This volume examines whether the Arab Uprisings introduce a replica of the European Enlightenment or rather stimulate an Arab/Islamic Awakening with its own cultural specificity and political philosophy. By placing Immanuel Kant in Tahrir Square, Cairo, this book adopts a comparative analysis of two enlightenment projects: one Arab, still under construction, with possible progression toward modernity or regression toward neo-authoritarianism, and one European, shaped by the past two centuries.

After decades of single issue movements and identity politics on the U.S. left, the series of large demonstrations beginning in 1999 in Seattle have led many to wonder if activist politics can now come together around a common theme of global justice. This book pursues the prospects for progressive political movements in the 21st century with case studies of ten representative movements, including the anti-globalization forces, environmental interest groups, and new takes on the peace movement.

Welcome to the family -- The sources of new phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger -- How to be a phenomenological heretic: the origins and development of new phenomenology -- Phenomenology and onto-theology -- Phenomenology and theology reconsidered -- New phenomenology on the existence and nature of God -- The call, prayer, and Christian philosophy -- Proposals for new phenomenology and analytic philosophy of religion -- Normativity: ethics, politics, and society -- Possible futures for new phenomenology.

Optimism and pessimism are two diametrically opposed views about the value of existence. Optimists maintain that existence is better than non-existence, while pessimists hold that it is worse. Arthur Schopenhauer put forward a variety of arguments against optimism and for pessimism. I will offer a synoptic reading of these arguments, which aims to show that while Schopenhauer’s case against optimism primarily focuses on the value or disvalue of life’s contents, his case for pessimism focuses on the ways in which life (...) as a whole is structurally defective. (shrink)

Joyful Human Rights espouses a joy-centered approach that provides new insights into foundational human rights issues. William Paul Simmons offers a framework -- surveying a more comprehensive understanding of human experiences -- for theorizing and practicing a more affirmative and robust notion of human rights.

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan defends the view that all animals who are “subjects of a life” have an equal moral right to life. In this chapter, I consider whether it makes sense to think that animals have an equal right to life in light of the challenge that life has less value for animals than humans. This challenge raises two central questions: (1) does life have less value for animals than humans and (2) if it does, (...) does this fact justify the view that animals do not have an equal right to life. I argue, first, that life has greater value for most humans than animals because most humans are capable of experiencing higher qualities of enjoyment in life, in the form of creative, intellectual pleasures. However, this does not justify denying that animals have an equal right to life. Whether beings’ lives deserve strong respect depends on whether the value of life for those beings meets a certain threshold. I argue that the value of life for many animals meets this threshold because it is compatible with the virtue of compassion. (shrink)

Collected critical essays analyzing Kierkegaard’s work in regards to theology and social-moral thought. Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life focuses on faith and love, two central topics in Kierkegaard’s writings, to grapple with complex questions at the intersection of religion and ethics. Here, leading scholars reflect on Kierkegaard’s understanding of God, the religious life, and what it means to exist ethically. The contributors then shift to psychology, hope, knowledge, and the emotions as they offer critical and constructive readings for contemporary (...) philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology. Together, they show how Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for understandings of religious existence, public discourse, social life, and how to live virtuously. “All in all, the editors of this volume have put together a thoughtful and sometimes provocative collection of essays by a number of Kierkegaard scholars and philosophers for the reader’s consideration.... The volume undoubtedly makes a contribution to contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology, especially with regard to the importance of faith and love for leading a good and meaningful human life.” —International Journal for Philosophy of Religion “Invites the reader to think anew about what Kierkegaard was saying and what we can learn from him in the context of our time, particularly what it means to become a Christian in terms of the moral task of love and living a life worthy of a human being.” —Sylvia Walsh, translator of Kierkegaard’s Discourses at the Communion on Fridays. (shrink)

