Most research on Ernesto “Che” Guevara has been concerned with emphasizing his ideological Marxist commitments and anti-imperial material objectives. These scholarly concerns usually constellate recycled subjective themes highlighting the revolutionary leader hating injustice, and loving justice, in tandem with the objective of eliminating imperialism and advancing a Third World project. In 2012, Che’s Apuntes filósoficos (Eng. Philosophical Notes) were published and highlighted that his exposure to philosophy regrettably occurred late in his life, and surprisingly, the difficulty he had (...) in reading Marx and Hegel. The objective, therefore, of this multidisciplinary research navigating law, theology, philosophy, and politics is threefold. First, it alludes to and critiques the familiar pedagogy of Guevara emphasizing the importance of developing a “theory in action”, “learning through action”, being a “humanist”, and “leading by example”. Secondly, it considers the consequences of Che reifying emotion (eros) over reason (logos) thereby providing a possible answer to his “failed revolutionary story” in the Congo and Bolivia with his pedagogy involving an unstable compound mixing the emotion of compassion with rage thus clouding his reason. Finally, the third section highlights that we should not relegate emotion away from the sphere of political discourse, but rather harmonize it with reason to avoid chaotic and unpredictable errors based on subjective truths. Emphasizing the former at the expense of the latter—as maintained by a realist approach to International Relations and positivist jurisprudence accenting International Law—risks undermining scholarship challenging the immoral consequences arising from a naturalized assumption separating reason and revelation thus decriminalizing colonial practices characterizing the North and South. (shrink)

How might people be wronged in relation to their feelings, moods, and emotions? Recently philosophers have begun to investigate the idea that these kinds of wrongs may constitute a distinctive form of injustice: affective injustice (Archer & Mills 2019; Mills 2019; Srinivasan 2018; Whitney 2018). In previous work, we have outlined a particular form of affective injustice that we called emotional imperialism (Archer & Matheson 2022). This paper has two main aims. First, we aim to provide an expanded account (...) of the forms that emotional imperialism can take. We will do so by drawing inspiration from William Reddy’s concept of an emotional regime and investigating ways in which colonial powers of the 18th to 20th Centuries sought to impose their emotional regimes on their colonial subjects. Second, we will offer more expansive accounts of both emotional imperialism and affective injustice that can accommodate these additional forms of emotional imperialism. (shrink)

The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline’s traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism and, in particular, interested in the conceptual clarification, (...) empirical identification, and normative assessment of the idea of scientific imperialism. Thus, this innovative volume has two main goals. Indeed, the authors first seek to understand interdisciplinary relations emerging from the incursion of one scientific discipline into one or more other disciplines, such as in cases in which the conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields; or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline’s domain. Secondly, the authors explore ways of distinguishing imperialistic from non-imperialistic interactions between disciplines and research fields. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological (...) investigations. Noyes argues that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

To date, philosophers of education have shown relatively little interest in analyzing the theoretical basis in which the economics of education is grounded. The main argument of this article is that due to the changing nature of orthodox economic theory’s influence on education, a philosophical examination of its underpinnings is required. It is maintained that as a result of economics imperialism, namely the penetration of economic modes of thinking into new domains, educational philosophers have an essential role to (...) play in examining economic theory. The article briefly discusses this role and provides some examples of how educational philosophers can make a unique contribution to current thinking about the relationship between economics and education. (shrink)

The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline's traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism and, in particular, interested in the conceptual clarification, (...) empirical identification, and normative assessment of the idea of scientific imperialism. Thus, this innovative volume has two main goals. Indeed, the authors first seek to understand interdisciplinary relations emerging from the incursion of one scientific discipline into one or more other disciplines, such as in cases in which the conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields; or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline's domain. Secondly, the authors explore ways of distinguishing imperialistic from non-imperialistic interactions between disciplines and research fields. The first sustained study of scientific imperialism, this volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Sociology of Science & Technology, Philosophy of Science, and History of Science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic brings to our attention in a forceful way that feminist modernity is complicit with imperialist ideals and attitudes. She offers an extensive set of examples, analyses and arguments to recommend a nonideal universalism while embracing maternal ‘feminized power’ from non-Western cultures. I comprehend her arguments to understand salient features of imperialist feminism and then contextualize her critique in the South Asian context of feminist discourse. Expanding on her main critique of Western imperialist (...) hegemony, I propose pluriversal philosophies as a positive approach towards a more just world. I take inspiration from Mignolo, Phule, Ambedkar, Buddha, Anzaldúa and Freire as philosophers of praxis and engage with important anti-hegemonic scholars and organizations to offer a pragmatic translation of powerful ideas. (shrink)

