Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

In this paper I attempt to show how the African philosopher - Kwasi Wiredu - constructs an ethnic perspectival model of ethics from the structure of kinship relations found among the Akans of Ghana. The specifics of this structure generate a notion of particularity in morals, which is carried from its origins in civil society, through a process of contested dialogue, into civic society where it is validated as norm-setter in an actual public forum of debate. The dynamics of this (...) forum ensures that the renewal of tradition remains an ongoing process and that a participatory ethos remains ascendant. I hope that my interpretation and reconstruction of Wiredu is correct. I have not attempted to cover the entire picture of Akan ethics, but only that part of it which deals with members of Akan society, and not strangers. (shrink)

The target article presents a model for schizophrenia extending four levels of abstraction: molecules, cells, cognition, and syndrome. An important notion in the model is that of coordination, applicable to both the level of cells and of cognition. The molecular level provides an “implementation” of the coordination at the cellular level, which in turn underlies the coordination at the cognitive level, giving rise to the clinical symptoms.

The revised edition contains a new chapter which provides an elegant description of the semantics. The various classes of lambda calculus models are described in a uniform manner. Some didactical improvements have been made to this edition. An example of a simple model is given and then the general theory (of categorical models) is developed. Indications are given of those parts of the book which can be used to form a coherent course.

The liberal constitution in South Africa, which entrenches a certain kind of socio-economic organisation, renders systems of socio-economic organisation traditional to Africa, dysfunctional. These traditional communitarian systems contain within themselves structures endorsing harmony, mutuality and reciprocity as ground rules or values which distribute significant resources (both material and moral) to all agents in accordance with their socially determined deserts. The absence of these structures in South Africa contributes to a condition, inflamed by liberal structures, of rights paralysis under which agents (...) are unable to translate rights into substantial benefits. In this article I examine this condition with reference to two traditional systems of socio-economic organization to exhibit their advantages as correctives to the paralysis of rights, and to compare them in order to establish which one is preferable. (shrink)

In Intolerance, Polemics, and Debate in Antiquity scholars reflect on politico-cultural, philosophical, and religious forms of critical conversation in the ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, Graeco-Roman, and early-Islamic world. They enquire into the boundaries between debate, polemics, and intolerance, and address their manifestations in both philosophy and religion. This cross-cultural and inclusive approach shows that debate and polemics are not so different as often assumed, since polemics may also indicate that ultimate values are at stake. Polemics can also have a positive (...) effect, stimulating further cultural development. Intolerance is more straightforwardly negative. Religious intolerance is often a justification for politics, but also elite rationalism can become totalitarian. The volume also highlights the importance of the fluency of minorities in the dominant discourses and of their ability to develop contrapuntal lines of thought within a common cultural discourse. Contributors are: Robbert van den Berg, Stefan Beyerle, George Boys-Stones, Reuven Firestone, Pieter B. Hartog, Paul Heck, Paulin Ismard, George van Kooten, Marjo C. Korpel, Dominik Markl, Steve Mason, Peter Franz Mittag, James C. Oleson, James Carleton Paget, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Jacques van Ruiten, Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella, Clare Wilde. (shrink)

This study examines how hunger narratives and performances contribute to a reconsideration of neglected or prohibited domains of thinking which only a full confrontation with the body's heterogeneity and plasticity can reveal. From literary motif or psychosomatic symptom to revolutionary gesture or existential malady, the double crux of hunger and disgust is a powerful force which can define the experience of embodiment. Kafka's fable of the "Hunger Artist" offers a matrix for the fast, while its surprising last-page revelation introduces disgust (...) as a correlative of abstinence, conscious or otherwise. Grounded in Kristeva's theory of abjection, the figure of the fraught body lurking at the heart of the negative grotesque gathers precision throughout this study, where it is employed in a widening series of contexts: suicide through overeating, starvation as self-performance or political resistance, the teratological versus the totalitarian, the anorexic harboring of death. In the process, writers and artists as diverse as Herman Melville, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Christina Rossetti, George Orwell, Knut Hamsun, J.M. Coetzee, Cindy Sherman, Pieter Breughel, Marina Abramovic, David Nebreda, Paul McCarthy, and others are brought into the discussion. By looking at the different acts of visceral, affective, and ideological resistance performed by the starving body, this book intensifies the relationship between hunger and disgust studies while offering insight into the modalities of the "dark grotesque" which inform the aesthetics and politics of hunger. It will be of value to anyone interested in the culture, politics, and subjectivity of embodiment, and scholars working within the fields of disgust studies, food studies, literary studies, cultural theory, and media studies. (shrink)

