Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 32, Issue 1, Page 164-178, January 2023.

Language plays a central role in the life and activities of our world. This article is a theoretical analysis of the dynamic powers of language in driving possible value-based orientations in higher education. The multilingual nature of the continent of Africa and its bilateral lingual experiences during the colonial eras should be considered as both factual and impacting factors in evaluating language dynamics within value orientations and learning in the African case study. To this end, the article attempts to contribute (...) to the fact that there is a need to find or reinstate value in Africa’s linguistics dynamics and its complexities, as well as give them properly structured orientations within the new phase of repositioning Africa in the global spaces. (shrink)

The contemporary world today has evolved into a global village. This civilization owes its existence to fast means of communication systems. Thus the global world is knighted into one political economy. Distances are reached under seconds. Notwithstanding the fast means of communication gadgets in our time, African traditional means of communication has survived the test of time. What then has been the connection of Africa traditional means of communication and politics? The answer to this question, specifically as operative in Ogba (...) land is the main thrust of this paper. The issues in discourse includes communication and the socio-political sphere, the town crier and Ogba socio-political culture using the literature approach. (shrink)

The modus operandi of this paper is centered on governance and the metaphysical forces in Ogba Land. In other words the main focus of the article is that theocracy is concomitant with Ogba metaphysics. The salient points discussed include Maduabuchi Dukor’s reflection on African cosmic environment as posited in Dukor’s four great works on African philosophy. Others include Jewish theocratic tradition, Islamic theocratic tradition and Ogba theocracy and metaphysics in the light of Dukor’s philosophy. The researcher adopted the literature approach (...) to achieve the aforementioned objectives. (shrink)

How do military leaders who overthrow governments through coups create legitimacy for their new regime? A limited research response has been provided to this question, especially from a discursive perspective. To fill this gap, this study examines the discursive strategies employed by Nigerian military leaders in justifying coups through a critical metaphor analysis of their post-coup proclamations. The study analyzed 13 post-coup proclamations from nine Nigerian coups between 1966 and 1999. Three dominant metaphors were identified: JOURNEY, BUILDING and WAR. Findings (...) indicate that metaphors strategically framed conflicting representations of prior/new regimes to justify coups and establish initial legitimacy for military rule. By examining metaphors in coup discourse, the study contributes to political communication by providing insights into coup legitimation tactics and the discursive construction of coup crisis narratives in an African political context. (shrink)

Articles on the life and works of Āraja Ālī Mātubbara, 1901-1986, Muslim philosopher and author from Bangladesh.

This article describes and analyses how small protests against the construction of a hydropower plant at a local level took a national level and led to a rare occasion where Swedish parliament overran a governmental decision. This event in 1979 had significant consequences for the government, which had to pay 270 million kroner in compensation to the enterprise that was willing to build the plant in Sölvbacka in northern Sweden. With reference to the research on political consequences of social movements, (...) we propose that this small group of local activists achieved their goals thanks to the continued protests, help of significant political allies at the local and national level, and the general political context which dominated in Sweden after the elections in 1979. The study demonstrates that even small groups of citizens in remote areas can have an impact on environmental or energy politics by sustaining their mobilisation and gaining support from important political allies. (shrink)

In this work, we study Hilbert-style proof systems for logics based on the data-aware language CoreDataXPath(↓) where the comparison relation between nodes is not necessarily an equivalence relation. We give a sound and complete axiomatization of the class of tree-like Kripke frames endowed with a general comparison relation between nodes. Modular extensions of this axiomatization are also discussed, including cases where the comparison relation is reflexive, symmetric, transitive and an equivalence. A notable highlight that we recover an axiomatization for CoreDataXPath(↓) (...) over any data-tree when the comparison is by ‘equal data’. Moreover, we prove that all these systems are decidable by leveraging the finite model property of their corresponding frame classes. (shrink)

There is a well-established relationship between isolation and both morbidity and mortality in the context of addiction recovery, yet the protective effects of intimate and familial relationships have not been adequately assessed. The current paper uses the European Life In Recovery database to assess the association between relationship status and living with dependent children on recovery capital of people in recovery from drug addiction, operationalised by the Strengths And Barriers Recovery Scale. The study participants were drawn from the REC-PATH study (...) and supplemented by a second sample recruited by the Recovered Users Network across various European countries, resulting in a combined sample of 1,313 individuals completing the survey, primarily online. The results show that, in recovery, those who are married or co-habiting reported significantly greater recovery strengths and fewer barriers to recovery, and reported greater gains in recovery capital across their recovery journeys. Similar associations are found for participants who have dependent children living with them. There is also some indication that this association is stronger for female than for male participants. Finally, having more people that one can rely on and a greater proportion of people in recovery in the social network are both linked to greater recovery capital and greater self-reported growth in recovery capital. We conclude that this study provides further evidence in favour of a “social cure” in recovery, in which close familial ties are associated with stronger recovery resources. (shrink)