Expanding on recent philosophical contributions to the conceptual and normative framework of scientific imperialism, I examine whether the economics approach to social epistemology can be considered a case of economics imperialism and determine whether economics’ explanatory expansionism appropriately contributes to this philosophical subfield or not. I argue first that the economics approach to social epistemology counts as a case of economics imperialism under a broad conception of the term, and second that we have good reasons (...) to doubt the appropriateness of the incursion of economics into social epistemology, insofar as economics’ attempt at explanatory unification fails to express significant human interests. (shrink)

The article talks about the emergence of the theory of imperialism and neocolonialism, the reasons that gave rise to it, and its effects on the development of humanity in the current period. Imperialism is a multifaceted, multidimensional problem. It is a political issue, it has philosophical, scientific and technological foundations, it has economic, sociological, geographical, ethnic, religious and educational dimensions. But the fact that it is primarily a human problem makes it a multifaceted problem. Surely we can (...) increase these reasons. But no matter how much we multiply, colonization of one society by another society, confiscation of its wealth, enslavement and cultural separation is the most visible form of this. But this experience is not unprecedented in human history. Because human history has been a kind of exploitation, enslavement and attempts to create superiority. As Camus said, "Man emerges as the most dangerous being for his species". Attitudes to imperialism may vary between tribal and celestial cultures. After all, the culture of heaven is a culture cultivated by divine teaching. Exploitation and slavery are the dominant attitudes of tribal cultures. In these cultures, the relationship between man and man is based on power, wealth and nobility. In celestial cultures, the relationship between man and man was determined by nomos, divine laws. Heavenly culture is the product of a will that emerges for "good will" to prevail. It should be known that colonialism is a tribal behavior wherever and whenever it occurs. Because they do not see other societies as equal to themselves, it is a desire to dominate, exploit and enslave those who are not like themselves. From this perspective, colonialism can be seen as one of the oldest forms of behavior in history. This situation appears as the victory of the strong over the weak. Since transcendental attachment does not occur, they are in a position to absolutize their self. As a result, they see themselves as masters to be served, they see in themselves the right to such an inclination. It can be misleading to associate the colonial movement with human nature. It is more about the degradation and degeneration of human nature, it is about self-cultivation. It is a matter of outlook. The heavenly cultures, where the powerless were protected and spared, showed themselves not in a colonial style, but in a protective and compassionate way. We can see this patronizing relationship in the states established within the celestial cultures. (shrink)

In his essay “The Crisis in the Teaching of Philosophy” Derrida writes “Philosophy would repeat itself and would reproduce its own tradition as the teaching of its own crisis and as the paideia of self-critique in general. This paideia goes hand in hand, and there is nothing fortuitous about this, with what I will call without taking it lightly, an imperialist self-confidence of philosophy.” In a properly Derridean fashion these lines are haunting for me. What is “imperialist” about philosophy; the (...) self-confidence? Is the confidence imperialist or is it the entire content of the philosophical tradition? Is there something colonial about not only dominating other disciplines and assigning them their regional ontologies, but also about the very discourse of philosophy itself? Of course, this very question presupposes there is such a thing as a “philosophical discourse” that has an identity which is itself a philosophical question. Is there such a thing as identity? If philosophy does not have this discursive identity, is it the crisis that is imperialist, crisis in the sense of constantly being separated from itself, always not having an identity or “never having an identity”? Perhaps in a different yet admittedly still problematic way, does philosophy dominate, colonize, thinking itself, both culturally and conceptually. Derrida continues his essay by forging an alliance between decolonization and deconstruction. It is a curious alliance because it both endorses and rejects philosophy (in a properly philosophical fashion): “If, like philosophy and the deconstruction of the philosophical, decolonization is interminable, it is because it cannot be effective either as simple mode of reappropriation or as a simple mode of opposition or overturning.” (Derrida 2002, 103). (shrink)