The central theme of this book is the question, Why do scientists pursue scientific investigation? Of course, Bert Theunissen begins by pointing out that the answers scientists offer will be socially acceptable answers. Even so, Theunissen asserts, the historian may infer from the answers what motivated the persons questioned. Moreover, insights may be gleaned concerning science, society, and the relations between the two in the period the scientists lived.In this book the author discusses the notions of the objective of science (...) endorsed, respectively, by Jan Hendrik van Swinden , Jan van der Hoeven , Pieter Harting , Gerrit Jan Moll , Franciscus C. Donders , Hugo de Vries , Martinus W. Beijerinck , and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz .From this list of names it appears that Theunissen has focused his study on the nineteenth century. That period is especially interesting with respect to the changing images of science, as the ideas of the main goal of the university altered completely during that period. At the beginning of the century providing an academic education was seen as the prime task. Research was not seen as part of the duties of a professor at all. Those that did any experimentation chose to do so for their own sake, not because it was an element of the curriculum. That had changed completely by the end of the century. By then scientific investigation was considered a regular—in fact the most important—task of the university. This change in focus went hand in hand with the establishment of a number of new laboratories for most Dutch universities.In the accounts of the above‐mentioned men the content and development of their ideas about the pursuit of science are examined. From this analysis the common element that emerges in their images of science is gain for society, as expressed in the title, which translates into English as something like “Profit and more profit.” In the view of these men the pursuit of science is profitable for society; it is not pursued just for its own sake, let alone for the pleasure of the pursuer. In the beginning of the century the well‐trained minds of an intellectual elite that had completed academic training was regarded as the prime benefit for society. By the end of the century the profit was understood to come from scientific investigation of nature: science was seen as an instrument to further human welfare.Initially, I found it surprising that each and every one of the leading persons confidently asserts that the pursuit of science is for the benefit of society at large. Yet, on closer inspection, that was not so surprising, as Theunissen has studied and quotes almost exclusively from published sources, from treatises written for fellow scholars, for administrators, and for the lay public. The author seems not to have studied correspondence or other private papers in which a man may have voiced less elevated purposes for the pursuit of science.One thing amazed me: in the whole of this work, covering over a hundred years of discussion and the ideas of some 300 Dutch scholars on the subject at hand, there is not one woman mentioned. Admittedly, by the time the present story finishes, in the early twentieth century, only a few women had been appointed to academic positions in Dutch universities, so there is presumably not much material to draw on. However, one argument in the debate raging in the last quarter of the nineteenth century about the admission of women to the universities was the view that women, like men, should have the benefit of a higher education so as to fully develop their minds.Most of the contents of this book have appeared in print already in the form of separate articles in various journals, some in English but mostly in the Dutch language. Presumably that explains why the author has chosen to publish his treatise in Dutch rather than English. Even though the author has stressed the national character of his exposé by discussing at length some controversies among Dutch historians of science on points he addresses, the issues considered in this book and the scope of the inquiry warrant international notice and discussion.This book has a pleasantly unpretentious layout and typography and is, moreover, very carefully produced: I have seen but one printing error—which I leave it to you to discover. (shrink)

Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship into the societal dimensions of emerging life sciences (Chadwick and Zwart 2013) and via this (...) thematic series, the journal provides a podium for authors who intend to address concrete issues from a ‘continental philosophical’ perspective, which may in- clude (post)phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory and similar approaches. The series aims to contribute to a diagnostics of the present and a prognostics of the future, focusing on critical normative challenges (such as embodiment, intimate technologies, social justice, biopower, nanomedicine, human enhancement and the anthropocene) and building on the work of key authors such as Hegel (1830), Heidegger (1953, 1953/1954), Bachelard (1938), Canguilhem (1975), Lacan (1966, 1969-1970/1991), Habermas (1968), Serres (1972), Foucault (1969), Žižek (2006/2009), Stiegler (2010), Sloterdijk (2001, 2009) and others, but targeting con- crete up-to-date events and case studies against the backdrop of broader developments within the techno-scientific culture. (shrink)

For decades, the discussion on children’s competence to consent to medical issues has concentrated around normative concerns, with little progress in clinical practices. Decision-making competence is an important condition in the informed consent model. In pediatrics, clinicians need to strike a proper balance in order to both protect children’s interests when they are not fully able to do so themselves and to respect their autonomy when they are. Children’s competence to consent, however, is currently not assessed in a standardized way. (...) Moreover, the correlation between competence to give informed consent and age in children has never been systematically investigated, nor do we know which factors exactly contribute to children’s competence. (shrink)

