Genesis -- Natural habitat -- Dirt -- Water -- Sky -- Human geography -- Roots -- Home -- Neighborhood -- Commons -- Revelation.

This paper examines the philosophies of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, focusing on their insights into identity and individualism. While self-help literature often advocates fixed identities, this study argues for an alternative: existence as constant transformation, challenging stagnation in personal growth. Using a materialist lens, it explores identity through interactions of internal and external experiences with power dynamics. Postmodernists collectively highlight the self’s fluidity and its perpetual evolution. The goal is to assess their influence on (...) understanding the self and explore implications for future narratives on identity. (shrink)

In this article I offer a critical examination of Giorgio Agamben’s vision of political liberation as it is articulated in his philosophy of language. Focusing on his affirmative politics as a particular kind of performance, I show that he has in mind a radically ‘pure’ performative that affirms only language as such. This conception is very different from other influential approaches to performativity in the contemporary scene of political thought, such as those developed by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler. (...) Rather than offering a meaningful alternative to these approaches, however, I argue that this pure performative makes visible the specific problems connected to Agamben’s model. Ultimately, Agamben risks affirming what he sees as problematic in political terms, namely the isolation of his preferred type of experience of language to a separate ‘sphere’. It is, moreover, questionable whether his performative points to a plausible model of political contestation in an age where careless and void utterances have become widespread. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The main objective of this article is to make evident the relationship between expressivity and performativity trying to reveal the continuities, tensions and ruptures concerning the ways of understanding the sexed body in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and the poststructuralist perspective of Judith Butler. On the one hand, the body as a sexual being is approached to demonstrate how the critiques to the anonymous body and the preexistence of the operative locus made by feminism do not fully grasp (...) the ideas of the French philosopher. On the other hand, the notions of expressivity and performativity are approached to reveal the displacement from theatricality to dramatization. RESUMEN El objetivo central de este artículo es evidenciar la relación entre expresividad y performatividad, tratando de revelar las continuidades, tensiones y rupturas entre la manera de comprender el cuerpo sexuado desde la Fenomenología de la Percepción de Merleau-Ponty y la perspectiva postestructuralista de Judith Butler. En primer lugar, se efectúa una aproximación al cuerpo como ser sexuado para demostrar cómo las críticas elaboradas desde el feminismo sobre el cuerpo anónimo y la preexistencia de un locus operativo no comprenden plenamente la propuesta del filósofo francés. En segundo lugar, se abordarán las nociones de expresividad y performatividad, para revelar el desplazamiento de la teatralidad a la dramatización. (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, (...) and Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s 2021 essay “Bodies That Still Matter” offers a compressed rehearsal of themes and moves that are developed in more detail in their 2020 book, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. In both projects, Butler spotlights the term feminicidio as an instructive indicator of brutality and violence against feminized individuals, including trans women. Feminicidio exemplifies the violence of “unequal grievability” that Butler’s recent work seeks to overcome; therefore, in particular relation to their recent work on (...) nonviolence, Butler insists that the horror of feminicidio should be closely linked to analysis that mobilizes against the full social force of the crimes. Following the work of Montserrat Sagot, Butler calls for analysis that links the brutality of the killings with a structure of social domination and terror. Additionally, Butler introduces questions for further exploration about representation, social organization, and the relation of sexual terror to domination, extermination, or a general theory of sexuality and violence. In this article, I make a start on the set of questions that come along with the term feminicidio in the work of some of its key theorists such as Diana Russell, Marcela Lagarde, Monserrat Sagot, and Alicia Schmidt Camacho. Here, in support of Butler’s claim that feminicidio should be analyzed in ways that mobilize comprehensive resistance, this article (1) defends Lagarde’s definition of feminicidio as an institutionalized crime, especially against Russell’s objection; (2) develops Sagot’s analysis of femicide in relation to Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, (3) considers Schmidt Camacho’s critique of the term in the context of maquiladora labor in Mexico, and (4) excavates the salience of Foucault’s concept of biopower as an important model for Butler’s analysis. Finally, this article (5) argues that Butler’s work challenges nonviolence researchers to expand their interest and understanding of grieving as a form of resistance. (shrink)