In recent years, several authors advocated neuroscience imperialism, an instance of scientific imperialism whereby neuroscience methods and findings are systematically applied to model and explain phenomena investigated by other disciplines. Calls for neuroscience imperialism target a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, economics, and philosophy. To date, however, neuroscience imperialism has not received detailed attention by philosophers, and the debate concerning its identification and normative assessment is relatively underdeveloped. In this paper, I aim to remedy this (...) situation by making some conceptual distinctions about neuroscience imperialism and by providing a normative assessment of prominent calls in its favour. I shall articulate and defend two interrelated claims that, I argue, undermine prominent calls for neuroscience imperialism. First, the proponents of neuroscience imperialism significantly overstate the evidential and explanatory relevance of neuroscience methods and findings for the disciplines they target. And second, prominent calls for neuroscience imperialism point to an untenable reductionist position, which rests on unsupported empirical and normative presuppositions. To substantiate these two claims, I shall draw on two sets of influential calls for neuroscience imperialism, which respectively target the economic modelling of choice and entrenched philosophical conceptions of free agency. (shrink)

Current debates over so-called ‘scientific imperialism’, on one plausible reading, explore significant general issues about the proper boundaries between distinct disciplines. They raise questions about whether some forms of territorial expansion by scientific disciplines into other domains of inquiry are undesirable. Clearly there is a strong normative undercurrent here, as the use of the pejorative term ‘imperialism’ would indicate. However, we face a genuine puzzle here: why should we regard some forms of expansion as illegitimate? Why should any (...) particular boundaries between various disciplines be regarded as sacrosanct? In response we note that one striking feature of the examples upon which opponents of scientific imperialism focus (such as the use of economics for sociological explanations) is that that they involve cases where folk conceptions of morality and philosophical anthropology appear to be threatened. We suggest that rather than seeking a more general pluralist account of the proper boundaries between disciplines, we should consider the epistemic and normative implications of particular expansions. (shrink)

How does empire become transposed onto justice? There are two kinds of question here, one historical the other conceptual, though they are often entwined. First, we may ask whether there are particular arguments about justice that were subsequently used in the justification of empire or colonialism. Or, we may seek to trace the conceptual structure of argu- ments justifying imperialism to their roots in particular philosophical views, debunking their supposed universalism.3 Second, we may ask about the very nature (...) of the concept of global justice and the values it expresses in relation to other important values. Is the very notion of global justice imperialistic, just because it claims there are universal values applicable to everyone everywhere, whatever their particular ways of life or worldviews? (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have debated about the justifiability of so-called scientific imperialism. To date, however, widespread disagreements remain regarding both the identification and the normative evaluation of scientific imperialism. In this paper, I aim to remedy this situation by making some conceptual distinctions concerning scientific imperialism and by providing a detailed assessment of the most prominent objections to it. I shall argue that these objections provide a valuable basis for opposing some instances of scientific (...) class='Hi'>imperialism, but do not yield cogent reasons to think that scientific imperialism in general is objectionable or unjustified. I then highlight three wide-ranging implications of this result for the ongoing philosophical debate about the justifiability of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophical conception of human rights that responds satisfactorily to the challenges raised by cultural and political critics of human rights, who contend that the contemporary human rights movement is promoting an imperialist ideology, and that the humanitarian intervention for protecting human rights is a neo-colonialism. These claims affect the normativity and effectiveness of human rights; that is why they have to be taken seriously. At the same time, the same philosophical account dismisses the imperialist (...) crusaders who support the imperialistic use of human rights by the West to advance liberal culture. Thus, after elaborating and exposing these criticisms, the book confronts them to the human rights theories of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, in order to see whether they can be addressed. Unfortunately, they are not. Therefore, having shown that these two philosophical accounts of human rights do not respond convincingly to those the postco lonial challenges, the book provides an alternative conception that draws the understanding of human rights from local practices. It is a multilayer conception which is not centered on state, but rather integrates it in a larger web of actors involved in shaping the practice and meaning of human rights. Confronted to the challenges, this new conception offers a promising way for addressing them satisfactorily, and it even sheds new light to the classical questions of universality of human rights, as well as the tension between universalism and relativism.. (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 73-102.

