retain mentalizing, particularly in the midst of emotional interactions, is a core problem in borderline personality disorder and results in severe emotional fluctuations, impulsivity, and vulnerability to interpersonal and social interactions. Mentalization-based treatment for borderline personality disorder is a (...) 'How to Do It' book outlining a clinically proven treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. Containing illustrative clinical examples, it details precisely how to develop and implement treatment and is a companion to the highly successful book Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder - mentalization based treatment. This practical guide explains how to treat borderline patients by helping them develop a more robust mentalizing capacity within the context of an attachment relationship. It provides the practitioner with everything they need to know about how to practise mentalizing treatment in day patient and out-patient settings. Enough theory is provided to orientate the clinician and there is step-by-step practical advice on the assessment of mentalizing and interpersonal relationships, how to structure treatment, the use of basic mentalizing interventions and how to apply them, as well as information on what not to do. In addition, it includes a check list to be used in the assessment of mentalizing and a self-rating exercise for practitioners to evaluate their adherence to mentalizing. (shrink)

This article considers financial risk management practice using a virtue ethics lens, in response to ongoing critiques of risk management from within business ethics. Risk management should be seen as embedded within a complex system of cultures, organizations and regulations that are underpinned by a quantitatively reductive or ‘mechanistic’ economic paradigm, where dominant logics of self-interest, profit maximization and short-termism prevail. Building on recent work applying virtue ethics in finance, an alternative to the values, normative expectations and priorities in financial (...) risk management is presented in the form of a refined ‘taxonomy’ of the virtues that can be applied to individuals and organizations engaged in financial risk management. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on the ethical aspects of risk management and presents an alternative to more technically based critiques which do not engage with the underlying socially constructed foundations of risk management practice. It thereby provides a basis to critique the mechanistic and narrow approach used in the current regulation of the sector. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a torrent of work at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics on predicates of personal taste, subjective expressions like fun and tasty that are used to express opinions rather than matters of fact. In each section of this paper I discuss a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in the literature on PPTs. In Section 1, I identify a neglected experiential reading of these adjectives. All other theories of expressions like fun take them (...) to express some standing property, but distributional and compositional considerations suggest that the basic meaning of fun adjectives is experiential. In Section 2, I discuss the relation between fun claims relativized to particular experiencers and their unrelativized counterparts, arguing that previous theories fail to capture the evaluativity unique to the latter. Finally, I argue... (shrink)

In a number of papers, Sydney Shoemaker has argued that first-order belief plus rationality implies second-order belief. This paper is a critical discussion of Shoemaker’s argument.

Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation, co-edited by Nathan Poirier, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Annie Bernatchez of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, is a brilliant radical engaging intersectional book promoting total liberation from new fresh critical animal studies voices throughout the world. This captivating critical animal studies collection, influenced by historical and ongoing radical movements such as green anarchism, Black liberation, prison abolition, feminism, Queer liberation, disability rights, and decolonization, is one (...) of the most powerful texts in the last decade within the animal liberation movement. We must begin to listen to new and young scholars for social justice to evolve in order to end speciesism and all forms of oppression. Read, share, reflect and act on this interdisciplinary collection of scholar-activists from sociology, anthropology, criminology, economics, philosophy, cultural studies, eco-theology, environmental studies, and education that will transform the global movement for radical social justice and propel total liberation forward. (shrink)

Contains the _Poetics _ and the first twelve chapters of the_ Rhetoric_, Book III.