Meyers examines the question of personal autonomy. She observes the effects of childrearing practices and sexual biases, and reflects upon the results in women. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Verbal communication leaves room for interpretative disputes. Speakers can argue about what they mean by their words and negotiate their commitments in conversation. This article examines the deniability of implicitly communicated contents and addresses the question of what makes an act of denial seem more or less plausible to the addressee. I argue that denials bring about a process of reconstruction of the context of interpretation of the speaker's utterance and I illustrate how considerations of cognitive utility are the key (...) determinant for distinguishing plausible from merely possible deniability. (shrink)

This paper develops the treatment of vague predicates begun in my "Vagueness Without Paradox" (Philosophical Review 103, 1 [1994]). In particular, I show how my account of vague words dissolves an "eternal" version of the sorites paradox, i.e., a version in which the paradox is generated independently of any particular run of judgments of the items in a sorites series. In so doing I refine the notion of an internal contest, introduced in the earlier paper, and draw a distinction within (...) the class of internal contexts between contexts of judgment and contexts of consideration. (shrink)

Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an important exception to this pattern of neglect, and this paper explores Mackenzie’s work (...) on embodiment and self-narrative with the aim of better understanding the adequacy of autobiographical narrative as an account of the agentic self. I argue that Mackenzie’s narrative account of embodied subjectivity and agency is incomplete, for it over-estimates the reach of narrative and underestimates the cognitive and agentic powers of the lived body. (shrink)

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

The “film as philosophy” (FAP) hypothesis turned into a field if its own right during the 2000s, after S. Mulhall’s On Film (2001). In this work, Mulhall defended that some films philosophize for themselves. This caused controversy. Around the same time of On Film’s release, B. Russell published the article “The philosophical limits of film” (2000). This article had one of the first attacks against FAP, posing some main objections based on metaphilosophical grounds, which were called the “generality” and the (...) “explicitness” objections. These objections made by Russell and by M. Smith are based on the idea that film and philosophy are too different in their purposes or ways of presentation, ideas that are grounded in implicit or explicit conceptions of philosophy. In this chapter, these will be analyzed, as well as some other metaphilosophically grounded objections, as a line of reasoning connecting to attempts of responding to them will be drawn. After doing so, it will be concluded that their metaphilosophical grounds are implausible, and, thus, they are not definite objections against FAP. (shrink)

What is sportsmanship? Following Keating, we may say that sportsmanship is conduct befitting a person involved in sports. This raises the question of what kind of activity exactly sport is. This is notoriously difficult to answer, but roughly speaking, sport is a rule-governed activity that is about excellence, an understanding of how to play the game, and, in competitive sports, winning. Accordingly, there are four elements of sportsmanship: fairness, equity, good form and the will to win. These four elements are (...) equally important and not reducible to one another. Yet, the will to win is in systematic conflict with the other three elements. Hence, sportsmanship is not only compromised of these four elements, but also requires that a balance be held between them. (shrink)

Feminist Social Thought brings together key articles by prominent feminist thinkers, offering students sophisticated treatment of the theoretical topics central to feminist social thought. This reader highlights salient concerns in contemporary feminist scholarship and the advances feminist philosophers have made. The editor's introduction outlines alternative routes through the text, allowing instructors to easily adapt this reader to their particular courses and the interests of their students. Each article is prefaced with a short introduction by the editor placing it in context, (...) highlighting the principle issues and the conclusions reached. Students will find these headnotes helpful when tackling the challenging theoretical issues addressed. Representing a spectrum of feminist thinking, Feminist Social Thought is organized around seven topics constructions of gender; theorizing diversity; figurations of women; subjectivity, agency and feminist critique; social identity, solidarity and political engagement; care and its critics; and women, equality and justice. Students will be exposed to a wide variety of feminist philosophy and encouraged to think critically about challenging questions around pivotal subjects including * How are gender norms instilled, enforced, and perpetuated? * What are the relationships between gender and other socially demarcated positions such as race, class and sexual orientation? * What resources do women have at their disposal for recognizing their subordination and resisting it? * What goals should feminist politics pursue? * How can social and legal equality be reconciled with difference? (shrink)