This dissertation analyzes the philosophical theories and politics of Kitaro Nishida , the founder of modern Japanese philosophy, and Tetsuro Watsuji , the second most famous philosopher in Japan. Both Nishida and Watsuji develop a "spatialized" conception of history to contrast with a temporal model which had the effect of situating Europe as the most advanced form of modern culture. According to their view, the representation of world history should take into account the contemporaneous developments of all cultures. ;Positioning (...) themselves as non-European thinkers but sharing in the modern European intellectual tradition, Nishida and Watsuji develop original philosophical positions in the language of Western philosophy. After the initial formulation of the theory of "pure experience" under the influence of William James, Nishida develops a metaphysical theory of "place," a dialectical system inspired by Hegel. Using Heideggerian phenomenology, Watsuji develops his own theories of "milieu" and "Being-between" . In an attempt to go beyond Eurocentrism, these theories sought to widen the context of Western philosophy from a non-Western point of view. ;However, in the 1940s when Japan became an imperialist state, Nishida and Watsuji used their philosophical theories to justify wartime political ideology. Their anti-Eurocentrism thus allied with Japanese nationalism. However, their philosophical theories could have been developed to critique nationalism rather than endorse it. Their error resulted from the persistent framework of "East vs. West" which essentialized Japan's identity vis-a-vis the West. (shrink)

We highlight the important lessons our contributors present in our collective project of fostering dialogues both between applied ethics and computer science and between cultures. These include: critical reflexivity; procedural (partly Habermasian) approaches to establishing such central norms as “emancipation”; the importance of local actors in using ICTs both for global management and in development projects – especially as these contribute the trust essential for the social context of use of new technologies; and pluralistic approaches that preserve local cultural differences (...) alongside shared norms. May Thorseth then contextualizes our work vis-a-vis broader philosophical discussions of deliberation and democracy. (shrink)

This essay centres on the English translation of Georg Lukács’s Tailism and the Dialectic. Lukács is generally heralded as a founding theoretician of a ‘Western Marxism’, in opposition to ‘Eastern’ Soviet Marxism, and his most impressive and most influential work, History and Class Consciousness, is generally treated as having rehabilitated Marxist concern with questions of subjectivity. It might therefore come as a surprise when Lukács in Tailism states that the purpose of History and Class Consciousness was to demonstrate ‘that the (...) organisation and tactics of Bolshevism are the only possible consequence of Marxism’. In my view, however, this should already be abundantly clear from History and Class Consciousness. For Lukács’s absorption with proletarian subjectivity was motivated by an obsession with what he saw as its immaturity. And he coined the category of ‘reification’ in order to explain his disappointed expectations, to explain, that is, why the proletariat did not make a ‘socialist’ revolution in the ‘objectively ripe’ situation of an ‘imperialist war’ created by ‘moribund capitalism’. In short, Lukács did raise anew the question of the subjective, but only to then declare that workers, not even ‘the most revolutionary among them’, could never attain proper class consciousness, which he attributed instead to the ‘revolutionary party’ bearing the properly revolutionary theory. For this reason I agree with Slavoj Žižek’s characterisation of Lukács as the ‘ultimate philosopher [my emphasis] of Leninism’ – although I do think that Lenin himself would have found, as he did in connection with one of Lukács’s other works, Marxism ‘present only at a verbal level’. My concern is two-fold: with a critique of the methodological short-cuts that Lukács made in his purely conceptual derivation of the concept of reification, and his purely conceptual attribution of it as the necessary form of working-class consciousness ‘in its immediacy’; and with the dangerous political consequences that Lukács derived from his assessment of the reified character of working-class subjectivity, mainly a theoretical guarantee that the party with the proper revolutionary theory must always be right, or at least more right than anyone else. (shrink)

These two ambitious volumes from one of the world's most celebrated political philosophers present a new kind of political and legal theory that James Tully calls a public philosophy, and a complementary new way of thinking about active citizenship, called civic freedom. Professor Tully takes the reader step-by-step through the principal debates in political theory and the major types of political struggle today. These volumes represent a genuine landmark in political theory. In this second volume, Professor Tully studies networks and (...) civic struggles over global or imperial relations of inequality, dependency, exploitation and environmental degradation beyond the state. The final chapter brings all of the author's resonant themes together in a new way of thinking about global and local citizenship, and of political theory in relation to it. This forms a powerful conclusion to a major intervention from a vital and distinctive voice in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Because of Professor Cooley's prosecutorial review, I want to make clear at the outset that my rejoinder is not a codefendant's answer to a plaintiff's replication. Instead, I first attempt to provide an ?immanent? analysis of Cooley's indictment, in the sense of dealing with what dwells within his reasoning. A specific philosophical definition of ?immanent? reads: taking place within the mind of the subject, but having no effect outside (this does not apply to me as an outsider). I intend (...) to battle with Cooley up close?no ?dancing??my defense against his offense. In the second part, the focus will be on what I think is missing from Cooley's attempt to discredit McLaren and Farahmandpur's book. His decision or failure to deal with what Marx and the most effective Marxists have written, and how some of this provided analyses that could be and/or was acted upon, may be more serious than his beating up on the book's authors. (shrink)

