Epistemic Freedom in Africa is about the struggle for African people to think, theorize, interpret the world and write from where they are located, unencumbered by Eurocentrism. The imperial denial of common humanity to some human beings meant that in turn their knowledges and experiences lost their value, their epistemic virtue. Now, in the twenty-first century, descendants of enslaved, displaced, colonized, and racialized peoples have entered academies across the world, proclaiming loudly that they are human beings, their lives matter and (...) they were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems that are capable of helping humanity to transcend the current epistemic and systemic crises. Together, they are engaging in diverse struggles for cognitive justice, fighting against the epistemic line which haunts the twenty-first century. The renowned historian and decolonial theorist Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni offers a penetrating and well-argued case for centering Africa as a legitimate historical unit of analysis and epistemic site from which to interpret the world, whilst simultaneously making an equally strong argument for globalizing knowledge from Africa so as to attain ecologies of knowledges. This is a dual process of both deprovincializing Africa, and in turn provincializing Europe. The book highlights how the mental universe of Africa was invaded and colonized, the long-standing struggles for 'an African university', and the trajectories of contemporary decolonial movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall in South Africa. This landmark work underscores the fact that only once the problem of epistemic freedom has been addressed can Africa achieve political, cultural, economic and other freedoms. This groundbreaking new book is accessible to students and scholars across Education, History, Philosophy, Ethics, African Studies, Development Studies, Politics, International Relations, Sociology, Postcolonial Studies and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Some scholars tend to argue that Black marginality is due largely to the exclusion of Blacks from meaningful economic participation as well as generalized social exclusions. This, owing to the division of the world’s populations along a racial hierarchy on the one hand, and in geopolitical terms along the dichotomy of Metropoles and dependencies. While there have been some cosmetic changes, particularly in relation to the complexion of the ruling personnel in the aftermath of Independence, the view adopted here (...) is that the colonial structure remains largely intact. This is because the material base of colonial countries or regions remains fundamentally predisposed toward satisfying the economic interest of industrialized Western powers, the former colonizers. The argument advanced here therefore, is that such marginality is due not from exclusions per se but rather from inclusion albeit only as junior, and therefore inferior, partners. So at the root of the problem is the problem of “white supremacy,” which establishes and maintains asymmetrical relations between the races. This system underlies as it underpins the standard contract and thus functions as a clandestine and unofficial political system. The article thus delves into the social contract theory, particularly the works of Charles Mills and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the view of ascertaining how their ideas help us understand the modern world in terms of race relations. Furthermore, Walter Rodney’s concept of “white power” is appropriated as it provides a useful framework within which to understand the white power complex. (shrink)

A recent French reform has revised the legal definition of the corporation. In essence, the law stipulates that the corporation must be run with due regard to the social and environmental impacts of its activity. It also introduces the notion of raison d’être and affords the possibility for any corporation to assign social or environmental purposes to itself, defined in its by-laws. This reform is similar to recent reforms in the UK and the US, but is based on an original (...) and distinctive theoretical argument. The aim of our article is to analyze the fundamental tenets of this reform and their implications for the theory of the corporation. It shows that the new law is based on a new positive definition of the enterprise as not only an economic organization or a productive entity, but more fundamentally a space for innovative collective action. We argue that this view of the enterprise challenges our conceptualization of the corporation in two important ways. First, it shows that the traditional theories overlook the activities of the enterprise and their related impacts, and that the corporation is not necessarily the appropriate legal vehicle for the innovative enterprise. Second, it suggests that the stipulation of the enterprise’s purpose or raison d’être in the corporate by-laws can provide new promising legal foundations for corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Three levels are proposed to explain lying as a process in discourse production, to characterize different types of lies and to distinguish them from mistakes, ignorance and forgetting as well fr from ill-timed or irrelevant utterances.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse and discuss the views of constructivism, on the teaching and learning of mathematics. I provide a background to the learning of mathematics as constructing and reconstructing knowledge in the form of new conceptual networks; the nature, role and possibilities of constructivism as a learning theoretical framework in Mathematics Education. I look at the major criticisms and conclude that it passes the test of a learning theoretical framework but there is still a (...) gap between theory and mathematics classroom practice. (shrink)

