The history of Wakanda began thousands of years ago when five African tribes fought over a meteorite containing vibranium. In the world of Black Panther, Killmonger's plan to arm African descendants across the globe represents the beginning stages of the Pan‐African ideal, where Blacks all over the world fight for liberation by any means necessary. Pan‐Africanism represents the expression of shared values and common interests of Africans across the diaspora. In a departure from liberalism toward a more realist theoretical approach, (...) African Americans realized with frustration that the expectation that emancipation would end exploitation of Blacks and restore their dignity was mistaken. Whereas Killmonger wants Wakanda to free oppressed Black communities all over the world, T'Challa wants to work through global institutions and the international community. (shrink)

With technology beyond the comprehension of any other country (thanks to their supply of vibranium), Wakanda has enough power to rival any nation on Earth. T'Challa oversees this power with wisdom, leading his kingdom with benevolence. Despite Wakanda's isolationism, T'Challa views outsiders positively, and ultimately he comes to see humanity as one tribe. Killmonger's perspective is different. One way to look at Black Panther is through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement, comparing T'Challa to Dr. Martin (...) Luther King, Jr. and comparing Killmonger to Malcolm X. Like T'Challa, Dr. King was an inspirational leader, beloved by those who followed him. King wanted to build bridges and establish an open line of communication between the African American community and the Caucasian community. (shrink)

T'Challa, seemingly risen from the dead after having suffered grievous wounds and a fall from a high cliff, openly challenges Erik Killmonger's right to be called King of Wakanda. With T'Challa's return, Killmonger orders W'Kabi to "kill this clown," but Okoye decides to follow tradition, not Killmonger, saying to her husband W'Kabi that "the challenge is not complete." The same principle is at work when, earlier in the film, T'Challa engages in ritual combat against M'Baku, leader of (...) the Jabari Tribe. T'Challa, occupying the most privileged position, can smile bemusedly and shake his head at Shuri's outburst, and a child in the crowd can innocently slap his hand to his forehead in disbelief; but the adults present are not amused at Shuri's transgressions. Shuri may be the most visible gadfly, but the harshest – and, ultimately, most effective – critics of Wakanda's kings are Killmonger, Nakia, and T'Challa himself. (shrink)

The original comic version of T'Challa is a traditional monarch, whose actions demonstrate his concern for maintaining power and securing his nation. In fact, with his strategic use of violence, his demonstrations of empathy and humanity, and his embrace of religious symbolism, T'Challa was classically “Machiavellian” in the comics. "Panther's Rage" chronicles T'Challa's return to Wakanda after an extended stay in the United States as a costumed superhero, most notably with the Avengers. Machiavelli would approve of (...) class='Hi'>T'Challa's embrace of violence. Machiavelli was keenly aware of how a ruler should be perceived by his subjects, suggesting that a successful ruler will appear to possess five key qualities that meet with the approval of his subjects: mercy, faith, honesty, humanity, and religion. T'Challa is never as cruel as some of Machiavelli's models, but he does preserve his divinely ordained kingdom by employing fear and religion to stay in power. (shrink)

One of the issues for T'Challa is how to respond to the refugees from broken African states while maintaining the isolationist interests of Wakanda. By the end of the film, T'Challa embraces a more complex form of responsibility that is closer to what Hannah Arendt envisions. In the throne room Eric Killmonger says, "It's about two billion people all over the world that looks like us, but their lives are a lot harder." With Killmonger's death, T'Challa begins (...) to direct Wakandan resources and technologies towards international social outreach to rectify the failures of generations of his ancestors. The argument between T'Challa and Killmonger is unusual within the superhero genre; the villain wins and compels the hero to take a dramatic turn. Killmonger seems to advocate killing millions of people, presumably white people, so that the world can start over with the Black people "on top.". (shrink)

T'Challa, the Black Panther, wears many hats, both at home and abroad. He is the chieftain of the Panther Tribe, which makes him the spiritual leader of his people as well as the king of Wakanda and its head of state. One key aspect that separates virtue ethics from its rival moral theories, consequentialism and deontology, is its focus on character. Judgment, or what Aristotle called "practical wisdom", is the ability to decide how best to act on one's virtues (...) in a particular situation. When T'Challa believed that agents within the US government were helping to overthrow his own, he and the Dora Milaje drove a truck into a building and abducted a businessman involved in the operation. T'Challa's duties as an Avenger come into conflict with his role as king of Wakanda, but other conflicts result from his role as a spiritual leader, which he regards as more important. (shrink)

