Migration remains an important strategy for livelihood security in sub-Saharan Africa. Like other parts of the region, migrant flows within Ghana have historically been directed towards urban, mineral, and plantation economies. This study, however, examines a new pattern of migration related to rural livelihood that has intensified in recent decades largely in response to mounting environmental pressures and worsening poverty. Using in-depth interviews and focused group discussions and drawing on perspectives from the livelihood approach and political ecology, this paper examines (...) the challenges confronting farmers who flee poverty and environmental pressures in Ghana’s Upper West Region and migrate to the agriculture-rich area of Brong Ahafo Region to farm for subsistence. The study revealed that migrant farmers’ acute lack of social assets and agrarian resources in these remote enclaves not only hampered their productivity but also subjected them to exploitative and exclusionary practices in these remote, host communities. The study contributes to the understanding of social of realities migrant farming as an emerging safety valve for the rural poor and makes relevant policy recommendations. (shrink)

In the unequaled and majestic contemporary technological phase of our cultural development, where democratic liberties and the means of well being are accessible to everyone; man is unsatisfied, insecure, rebellious, confused and lost. More than ever before he seems to lack the sureness of his way in life. The abundance of theories, doctrines and various philosophical, social or religious systems and moral teachings fails to provide the individual today with any clarity whatsoever. Lacking this, he turns to peripheral events, to (...) sensational occurrences; he turns his attention to more and to glaring new models of technological products. more new things, mostly Acquiring a great multitude of these and various other things, he seems to stress his own importance, thus making an inquiry in its fundamental validity superfluous. In this way he escapes the search of his very own mission; he betrays the superior powers which demand from him his existential contribution in finding his ideals and outlining the way of his life. (shrink)

Adopting a broadly compatibilist approach, this volume's authors argue that the behavioral and mind sciences do not threaten the moral foundations of legal responsibility. Rather, these sciences provide fresh insight into human agency and updated criteria as well as powerful diagnostic and intervention tools for assessing and altering minds.

Offering an overall insight into the French tradition of philosophy of technology, this volume is meant to make French-speaking contributions more accessible to the international philosophical community. The first section, “Negotiating a Cultural Heritage,” presents a number of leading 20th century philosophical figures and intellectual movements that help shape philosophy of technology in the Francophone area, and feed into contemporary debates. The second section, “Coining and Reconfiguring Technoscience,” traces the genealogy of this controversial concept and discusses its meanings and relevance. (...) A third section, “Revisiting Anthropological Categories,” focuses on the relationships of technology with the natural and the human worlds from various perspectives that include anthropotechnology, Anthropocene, technological and vital norms and temporalities. The final section, “Innovating in Ethics, Design and Aesthetics,” brings together contributions that draw on various French traditions to afford fresh insights on ethics of technology, philosophy of design, techno-aesthetics and digital studies. The contributions in this volume are vivid and rich in original approaches that can spur exchanges and debates with other philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This issue of Criminal Law and Philosophy contains three papers on a topic of increasing importance within the field of "neurolaw"-namely, the implications for criminal law of direct brain intervention based mind altering techniques. To locate these papers' topic within a broader context, I begin with an overview of some prominent topics in the field of neurolaw, where possible providing some references to relevant literature. The specific questions asked by the three authors, as well as their answers and central claims, (...) are then sketched out, and I end with a brief comment to explain why this particular topic can be expected to gain more prominence in coming years. (shrink)

Philosophical compatibilism reconciles moral responsibility with determinism, and some neurolaw scholars think that it can also reconcile legal views about responsibility with scientific findings about the neurophysiological basis of human action. Although I too am a compatibilist, this paper argues that philosophical compatibilism cannot be transplanted “as-is” from philosophy into law. Rather, before compatibilism can be re-deployed, it must first be modified to take account of differences between legal and moral responsibility, and between a scientific and a deterministic world view, (...) and to address a range of conceptual, normative, empirical and doctrinal problems that orbit its capacitarian core. (shrink)