At least since the Neoplatonic commentators, Aristotle’s thesis that place is immobile has been considered a serious problem for his theory of place and locomotion. This diagnosis, however, is essentially based on a single passage (212a14–21)—the famous passage on the boat moving in a river—which interpreters find both central and obscure or imprecise, and which has so far resisted a literal reading. I tackle this issue by considering texts hitherto neglected by scholars and propose a new and charitable interpretation, showing (...) the consistency of Aristotle’s thesis of the immobility of place with his general theory of change, as well as a fresh reading of ll. 212a14–21 that stays close to the text. Further, I argue that there are good reasons to believe that the interpretation I put forward is the most ancient one. (shrink)

This paper argues that potential cases of oppression, such as sex trafficking, can sometimes comprise autonomous choices by the trafficked individuals. This issue still divides radical from liberal feminists, with the former wanting to ‘rescue’ the ‘victims’ and the latter insisting that there might be good reasons for ‘hiding from the rescuers.’ This article presents new arguments for the liberal approach and raises two demands: first, help organizations should be run by affected women and be open-minded about whether or not (...) the trafficked individuals should remain in the sex industry. Second, the career choices of trafficked individuals should be expanded by the introduction of an opportunity-extending right to asylum. (shrink)

It is often said that human rights are the rights that people possess simply in virtue of being human – that is, in virtue of their intrinsic, dignity-defining common humanity. Yet, on closer inspection the human rights landscape doesn’t look so even. Once we bring perpetrators of human rights abuse and their victims into the picture, attributions of humanity to persons become unstable. In this essay, I trace the ways in which rights discourse ascribes variable humanity to certain categories of (...) people. I set the stage for my discussion of the human in relation to human rights by examining John Locke’s account of the justification for punishment. For Locke, in committing a crime one abrogates one’s humanity and forfeits one’s rights. Likewise, I argue, human rights discourse takes a scalar view of humanity. I consider victims of genocide who are dehumanized as helpless and passive, victims of state persecution who are super-humanized as righteously agentic, and perpetrators of genocide who are dehumanized as out-of-control beasts. In each case I use relevant testimony to argue that the scalar view of humanity is factually incorrect and morally deplorable. For genocide victims, I discuss testimony that Selma Leydesdorff gathered from women who survived the Srebrenica massacre. For a victim of persecution, I discuss Liao Yiwu’s memoire of his detention and imprisonment in China because of his artwork protesting the Tiananmen Square massacre. For perpetrators of genocide, I discuss testimony Jean Hatzfeld gathered from Hutu men who systematically murdered Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide. Finally, I apply my critique of dehumanized and super-humanized victims and dehumanized perpetrators to the problem of transnational trafficking in persons and argue that the view I advocate necessitates reforming immigration policy with respect to persons trafficked into forced labor. (shrink)

Of the many families of words that are thought to be vague, so-called observational predicates may be both the most fascinating and the most confounding. Roughly, observational predicates are terms that apply to objects on the basis of how those objects appear to us perceptually speaking. ‘Red’, ‘loud’, ‘sweet’, ‘acrid’, and ‘smooth’ are good examples. Delia Graff explains that a “predicate is observational just in case its applicability to an object (given a fixed context of evaluation) depends only on the (...) way that object appears” (2001, 3). By the same token observational predicates are, as Crispin Wright observes, terms “whose senses are taught entirely by ostension” (1976). Like other vague predicates, observational words appear to generate sorites paradoxes. Consider for example a series of 20 colored patches progressing from a clearly red one to a clearly orange one, so ordered that each patch is just noticeably different in hue from the one before. The following argument then seems forced upon us: (1) Patch #1 is red. (2) Any patch that differs only slightly in hue from a red patch is itself red. (3) Therefore patch #20 is red. Premise (2) expresses what Wright has called the tolerance of ‘red’: the application of the predicate tolerates small changes in a decisive parameter (here, hue). Of course, most vague predicates, hence most versions of the sorites, are not observational. For instance, given a series of. (shrink)