Restless Ideas is a lively new textbook of contemporary social theory that speaks directly to the anxious age in which we live today. In addition to providing a highly readable guided tour of major social theories from the mid-20th to the early 21st century, this book is full of dynamic examples that show how these theories may be used to deepen our understanding of current events and of our own life experiences. The emergence of demagogic political leaders like Donald Trump (...) in the USA, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey; the rise of religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and political populism; the digital echo-chamber of social media; and the underlying causes of Brexit are only some of the many current social issues that can be framed through contemporary social theories. Similarly, the politics of sexual, racial and ethnic minorities can be analyzed through the prism of theoretical perspectives such as queer theory, standpoint and intersectional theory, postcolonial theory and critical race theory, while the ongoing struggles for gender equality and gender justice can usefully be examined through the generational perspectives of feminist theories. This book sets the stage with a critical discussion of the loaded history of the social theory canon and makes the argument that there has never been a better time than the present to broaden our understanding of our shared global heritage of social theory, to include some of the formerly excluded classics of past social thinkers, and to open the doors to current social thinkers theorizing from the margins. The book traces the modern roots of contemporary social theory back to the works of the early structural functionalists, systems theorists, conflict theorists, symbolic interactionists, ethnomethodologists and sociobiologists, building on and at times inverting the canon with the critical advancements to social theory. Later chapters focus on the current influence of structuration theory, third wave critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, critical race theory, postcolonialism, liquid and late modernity theories, and globalization theories. These perspectives include the works of contemporary social theorists such as Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Juliet Mitchell, Dorothy Smith, Judith Butler, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Zygmunt Bauman, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Manuel Castells and Ulrich Beck. The underlying premise - and the promise - of this book is that social theory has the power to provide us with the skills for more informed observation, analysis, and empathic understanding of social behavior and social interaction. In a word: the value of social theory may be seen in how it can enhance social literacy - by deepening our understanding of the world around us, and by empowering us to become practical theorists in our own lives. (shrink)

"Audaces fortuna invat. Dynamin sophian kyle baraka. Many or few, always bold"--Front cover.

In this paper, I examine a solution to the Liar paradox found in the work of Ockham, Burley, and Pseudo-Sherwood. I reject the accounts of this solution offered by modern commentators. I argue that this medieval line suggests a non-hierarchical solution to the Liar, according to which ?true? is analysed as an indexical term, and paradox is avoided by minimal restrictions on tokens of ?true?. In certain respects, this solution resembles the recent approaches of Charles Parsons and Tyler Burge; in (...) other respects, it is related to a suggestion of Gödel. But, as a whole, it suggests an original solution to the Liar paradox, quite unlike any current proposals. (shrink)

In 1905, Richard discovered his paradox of definability, and in a letter written that year he presented both the paradox and a solution to it.Soon afterwards, Poincaré endorsed a variant of Richard?s solution.In this paper, I critically examine Richard?s and Poincaré?s ways out.I draw on an objection of Peano?s, and argue that their stated solutions do not work.But I also claim that their writings suggest another way out, different from their stated solutions, and different from the orthodox Tarskian approach.I argue (...) that this second solution does not prevent the return of the paradox. (shrink)

Brian Calvert has offered us a clear and careful analysis of Locke′s views on punishment and capital punishment. 1 The primary goal of his paper–that of correcting the misperception of Locke as a wholehearted proponent of capital punishment for a wide range of offences–must be allowed to be both laudable and largely achieved in his discussion. But Calvert′s analysis also encourages, I think, a number of serious misunderstandings of Locke′s true position.