Compared with other biblical books that are named after its main protagonist, Job mentions many (at least 72) body parts. Yet hair is explicitly referred to only once, even when it plays a relatively significant role in other books in the Hebrew Bible. This virtual absence of hair in the book can at first glance be explained by the shaving of Job's 'head' as early as 1:20, using a different verb, •••, from the one in Leviticus 13:33 and 14:8.9, •–•, (...) where the context is that of —’—’–’—, wrongly translated as 'leprosy', but probably referring to the same skin problem from which Job is suffering. This connection to the skin is important, because the two body parts seem to be almost mutually exclusive, as also suggested by 1:21 immediately after the aforementioned shaving, where Job considers himself to be essentially –’—’– [naked]. This means that hair has, amongst other functions, also a clothing-like role in the book of Job. Three questions will hence be explored: how 'absence' is to be psychoanalytically interpreted and more specifically, what consequences all of this has on the virtual absence of hair in the Book of Job and, finally, what relevance this absence has for the South African context. CONTRIBUTION: Applying a psychoanalytical perspective to both the body and to absence, the biblical text is contextualised on a broader horizon than what the purely historical-critical approach can render. The additional African context widens the relevance of the ancient book even further. (shrink)

Rapid advances in high throughput genomic technologies and next generation sequencing are making medical genomic research more readily accessible and affordable, including the sequencing of patient and control whole genomes and exomes in order to elucidate genetic factors underlying disease. Over the next five years, the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) Initiative, funded by the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom) and the National Institutes of Health (United States of America), will contribute greatly towards sequencing of numerous African samples for (...) biomedical research. (shrink)

BackgroundFor many decades, the debate on children’s competence to give informed consent in medical settings concentrated on ethical and legal aspects, with little empirical underpinnings. Recently, data from empirical research became available to advance the discussion. It was shown that children’s competence to consent to clinical research could be accurately assessed by the modified MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research. Age limits for children to be deemed competent to decide on research participation have been studied: generally children of 11.2 (...) years and above were decision-making competent, while children of 9.6 years and younger were not. Age was pointed out to be the key determining factor in children’s competence. In this article we reflect on policy implications of these findings, considering legal, ethical, developmental and clinical perspectives.DiscussionAlthough assessment of children’s competence has a normative character, ethics, law and clinical practice can benefit from research data. The findings may help to do justice to the capacities children possess and challenges they may face when deciding about treatment and research options. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of standardized competence assessment in children on a case-by-case basis compared to application of a fixed age limit, and conclude that a selective implementation of case-by-case competence assessment in specific populations is preferable. We recommend the implementation of age limits based on empirical evidence. Furthermore, we elaborate on a suitable model for informed consent involving children and parents that would do justice to developmental aspects of children and the specific characteristics of the parent-child dyad.SummaryPrevious research outcomes showed that children’s medical decision-making capacities could be operationalized into a standardized assessment instrument. Recommendations for policies include a dual consent procedure, including both child as well as parents, for children from the age of 12 until they reach majority. For children between 10 and 12 years of age, and in case of children older than 12 years in special research populations of mentally compromised patients, we suggest a case-by-case assessment of children’s competence to consent. Since such a dual consent procedure is fundamentally different from a procedure of parental permission and child assent, and would imply a considerable shift regarding some current legislations, practical implications are elaborated. (shrink)

Although law is established on a strong presumption that persons younger than a certain age are not competent to consent, statutory age limits for asking children’s consent to clinical research differ widely internationally. From a clinical perspective, competence is assumed to involve many factors including the developmental stage, the influence of parents and peers, and life experience. We examined potential determining factors for children’s competence to consent to clinical research and to what extent they explain the variation in competence judgments.