This Special Issue comes at a time when African countries and the Global South in general are facing unprecedented crises in securing energy to power their economies. The crises are necessitated largely by the developed Western countries exerting enormous power and pressure upon the developing world to move away from fossil fuels, while at the same time the West is increasing its uptake on fossils. However, with critical self-reflection we are able to understand that a crisis of this nature is (...) not without historical precedence, as it is preceded by a series of other forms of injustices meted out upon the formerly and still colonized peoples. And not long ago, the COVID-19 pandemic on the health front, and the handling thereof, showed just how skewed and divided the world still is and laid bare race-laden inequalities both at local and global levels. So to be sure, the current crises are part of the history of struggle against race-based social injustices and demonstrate Western desire to continue its stranglehold over its former colonies. And although the energy transition is dubbed the “Just Energy Transition,” for those in the developing world who are negatively affected, there is clearly nothing “Just” about it. So whereas we generally tend to speak of social or historical injustices such as the energy crises and COVID-19, at an epistemological front we find cognitive injustice. Accordingly, the articles in this issue contribute to a series of responses by the anticolonial movement (broadly defined) in relation to injustice, particularly its epistemological ramifications on knowledge and knowledge production in the relation between the colonizer and the colonized, the center and the periphery. Furthermore, the historical exclusion of African and other non-European peoples from participation in reason had the effect that Africans in particular were precluded from philosophy itself, a phenomenon that African philosophy and associated disciplines are today still grappling with in the academy. So in a word, the articles make an important contribution insofar as reckoning with the impact that race and the history of racism has had in philosophy in particular, both as a discipline and as a human mental activity.It should be remembered that the exclusion of Africans from reason and eventually from philosophy is preceded by an earlier one, the exclusion of Africans from recognition at a human level, qua rational beings. One can talk of a history of depersonalizations and dehumanizations; of massacres and deracination inflicted upon the oppressed owing to the colonial encounter. This is why for a scholar and a philosopher of the periphery, to use Enrique Dussel’s term, philosophical inquiry cannot and ought not be divorced from human reality. In fact, scholars of the periphery often stress the need for philosophy not to abstract too much from reality; and for philosophy to confine itself with liberatory human ends, among other things. There are a number of thinkers of the periphery who famously harp upon this point. For instance, Lewis Gordon has introduced the concept of “disciplinary decadence” by which he laments the fetishization of methods and whereby disciplines become an end in themselves, thus not necessarily serving human needs. Other thinkers in this school of thought include the likes of Enrique Dussel, Charles Mills, Cornel West, Angela Davis, and George Yancy to mention but a few. Yancy speaks of the “Density project” with which he has a normative injunction upon Black philosophers. In a similar vein, Dussel remarks in the Philosophy of Liberation that “Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical texts, except as a pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality.”1 This reality, as is averred, is in existential phenomenology, not merely objective reality or perhaps something out there existing on its own accord, but rather it is what Jean-Paul Sartre associates with “human reality,” which is reality as lived by people of flesh and blood. So in a world demarcated between center and periphery, human beings and subhumans, whites and Blacks, the anticolonial thinker cannot afford not to raise questions relating to social existence, “the reality.” Thus for those in the academy, one must be able to come to terms with the reality of non-Western and “non-scientific knowledges” (after Boaventura De Sousa Santos) not being recognized as credible knowledge, coupled with the possibility of being forgotten, of being completely wiped out from history. And, as we see with Bernard Matolino’s article in particular, this is the battle that African philosophy has vigorously had to deal with in the previous two or three decades.In the Western canon, philosophy is generally taken to begin with the Greeks and this, as is observed, is no historical accident but forms part of a project