One important element of globalization is the dissemination of western educational ideals and organizational frameworks through educational development projects. While postcolonial theory has long offered a useful critique of this expansion, it is less clear about how educational development that eschews neo-imperialist tendencies might proceed. This problem poses a question that requires philosophical reflection. However, much of comparative and international development education ignores philosophical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as Libbrecht (2007) argues, philosophy all too often sees itself as (...) synonymous with the Euro-American intellectual tradition, thus ignoring indigenous educational thought that might more appropriately guide local educational development. Drawing on John Dewey's (1938) call for deeper and more inclusive plans of operations in response to social conflicts and Jurgen Habermas (2008) call for ?reciprocal learning processes? and ?cooperative acts of translation,? we will attempt to reach beyond our individual philosophical borders to explore the necessity and possibilities of comparative philosophy of education by sharing three examples of our current efforts to apply philosophical analysis to international educational development. These examples will articulate and embody the necessity and the challenges of applying philosophical analysis to educational development work. (shrink)

Adaptationism has for decades been the topic of sophisticated debates in philosophy of biology but methodological adaptationism has not received as much attention as the empirical and explanatory issues. In addition, adaptationism has mainly been discussed in the context of evolutionary biology and not in fields such as zoophysiology and systems biology where this heuristic is also used in design analyses of physiological traits and molecular structures. This paper draws on case studies from these fields to discuss the productive and (...) problematic aspects of this heuristic in different research practices, in functional as well as evolutionary studies on different levels of biological organization. Gould and Lewontin’s Spandrels-paper famously criticized adaptationist methodology for implying the risk of generating ‘blind spots’ with respect to non-selective effects on evolution. Some have claimed that this bias can be accommodated through the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Although this is an important aspect of overcoming naïve adaptationism, I argue that the issue of methodological biases is broader than the question of testability. I demonstrate the productivity of adaptationist heuristics but also discuss the deeper problematic aspects associated with the methodological imperialism that is part of the strong adaptationist position. (shrink)

While most people agree that September 11, 2001, witnessed a terribly important series of events, opinions about the meaning of these events diverge sharply. This book searches for sense in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Consisting of fourteen essays written by leading philosophers, most of which have been specially commissioned for this volume, it offers a philosophical reflection on the implications of 9/11. The contributors engage with a broad range of issues associated with the causes and (...) consequences of 9/11, including American imperialism, anti-Americanism, Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, the idea of pre-emptive war, and the role of the media. They consider how 9/11 has altered the terms and categories of philosophical debate, looking at changes in the conception of moral and political reasoning, rationality and responsibility, and the repercussions for justice, human rights and international law. (shrink)

In analysis of reactions to the NATO-led bombing of Kosova, the author finds that radical critics relied on a disembodied logic of anti-imperialism rather than focusing on the experience of the Kosovar population. For this reason, the author argues that the left failed to consider the history of Kosovar nonviolent resistance to Serbian domination or the Serbian repressions that followed. And in the aftermath of the bombing, the left failed to see how NATO intervention was also leveled at dismembering (...) the indigenous liberation struggle of the Kosovar population. Behind these errors, the author argues for philosophic reform of left analysis, that will move beyond binary oppositions of imperialism/anti-imperialism, into more dialectical engagement with historical particulars, especially when those particulars involve emerging indigenous movements for liberation. (shrink)

Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation explores Hinduism and the distinction between the secular and religious on a global scale. According to Ranganathan, a careful philosophical study of Hinduism reveals it as the microcosm of philosophical disagreements with Indian resources, across a variety of topics, including: ethics, logic, the philosophy of thought, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. This analysis offers an original and fresh diagnosis of studying Hinduism, colonialism and a global rise of hyper-nationalism, as well as (...) the frequent acrimony between scholars and practitioners of Hindu traditions. -/- This text is appropriate for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on Hinduism, and Indian philosophy, and can be used as an advanced introduction to the problems of philosophy with South Asian resources. (shrink)

This brand new and fully updated edition builds upon nearly three decades of research, thought, conversation, and teaching of the most powerful political ideologies of our era. The Fourth Edition expands the treatment with significantly updated treatments of each ideology and new discussions of conservatism, neoconservativism, imperialism, Islamism, modernity, colonialism, and globalization. It contextualizes and explains the ideological foundations of the American war on terrorism and ongoing developments in nation states where pivotal ideological developments are occurring, especially the United (...) States, China, and Iran. The authors also offer fully updated introductory and concluding chapters on the ongoing significance of studying ideologies and their meaning in a new global era. (shrink)

Defenders of the Enlightenment highlight the long neglected anticolonial writings of thinkers like Immanuel Kant, which serve as a corrective to the misrepresentation of the Enlightenment's epistemological investment in imperialism. One of the most pervasive repercussions of the claim that the Enlightenment was always already anti-imperial is that postcolonial critique is rendered redundant, and the project of decolonizing European philosophy becomes unnecessary. Contesting the exoneration of Enlightenment philosophers of racism and sexism, this article debunks the claim that Kantian cosmopolitanism (...) was an antidote to colonialism. Addressing the ambivalent legacies of the European Enlightenment for the postcolonial world, with special focus on the “Syrian refugee crisis,” the article examines the enduring normative violence exerted by Enlightenment principles of cosmopolitanism and outlines the contested terrains that inflect current geopolitics of knowledge-production. Given that the normative idea of philosophy, as defined during the Enlightenment, continues to delegitimize non-European perspectives, the integration of previously marginalized knowledges into the philosophical canon is insufficient; rather, in order to desubalternize non-Western epistemologies, it is imperative to undo the uneven distribution of epistemic agency globally. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak's ideas of transnational literacy and planetary ethics, the article concludes by underscoring the contribution of postcolonial-feminist critique in imagining postimperial philosophy in a global age. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and (...) Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

Great historical crises oblige us to choose not between violence and nonviolence, but between two different forms of violence. Nonviolent movements are no exception to this rule. In the US, with the outbreak of the War of Secession, the Christian-nonviolent movement was obliged to choose between the violence of the Union-army and the violence of slavery. With the outbreak of World-War One, Lenin chose revolution, while, in India, Gandhi became the ‘recruiting agent-in-chief’ for the British army. At that moment, he (...) struggled not for the general emancipation of colonial peoples, but only for the co-optation of the Indian people under the ruling races, and this co-optation was to be gained on the battlefield. While in the past, in spite of their mistakes and oscillations, the protagonists of nonviolence were an integral part of the anticolonialist movement, today nonviolence is the watchword of imperialism, which tries to discredit as violent its enemies and challengers. (shrink)