Things are thick with politics. This essay illustrates the point by focusing on a variety of technologies that help to manage water: anicuts and tanks in India, dikes and a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands, and levees in New Orleans. Technologies are not only shaped by political forces; they also exert political force themselves: on social stratification in Indian villages or on government stability in the Netherlands. We should recognize, then, that the functioning of technologies and the functioning of (...) societies are intricately linked. The essay traces this interlinking by using the concept of “technological culture.” It argues that the different styles of coastal engineering in the United States and in the Netherlands can be explained by differences in their technological cultures, particularly the different styles of risk handling. This conclusion is then applied to the Indian case and to issues of development, democracy, and innovation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dike Phonou: The Right of Prosecution and Attic Homicide ProcedureDavid C. MirhadyAlexander Tulin. Dike Phonou: The Right of Prosecution and Attic Homicide Procedure. Stuttgart and Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1996. x 1 135 pp. Cloth, DM 56. (Beiträge zum Altertumskunde, 76)The normal means of seeking redress in Athenian law was through a dike, which the victim brought to the appropriate magistrate, who then conducted the (...) case through the various stages of the Athenian legal process, an initial inquiry, possibly a public arbitration, and finally a trial before a democratic court. What distinguishes homicide from almost every other offense, however, is precisely that its victim cannot seek legal redress because he is dead. So who does? [End Page 639]This short book is devoted to the single aim of supporting the “traditional view” that it was only the members of the victim’s family who had the right to seek this redress through a suit for murder (dike phonou). In a wider-ranging book (almost as short as this one, Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators), Douglas MacDowell argued in 1963 against that restrictive interpretation: though Athenian law enjoined the relatives (or in the case of a slave, the owner) of the victim to prosecute, it did not order others not to. Others have since followed MacDowell’s lead. Tulin relies on three disparate pieces of evidence, to each of which he devotes one chapter: Drakon’s Code (IG I3 104), [Dem.] 47.68–73, and Plato’s Euthyphro 3e7–5d7.He gives the entire text of Drakon’s Code in Greek, translates most of it in a footnote, but then discusses specifically only the four lines (20–23) that relate most directly to his argument, although he points out many peripheral issues along the way, such as the authenticity of the code and the possibility of interpolation. Without reviewing the evidence in detail, he takes as established that in archaic conceptions of homicide, murder was viewed initially as a violation of a kinship unit, not “any larger corporate entity” (11). Yet the Code itself is an indication of interest, and indeed control, being taken by the larger corporate entity, and the roles it ascribes to the ephetai in the place of the family of the victim need discussion, since they touch directly on Tulin’s central thesis; they do not get it. Ultimately the issue of restrictiveness will be decided on the basis of whether the jussive infinitives that form the injunctions of the Code are to be understood inclusively or exclusively. To Tulin they seem exclusive and restrictive; to me they could be inclusive, calling upon an ever wider circle to take responsibility for sharing in the prosecution. Viewed in isolation, this piece of evidence is inconclusive.In [Dem.] 47.68–73 the speaker, the Trierarch, is concerned to show his own scruples with regard to legal procedure, which prevented him from laying charges for murder against his opponents even after they had killed his old wetnurse. Tulin analyzes the passage in great detail, giving the Greek text twice and reproducing the Loeb translation. Although the presentation is unnecessarily awkward, Tulin is successful in showing that it is in fact the lack of the requisite family or owner’s relationship to the victim that has compelled the Trierarch not to pursue a prosecution for murder. It would have required him and his family to commit perjury with regard to their relationship to the deceased. One lapse in Tulin’s account sticks out, however: his interpretation of the clause (47.69). He translates it as a protasis to the infinitives set out in the funeral nomima: “if there be anyone related to the woman, let him...” (23). But the position of the clause after the second of the three infinitive clauses strongly suggests that it be made to follow that clause as an indirect question: “and (you, Trierarch, must) make a proclamation at the tomb whether there be some relative of the woman.” It becomes clear several lines later that the Trierarch will make this proclamation, since no relative [End Page 640] is required for it. The proclamation involves not... (shrink)

