The ‘transformation’ of disciplines and organisations has been increasingly pursued by South African policymakers. Many understand community engagement or development as ‘structural’ or ‘agentive’. For most African citizens, however, transformation’s starting point is the obligation towards the divine and towards others. It will be suggested that spiritual transformation (as an aspect of African spirituality) is more appropriate for the South African setting. The article will offer the overarching foundational spiritual framework of spiritual transformation as a possible object to a future (...) discourse. A literature review will allow the mapping of different transformational stages or movements. The dynamics of the African spiritual-based concept of joy as a bridge to new possibilities will be tracked. The findings will point to the importance of clashing or complementing spiritual experiences, directing Africans towards a new spirituality. It will be indicated how change agents can develop sustainable transformative methodologies for different contexts, relevant to the developmental challenges of communities and organisations. Successful transformation involves nurturing communities from a spiritual perspective, specifically the experience of joy as part of the original African spirituality. (shrink)

Architecture and urbanism seem to be »weak« disciplines, constantly struggling for a better understanding of their nature and disciplinary borders. The huge amount of metaphors appearing in the discourse of both not only reference to their creative nature but also indicate their weakness and the missing piece strengthening their own understanding: a definition of space for architecture and of city for urbanism. But using metaphors in this field implies a problem - though metaphors achieve to bring opposites together, there remains (...) the question how literal they can actually become in order to relate to these subjects properly. In this volume, several authors from various fields using different approaches discuss this question. (shrink)

This qualitative study explored and described South African students’ experiences and perceptions regarding academic success. Focus group participants related academic success not only to achieveme...

Freivalds defined an acceptable programming system independent criterion for learning programs for functions in which the final programs were required to be both correct and "nearly" minimal size, i.e., within a computable function of being purely minimal size. Kinber showed that this parsimony requirement on final programs limits learning power. However, in scientific inference, parsimony is considered highly desirable. A lim-computablefunction is (by definition) one calculable by a total procedure allowed to change its mind finitely many times about its output. (...) Investigated is the possibility of assuaging somewhat the limitation on learning power resulting from requiring parsimonious final programs by use of criteria which require the final, correct programs to be "not-so-nearly" minimal size, e.g., to be within a lim-computable function of actual minimal size. It is shown that some parsimony in the final program is thereby retained, yet learning power strictly increases. Considered, then, are lim-computable functions as above but for which notations for constructive ordinals are used to bound the number of mind changes allowed regarding the output. This is a variant of an idea introduced by Freivalds and Smith. For this ordinal notation complexity bounded version of lim-computability, the power of the resultant learning criteria form finely graded, infinitely ramifying, infinite hierarchies intermediate between the computable and the lim-computable cases. Some of these hierarchies, for the natural notations determining them, are shown to be optimally tight. (shrink)

Since the beginning ofthe 1980s, successive Belgian governments have pursued a social security policy that is a combination of cutting social expenditure on the one hand and improving the plight of lower income categories among benefit recipients on the other. This has been realised by means of a strategy of 'targeting within universalism ', i.e. improving the benefits for the poor and restricting them for the better off, but without abolishing the entitlements oft he latter category completely. The Belgian experience (...) puts inperspective the 'middle class matters' argument, which predicts that, if cuts are made in social expenditure,the middle classes will use their political resources to defend the provisions they benefit from and to diminish the benefits reserved for the poor. (shrink)

This article builds on collaborative research (observations, interviews, and writing and reflection workshops) conducted on Early Childhood Educators (ECEs). The text studies the inclusive education efforts of ECEs within early childhood centers. In this setting, the educational and care work carried out raises the question of encounters with others. Inclusive education places children, families, and ECE in liminal or in-between spaces. ECEs have to reconcile the similarities and differences between young children and their parents within early childhood centers. As a (...) result, certain points of rupture and convergence emerge between ECEs and families. The active involvement of ECEs appears to be a key component of this professional posture so conducive to inclusive education. (shrink)

Straipsnio tikslas – ištirti Latvijos filosofijos istoriografijos tendencijas per pastaruosius tris dešimtmečius. Autoriaus dėmesio centre dvi pagrindinės filosofijos istorijos rašymo prieigos – idėjų istorija ir intelektinė istorija. Iširus Sovietų Sąjungai Latvijos kultūriniame diskurse išpopuliarėjo terminas „idėjų istorija“. Filosofijos istorikai ėmėsi nušviesti glaudžius ryšius tarp Vakarų šalių ir Latvijos kultūrų. Tačiau pastarąjį dešimtmetį Latvijos filosofijos istorikai vis labiau renkasi intelektinės istorijos prieigą.