The study focused on the adventure-based experiential learning component of the North-West University peer helper training program. The aim of this study was to explore and describe a group of peer helpers’ subjective experiences of their participation in an ABEL program, with a focus on how these experiences related to the concept of grit. A total of 26 students at the North-West University, both male and female, participated in the study. A qualitative research approach with a case study research design (...) was used. The participants completed daily reflective diaries for the duration of the three-day ABEL program. After 3 months of performing their duties as peer helpers, the same individuals participated in focus group interviews. Themes were identified through inductive analysis and discussed regarding their relevance to the concept of grit. The main themes that emerged from both phases of data collection included intra-, inter-, and transpersonal/transcendent aspects, within which participants regularly referred to elements of grit. It was concluded that ABEL, due to its unique nature and demands, provides an ideal mechanism for the facilitation of personal growth on various levels. More specifically, through its clear association with the improvement and/or development of participants’ grit, it could equip these students to be more effective in their role as peer helpers. (shrink)

The body plays an important role in the book of Job - as do animals. According to psychoanalytical specifically object-relations theory, a subjective body image was partly constructed through the internalisation of external stimuli from significant others who mirrored the subject through their feedback or through their own bodies, which served as an ideal or critique to the subject. Amongst the external stimuli, animals constitute such significant others. Animals could therefore have impacted Job's subjective body image, particularly as their bodies (...) were described in detail by God as a response to Job's complaints and searching. CONTRIBUTION: Two theoretical and interrelated problems were acknowledged although they cannot be satisfactorily solved: the cultural aspect of the body image and the relationship to animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious research has shown that the presentation of valenced information about a target stimulus sometimes has different effects on implicit and explicit stimulus evaluations. Importantly,...

Job’s body is ‘portrayed’ in a text that can be nothing more than audible. Compared with the eyes of Job (mentioned 49 times explicitly), his ears (mentioned 13 times, i.e., four times less than his eyes, perhaps because his ears are less visible) play a much more subtle role, underlying even his final confession in 42:5-6, where it seems/sounds that his eyes gave him (only) his final in-‘sight’. That leaves the impression that his ears give him access to the second-hand (...) testimony of tradition but his eyes to his own, personal experience. The hypothesis of this study is that a psychoanalytical perspective can give additional meaning to this polarity and cooperation of the senses for both the main character and recipient of the book of Job in that Job’s (in)sight depends on the foundation of the aural experience, even the musical experience.Contribution: A psychoanalytical perspective adds to the breadth and depth of insight gained from studying the role of the sensory experience in the narrative about the psychic and spiritual development of the protagonist in the Book of Job. (shrink)

Politische Theologie erlebt derzeit ein Revival: Nachdem es eine längere Zeit lang still um die Politische Theologie geworden war, erfreut sie sich - nicht zuletzt angesichts multipler Krisenerscheinungen - aktuell wieder eines wachsenden Interesses. Aber was ist,,Politische Theologie" eigentlich? Die Einführung bietet eine begriffsgeschichtliche Orientierung und systematische Einordnung dieses schillernden Begriffs, eine vertiefende Auseinandersetzung mit den Politischen Theologien des Staatsrechtlers Carl Schmitt und des katholischen Theologen Johann Baptist Metz sowie eine Reflexion ausgewählter gegenwärtiger Diskussionsbeiträge in der deutschsprachigen katholischen Theologie. Das (...) Buch verdeutlicht die ungebrochene Aktualität und Relevanz fundierter wissenschaftlicher und öffentlicher Auseinandersetzungen mit der Politischen Theologie. Der Inhalt Politische Theologie - Begriff und Geschichte Politische Politische Theologie (Carl Schmitt) Theologische Politische Theologie (Johann B. Metz) Gegenwart theologischer Politischer Theologie Die Zielgruppen Studierende und Dozierende der Theologie, Philosophie, Sozial- und Politikwissenschaften Interessiertes Fachpublikum Die Autoren Jan Niklas Collet ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Katholische Theologie der TU Dortmund (Systematische Theologie). Dr. Jan-Hendrik Herbst ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Katholische Theologie der TU Dortmund (Religionspädagogik). (shrink)

This article focuses on the power of technological mediation from the point of view of autonomist Marxism. The first part of the article discusses the theories developed on technological mediation in postphenomenology and critical theory of technology with regard to their respective power perspectives and ways of coping with relations of power embedded in technical artifacts and systems. Rather than focusing on the clashes between the hermeneutic postphenomenological approach and the dialectics of critical theory, it is argued that in both (...) the category of resistance amidst power-relations is at least similar in one regard: resistance to the power of technology is conceptualized as a reactive force. The second part of the article reads technological mediation through the lens of the antagonistic power-perspective on class struggle developed in autonomist Marxism. The outline of a provisional autonomist philosophy of technology is developed using Foucauldian dispositifs of biopower in contrast to the hermeneutic and dialectical approach. It is thus argued that resistance should here be understood in terms of practice that subverts the technically mediated circuit of production itself. (shrink)

