In this article, I argue that methodological pluralism is not identical with methodological anarchism. While the former connotes the existence of different methods that could be legitimately employed in different disciplines or contexts, the latter tends to suggest the non-existence of any legitimate method at all. Consequently, I contend that Afroconstructivism, a recent development in African philosophy supports methodological pluralism but repudiates methodological anarchism. The corollary of this is a critical re-evaluation of Paul Feyerabend’s critique of method. My basic argument (...) is that the epistemological framework of Afro-constructivism accepts Feyerabend’s repudiation of the hegemonic imposition of the method of modern science as valid. However, I argue that an Afro-constructivist interpretation of Feyerabend’s critique gives credence to methodological pluralism as against methodological anarchism. I buttress this position using the methods of logical analysis and argumentation. I begin with an analysis of the question of method, Feyerabend’s critique of method and Afro-constructivism,and then proceed to examine the merit of Feyerabend’s critique from the perspective of Afro-constructivism. At the end, I submit that the logical product of Feyerabend’s critique of method is methodological pluralism. Keywords: Afro-constructivism, Anarchism, Paul Feyerabend, methodology, epistemological dadaism, Pluralism, Reason, Science. (shrink)

As at present, a fundamental problem negating intensive and extensive integration of self-other relations in Africa, bothering the African mind, is xenophobia: the fear and, by extension, revulsion against any human (or non-human) subject of foreign origin. What is usually understood as xenophobia in Africa is actually Afro-phobia: Africans from within reject other Africans from without, while non-Africans are largely not so treated. This reasoning contextually motivates the phrase, xenophobia as Afro-phobia. Confronting the problem and its outcomes, much (...) scholarship has dominantly come from social sciences, confirming that that there could only be little non-social scientific voice to the discussion. Given this gap, this work is philosophical. The claim is that, in the presentworld where continental (perhaps, inclusive of diasporic) Africans should committedly reinvent their largely common ontology (idea of African being) and cosmology (African worldviews), unitedly confronting continental and non-continental challenges, xenophobia as Afro-phobia regrettably expresses a morally unjustifiable divergence rather than cooperative convergence. Addressing the problem, this work critically interrogates xenophobia as Afro-phobia, before foregrounding a political philosophy of change, ultimately promoting Afro-philia, rather than xenophobia as Afro-phobia, in the African person. Successfully developing this political philosophy of change, its epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and logic must be intelligible to Africans and its ultimate practical realization. These constitute the present goals. (shrink)

This essay has two aims. The first is to show that the editors of Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings and some of the writers who contributed to it (especially Ismail Ezzedine, Anar Rzayev, Tawfick Zeyad, Abdel Aziz El-Ahwani, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Alex La Guma, Adonis, Salah Dehni, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Ghassan Kanafany, and Tozaburo Ono) attempted to reconceive of nationalism in a way that would make international solidarity constitutive of the new national projects. It is argued that this is quite different from (...) thinking of the contributors to Lotus as abandoning nationalism in favor of a supranationalist project. The second aim is to show that at least some of the contributors to Lotus thought of themselves as being the vanguard of modernity, and not as the creators of “alternative modernities”. This essay shows that some of the aforementioned contributors to Lotus implicitly drew on standpoint epistemology in order to argue that, due to their struggles against colonialism, racial discrimination, etc., they had a privileged epistemic vantage point from which to criticize modernity in its European form for not being modern enough. (shrink)

Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in Critical Epistemology explores the central, but often critically neglected role of knowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for human emancipation. This collection examines the systemic connection that exists between the empirical subordination of "Black" peoples globally and the conceptual negation that subordinates or renders this population invisible within the epistemes of the West. The collection recognizes that as peoples of "Black" African and Afro-mixed descent mobilize against their dehumanized status within Western modernity, (...) they are involved in a struggle that is both contemporary and of long standing, one where local and national battles have a global dimension. The essays in this collection foreground the extent to which liberation from imposed subordination necessarily entails critiques of, challenges to, and counter-formulations against the epistemic formations that work to "naturalize" subordination. The essays in the collection engage primarily with knowledge formations and empirical practices generated from within the discourse of "race," but also in its relation to other socio-human discourses of Western modernity. These essays also analyze the critiques, challenges, and counter-knowledge/epistemic formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements, and/or institutions of the "Black" world. Through these examinations, the collection's authors implicitly point towards, and sometimes explicitly take part in, the formulation of a new kind of critical - but also emancipatory - epistemology. What emerges is a more comprehensive view of what it means to be human, an epistemic construction that can serve as an instrument of liberation rather than subordination. (shrink)