This collection of essays seeks to expand the parameters of the debate on pornography. In an effort to move away from the divisive frameworks of which side are you on? and who counts as women worthy to be listened to? in feminist debates on pornography, this volume seeks to understand what pornography means to those who consume it, fight against it, work within it, and to those engaged in changing its meaning. By opening up a space for divergent points of (...) view to address the complexityof sexual material, this volume seeks to forge solidarity amongst a diverse array of constituencies, including academics, activists, and sex workers from diverse socio-political contexts. Through seeking to address the relationship between imperialism, the exotic, and the pornographic, the collection moves away from Eurocentric perspectives on pornography, by including the perspectives of women involved in struggles for national liberation in the South. This volume explores a wide range of issues, such as, how the meaning of pornography is shaped by changing historical and political realities; the role law should play, if any, in the sex industry; whether union organizing can change the working conditions in the sex industry; kinds of representational politics available for redefining pornography; and how sexually explicity literature, videos, art, and music can serve the purpose of sexual freedom. Contributors to the volume include Diana Russell, Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Wendy Brown, Becki Ross, Mallek Alloula, M. Jacqui Alexander, Victoria Ortiz, bell hooks, Rey Chow, Judith Butler, Candida Royalle, Zoraida Ramirez Rodriguez, amongst others. (shrink)

"... Fraser and Bartky have brought the encounter between U.S. and French feminism to a new level of seriousness." —Ethics In the last decade, elements of French feminist discourse have permeated and transformed the larger feminist culture in the United States. This volume is the first sustained attempt to revalue French feminism and answer the question: What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of this intercultural encounter? Interviews with Simone de Beauvoir open the book; essays (...) by French feminists Sarah Kofman and Luce Irigaray follow; the North American contributors are Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Diana J. Fuss, Nancy J. Holland, Eleanor H. Kuykendall, Dorothy Leland, Diana T. Meyers, Andrea Nye, and Margaret A. Simons. (shrink)

I seek to understand the relationship between human vulnerability and human rights as something more than a problem that respect for human rights solves. After characterizing vulnerability and noting that human rights are generally regarded as entitlements that respect the dignity of persons by securing their autonomous agency, I draw out the implications of these premises. I argue that human vulnerabilities are constitutive of the capacity for autonomous agency and therefore that the circumstances of respect for persons must include persons’ (...) vulnerability to many sorts of harms. Given that the opportunity to lead one’s life in one’s own way—that is, the opportunity to exercise autonomous agency—is indispensable to human dignity, respect for persons entails respect for the vulnerability that underwrites autonomous agency. If so, rights-bearers are necessarily vulnerable subjects. I further defend this conception of rights-bearers by arguing that it comports with three types of human rights theory: agency-centered, needs-centered, and practice-based accounts of human rights. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Rodriguez-Pereyra�s claim according to which analytical philosophy should be published exclusively in English. I focus my reply on three issues: (1) the implicit conception of philosophy and of the philosophical practice that underlies his argument, (2) the myth of the �native speaker� and (3) some values that should guide philosophy and which I propose to highlight.

In this study, I aimed to carry out a comparative analysis of the methods of conversational philosophy and sage philosophy as contributions towards overcoming the problem of methodology in African philosophy. The purpose was to show their points of convergence and probably, if possible, their point of divergence as well. I did not intend to show that the method of one is superior or inferior to the other. The objective was to provide an analysis to show that the two methods (...) are essentially the same with little variations. Thereafter, I highlighted their significance as methods of doing African philosophy and discussed their problems as well. I used the methods of analysis and hermeneutics. From the study, I concluded that conversational philosophy is an extension or a modified form of sage philosophy. The implication of this conclusion is that sage philosophy and conversational philosophy should overlap each other in research and purposes. (shrink)