Humans are always interested in distinguishing natural and artificial entities although there is no sharp demarcation between the two categories. Surprisingly, things do not improve when the second type of entities is restricted to the arguably more constrained realm of physical technical artifacts. This paper helps to clarify the relationship between natural entities and technical artifacts by developing a conceptual landscape within which to analyze these notions. The framework is developed by studying three definitions of technical artifact which arise from (...) different perspectives. All these perspectives share two intuitions: that technical artifacts are physical objects that exist by human intervention; and that technical artifacts are entities to be contrasted to natural entities. Yet the perspectives are different in the way they spell out these intuitions: the relevant human intervention may range from intentional selection to intentional production; and the contrast between technical artifacts and natural entities may be introduced by a constitution relation or by defining properties that set technical artifacts apart. The three perspectives are compared and their similarities and dissimilarities are explored with the help of ontological analysis. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool for several healthcare tasks. AI tools are suited to optimize predictive models in medicine. Ethical debates about AI’s extension of the predictive power of medical models suggest a need to adapt core principles of medical ethics. This article demonstrates that a popular interpretation of the principle of justice in healthcare needs amendment given the effect of AI on decision-making. The procedural approach to justice, exemplified with Norman Daniels and James Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness (...) conception, needs amendment because, as research into algorithmic fairness shows, it is insufficiently sensitive to differential effects of seemingly just principles on different groups of people. The same line of research generates methods to quantify differential effects and make them amenable for correction. Thus, what is needed to improve the principle of justice is a combination of procedures for selecting just criteria and principles and the use of algorithmic tools to measure the real impact these criteria and principles have. In this article, the author shows that algorithmic tools do not merely raise issues of justice but can also be used in their mitigation by informing us about the real effects certain distributional principles and criteria would create. (shrink)

Site‐specific recombination events are of fundamental importance in many biological systems. In vitro experiments using purified proteins and DNA sub‐strates are yielding insights into strand exchange mechanisms and synapsis of recombination sites. By examining results across a range of systems ‐ prokaryotic and eukaryotic ‐ two distinct classes of site‐specific recombinase enzymes can be defined.

Aristotle's zoological writings with their wealth of detailed investigations on diverse species of animals have fascinated medieval and Renaissance culture. This volume explores how these texts have been read in various traditions (Arabic, Hebrew, Latin), and how they have been incorporated in different genres (in philosophical and scientific treatises, in florilegia and encyclopedias, in theological symbolism, in moral allegories, and in manuscript illustrations). This multidisciplinary and multilinguistic approach highlights substantial aspects of Aristotle's animals.

Introduction 1. Alexander in Modern Scholarship; The Present Translation The anti-Manichaean treatise of Alexander of Lycopolis has for a long time been...

Since Hegel's analysis of weltanschauung the concept of 'worldview' has received a variety of implementations relating to a shared and encompassing cultural comprehension of and by a community in a given period and society. Worldviews can best be described as the various ways in which people imagine or represent their (social) existence, how they fit together with others, how things in the world go on. They are (meta)physical systems of dispositions that function as principles that generate and organize representations and (...) practices. Implicitly and explicitly, worldviews give meaning to our everyday relation with the world and the other. With regards to people's most important beliefs and faiths, worldviews enter the domain of lifestances: what really drives people, what grounds their being and what is the main-spring of their attack in life? From a religious and ideological point of view, such questions can be answered rather unambiguously and straightforwardly. However, due to (post)modern evolutions in science and its accompanying secularization of society, the foundation and legitimation of such grand narratives are increasingly and extensively discredited. Furthermore, the expanding globalization of the world entails a far-reaching diversification of and confrontation between various belief systems. Indeed, if anything, contemporary society can no longer claim an exclusive and univocal kosmotheoros, a single theory about the world. This alleged decline of general and common frames of reference for the guidance of our daily actions seems a non sequitur however: while from a philosophical and scholarly stance, the use of a world-picture or a worldview as the absolute foundation of everyday praxis is discredited, in global socio-cultural contexts these frames of reference easily gather power for groups with ideological inspiration (religious, political, ...). In a global setting, due to an increasing globalized interconnectedness and its unprecedented degree of people with different religious and lifestance backgrounds, the tangibility of this strange non sequitur is evermore present: the idea that the finite reach of such worldviews and lifestances is sociologically and philosophically acknowledged contrasts strongly with the way in which these frames of reference all too easily seem to gather terrific power in local contexts. Every day our world witnesses the further rise of religious, political and economic radicalism, unfortunately often with dramatic scenes and results. A 'clash of civilizations' seems to be practically on our doorstep. (shrink)