English Abstract This paper examines arguments made by the Argentinean philosopher Risieri Frondizi in his essay “On the Unity on the Philosophies of the Two Americas” regarding the legitimacy of unifying the philosophic traditions of the Americas. It argues that the present situation is much as it was in the 1950’s: the two largest philosophical communities of the Americas are still generally isolated from each other and the integration of these communities is a legitimate aspiration. The paper then examines (...) the concern, mentioned by Frondizi, that Pan-Americanism is political propaganda concealing U.S. imperialism in Latin America. It concludes that Frondizi’s arguments in favor of unifying American philosophies should encourage philosophers across the Americas to integrate the philosophical traditions of the Americas through a dialogue that explicitly addresses the United States’ history of anti-democratic actions in Latin America. Resumen en español Este articulo examina los argumentos formulados por el filósofo argentino Risieri Frondizi en su ensayo “Sobre la unidad de las filosofías de las dos Américas” con respeto a la legitimidad de la unificación de las tradiciones filosóficas de las Américas. Argumenta que la situación actual es tanto como lo fue en la década de 1950: las dos comunidades filosóficas más grandes de las Américas en general siguen siendo aislados unos de otros y la integración de estas comunidades es una aspiración legítima. Este articulo entonces se examina la preocupación, mencionada por Frondizi, que el panamericanismo es un tipo de propaganda política que oculta el imperialismo de EE.UU. en América Latina. Llega a la conclusión de que los argumentos de Frondizi en favor de unificación de las filosofías de las Américas deben fomentar los filósofos de las Américas para integrar las tradiciones filosóficas de las Américas a través de un diálogo que aborde explícitamente la historia de las acciones anti-democráticas en América Latina de los Estados Unidos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical ReadingRichard A. S. Hall William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical Reading. Ed. H. G. Callaway. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.In 1907 William James was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. Initially he was reluctant to do so since he feared undertaking them would divert him from developing rigorously and systematically some (...) metaphysical ideas of his own that had preoccupied him for some time. [End Page 130]In the end, however, he relented and in the spring of 1908 gave the lectures which were subsequently published as A Pluralistic Universe.As it happened, though, in the course of these lectures James presented some of those metaphysical ideas, though in a popular and informal style appropriate to lecturing. Later on he did get down to working out a systematic metaphysics in proper academic style, but the project was cut short by his untimely death in 1910. The incomplete Some Problems of Philosophy,posthumously published in 1911, recapitulates some major themes of A Pluralistic Universe.When James addressed his Oxford audience, the time was ripe for the advancement of his own brand of metaphysical pluralism and radical empiricism in opposition to the still-regnant forms of monistic idealism as represented by Bradley, Green, and Royce. The hegemony in the philosophical world long enjoyed by idealism was beginning to break up—something noted by James in his first lecture—due in no small part to the very ideas aired in his lectures and the then newly emerging schools of pragmatism and realism. The period between 1914 and 1918 not only rings the death knell of European imperialism but also, significantly, marks the watershed between nineteenth-and twentieth-century philosophy.The argument of A Pluralistic Universerevolves around the Parmenidean conundrum of the one-and-the-many. It is the solution to this problem that was the main bone of contention between James and absolute idealists like F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, and Josiah Royce. For them, the world in reality is but one thing, though appearing illusorily as many, with a pervasive unity throughout—it is a "block-universe," to use James's expression for it; for James, by contrast, the world is irreducibly many things whose unities are partial and shifting. The gravamen of James's objections to absolute idealism was its monism, though he objected no less strenuously to other ideas associated with it: its doctrine of internal relations; its determinism; and, in particular, its deprecation of experience in favor of concepts (what James condemns as "vicious intellectualism"). James proposed, against this monolithic idealism, the alternative hypothesis of metaphysical pluralism. Here he affirmed the reality of external relations (particularly conjunctions) among things and the continuities within experience, thereby making his empiricism "radical." He approached experience phenomenologically, finding it, not concepts, to be constitutive of reality, the value of concepts being more practical than theoretical. He conceived of the universe as being open-ended, where human agency can make a difference for the better.A subtext of A Pluralistic Universeis James's advocacy of something like [End Page 131]traditional theism in contradistinction to the pantheism of absolute idealism. He rightly notes that the Absolute is not the God of Christianity. He believes that his pluralistic ontology allows for, and the religious experiences of people abundantly attest to, the existence of a personal God, albeit a finite one, with whom communion and commerce is possible. At a deeper, psychological level, though, A Pluralistic Universeis an expression of James's own desire to feel "at home" in the universe, a desire, I should add, that he shares with many protagonists of classic American fiction, and which is perhaps intensified by the experience of inhabiting and accommodating one's self to the relatively unfamiliar New World. He complains about the "foreignness" of the Absolute in objective idealism and of that sovereign God, in traditional theisms, subsisting beyond all human influence or effects.Howard Callaway's recent edition of James's Hibbert Lectures joins the Harvard edition of them, with a foreword by Richard J. Bernstein, as an indispensable volume of James's... (shrink)