Although technology is often viewed as value-free, an anthropological perspective suggests that technological tools embody values and assumptions of their builders. Drawing upon extended field research, this article investigates the construction of work in the expert systems community of artificial intelligence. Describing systematic deletions in practitioners' representations of their own work, the article relates these to both the selectivity of conventional knowledge acquisition procedures and the tendency of expert systems to "fall off the knowledge cliff." Although system builders see the (...) latter problem as purely technical, this article suggests that it is also the result of nontechnical factors, including the system builders' own tacit assump tions. This article supports the view that technology has a cultural dimension. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is about the context of Albert Einstein's concerns at the time of a most intense intellectual effort — his own and that of a small group of scientists concerned with classical quantum theory. I describe contemporaneous interactions and differing views about the prospects for and the significance of the First Solvay Congress of 1911 as voiced by major participants. There are two axes around which the paper evolves: the Einstein-Nernst-Lorentz dialogue and the public institutional creation of the (...) “Solvay” stage. In certain ways, this paper is about personal and institutional patronage: the working out of a difficult theoretical impasse requires individual and collective moral support. It is about the forging of the identity of a scientific problem and the personal and institutional setting, the public space, in which this problem was collectively addressed. But I also uncover heuristic playfulness and flexibility which accompanies theoretical change. (shrink)

Las emociones han sido tradicionalmente consideradas por la filosofía, un obstáculo para la obtención de conocimiento confiable. La falta de valor epistémico atribuida a lo emocional, su pasividad, junto con la naturalización de la distribución sexista que considera la razón una cualidad masculina y opuesta a la feminización de las emociones, obstaculizó históricamente el acceso de las mujeres a la ciencia y al conocimiento abstracto, así como a los más altos grados de educación superior y actividades de alta responsabilidad social. (...) En la filosofía del conocimiento contemporánea, la interfaz entre conocimiento y emoción recibe una intensa atención, sobre todo por parte de las corrientes cognitivas. Se mencionarán modelos diferentes de vincular conocimiento y emoción, destacando el interés de revisar el carácter dicotómico de este par de conceptos. (shrink)

Sumner B. (Barney) Twiss, who died in 2023, was for ten years a General Editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE). He was a frequent contributor of articles, a member of the JRE Editorial Board, and a member of the journal's Board of Trustees. In this article, colleagues and students reflect on some of his many contributions, not only to the JRE but to the broader discursive fields of comparative religious ethics and human rights.

This book tackles how and why 'landscape' (farms, gardens, countryside) set the scene in the first centuries BCE and CE for Romans keen to talk up and about (but also to scrutinize and understand) what it meant to be a citizen. It investigates what 'landscape' means now and reflects upon how contemporary approaches to 'landscape' can enrich our understanding of ancient experience of the interface between natural and artificial space. It encourages examination of 'landscape' from a range of angles, suggesting (...) alternative ways of thinking about what landscape represents. These methodological approaches (presented initially via a set of key terms and definitions and then deployed thematically across four chapters), combined with a detailed interdisciplinary bibliography and a series of case studies of literary texts and material sites, enable readers to use this survey as a starting point for developing their own in-depth study. (shrink)

This paper addresses two related topics: 1. The disanalogies between elective cosmetic practices and sex reassignment surgery. Why does it seem necessary for me – an aging professional woman – to ignore the blandishments of hairdressers wielding dyes and dermatologists wielding acids and scalpels? Why does it not seem equally necessary for a transgendered person to repudiate sex reassignment procedures? 2. The role of the body in identity and agency. How do phenomenological insights regarding the constitution of selfhood in relation (...) to the interplay between the body image and corporeal know-how contribute to an account of the agency of transgendered individuals? Studying several paintings by contemporary feminist artist Jenny Saville has advanced my thinking on these topics. Saville’s imagery is an invaluable aid to reflection on these issues because she uses her painterly technique, which critics often dub “virtuoso,” to represent lived human bodies. In her work, viewers encounter representations of subjectivized, agentic corporeity, as distinct from inert, objectified flesh. Moreover, her sympathetic engagement with nonconformist, devalued bodies helps to reconfigure the standard gestalts of the human body that viewers typically carry with them and thus to convert fear and/or disgust into appreciation and understanding. In this paper, I consider three of Saville’s paintings. Plan, Saville’s self-portrait as a nude female whose body has been prepped for liposuction, conveys the pathos of this procedure. Matrix is a nude portrait of self-described “gender variant visual artist” Del LaGrace Volcano. In the words of one critic Saville’s depiction of Volcano’s nude intersexed body “restores beauty to the primitive [female] genital organ.” Passage, another nude portrait of an intersexed individual, is an image of vibrant sexuality despite the presumptively jarring juxtaposition of breasts and a penis. I argue that conceiving the agentic subject as a rational deliberative capability that uses a conjoined body as the instrument of its will makes it impossible to theorize the agency of transgendered people. In contrast, when agentic subjects are understood as embodied subjects and embodiment is understood as a dimension of practical intelligence, the agency of transgendered individuals is intelligible. (shrink)