This paper centres on the question as to whether human rights can be reconciled with patriotism. It lays out the more conventional arguments which perceive them as incommensurable concepts. A central aspect of this incommensurability relates to the close historical tie between patriotism and the state. One further dimension of this argument is then articulated, namely, the contention that patriotism is an explicitly political concept. The implicit antagonism between, on the one hand, the state, politics and patriotism, and, on the (...) other hand, human rights, is illustrated via the work of Carl Schmitt. However, in the last few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in patriotism and an attempt to formulate a more moderate form, which tries to reconcile itself with universal ethical themes. Some of these arguments are briefly summarised; the discussion then focuses on Jürgen Habermas’s understanding of constitutional patriotism. This is seen to provide an effective response to Schmitt’s arguments. There are weaknesses in the constitutional patriotic argument which relate to its limited understanding of both the state and politics. This leads me to formulate my own argument for “unpatriotic patriotism.” The discussion then examines and responds to certain potential criticisms of this argument. (shrink)

The Politics of Human Rights provides an engaging and systematic introductory overview of the nature and development of human rights.

Nationalism has had a complex relation with the discipline of political theory during the 20th century. Political theory has often been deeply uneasy with nationalism in relation to its role in the events leading up to and during the Second World War. Many theorists saw nationalism as an overly narrow and potentially irrationalist doctrine. In essence it embodied a closed vision of the world. This article focuses on one key contributor to the immediate post-war debate—Karl Popper—who retained deep misgivings about (...) nationalism until the end of his life, and indeed saw the events of the early 1990s (shortly before his death) as a confirmation of this distrust. Popper was one of a number of immediate post war writers, such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, who shared this unease with nationalism. They all had a powerful effect on social and political thought in the English-speaking world. Popper particularly articulated a deeply influential perspective that fortuitously encapsulated a cold war mentality in the 1950s. In 2005 Popper's critical views are doubly interesting, since the last decade has seen a renaissance of nationalist interests. The collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the changing political landscape of international and domestic politics, has seen once again a massive growth of interest in nationalism, particularly from liberal political theorists and a growing, and, at times, immensely enthusiastic academic literature, trying to provide a distinctively benign benediction to nationalism. (shrink)

Nous proposons de lire ensemble les textes de Félix Guattari portant sur la production d’une « subjectivité capitalistique » avec ceux qu’il consacre à la question des « drogues » afin d’interroger le sens de nos couplages technologiques industriels. Cette conjonction dessine les linéaments d’une philosophie de la technique originale centrée sur l’« expérimentation risquée » que nous qualifierons de « pharmacodynamie » des techniques, par analogie avec les pratiques des « personnes utilisatrices de drogues ».

This book'¬"s chapters deal with a range of theoretical problems discussed in classic compatibilist literature '¬ ; e.g. the relationship between ...

This article examines the philosophical and theological nuances in the works of Étienne Pascal and Étienne Noël, focusing on their interpretations of Saint Augustine and Jean Duvergier de Hauranne. It explores the concept of antithesis (ἀντίθεσις) in both rhetorical and philosophical contexts, drawing upon Platonic and Aristotelian texts. The article highlights the use of antithesis in Augustine’s explanation of evil and its integration into the universal order, connecting this to 17th-century French thought, especially in relation to Blaise Pascal’s ideas on (...) rhetoric. A critical analysis of Étienne Pascal’s letter to Father Noël is presented, emphasizing his understanding of rhetorical figures, notably metaphor and antithesis, and their theological implications. The discussion extends to Saint-Cyran’s interpretation of Augustine, particularly concerning ecclesiastical guidance and priesthood preparation. The article concludes by underscoring the complex interplay between language, thought, and faith in these historical contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores relations, ruptures, and rituals in light of repetition. In turn, it considers repetition in light of Freud, Kierkegaard, and Dewey. The author’s engagement with Freud is however partly mediated by attention to how Jonathan Lear, especially in a recent book, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (2022), criticizes the Freudian conception of repetition. While Freud valorizes remembrance over repetition, Kierkegaard does just the opposite: he elevates repetition above recollection, at least in the modern age (that (...) is, in his own age as envisioned by Kierkegaard). The insights to be derived from Lear’s critique of Freud’s one-sided understanding of repetition (especially Freud’s failure to appreciate how “repetition” might be healthy) and from Kierkegaard’s treatment of this topic need to be extricated from the context in which they are articulated. Dewey’s formulation of a nuanced, variable, and multifaceted understanding of habit provides us with a framework in which these—and indeed other—insights might be more tightly integrated and sharply focused on some of the salient features of everyday experience. One of these features concerns the repeated forms of activity through which the fleeting moments of our quotidian lives are given meaning shape and worthwhile foci (that is, rituals). (shrink)

Chapter Some topics in semantics Aims of this study The central preoccupation of this study is semantic. It is intended as a modest contribution to the ...