This volume is designed to set out some of the central issues in the theory of truth. It draws together, for the first time, the debates between philosophers who favor 'robust' or 'substantive' theories of truth, and those other, 'deflationist' or minimalists, who deny that such theories can be given. The editors provide a substantial introduction, in which they look at how the debates relate to further issues, such as the Liar paradox and formal truth theories.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Latina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking, and: Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a PerspectiveKevin N. York-SimmonsLatina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking Miguel A. de La Torre, Waco Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010. 160 pp. $24.95.Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective Rubén Rosario Rodríguez New York: New York University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $24.00Although Latina/o theologians have contributed much to Christian moral discourse in recent decades, (...) the impact of these contributions has too often remained limited to other Latina/os and those with particular interests in liberation theologies. Miguel de La Torre and Rubén Rosario Rodríguez build on the contributions of theologians before them while challenging the broader theological community to take notice of these rich and provocative works.In four concise chapters, Miguel de La Torre’s Latina/o Social Ethics delivers a forceful criticism of prominent thinkers in the field of Christian ethics and offers a creative reconstruction of ethics from a Latina/o perspective. De La Torre offers a critique of “Euroamerican” Christian ethicists whose works have greatly influenced contemporary Christian moral discourse. He addresses the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, Anthony Campolo, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis. De La Torre faults these theologians for the ways in which their moral thinking participates in the oppression and marginalization of Latina/os, either through their silence or through their endorsement of specific polices. De La Torre concludes that the legacy of cultural and economic privilege and the oppression of Latinas/os are so [End Page 199] deeply embedded in the Eurocentric thinking that has dominated the field of Christian ethics that it cannot be the foundation for Latino social ethics.De La Torre’s aim is to “move beyond” Eurocentric modes of thinking rather than dwell on critique. This eagerness to move forward to the creative and constructive aspects of Latina/o ethics, however, limits the forcefulness of his critique of Euroamerican ethicists. De La Torre’s reading of Euroamerican ethics—and even the application of that term—is highly selective, both in terms of the thinkers chosen and the writings examined. While De La Torre’s criticisms of these thinkers are generally insightful and serve to illustrate his basic criticism of Eurocentric ethics, these criticisms are limited in their depth of analysis. De La Torre is less concerned with the broader historical and theological considerations at work in these Euroamerican ethicists than with their failures to adequately address issues of concern to Latinas/os.The second half of Latina/o Social Ethics moves to his constructive, or “reconstructive,” project. De La Torre reviews central concepts in the methodology of Latina/o social ethics, including lo cotidiano, nepantla, la lucha, en conjunto, and acompañamiento. De La Torre’s explanation of these terms is brief and accessible. Moving beyond these concepts, the fourth chapter of Latina/o Social Ethics offers a creative approach to a liberative ethics that draws on Christian tradition as well as broader Hispanic cultural resources, including folk characters and themes of the trickster found in Afro-Caribbean religious traditions. De La Torre addresses the concern for how to imagine a Christian ethics with a role for the trickster, including identifying trickster characters and themes in the Bible. His “disruptive ethics” challenges the preference for order over justice that has characterized Eurocentric ethics, for which he provides helpful examples. De La Torre is clearly concerned with imperialism, immigration, and free trade, yet it is unclear what justice means in those contexts. Perhaps due to the powerlessness of marginalized Latina/os, criticisms of injustice weigh far more heavily than visions of justice.The concise length of this book broadens its appeal. Academics unfamiliar with some of the concepts and methodologies of Latina/o theologians will find this short introduction a useful starting point. This provocative book would also be a welcome addition to the classroom, either in part or in its entirety.In contrast to De La Torre’s short work, Rubén Rosario Rodríguez sets a broader and more ambitious task in his Racism and God-Talk. His project... (shrink)

A principal proposta desse trabalho é mostrar a relatividade do tempo. Inicialmente, o ponto de vista clássico é explorado: a) a entropia do universo crescendo como uma medida de tempo; b) o tempo como algo independente do observador. Depois de um experimento muito especial, a velocidade da luz - ideia introduzida por Einstein - como uma simples matemática, a relatividade do tempo é mostrada. Finalmente, o conceito de "continuo" tempo-espaço é apresentado.

The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair share of the (...) communal samaritan chore of rescuing our compatriots from the perils of the state of nature. Simmons counters that this, and all other attempts to explain our duty to obey the law, fail. He defends a position of philosophical anarchism, the view that no existing state is legitimate and that there is no strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, or compliance with, any existing state. (shrink)

We argue that at least some corvids morally ought to be granted a right to bodily liberty in the US legal system and relevantly similar systems. This right would grant immunity to frivolous captivity and extermination. Implementing this right will require new legislation or the expansion of existing legislation including the elimination of various "pest" clauses. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, we survey accounts of the moral grounds of legal rights. Second, to establish an overlapping consensus supporting corvid (...) bodily liberty rights, we survey the empirical literature on corvid cognition. Third, we illustrate what a corvid right to bodily liberty might look like, by looking to recent developments in animal law, as well as previous advocacy on behalf of primates and cetaceans. (shrink)

Le MAS a remporté les élections présidentielles boliviennes d’octobre 2020 dès le premier tour, avec 55,1 % des voix. Pablo Solón, ancien ministre d’Evo Morales, énumère dans cet article les raisons de ce triomphe et trace les défis qui s’imposent au nouveau gouvernement du président élu, Luis Arce. De fait, c’est une phase post Evo Morales qui s’ouvre, dans un pays profondément marqué par la pandémie, l’écocide, la corruption, les atteintes à l’état de droit, ainsi que par grave crise économique. (...) La clé pour relancer un « processus de changement » repose dans la capacité d’autogestion et d’autonomie des organisations sociales. (shrink)