In this article we compare the experiences of women members of the board of directors of U.S. and Norwegian corporations. Based on the personal stories of two women directors from each country, we discuss similarities and differences in the role and characteristics of women corporate directors and the processes and behaviours they are involved in as directors within and outside the boardroom. We also investigate the role of gender-related dynamics in these two countries, focusing on board roles and processes, and (...) the visible and invisible board structures with which women corporate directors contend. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between victims’ stories and normativity. As a contribution to understanding how the stories of those who have been abused or oppressed can advance moral understanding, catalyze moral innovation, and guide social change, this paper focuses on narrative as a variegated form of representation and asks whether personal narratives of victimization play any distinctive role in human rights discourse. In view of the fact that a number of prominent students of narrative build normativity into their accounts, (...) it might seem obvious that there is a connection between victims’ stories and moral insight. However, the category of victims’ stories spans an enormous variety of texts – private diaries, memoirs written for publication, interviews with journalists or social scientists, depositions prepared by human rights workers, stories shared with like-minded activists or with support groups, stories told to medical professionals, and testimony in courts, truth commissions and asylum hearings, to mention just some of the possibilities. The different contexts of elicitation and the different rules governing expression in these sites should make us wary of ready generalizations about the nature of victims’ narratives. Moreover, I doubt that existing explications of the way in which norms figure in narratives yield satisfactory theories of the contribution victims’ stories can make to discovering and defending just policies and practices. I consider two of the most prominent accounts of the relation between narrative and normativity. For different reasons, the account Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner present in their work on narrative and law and the account Hayden White presents in his work on narrative and history fail to appreciate the capacity of victims’ stories of abuse to advance understanding of and increase respect for human rights. In defense of the value of victims’ stories, I propose an account of the relation between normativity and a salient type of victim’s narrative that seems especially resistant to integration into human rights discourse. -/- . (shrink)

Jenny Saville is a leading contemporary painter of female nudes. This paper explores her work in light of theories of gender and embodied agency. Recent work on the phenomenology of embodiment draws a distinction between the body image and the body schema. The body image is your representation of your own body, including your visual image of it and your emotional attitudes towards it. The body schema is comprised of your proprioceptive knowledge, your corporeally encoded memories, and your corporeal proficiency (...) with respect to various environments and activities. Saville is concerned with body image issues, and I discuss how she reconfigures representational practices with respect to feminine body images. However, the most exciting potential for feminist analysis of the state of the female nude derives from the concept of the body schema, for this concept endows the human body with subjectivity and agency. My key question, then, is by what pictorial means and to what extent Saville succeeds in representing agentic womanhood. I argue that interpreting Saville’s paintings from the standpoint of the body schema demonstrates the radicality of her remaking of the female nude and the rapport between her imagery and feminist values. (shrink)