This article gives a survey of results of research concerning effects of public policy in the Netherlands. This survey is preceded by a summary of some important American projects.The Dutch research reported concerns effects of educational and housing policy on income distribution, effects of sururbanization policy, participation policy, and still other policies.In both countries the dominant conclusion is that the goals of public policy are at least partially realized by the means chosen. However, the conclusion that the welf are state (...) is totally f ailing would go to f ar.Research concerning effects of public policy is still rare. Moreover, it is clear that some goals are realized at least in part by the chosen means.When public policy appears not to be effective, this can be explained from several factors : the contents of policy and the underlying theory, the policy process, the society, the research, and a view which is toonarrow because it takes only short term effects of one particular policy program into account. (shrink)

The history of the phrase absolute music has been studied by many theorists of music and music historians, while historians of philosophy proved to be rather reluctant to such syncretic concept. However, absolute music is exactly the case of non-philosophical appropriation of a philosophical category, which fits theoretical framework of the studies in intellectual history. Initial exploration on the synthesis of history of philosophy and musicology and music history has shown that the conceptual field of intellectual history enables the transition (...) from abstract ideas to concrete social history of thought. It is proved that "absolute music" is not an authentic concept of music culture of the nineteenth century, but rather a good invention of new musical hermeneutics, which defined a period in the development of music and paradigm of concepts that characterized autonomy of musical form. The subject of historical and philosophical studies of the phrase "absolute music" lies in transformation of a philosophical term into a unit of aesthetic discourse, and later its reincarnation in the concept of musical historiosophy. Both philosophical and musicological approaches to the history of absolute music are based on the assumption that only theoretically relevant assertions and judgments appeal to the hermeneutic reconstruction and generalization, whereas political and social references of the discourse of absolute music can be left aside. So futher research shall focus on possibilities of how to reach the concrete social background of that form of thinking which employs the idiom absolute music. (shrink)

The ego-focus of pioneer women on the South African frontier, 1760–1860, reflects distinct traits of mystical spirituality. The pioneer spirituality of women on the borders increasinglycame to expression in ego-texts with experiential inclinations. The leaning towards Jesuscentredmystical spirituality developed parallel to pietistic tendencies in Holland and Germany,and allegorical and tropological applications of the bridal metaphors in the Song of Songsformed a distinct element of female pietism on the frontier. Women believers in the interiorfavoured tropological applications of bridal metaphors in the (...) Song of Songs. The popularity ofsuch tropological applications can firstly be attributed to the physical conditions under whichpioneer women found themselves. Secondly, the availability of German pietistic workscontributed towards the religious culture of mystical and individualistic readings of bridalmetaphors in the Song of Songs. Tropological readings of the Song of Songs’ bridal metaphorsare traced to the theology of Bernard of Clairvaux particularly and other pre-reformationalmystical sources. (shrink)

If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characterized by inaction at all levels? The authors argue there are two complementary explanations for the lack of motivation. First, our moral judgment system appears to be unable to identify climate change as an important moral problem and there are pervasive doubts about the agency of individuals. This explanation, however, is incomplete: Individual emitters can effectively be held morally responsible for their luxury emissions. Second, doubts (...) about individual agency have become overly emphasized and fail to convincingly exonerate individuals from responsibility. This book extends the second explanation for the motivational gap, namely that the arguments for the lack of individual agency do in fact correspond to mechanisms of moral disengagement. The use of these mechanisms enables consumption elites to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions. (shrink)

This paper discusses Freud's model of the psychical apparatus in the “Project”, and concludes that it is a remarkably sophisticated work which even today is still highly relevant to neuropsychological theorising. Freud rejects the notion that what happens in the brain can be clearly localised in space and time. This anticipates the notion of a distributed system found in recent developments in computing (“neural net works”) and in Derrida's conception of systems characterised by différance. Every part of such a system (...) is constituted by its relation to the rest of the system. Although such systems are spatio-temporal, processes occur ring in them can not be pinpointed in space and time. Against the common charge that Freud has a passive hydraulic-reflex model of the psychical apparatus, the authors argue that Freud presents it as an open, complex, self-organising system. Ricoeur's (1972) claim that the model of the psychical apparatus in the “Project” is essentially solipsistic, is accordingly rejected. In conclusion the authors explain why they prefer the model in the “Project” to the more linear model found in Ch. VII of the Traumdeutung. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.20(3) 2001: 1- 21. (shrink)