to relegate previous philosophical traditions to relative obscurity, and to preclude the rest of humanity from participation in reason. The idea is that for Western modernity to be a viable project, oppressed cultures must out of necessity be denied reason. On this very point, Frantz Fanon would remark in Black Skin White Masks in the following manner: “That victory [on the rational front] played cat and mouse; it made a fool of me. As the other put it, when I was present, it was not; when it was there, I was no longer.”2 In this regard Mogobe Ramose’s article notes how the Aristotlean concept of man as a rational animal becomes a misnomer insofar as this relates to the Black person. With this sleight of hand, previous civilizations such as the African (Egyptian) and Arab traditions in philosophy are supposed to vanish from history and from the epistemological landscape. In this regard, Mills’s insights will continue to haunt philosophy well into the future, long after his passing. Mills had noted that a typical philosophy program in the Westernized university will normally start off with the two Greek philosophers, namely Plato and Aristotle. From here it moves to cover the Middle Ages and probably end with theories on liberalism. And although this period covers a history of more than two thousand years of Western philosophy, there will be little or no mention of traditions that shaped philosophical thought prior to the Greeks.The above notwithstanding, the articles in this issue show, however, that not only are Africans and oppressed peoples endowed with reflective reason, but that they also possess a unique brand of philosophy. By and large, the articles not only affirm the epistemological standpoint of African philosophy but show its own genealogy, discourse, and objectives among other things.With these short remarks, the following articles cut across these thematic areas: metaphysics of race, epistemic racism, racial ontology, feminism, and decolonial literature. Accordingly, the article by Bernard Matolino begins by delving into the metaphysics of race and notes that while there is no proof that there are distinct races (after Kwame Appiah), race as a matter of social life is alive and relevant. Further, his article goes on to demonstrate how African philosophy emerged as a form of protest and native philosophers’ need to show that indigenous peoples always had a philosophy. In a similar vein, Edwin Etieyibo’s article discusses epistemic racism, and how color prejudice historically translated to other forms of racial injustices such as epistemic racism. His article makes use of the works of such thinkers as Anibal Quijano and Ramon Grosfoguel to trace the genealogy of such injustices in the modern period.Siphiwe Ndlovu’s article looks into the problem of Black marginality, particularly in the modern period. He locates his musings within the social contract tradition but suggests a reading of contemporary marginality through the lens of Mills’s racial contract. Accordingly, instead of seeing Black marginality as a function of exclusion or being cast outside the contract, the article argues that such marginality is due not from exclusions per se but rather from inclusion albeit only as junior—and therefore inferior—partners in the racial contract.Mogobe Ramose’s article begins by endorsing Kwasi Wiredu’s view that there is nothing wrong with African philosophy being preoccupied with questions that are not exactly identical to those of non-African philosophies. Furthermore, his article traces, through D. M. Goldenberg, the roots of anti-Black racism from “colour symbolism” among the Arabs in the classical world, through the Rabbinic era, and later taking the form of race prejudice in Christianity. At the crux of his article is the argument that the prevailing practice of fragmenting the human race into multiple bits and pieces is against the pursuit of justice and peace in human relations.The article by Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse considers Anika Mann’s arguments on race and feminist standpoint as an existential standpoint and foundation. She takes up Mamphela Ramphele’s initial autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele: A Life, to critically reflect on what the actions of “non-subservient Blackwomen” reveal about the lived experience of being Black and a woman under Apartheid South Africa.The article by Siseko Kumalo infuses decolonial and literary criticism as projects that may allow for a recognition of the “ontological legitimacy” of amaqaba (those who rejected colonial influences and education). Through a close reading of S. E. K. Mqhayi’s Intshayelelo: Imbali, the article engages with the question How does a model of inclusive national identity in South Africa, once established, get us to the point of recognition for the Indigene? (shrink)