Este texto se sitúa en la juntura de los feminismos del sur que señalaron el encubrimiento de la heterogeneidad de las mujeres indo-afro-latino-americanas. Desde las cadencias y los ritmos de las voces de mujeres de Nuestra América cuyos saberes interrumpen, disrumpen e intervienen muestra que los problemas del feminismo blanco burgués del norte no son los de todas las mujeres puesto que algunas mujeres escapan a la fragilidad femenina que justifica el paternalismo y los micromachismos dentro y fuera de (...) la academia, incluso dentro y fuera de la misma clase, etnia o generación. Desde los feminismos del sur se propone habilitar un diálogo entre/con “las otras” de nosotras no sólo para articular teóricamente y coalicionar políticamente nudos epistémicos que pongan en crisis el modelo de la representación y con ello una revisión del punto de vista, sino también para desmontar, paralelamente desde la ontología relacional que suponen, el privilegio epistemológico, la violencia epistémica y el extractivisimo académico que ubica y posiciona a unas sobre otras en la reproducción de “las otras de nosotras”. A partir de los posicionamientos de María Lugones, Rita Segato, Aura Cumes, Lorena Cabnal y Julieta Paredes, se propone visibilizar los nudos epistemológicos venidos de los feminismos comunitarios e indígenas que habilitan ampliaciones metodológicas desde las que podrían configurarse una historia de las resistencias de las mujeres de Latinoamérica en la exterioridad de los paradigmas euronortecentrados. (shrink)

In The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs, Hans Van Eyghen challenges Western philosophy's ethnocentrism by examining the justification of beliefs in spirits, exploring neglected religious phenomena like mediumship, possession, and animistic experiences, drawing from various traditions worldwide, including a significant emphasis on Afro-Atlantic religions. The book employs phenomenal conservatism, arguing for prima facie justification of spirit beliefs based on experiences. It addresses metaphysical arguments, examining the connection between God's existence and spirits, as well as attributing unusual events to spirit (...) activity. The author defends these views against counterarguments, offering a nuanced response. Van Eyghen's approach, expanding the discourse while avoiding pitfalls of traditional philosophy of religion, is to be commended. It lays the groundwork for future research programs in the epistemology of religion, providing a clear, well-argued, and accessible contribution to the field. (shrink)

Slightly modified reprint of an article first appearing in the journal _Synthesis Philosophica_ (2018).

RESUMENDesde la teoría postcolonial se han cuestionado los modelos de historia de las ideas impuestos por el africanismo y el orientalismo. Diferentes teóricos africanos –Bachir Diagne, Mundimbe, Wiredu o Kete Asante– han formulado diversas soluciones para superar las dificultades. Este trabajo explora las principales dificultades y las propuestas para elaborar una historia de la filosofía africana.PALABRAS CLAVESFILOSOFÍA AFRICANA, AFROEPISTEMOLOGÍA, HISTORIOGRAFÍA FILOSÓFICA, TEORÍA POSTCOLONIALABSTRACTThe postcolonial theory was questioning the patterns of History of Ideas imposed by Orientalism and Africanism. Different African theorists (...) –Bachir Diagne, Mundimbe, Kete Asante or Wiredu– developed various solutions to overcome the difficulties. This paper explores the principal challenges and proposals so as to build a History of African philosophy.KEYWORDSAFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, AFRO-EPISTEMOLOGY, PHILOSOPHIC HISTORIOGRAPHY, POSTCOLONIAL THEORY. (shrink)