This is a review article of Ross (2005), a book which attempts to show the implications of cognitive science and economics for each other. Ross makes neoclassical economics central to the unification of the behavioural sciences, and defends its fundamental health against its critics. He locates the source of the empirical and conceptual problems besetting neoclassical economics in the mistaken assumption that the economic agents neoclassicism talks about refer directly to real, whole people. Ross argues that people are atypical as (...) economic agents; bugs and other non-social animals are much more typical, and neoclassical economics applies to them in a straightforward way. How then does economics apply to the atypical agents that people are? Ross’s answer builds on Ainslie (2001), who models people as being the result of strategic interactions between successive economic agents, and on Glimcher’s (2003) work on the neuroeconomics of game playing in monkeys which, Ross argues, can be extrapolated to humans. The author is impressed by the boldness of Ross’s vision, and the arguments offered to support it. However, doubts remain about Ross’s theory of the self, the lifespan of the proposed successive economic agents out of which real people are composed, the implicit suggestion that in economics approximations can be overcome, and finally the conclusiveness of Ross’s case against the need for revolutionary reappraisals of neoclassical economics. (shrink)

This paper gives a sketch for a reconstruction of the Freudian unconscious, and an argument for its existence. The strategy followed attempts to side-step the extended debates about the validity of Freud's methods and conclusions, by basing itself on the desire/belief schema for understanding and explaining human behaviour – a schema neither folk psychology nor scientific psychology can do without. People are argued to have, as ideal types, two fundamental modes of fulfilling their desires: engaging with reality, and wishful thinking. (...) The first mode tries to acknowledge the constraints reality imposes on the satisfaction of desires, while the second mode tries to ignore, deny or disguise these constraints, inasmuch as they threaten to make such satisfaction impossible or unfeasible. Crucially, wishful thinking can be used so as to ignore or deny any desire that is incompatible with other strong desires. Thus we end up unaware of the existence or nature of some of our desires, of the fact that they are in flu enc ing our thought and be hav iour, and of the process our own mind has used to thwart awareness of them. Once we acknowledge this possibility, we are already seriously entertaining the possibility of the Freudian unconscious, or something fairly close to it. The more aware the subject is that her wishful thinking is just that, the less effective it becomes. Wishful thinking thus requires an unconscious; it is inimical to a clear, complete and unambiguous acknowledgement of its own status. Next, various aspects of my account (and Freud's) that allow a conception of the unconscious in non-Cartesian terms are emphasised: the unconscious is largely constituted by semantic phenomena of a particular type: forms of representation which would conceal their meaning even if the full light of 'attention', Cartesian 'consciousness' or 'introspection' were cast upon them. If wishful thinking is an integral part of mental life, philosophers and others wishing to “educate humanity” will have to proceed differently from what would have been appropriate had rational thought and action been the only available option for satisfying desires. Mankind cannot bear too much reality – T.S. Eliot S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(4) 2003: 361-377. (shrink)

The contributions of this volume discuss the legacy of Emmanuel Levinas philosophy. Examining critically the limits of his thinking, they also bear witness to its influence, thus demonstrating the significance of his groundbreaking project of establishing ethics as first philosophy".

Wrestling and arguing with God: between insider and outsider African perspectives -- Introduction to Richard Kearney's intellectual autobiography: where do you come from, Richard Kearney? -- Where I speak from: a short intellectual autobiography -- Phenomenology in South Africa: an indirect encounter with Richard Kearney -- Transcendence and anatheism -- Response to Richard Kearney's Anatheism: Anatheism and holy folly -- Kearney between poles: is too much lost in the middle? -- Strangers, Gods and Africa: in dialogue with Richard Kearney on (...) Otherness -- Approaching the threshold: hospitality as a pedagogical wager in the work of Richard Kearney -- God-talk, the biblical prophets and Richard Kearney -- 'Strange' theology: engaging with Richard Kearney -- Trinitarian theology and Richard Kearney's anatheism: an engagement -- After God but behind the Cross: the procession as a way to re-encounter God in a culture beyond classical liturgy -- Touch gives rise to thought: Paul Ricoeur and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on mutual recognition and carnal hermeneutics -- Towards hospitality between enemies -- Across oceans: a conversation on otherness, hospitality and welcoming a strange God. (shrink)