""Published to coincide with University of Missouri-St. Louis's Golden Jubilee celebrations, this photo book by former chancellor Blanche M. Touhill invites readers to witness the inspiring story of how this school became an urban university of excellence and an important center of the community"--.

The name ‘Chloe’ appears four times in Horace'sOdes, once in Book 1 (1.23) and three times in Book 3 (3.7, 3.9, 3.26). Whether the ‘Chloes’ represent a woman or women from Horace's real life is probably not something we could know. Furthermore, there is no obvious reason to assume that all the ‘Chloes’ are the same person. However, there is likewise no obvious reasonnotto read the odes in which the name ‘Chloe’ appears, as some scholars have done, as referring to (...) the same woman, fictional or otherwise. This article argues both that ‘Chloe’ is a consistent character in theOdesand that the portrayal of Chloe is not only connected across odes but also sequential. Taking the poems in order, we see Chloe grow up from a girl who is inexperienced in the world of men to a mature mistress who plays the dominant role in her love affairs. (shrink)

Raison et discours s'inscrit dans la continuite du projet initie par l'ouvrage publie un an auparavant sous le titre de Structures intellectuelles. Reflechissant sur la portee de son hexagone logique, dont il vient d'exposer la theorie, Robert Blanche pretend y trouver une preuve en faveur d'une logique developpee par reflexion sur les operations meme de la raison, qu'il oppose a une logique obtenue par analyse des resultats de ces operations dans le discours. Il s'efforce par la de justifier la (...) legitimite d'une approche reflexive ou philosophique des activites logiques de l'esprit, logique reflexive que les philosophes, abandonnant la logique aux mathematiciens comme une specialite curieuse, semblaient alors delaisser. La reflexion sur la logique operatoire ne condamne nullement a tomber dans le psychologisme: il ne s'agit aucunement ici de decrire des processus mentaux, mais bien d'expliciter et d'etudier, dans ses diverses applications, une structure objective et intemporelle. Bien plus qu'un compromis entre logique formelle et pensee modale, le projet de Robert Blanche vise une articulation efficace de la philosophie et des mathematiques. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider climate change as a systemic respiratory crisis, and explore how breath can function as a mode of witnessing climate catastrophe. We build on feminist environmental humanities methodologies of embodied attunement to advance a more-than-human witnessing of climate change. We suggest that a feminist “conspiratorial” witnessing of breath(lessness) can afford an embodied, situated, empathetic and systemic mode of witnessing. In this approach, the witness (e.g., “the human”) is part of what is witnessed (the climate crisis). As (...) such, breathing climate catastrophe can reveal the intimate, visceral and personal violences of global climate change, and develop empathetic approaches to climate injustice. Nevertheless, as breath’s social and multispecies differentiation reveals, no-one can witness the entirety of climate catastrophe with their own bodies. We thus advocate for collective, more-than-individual modes of knowing, such as science, art and critical analysis, to augment our own sensorial experiences of witness. (shrink)

Short and accessible teachings from one of America's pioneer woman Zen teachers. Zenkei Blanche Hartman is an American Zen legend. A teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, she was the first female abbot of an American Zen center. She is greatly revered, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has lived and taught for many years. This, her long-awaited first book, is a collection of short teachings taken from her talks (...) on the subject of boundlessness--the boundlessness that sees beyond our small, limited self to include all others. To live a boundless life she encourages living the vows prescribed by the Buddha and living life with the curiosity of a child. The short, stand-alone pieces can be dipped into whenever one is in need of inspiration. (shrink)

Translation of La Science actuelle et le rationalisme.

Large technical systems are integral to modern lifestyles but arduous to analyze. In this paper, we advance a conceptualization of LTS using the notion of mature “phases,” drawing from insights into innovation studies, science and technology studies, political science, the sociology of infrastructure, history of technology, and governance. We begin by defining LTS as a unit of analysis and explaining its conceptual utility and novelty, situating it among other prominent sociotechnical theories. Next, we argue that after LTS have moved through (...) the phases proposed by Thomas Hughes of invention, expansion, growth, momentum, and style, mature LTS undergo the additional phases of reconfiguration, contestation, and eventually stagnation and decline. We illustrate these analytical phases with historical case studies and the conceptual literature, and close by suggesting future research to refine and develop the LTS framework, particularly related to more refined typologies, temporal dimensions, and a broadening of system users. We aim to contribute to theoretical debates about the coevolution of LTS as well as empirical discussions about system-related use, sociotechnical change, and policy-making. (shrink)

La théorie de la quaternalité, telle que Piaget et Gottschalk l'ont appliquée aux connectifs binaires du calcul bivalent, appelle quelques précisions et compléments.Les seize connectifs ne comportent que deux quaternes complets: celui des jonctions et celui des implications. Leurs similitudes formelles ne doivent pas dissimuler une différence dans leur mode de construction. Elle apparaît sur leurs diagrammes (inspirés du “carré logique” traditionnel) par la place de la cellule initiale et par celles des signes barrés du trait vertical de la négation:En (...) effet, la dualité qui se combine avec celle de la négation contradictoire (DN, flèche diagonale) est, pour les jonctions, la dualité “morganienne” (DM, flèche verticale) et pour les implications, la dualité des réciproques (DR, flèche horizontale). Car dans les jonctions, liaisons symétriques, il n'y a point de vraies réciproques; inversement, les implications ne comportent pas (pourvu, bien sûr, qu'on ne les traduise pas en termes de jonctions) de dualité morganienne. Le quatrième terme, obtenu par la combinaison des deux relations génératrices, sera donc, pour les jonctions, une contreduale (DM× DN) et, pour les implications, une contreréciproque (DR× DN). (shrink)