« The students’ results are quite satisfactory, but I need to do more and more for the development of their knowledge and the evolution of my practices ». Leo is a secondary school teacher in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) who is being followed in a case study and a mentorship that focuses on the connection between his epistemological beliefs, his conceptions of teaching and learning, and his practices. This follow-up is part of a post-doctoral fellowship in Quebec, which (...) focuses on the idea that teachers’ relationship to knowledge is a part of their habitus that influences their practices. How then can Leo’s relationship to knowledge and epistemological/pedagogical beliefs explain his need to « do more and more »? What impact do they have on his practices? What teacher/researcher mentoring should be considered? Filmed observations of his SHS teaching, post-observation interviews and mentoring sessions were analyzed. We note an evolution in her practices, moving from a quantitative to a qualitative relationship with academic knowledge. (shrink)

It is acknowledged that the study of metaphor is a key inflection in Ricœur’s heremeneutics. It is perhaps less well known that this study is concomittant with one of parables, which represents an equally noteworthy inflection in Ricœur’s contribution to Biblical hermeneutics. Some, however, use this concommitance to argue that the transfer of some theological presuppositions (as to the nature of language and the Truth) is facilitated by this and then do not hesitate to claim that the pages devoted to (...) tha analogia entis , in The Rule of Metaphor , are proof of the presence of dubious theological interests in the development of his theory of metaphor. To counter this devastating critique, this article draws from some analyses by Umberto Eco, which imply that the relation between analogia entis and metaphor are not epistemologically scandalous as well as Alain, who sketched out an interpretation of parables which is very close to Ricœur’s. (shrink)

David Wootton has written an engaging book about the emergence of the theory that all human action is self-interested and that believes societies should be structured in ways that satisfy our “insa...

In this article, we utilize Merleau-Ponty’s notions of gesture, flesh and reversibility as philosophical tools to explicate the corporal reality of ritual, incarnation, sacramental presence and the church as the mystical body of Christ. The phenomenological investigation of bodily gesture provides a foundation to elucidate the meaning of symbolic presence from which we compare Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh with that of the patristic fathers, leading finally to its ecclesiological interpretation.

Résumé L’exploitation de nouvelles sources permet une recontextualisation des tentatives visant, au XVIIe siècle, à ouvrir une route de la soie russe, et principalement des projets de Frédéric III de Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf. L’article montre que ces projets, en dépit de leur caractère chimérique, s’inscrivaient dans les réseaux du commerce nord-ouest-européen vers la Russie, mais aussi qu’ils jouaient un rôle dans les évolutions de ceux-ci. Cela souligne la pertinence d’ambitions commerciales extra-européennes comme objet d’histoire européenne.

Geoffrey Hill’s prose has prompted longstanding critical controversy, much of which turns on the perceived difficulty, intransigence and anachronism of his œuvre as a whole. This paper proposes that new ways to navigate this controversy can be found in Hill’s preoccupation with the exemplary dimensions of writing – that is, in his interest in the poet’s capacity to offer examples (positive and negative) to a community of readers. The discussion pays particular attention to the connections Hill’s reviews establish between style (...) and ethical choice and between literary difficulty and democracy ; connections which are intertwined with his ethics of exemplarity in fundamental ways. The paper also engages with those dimensions of literary exemple-use which emerge in new or unusual ways in his prose : his presentation of “models” or ideals for the organisation of civil society ; his treatment of certain literary works as exemplars or embodiments of philosophical ideas ; and his procedural tic of “sampling” regularly for the purpose of chastisement the “bad example” set by some of the works he criticises. (shrink)