The term dikē has a wide range of meanings in tragic poetry. However, we could identify two distinctively or predominantly Euripidean trends that are closely associated with the use of dikē and are actually interdependent. Heracleidae, Suppliants, and Phoenissae are good test-cases in that regard. Whilst the plays bear strong resemblances to Aeschylean and secondarily Sophoclean dramas, the treatment of dikē is differentiated. 1) By contrast with Aeschylus and secondarily Sophocles, dikē in these Euripidean plays is viewed in connection to (...) socio-political values and institutions that are essentially humanly constructed. The focus is shifted to the nature and role of these human conventions and the way in which they interact with deeply-rooted, traditional patterns of conduct. The plays explore the difficulties, complications or failures that can arise in practice, in the frame of the quest for dikē. 2) Despite the occasionally strong individualization and interest in characterization, Euripides focuses on the consequences of the disturbance of dikē for the community as well as on the difficulties involved in the execution of dikē, rather than the rigid, and somewhat abstract, demand for the execution of dikē itself. Individual actions of doubtful justification are largely viewed and assessed in the light of their consequences for the polis. A major, pertinent issue is both the necessity and the limitations of vengeance or punishment, both on an individual and on a collective scale. (shrink)

Bekanntermaßen ist die philosophische Ethik spätestens seit Nietzsches Kritik an der moralischen Weltinterpretation und der modernen Ablehnung aller Metaphysik in eine tiefgreifende Krise geraten. Strittig ist dabei vor allem die Berufung auf die Vernunft geworden. Bei dieser Gelegenheit wird gern auf den göttlichen Ursprung des Sittengesetzes oder auf die Verbindlichkeiten der Pflicht verwiesen. Dabei wird zumeist nicht bedacht, daß ein vernünftiges Urteil die individuellen und allgemeinen Bestimmungen sinnvollen und vertretbaren Handelns in einem Widerstreit entgegengesetzter Momente austrägt. Das zeigt sich bei (...) der Analyse von Scham, Freundschaft und Liebe, die im Begriff eine Gegenbewegung im Denken erfordern, so daß sich Nähe und Ferne wechselseitig interpretieren. (shrink)

This work reveals the ambivalence of the notion of philia and its inability to serve as a foundation for the civic order when it is not supported by dike. The range of different analytical approaches opens up the perspective from which philosophy addresses a pivotal question for social and political ties in ancient Greece.

La question de la compréhension philosophique et celle de la justice sont intrinsèquement liées depuis les débuts de la philosophie grecque. La compréhension platonicienne de la justice tire son origine pré-philosophique de la déesse Diké, tout comme l’herméneutique tire la sienne du dieu grec Hermès. L’ambivalence d’Hermès implique la possibilité de comprendre mais aussi la possibilité de séduire ou d’abuser de cette compréhension, ce qui, dans l’horizon de la philosophie socratique et platonicienne, signifie en fait un défaut de compréhension. Dans (...) la philosophie platonicienne, la connaissance et la position éthique sont intimement liées. Si cette position éthique s’entend comme la justice, celle-ci ne doit pas être entendue dans le sens, quelque peu réducteur, d’une harmonie entre les actions de l’homme et les lois de l’Etat. Nous devrions plutôt nous occuper de l’harmonie intérieure de l’homme et de son âme, ce qui signifie en même temps l’harmonie entre l’homme et le monde dans lequel il vit. De ce point de vue, « l’an-archisme » herméneutique potentiel peut s’orienter, d’une nouvelle façon cette fois-ci, vers la question de l’archè et se transposer d’une simple théorie en existence même de la vie humaine, traitée dans la philosophie platonicienne à travers la question de l’âme. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to demonstrate the philological relation between justice, law and equality in ancient Greek or, that is the same, the philosophical relation between ethics, politics and economics. Actually it is interesting to examine the etymology of the word dikē which derives from the Sanskrit diś-(dik) and it refers more than to the generic idea of the «straight line» to the specific and astronomical concept of the «horizon (or skyline)», the apparent line that separates the cosmos (...) into two equal parts, the earth from the sky, meaning the same idea of equality which should be a rule of just law and ethical perfection. Moreover, according to my hypothesis Plato may have used the analogy of the horizon to explain his cosmological Doctrine of Ideas. (shrink)