In Black Panther, T'Challa and Erik "Killmonger" Stevens experience audiences with their departed fathers. Careful analysis of the second and especially the third Ancestral Plane visits downplays the metaphysical, leading toward a metaphor for better understanding one's place in the world. M'Baku fights gallantly, but T'Challa prevails, and bolsters his worthiness for the throne by sparing M'Baku's life. T'Challa rises from the ground, not in the entombed Hall of Kings, but in what appears to be an African (...) savanna where the sky is rippled in majestic blues and purples, giving off a twilight ambiance. Ingesting it increases one's strength, speed, agility, and stamina. It is akin to Captain America's super soldier serum, which reminds us of that awesome footrace between T'Challa and Steve in Avengers: Infinity War. The Heart Shaped Herb potion, then, helps T'Challa and Killmonger achieve greater focus on each man's past and allows a better perspective on who each one. (shrink)

Eric Killmonger is a power‐hungry villain and the new world order he wants to set up would be no less oppressive than the one he'd replace. Killmonger foresees a "Wakandan Empire" in which people of African descent are "on top" and the formerly powerful are slaughtered, along with their children and "anyone else who takes their side." "Civilizing barbarians" meant introducing them to Roman technology, administrative and legal systems, and, as the Romans saw it, the superior Roman culture and way (...) of life. Imagine a Wakandan who knows only the worship of the cat‐goddess Bast and ape‐god Hanuman, trying to mediate disputes between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, with no understanding of their traditions. In his post‐credits speech to the United Nations, T'Challa sees Wakanda as having a moral duty to share its knowledge and resources with the outside world. (shrink)

The paradoxes at the heart of Wakandan society as well as its highly desirable resources mean that it is often the subject of attacks, invasions by outsiders, and attempted political revolutions. At first it might seem a bit dubious to think that Edmund Burke can have anything to say about Wakandan politics. The reason for Burke's opposition to revolution lies in how he thought that societies ought to grow and change. Instead of revolution – which tears down society as it (...) is and erects something entirely new in its place – Burke preferred gradual, organic change that builds upon the parts of a society that already work well. Feminists might argue that patriarchy is poisonous for society and that Wakanda needs more women in power. After Eric Killmonger throws T'Challa over the waterfall during their ritual combat and assumes power, Wakandan society finds itself torn in two. (shrink)

Black Panther presents an African cultural tapestry. The wide breadth of the African elements fit Black Panther well within Afrofuturism, a genre defined by its use and placement of people of African descent in the past, present, and future of society. Beyond these cultural elements, Black Panther 's Afrofuturism employs water imagery and spinal cord injury as potent symbols of disconnection and reconnection. Black Panther draws from a long tradition of Afrofuturist literature that is influenced by a desire to remedy (...) the injuries of the past and reconnect people of African descent with the continent from which they've been severed. Black Panther 's Afrofuturism reimagines antebellum slavery society's flight fantasy as a powerful science fiction, T'Challa's Royal Talon Flyer. The narratives of T'Challa, Shuri, and Wakanda have been continuously remolded and expanded upon since the 1960s by artists who have been inspired by other Afrofuturist works. (shrink)

Here I want to examine two different ways of viewing/reading Black Panther. I will call the first reading the Standard Morality Reading (SMR). I will call the second reading the Liberation Morality Reading (LMR). I argue that these two readings, and the forms of morality that influence them, are in tension with each other throughout the movie. They also produce a tension or moral struggle in King T’Challa and the citizens of Wakanda in general.

Agent Ross's interrogation of Ulysses Klaue doesn't just explain the significance of vibranium, it frames vibranium as “the most valuable metal known to man,” which, in turn, establishes what ends up being a moral dilemma for T'Challa – when Agent Ross gets shot and, later, when T'Challa learns the truth about his father's past. The scene also adds to the fabled mystery that the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) narrative weaves throughout the other films. Although the metal's uses (...) are fictional, the concept and presence of vibranium in Black Panther and the depiction of Wakanda in the larger MCU narrative present some philosophical issues with regard to vibranium's value. While vibranium's use value is important to Wakandans and its exchange value is important to villains like Klaue, another way to understand the value of vibranium is to examine its cultural value. (shrink)

The film's rousing opening is a unifying creation myth every Wakandan child surely knows by heart. The characters in Black Panther are not contemplating justice from behind a veil of ignorance, nor applying ideal principles of justice to govern a nascent Wakandan society. Different approaches to achieving justice given that injustice has already happened vie for our consideration. The case for restitutive justice at the museum is pretty strong, but Eric Killmonger does a poor job of it: like his brief (...) reign as king, his corrective justice begets further injustice. Killmonger is not the only character in Black Panther for whom retribution as corrective justice resonates. In Black Panther, T'Challa, Killmonger, and Nakia offer radically different visions for Wakanda after injustice, visions for our hero – and for us – to reckon with. Killmonger insists on what T'Challa wants to ignore, that the people within Wakanda's borders exist in relation to the people outside them. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the classical conceptions of justice and then examines the contemporary movements that arose to challenge these old concepts. It looks at Wakanda's record on justice. In the comics, the trial to become the Black Panther involves more than fighting, but ritual combat has always been the final and most glamorous test in Wakanda. The Wakandan philosopher Changamire quotes him in the 12‐issue run “A Nation Under Our Feet,” by Ta‐Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze. Changamire gathers not (...) just the powers that be (T'Challa the king and Aneka the rebel leader) but also ordinary citizens traumatized by the war, so that together they can navigate a path forward. Their interest is not retribution or reparation, but rather restorative justice. In the transformative justice movement, the work of justice is the work of building our capacity to take care of each other, as ordinary people in ordinary communities. (shrink)

