This book consists of transcripts from two lecture courses on ethical relation Levinas delivered at the Sorbonne.

In this essay, I will argue that the discourse over the existence of the Devil/Satan has no place among the religious cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. This may be contrasted with the numerous efforts in the dominant philosophy of religion tradition in the Anglo-American sphere, where efforts toward the establishing grounds for the existence of God have occupied and commanded so much attention. On the other hand, it seems to have been taken for granted that Devil, the One who is antagonistic (...) of God, among the Abrahamic monotheisms, is assumed to exist and does not require serious intellectual elaboration. For my aim, I explore the traditional Yorùbá and Igbo religious cultures to foreground that God. In the traditional belief system of these two religious cultures, there is no place to entertain the idea of a necessarily antagonistic entity, popularly called the Devil.Whereas I recognise previous scholarships that have served to show that Èṣù and Ekwensu in each of these religious cultures are not synonymous with Devil in the Abrahamic monotheisms, I move beyond these to establishing the ontological framework which endorses the absence of a Devil, even when evil lingers in the world. If the argument that there is no Devil/Satan in these religious cultures is proved valid, then it is pertinent to tender the origin and persistence of evil in the world. For this task, I explore the process-relational character of Yorùbá and Igbo theology to reinforce my conviction concerning the peoples’ belief in the existence of God in Chukwu and Olódùmarè, the presence of evil in the world, without encountering the philosophical problem of evil. (shrink)

This article argues that Bowers and Paternoster’s emphasis on a moral community marks an important step towards a more ethical and effective approach to anti-doping. However, it also argues that the authors’ proposed strategies undermine their stated goal of effectively engaging athletes as partners in anti-doping efforts and raise ethical concerns. Their proposed emphasis on exploiting shaming as a punishment and their general view of athletes as adversaries fosters mistrust between athletes and those who enforce the anti-doping rules. Instead, this (...) article describes a model for empowering athletes as stakeholders in anti-doping policy as a means to provide anti-doping rules with increased moral legitimacy among athletes. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is a major voice in twentieth century European thought. Beginning his intellectual career in the 1920s, he has developed an original and comprehensive post rationalist ethics of social responsibility and obligation. The influence of his work has already been profound and far-reaching, readily acknowledged by such diverse and important figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and Enrique Dussel. Time and The Other was first presented as a series of lectures in 1946-47 at the College Philosophique and is (...) probably the clearest statement of Levinas' thought. Along with Existence and Existents (1947), it represents the first formulation of Levinas' own philosophy, later more fully developed in Totality and Infinity (1961) and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974. (shrink)

The distinction between rules and similarity is central to our understanding of much of cognitive psychology. Two aspects of existing research have motivated the present work. First, in different cognitive psychology areas we typically see different conceptions of rules and similarity; for example, rules in language appear to be of a different kind compared to rules in categorization. Second, rules processes are typically modeled as separate from similarity ones; for example, in a learning experiment, rules and similarity influences would be (...) described on the basis of separate models. In the present article, I assume that the rules versus similarity distinction can be understood in the same way in learning, reasoning, categorization, and language, and that a unified model for rules and similarity is appropriate. A rules process is considered to be a similarity one where only a single or a small subset of an object's properties are involved. Hence, rules and overall similarity operations are extremes in a single continuum of similarity operations. It is argued that this viewpoint allows adequate coverage of theory and empirical findings in learning, reasoning, categorization, and language, and also a reassessment of the objectives in research on rules versus similarity. Key Words: categorization; cognitive explanation; language; learning; reasoning; rules; similarity. (shrink)

Intended both for undergraduate students and for general readers, this introduction to the philosophy of science uses case studies, anecdotes and personal comment to portray many heroes and villains from the field of science through the ages.

Everything is phenomenon, everything is gift, or everything is given. This presupposition of phenomenology, which makes giveness the starting point for phenomenality, is not altogether self-evident. It is not sufficient to look merely at the reverse of the gift, but it is a matter of questioning the impossibility of even giving. Questioning the strategies of the contemporary reappropriations of Kant—radicalization, disproportion, and inversion —this text works under a fourth possibility, seldom examined and yet still envisaged by Kant: the “Extra-Phenomenal”, or (...) in other words, the “Chaos”, the “pell-mell”, the “Cinnabar”, or the “melee of sensations”. (shrink)

** This piece was originally titled "Beyond Borders: Exploring Ubuntu as a Lived Philosophy" but was later retitled "African thought can rescue Western philosophy" by the publisher. ** -/- Western philosophy is often abstract and disconnected from the real ethical problems we face today. Emmanuel Chiwetalu Ossai and Lloyd Strickland argue that the African philosophy of ubuntu, with its emphasis on community, interconnectedness, and practical application of ethical principles, offers a compelling alternative.