The author draws a distinction between the reflective (epistemic) tradition of philosophiz­ing and the value philosophy, which perceives the world correlating it with the needs and interests of people as well as viewing it through the prism of the man’s value preferences. The author derives this distinction from the difference between denotative judgments about being and prescriptive judgments about the proper. These two types of judgments are claimed to be related but not reducible to each other and not derived from (...) one an­other. The author defends the right of a refleсtive philosophy to speak in the language of verifiable judgments of truth, while opposing the position of cognitive imperialism, which absolutizes the truth and turns it into the substance of the human spirit. The author treats the anthropological and gnoseological interpretations of the reflective philosophy, which limit its subject to the analysis of the man in his praxiological, axiological and gnoseological relation to the world, as insufficient. The article defends the now unfash­ionable substantive understanding of philosophy, according to which its object is not the man, but the world surrounding and embracing us, and its subject is the possible unity of the world considered in the aspects of its integrative wholeness and taxonomic univer­sality. An integrative approach that looks for substantive distinctions and connections be­tween the subsystems of the world, is carried out by natural philosophy, social philoso­phy, and philosophy of consciousness. Philosophical ontology has a different objective. It begins with the axiomatic problem of the existence of the world, the relation between the real and the ideal, and proceeds to verifiable judgments about the referential relations between the various "realms of being”. The world is considered by the discipline of on­tology in a conceptual projection “the separate – the singular – the particular – the univer­sal”, which is different from a conceptual projection “the whole – the part”. The author argues for the importance of the ontological problematics, which is of great methodologi­cal importance for non-philosophical (first of all, social and humanitarian) sciences. (shrink)

"Critical Approaches to International Relations: Philosophical Foundations and Current Debates explores the achievements of a wide variety of critical approaches in International Relations theory, discusses the barrage of criticism and theoretical openings they levied against the IR orthodoxy and suggests future potential of critical IR scholarship to improve not only our explanatory possibilities, but also our ethical and practical horizons. In line with this broad objective, the book examines a number of influential approaches within critical IR scholarship, including core (...) strands of critical IR theory such as Marxism, post-structuralism, Feminism, post-colonialism and green politics as well as some sub-school approaches such as Marxist theories of imperialism, dependency perspective, uneven and combine development and non-western IR theory. Contributors are: M. Kürşad Özekin, Engin Sune, Çağdaş Özeniş, Gözde Turan, Mine Nur Küçük, Neslihan Dikmen Alsancak, Zeynep Arıöz, Pınar Akgül, and Altuğ Günar"--. (shrink)

René Girard’s work often seems suspect to liberals, because it appears as a totalizing narrative. Such hesitancy with respect to either dismissing or endorsing it follows from the demise of “grand narratives” that brought with them imperialistic and hegemonic tendencies. Yet if a liberal viewpoint does not embrace Girard, it is for different reasons that conservatives are either fully supportive of his thought as promising a return to religious values or hesitant about accepting his theories because they critique a form (...) of violence inherent to any community. Girardian thought, it can be argued, has focused on deconstructing mythological justifications for violent activity at the expense of establishing a fruitful position regarding positive communal formations. The tensions between these juxtaposed liberal and conservative viewpoints, as taken up in this article, illustrate an impasse between deconstructivist-genealogists and communitarians —one that shows up in a variety of contexts today. Highlighting this particular standoff in interpretations of Girard can, nevertheless, yield important insights regarding the ultimate significance of his work. (shrink)

The connection between Chinese sexism and Confucianism has been a subject of study on the condition of Chinese women in the West since the rise of feminist consciousness in the 1970s. However Confucianism in feminist scholarship is inescapably construed as a misogynous ideology that is incapable of self-rectification in regards to the issue of gender parity. Hence, conceptually the eradication of Confucianism becomes the necessary condition for the liberation of Chinese women, and the adoption of Western ideology let it be (...) Marxist-socialism, Liberalism, or Existentialism is then a logical next step for Chinese women. Yet, such a dichotomization of the West as a superior moral subject and the East as a passive object victimized by their "sexist" tradition is nevertheless an oversimplification of the condition and the liberation of women in the developing world. In the end, it is essentially a neo-colonial discourse in a feminist disguise. This dissertation sets itself up to accomplish two tasks: first, it is to obtain a conceptual clarity of what constitutes Confucianism and its connection with dominant sexist, social practices; second, it is to go beyond a mere critique of Confucianism and feminism as an ally of Chinese patriarchal family structure and Western imperialism respectively, and to lay a foundation for a future construction of a gender theory based on Confucianism as a theoretical ground to explain the cultural construct of Chinese women and to conceive an alternative ethical ground for women's liberation. Eventually, the whole project can be seen as an act of self-affirmation of my ethnic identity as a Chinese and an act of reconciliation with my feminist identity in the modern world. (shrink)