This chapter examines the debate on how Wakanda should respond to global injustice, Black Panther illustrates various issues regarding the nature of justice and the types of injustices we can inflict upon one another. Perhaps bearing witness to colonial epistemicide around them stoked Wakandans' strong impulse to protect their knowledge at all costs. In African philosophy, scholars often analyze or draw from proverbs and language use as a way to explore moral and political principles within an oral tradition. Ifeanyi Menkiti (...) argues that proverbs and wisdom within African thought and tradition uphold mutuality and the sense of not holding one's self others. Yet, despite what T'Challa says in his speech to the United Nations at the end of the film, his decision to "no longer watch from the shadows" appears to be motivated by the need to help, not by a sense of oneness with all of humanity, as understood through African philosophy. (shrink)

In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; (...) rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science. (shrink)

Controversy over providing financial incentives to research participants has a long history and remains an issue of contention in both current discussions about research ethics and for institutional review bodies/human research ethics committees which are charged with the responsibility of deciding whether such incentives fall within ethical guidelines. The arguments both for and against financial incentives have been well aired in the literature. A point of agreement for many is that inducement in the form of financial incentive is permissible when (...) the risk of harm to the individual is negligible in terms of degree and probability of occurrence. In the absence of harm to the individual, encouraging more people to participate in research would appear to be a good thing in so far as it will lead to statistically more robust research outcomes, which can then be translated into better healthcare and other practice. Whilst, on the face of it, this position seems highly defensible, I will explore the possibility that it is counterproductive – that is, providing individuals with financial incentives to become research participants may have the unintended outcome of reducing participation rates in some areas of research. In exploring this idea I will draw on empirical findings from the literature on crowding-out – the hypothesis that providing monetary incentives to people can backfire by overall reducing intrinsic motivation, in this instance intrinsic motivation to behave altruistically or undertake civic duties. (shrink)

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527-Criticism and interpretation ; Political science-Translating.

Logic; Islamic philosophy; Islam--doctrines.

Byzantine Empire; economic and social conditions; history.

There have been many discussions on problems of logic over the past several years. While the problem of the nature of the law of contradiction, one of the laws of formal logic, has received particular attention by everyone, the question has not been posed very precisely in the arguments. Actually, the question is not whether the movement, change, and development of things can be reflected in consciousness by use of the methods of formal logic, or in distinguishing the effectiveness of (...) the law of contradiction in disputation, proofs, or theoretical systems from its effectiveness in the general process of cognition, when applied to phenomena. If the development of reality cannot at all be reflected by the use of the logical tools of formal logic, what use do they have? No one denies that formal logic does not suffice as a method of cognition. If, in disputations and proofs, or in the establishment of theoretical systems, one relies only on the logical tools of formal logic, this is also not enough. The scope of applicability of the laws of formal logic, as laws that are studied by a concrete science, is necessarily limited. It is impossible for them to be all-powerful; it is of course impossible, relying on the law of contradiction, to know and grasp the contradictions in reality — the unity and conflict of opposites. All disputations and proofs, and the establishment of theoretical systems, are, in fact, efforts to know real objects, efforts of the subjective to grasp the objective. In principle, the use of formal logic in disputations and proofs and in the establishment of theoretical systems, and its use in knowing an object, should be no different. What, then, is the question? The question should be posed as follows: can thought contravene the law of contradiction? (shrink)

On inquiring into the nature of the Charites one may be astonished at the disagreement of their compounding elements. On the one hand, they appear as the very representatives and even personification of gracefulness and charm, brightness, and joy; their name itself seems to testify this, closely allied as it is with the verb χαρειν besides the particular names of the most renowned Hesiodic trinity—Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia—that is to say, brilliancy, mirth, and florescence. Hence arose the Roman conception of (...) the Gratiae decentes; hence also the widespread neo-humanistic idea, clothed by Goethe in the well-known verse of the Classical Walpurgis Night: ‘Grace we are bringing into life ….’ But, on the other hand, we discover the incontestable kinship of Charis with Charon, the ugly and sullen ferryman of the lower world, the still more amazing relation between Eurynome, the mother of the Hesiodic trinity, and Eurynomos, the horrid demon of decay, the vulture-skinned devourer of putrefying corpses in the Delphic Nekyia of Polygnotos. (shrink)