This paper examines heterogeneous impacts of gendered household headship and control of resources on food security in rural Tanzania. Analysis with minimal attention to heterogeneity in gender considerations indicates no differences in household food security between male and female-headed households. But with a more differentiated household headship variable and accounting for gendered differences in resource ownership, the results differ markedly. Using more gender-disaggregated variables, our results show significant differences between female-headed and male-headed households. In these results we find support for (...) the claim that gender norms in the study villages often restrict women’s access to resources, resulting in more vulnerable female-headed households. Female-headed households with no male adults present are particularly vulnerable. The study also points to specific opportunities for enhanced food security with attention to female and joint ownership of livestock. These results represent a hopeful sign that efforts to enhance female livestock ownership could be a useful strategy to address lower levels of food consumption in these Tanzanian villages. (shrink)

Este volumen recoge las ponencias, comunicaciones y coloquios que se ofrecieron en la última reunión organizada por la Asociación Interdisciplinar “José de Acosta” (ASINJA). El tema vertebrador, como indica el título, es el sentido del hombre en el Universo. La toma de conciencia de sí mismo y del Universo en el que se encuentra inmerso, hacen platearse al hombre una serie de preguntas sobre el sentido de las cosas, o sobre el por qué y el para qué de la propia (...) exitencia humana. Estas misma preguntas centran los estudios contenidos en este libro. (shrink)

Los estudiosos del Cristianismo reconocen dos grandes escuelas de pensamiento –la alejandrina y la antioquena– que delinearon las ideas que servirían de estructura a la teología cristiana. Un punto en discordia entre ellas era la exégesis alegórica de las Escrituras. Epifanio, quien adscribe a la corriente de pensamiento antioquena, condena el método alegórico incluyendo a Orígenes entre las sectas tratadas en su Panarion, a la vez que presenta al lector una propuesta exegética más acorde con la ortodoxia. En nuestro trabajo (...) analizaremos cuáles son los criterios que el autor propone como necesarios para captar el verdadero sentido del texto bíblico. (shrink)

Public health policies designed to improve individual and population health may involve coercion. These coercive policies require ethical justification, and yet it is unclear in the public health ethics literature which ethical concepts might justify coercion, and what their limitations are in applying across contexts. In this paper, we analyse a number of concepts from Western bioethics, including the harm principle, paternalism, the public interest, and a duty of easy rescue. We find them plausible justifications for coercion in theory, but (...) when applied to case studies, including HIV testing in Malawi, vaccine mandates in South Africa, and prohibitions of antibiotic use in livestock in the EU, their limitations become clear. We argue that the context-specificity of ethical justifications for coercion has been overlooked, and there is more work needed to identify context-relevant ethical justifications for coercive policies in various settings and for various populations, rather than relying on universalising Western bioethical justifications across all contexts. (shrink)

The magnitude of South Africa’s diet-related non-communicable disease burden calls for scrutiny of sugar-sweetened beverage manufacturers’ business ethics in terms of the commercial determinants of health. We gathered and analysed relevant literature from five electronic databases to determine whether a communitarian ethic can strengthen corporate governance in support of public health. Twenty-nine of 648 results were selected for data extraction and analysis. Six thematic categories were identified: the reciprocal nature of the corporation in society; perspectives on ‘corporate citizenship’; integrative approaches (...) to corporate sustainability; critiques of Corporate Social Responsibility; legal regulation to engender communitarian consciousness; and the social contract perspective. We found that in tackling the human and economic toll of South Africa’s obesogenic environment, a diverse range of theoretical and practical perspectives supports the concept that a communitarian ethic for corporate governance can normalise accountability for population health as a human right. (shrink)

Pour que ce précis soit fidèle à son titre et directement accessible à tout lecteur sans connaissances préalables, si ce n'est quelques notions élémentaires de logique classique, l'auteur a volontairement évité la présentation axiomatique et les démonstrations formelles. Il a plutôt visé à conduire progressivement l'esprit, par les voies de l'intuition, jusqu'au point où apparaissent les raisons des théories logiques contemporaines. Mais, en même temps qu'il ouvre l'accès aux développements de la logique depuis un siècle, cet ouvrage en donne une (...) large vue d'ensemble en touchant à des problèmes et à des théories que beaucoup de traités élémentaires laissent de côté. Ainsi, par son souci pédagogique de ne rien utiliser qui ne soit préalablement introduit et expliqué, en particulier en ce qui concerne les usages terminologiques ou algorithmiques, cet ouvrage, devenu un classique, constitue une remarquable introduction aux logiques modernes. (shrink)