We present two experiments that cast doubt on existing evidence suggesting that it is impossible to suspend belief in a comprehended proposition. In Experiment 1, we found that interrupting the encoding of a statement's veracity decreased memory for the statement's falsity when the false version of the statement was uninformative, but not when the false version was informative. This suggests that statements that are informative when false are not represented as if they were true. In Experiment 2, participants made faster (...) lexical decisions to words implied by preceding statements when they were told that the statements were true than when the veracity of the statements was unknown or when the statements were false. The findings suggest that comprehending a statement may not require believing it, and that it may be possible to suspend belief in comprehended propositions. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical examination of dialetheism, the view that there are true contradictions. Dialetheism's proponents argue that adopting the view will allow us to solve hitherto unsolved problems, including the well-known logical paradoxes. ;Dialetheism faces three kinds of challenge. Challenges of the first kind put in doubt the intrinsic coherence of dialetheism. It can be claimed, for example, that it is incoherent for a claim to be both true and false; that claims known to be false cannot be (...) accepted; that claims known to be false cannot be rationally accepted; and that dialetheism entails the falsity of some of its own theoretical claims. The second kind of challenge concerns the use of paraconsistent logics, which dialetheists must adopt on pain of accepting the truth of every proposition. I examine a number of paraconsistent logics, and conclude that either they come at an unacceptably high price or they do not support the dialetheist project. ;I devote most attention to the third kind of challenge, according to which dialetheism fails to provide the promised solutions to the paradoxes and other previously intractable problems, and so we lose the major motivation for the theory. Proponents claim that dialetheism allows for the solution of numerous problems, particularly in metaphysics, law, and logic. In the case of metaphysics, it is claimed that dialetheism allows us to deal with puzzles involving change, vagueness, and motion. However, I argue that the proposed solution does not eliminate the old metaphysical problems, and in fact gives rise to new ones. In the case of law, it is claimed that dialetheism can allow us to deal with legal contradiction. I argue there are more plausible means of solving such conflicts. The strongest case for dialetheism is that it allows us to solve logical and semantic paradoxes of self-reference, some of which have endured for well over two thousand years. I construct a paradox that the dialetheist cannot accommodate, and which shows that dialetheism never provided a solution to the paradoxes at all, even in their more familiar forms. (shrink)

Violence against women is a global stigma. At least two conditionsstirred the global community: Malala Yousafzai who took a bullet in 2012 andwho advocate girl’s education to date, and the 2014 reported kidnap of 300Nigerian girls by Boko Haram. There are oppressive stereotypes of women.Violence can come in different forms. These can come as verbal abuse, intimatepartners violence, non-intimate partner violence, trafficking, forced prostitution,exploitation of labor, debt bondage, physical and sexual violence, sex selectiveabortion, female infanticide and femicide, deliberate neglect and (...) girl’s education,rape in war, dowry murder, pornography, dating violence, female genitalmutilation/circumcision, and acid attack. With the aid of Hermeneutics, therich allusions and strong Feminist voices that exhume the elements of VAW areinherent characteristics of the Cebuano-Visayan Feminist poetry. The poemsconvince women to reclaim femininity, regain self-worth, challenge patriarchy,defy social prescriptions and conventions for women’s behavior. The four selectedCebuano-Visayan poetry with sound Feminist voices are support systems forwomen. Further studies on VAW in Cebuano-Visayan poetry are recommended. Keywords: Hermeneutics, poetry, Violence Against Women , descriptive research,Cebuano-Visayan language, Philippines. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the study of properties of the operations ∪ and ∩ in the upper semilattice of the e-degrees as well as in the interval (c,c') e for any e-degree c.

The study subjected to scrutiny the context of Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere and Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris in the search for confluence through the two novels’ use of rhetorical devices and imagery. It utilized Kolb’s Experiential Method, Phenomenology, and Interdisciplinary Approach. Primarily, a connection between Hugo and Rizal is established since no studies relating the two writers existed. Gathered evidences proved the historical and biographical connections: the phenomenology of both writers’ existence in the same Romantic milieu, and (...) of Rizal’s diary and bibliographic entries on Hugo. Thereafter, a focus on the two novels’ literary elements by character, setting, point of view, and conflict, as well as theme, confirmed textual confluence. Moreover, Hugolian symbols and rhetorical devices in Noli Me Tangere are conclusive in the establishment of confluence. Furthermore, evaluation of the Notre Dame de Paris as a historical novel, a poetic novel, a novel of ideas, and a dramatic novel are evident in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. Finally, a sharp phenomenology of confluence between Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is concluded. Further studies on the novel Noli Me Tangere are recommended to take into account the influence of Victor Hugo. Keywords - Hugo, Rizal, France, Philippines, novel, phenomenology, imagery, criticism. (shrink)