In 2015, Fainos Mangena published an essay entitled “How Applicable is the Idea of Deep Ecology in the African Context?” where he presented a number of arguments to support his thesis that deep ecology as discussed in the West has no place in the African context. Mangena later presented a counter-version of deep ecology that he claims is based on African philosophy. In this paper, I interrogated Mangena’s arguments for rejecting deep ecology and found that they were based on certain (...) erroneous presuppositions. Further, I developed a critique of Mangena’s Shona version of deep ecology which shows it to be impractical, unappealing, and based on a misunderstanding of the true nature of the modern African environment. I employ the method of conversationalism in this work. Keywords: Deep Ecology, African Environmental Ethics, Fainos Mangena. (shrink)

Sharing of social, economic, and political opportunities is crucial for the stability of many African states. Democracy has been identified as an inclusive framework that allows individuals to freely contest for these opportunities. However, in Africa, democracy appears not to work as compared to Western democratic societies. Some African political philosophers blame the problem on liberal democratic type practiced in the continent, which is modeled after the hegemonic socio‐political discourse in Europe and North America. Thus, it is argued that workable (...) democratic model for Africa must be embedded in the continent's cultural and historical nuances. Consequently, initial effort by the Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu appealed to the nonpartisan Consensus Democracy of traditional Akan society. But it is doubtful that the consensual model, which was successful in the mono‐ethnic traditional Akan society, will produce the same effect in a multi‐ethnic society as the modern African states. At present, ethnicity inter alia remains a major obstruction to democratization of the continent. Africa needs a democratic model that takes its rigid multi‐ethnic character into account instead of uncritically imposing global democratic knowledge to African situations or totally disregarding local knowledge of democracy. Therefore, I investigate how ethnicity inter alia can be accommodated in democratic practice. An experimental model called “Rotational Democracy” is introduced based on the traditional African social practice of One Cup, which embodies the phenomena of power rotation and rationing of the traditional society. The article demonstrates how indigenous knowledge can be the starting point for democratic practice in Africa. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent discussions within the representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness, in particular, the discussions between first order representationalism (FOR) and higher order representationalism (HOR). I aim to show that either there is only a terminological dispute between them or, if the discussion is not simply terminological, then HOR is based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena that a theory of phenomenal consciousness should explain. First, I argue that we can defend first order representationalism from Carruthers' attacks (...) and ignore higher order thoughts in our account of phenomenal consciousness. Then I offer a diagnostic of Carruthers' misunderstanding. In the last section I consider further reasons to include mindreading abilities in an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to secure both economic development and (...) free agency. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the diverse meanings of poverty both from the standpoint of the poor and from that of the relatively well-off. Part 2 examines morally appropriate responses to poverty on the part of persons who are better-off and powerful institutions. Part 3 identifies economic development strategies that secure the agency of the beneficiaries. Part 4 addresses the constraints poverty imposes on agency in the context of biomedical research, migration for work, and trafficking in persons. (shrink)

El presente trabajo analiza la construcción del espacio caribeño en la novela Rastro de sal de la escritora costarricense Arabella Salaverry. Este espacio se aborda desde dos perspectivas específicas: una, vinculada con la representación general del espacio caribeño. Este análisis se centra en tres relaciones concretas: conectividad/aislamiento, naturaleza/cultura, centro/periferia. La segunda perspectiva se interesa más bien en los espacios domésticos y su interacción con los personajes femeninos, a partir de las relaciones libertad/prisión e interior/exterior. Se concluye que, en Rastro de (...) sal, el Caribe se presenta como un espacio contradictorio, dinámico y desigual. (shrink)

This essay presents an analysis of Levinas’ and Qisong’s perceptions of the peace as an awakening to the other and its context. Based on an analysis of their views, it suggests that we as a society need to develop an ethical sensitivity, and also to base it otherwise than on an ethically neutral ontology. The first section examines Levinas’ perception of the Western ideal of peace and presents its ontological presupposition of the “sufficiency of being.” The second section interprets his (...) conception of peace as relationship with the other grounded in a “nondual transcendent.” In the third part, a parallel analysis of Levinas’ Chan Buddhist counterpart is presented: Qisong’s peace as relationship with the other grounded in a “nondual transcendent.” The last part explores a second parallel: between Levinas’ peace as disinterestedness and Qisong’s no-form good deeds. (shrink)