Solon is our only primary source for the intellectual context of archaic Athenian political thought. Dike is central to that context. The primary question of dike is the degree of abstraction it denotes. To Solon dike is neither an abstract principle with metaphysical proportions, nor merely the concrete procedures of dispute mediation. Solon understands Dike in a polis that is ordered by the thoughts and actions of particular human beings, not by divine dispensations. This re-alignment of (...) political authority from vertical authoritarianism to horizontal citizen relationships is directly related to the views of nature found in the Milesian philosophers. Solon’s dike is immanent from the thoughts and actions of the citizens; it is not a divine power pushing down on the polis. Solon’s dike has three distinct functions. First, it is the inevitable result of unjust thoughts and actions; this is ‘natural dike’. Second, dike is a process of dispute mediation; this is ‘procedural dike’. Third, dike is a nascent ordering principle in the polis, found in one passage in Solon as distinct from the consequent retribution. Dike is an archaic concept standing for a comprehensive inevitability in the interactions of the citizens. (shrink)

Kerekh 1. Toldot ha-adam, as̀arah maʼamarot.

On the Indic philosophy of atomism; in the light of materialism.

Los caminos espinosos en la construcción del conocimiento son un cometido al que solo el animal humano se ha enfrentado. El uso de un lenguaje proposicional le ha permitido iniciar construcciones racionales, que dan origen a las teorías más complejas en pos de comprender los enigmas del universo, y con ello iniciar la separación tajante entre episteme y doxa. Los discursos más enmarañados, rígidos y rigurosos convocan a científicos y epistemólogos. Enunciados con términos que, en ocasiones, se tornan oscuros y (...) poco comprensibles a quienes inician sus procesos formativos en el campo de la ciencia y la filosofía. Tal vez por ello se presenta un contraste actual en la enseñanza de las ciencias: por una parte, quienes apuestan por enseñar la rigidez de los enunciados científicos, y la conciben bajo un lenguaje unívoco, neutral y de carácter lógico-deductivo; y por otro lado, quienes la humanizan desde dinámicas móviles y cimentaciones semánticas artificiosas, las cuales, se alejan —como lo expone Héctor Palma en el prólogo del libro Bestiario epistemológico. Metáforas zoomórficas y de otras entidades en la enseñanza de las ciencias y la epistemología– de los enunciados depurados y se valen de nuevos discursos desde el ámbito literario, en los que abundan las metáforas. (shrink)

How are we disposed to the problem of natural resources scarcity that we face today and to the fact that certain natural sources remain unused, whereas the exploitation of others puts further strain on the already degraded biosphere? The scarcity of natural resources not only imposes a series of ecological issues on us; it also challenges democracy as organizational system and way of life, because it increases inequality, conflict, authoritarianism, and repression. One way to address this predicament would be the (...) re-appropriation of our relation with the biosphere by ceasing to see it as a limitless source of extraction and consumption. This essay suggests that a certain part of this.. (shrink)

Le vingtième siècle aura été le siècle de la démesure. La démesure de la politique avec des guerres mondiales, des déportations et des camps d'extermination, qui a culminé avec deux bombes atomiques larguées sur des populations civiles. La démesure de l'homme, ensuite, puisque ces crimes ont été commis au nom d'idéologies abstraites qui, pour sauver l'humanité, ont sacrifié sans remords les hommes réels. La démesure du monde, enfin, avec une science prométhéenne qui a tenté de percer les secrets de l'univers, (...) une technique déchaînée qui a cherché à asservir la nature et une économie mondialisée dont les échanges ont imposé le prix des choses au détriment de la dignité des hommes. Nietzsche avait clairement établi le diagnostic : "La mesure nous est étrangère, reconnaissons-le; notre démangeaison, c'est justement la démangeaison de l'infini, de l'immense. " Le sens de la démesure semble être une fatalité, aussi n'est-il pas étonnant que, déjà chez les Grecs, dans le mythe, la tragédie, la physique, l'éthique ou la politique, il se situe au coeur de la réflexion. Au travers de la tentation de la raison d'abolir toute limite, de remettre en cause la finitude humaine, la démesure témoigne du tragique de notre condition. Les Grecs, et c'est l'enseignement de ce livre, se sont attachés à la comprendre pour la convertir en cette mesure qui permet de redonner un sens à notre existence. (shrink)