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my turn (...) to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions. (shrink)

resumo O presente trabalho é uma contribuição ao estudo do sentido da « personalidade pura », que surge ao final da Ciência de Lógica de Hegel, e que é ali o nome correto e último do « Conceito ». Com esse nome, Hegel pretende designar a afirmação da liberdade em sua ide nt ida de com a negatividade absoluta. Pa ra esclarecer esse ponto, será preciso, primeiro, explicar o sentido hegeliano de pessoa no campo do espírito objetivo, onde ela é (...) alçada, na figurado imperador, à condição de « pessoa absoluta » . No entanto, para além da rigidez desta última, a pessoa hegeliana é o nome do sujeito que decide. Tal decisão é pensada por Hegel como uma criação, a personalidade é precisamente a identidade da vontade e da inteligência, e é possível então passar da sua aparência objetiva à decisão da Id é ia absoluta em sua própria afirmação como conhecimento absoluto, isto é, à identidade he geliana da verda de substancial e do sujeito pessoal. palavras-chave Personalidade pura; sujeito; negatividade; Hegel; Ciência da Lógica. (shrink)

This article takes its inspiration from Jacques Derrida to consider how deconstructionism can be done inadvertently. This possibility is underscored when one considers how a very significant phrase in Ifá texts— “A díá fún...” has been construed away from its transliteration as “Ifá divination was performed for...” by each of Oluwole and Karenga. Oluwole justifies her “deconstruction” on the grounds that such transliteration does not capture the philosophic cogs gravid within Ifá verses. Karenga, through his Kawaida methodology, “improvises” to suit (...) the ethical inferences he seeks to deduce out of the corpus. On this showing, this research infers that each of these scholars have engaged in a reflective activity that passes, on Derrida’s reading, as deconstruction, unbeknownst to them. Would they admit that their intellectual drudgeries amount to postmodern philosophy? This is the primary research question that this disquisition interrogates. (shrink)

A simplistic image of twentieth century French philosophy sees Merleau-Ponty’s death in 1961 as the line that divides two irreconcilable moments in its history: existentialism and phenomenology, on the one hand, and structuralism on the other. The structuralist generation claimed to recapture the dimension of objectivity and impersonality, which the previous generation was supposedly incapable of. As a matter of fact, in 1962, Derrida’s edition of Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry was taken to be a turning point that announced the (...) structuralist revolution by introducing a reflection on the historicity and the materiality of impersonal idealities. And yet, the 1998 publication of Merleau-Ponty’s notes from his Collège de France lecture course on the same topic make manifest that he was already taking phenomenology in another direction. His 1959 reading of The Origin of Geometry shows how unexpectedly close the early Derrida is to the late Merleau-Ponty. By identifying the tension between archaeology and teleology as the basic problem of Husserlian phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida each disclose the fundamental importance of history and of writing. Comparing the two readings in their specific context not only brings about a more complex picture of the intellectual debates of the time, but also shows how, with Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of The Origin of Geometry, Derrida’s “différance” predates itself and receives another genealogy. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage part d'un constat : nul n'est au monde s'il naît au monde. Le dogme de la résurrection des corps restera en ce sens un mot vide tant qu'on ne le rapportera pas philosophiquement à un mode de l'expérience : la naissance. Nicodème, déjà, en avait interrogé le sens : " Comment un homme peut-il une seconde fois entrer dans le ventre de sa mère et naître? " Confrontée à la philosophie contemporaine, une phénoménologie de la naissance corporelle fera (...) donc office de paradigme à une théologie de la renaissance spirituelle et charnelle. Car la " Résurrection change tout " en christianisme - monde et temps bien sûr, mais aussi notre propre corps transformé dans la figure du Christ transfiguré. Puissions-nous alors en recevoir la forme pour en être " in-formé ", puisque de la manière dont aujourd'hui je vis mon corps dépend la façon dont demain je ressusciterai charnellement en Dieu. De " l'analytique christique de l'angoisse, de la souffrance et de la mort ", ce livre passe, comme en un second volet pouvant être lu indépendamment du premier, à " l'analytique de la résurrection comme mode d'être de la naissance ". Ce dont le Fils pâtit, il en opère ici le passage vers son Père qui, dans la force de l'Esprit, en accomplit pour nous la métamorphose. (shrink)