Personhood is an extensively discussed theme in contemporary African philosophy, which has taken metaphysical, epistemological and normative dimensions. In Western philosophical traditions, discourse on personhood is transmuting to debates on transhumanism. Missing in the African philosophical literature is consideration of transhumanism and an explication of the relationship between personhood and transhumanism. In this article, I critically examine the relationship between personhood and transhumanism in an African context. Drawing on Barry Hallen’s African metaphysical account of personhood and Thaddeus Metz’s Afro-communal (...) normative conception of personhood, I argue that while some transhumanist elements are embedded in African normative and ontological conceptions of personhood, some others are not. In the final analysis, I defend an Afrofuturistic account of personhood that is compatible with some censored essentials of transhumanism in African thoughts. Keywords : Personhood, Transhumanism, Barry Hallen, Thaddeus Metz, Africa, Yoruba. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto visa a estabelecer linhas iniciais a uma apropriação da premissa do Caribe como prefácio às Américas, conforme o ensaio Introduction à une poétique du Divers, de Édouard Glissant, compreendendo-o em um quadro de pensamento negro americano. A apropriação da premissa de Glissant almeja propor bases a uma ferramenta metodológica, fundamentada na centralidade epistemológica do lugar, subsidiando análises literárias a respeito de um corpus de literaturas afro-americanas. Este texto, inicialmente, parte da hipótese de que qualquer literatura nacional (...) pode ser tomada, de modo econômico, como prefácio a um corpus mais amplo de literaturas afro-americanas.: this text aims to set initial lines for an apropriation of the premise of the Caribbean as a preface to the Americas, according to the essay Introduction à une poétique du Divers, by Édouard Glissant, understanding it in a frame of American black thought. The apropriation of Glissant’s premise aims to propose bases for a methodological tool, based on the epistemological centrality of the place, subsidizing literary analyzes among a corpus of Afro-American literatures. This text, initially, starts from the hypothesis that any African-American national literature can be taken, in a sparing way, as a preface to a broader corpus of African-American literature. (shrink)

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture Barry Hallen Reveals everyday language as the key to understanding morals and ethics in Yoruba culture. "This contrasts with any suggestion that in Yoruba or, more generally, African society, moral thinking manifests nothing much more than a supine acquiescence in long established communal values.... Hallen renders a great service to African philosophy." —Kwasi Wiredu In Yoruba culture, morality and moral values are intimately linked to aesthetics. The purest (...) expression of beauty, at least for human beings, is to possess good moral character. But how is moral character judged? How do actions, and especially words, reveal good moral character in a culture that is still significantly based on oral tradition? In this original and intimate look at Yoruba culture, Barry Hallen asks the Yoruba onisegun—the wisest and most accomplished herbalists or traditional healers, individuals justly reputed to be well versed in Yoruba thought and expression—what it means to be good and beautiful. Posed as an outsider wanting to gain understanding of how to speak Yoruba correctly, Hallen engages the onisegun and has them explain the subtleties and intricacies of Yoruba language use and the philosophy behind particular word choices. Their instructions reveal a striking and profound depiction of Yoruba aesthetic and ethical thought. The detailed interpretations of everyday language that Hallen supplies challenge prevailing Western views that African thought is nothing more than acquiescence to long-established religious or communal values. The philosophy of ordinary language reveals that moral reflection is indeed individual and that evaluations of action and character take place on the basis of clearly and logically delineated criteria. With the onisegun as his guides, Hallen identifies the priorities of Yoruba philosophy and culture through everyday expression and shows that there are rational pathways to both truth and beauty. Barry Hallen has taught philosophy at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. He is a Fellow at the W. E. B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Morehouse College. He is coauthor of Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy. Contents Ordinary Language and African Philosophy Moral Epistemology Me, My Self, and My Destiny The Good and the Bad The Beautiful Rationality, Individuality, Secularity, and the Proverbial Appendix of Yoruba-Language Quotations Glossary of Yoruba Terms. (shrink)

It is possible to assert that the present crisis in history on which there has been so much discussion is more specifically a problem affecting the historical sciences in the West rather than in the Afro-Asian countries. In the Afro-Asian countries, particularly those which have either become independent recently or have been able to assert their independence recently, history is considered important in forming a national self-image, help in the processes of national unity, and in the processes of (...) modernization or social change within the nation. The role of history in providing an ideological-cultural framework for national unity and growth is important, for in many of these countries the concept of a nation has not grown out of a long historical process by which people belonging to different race, religion and regions have become emotionally welded together. Rather, nationalism in these countries is a means for bringing about such a unity. The interpretation of the past therefore becomes a matter of wider public concern. In this context, history can hardly be regarded by anyone as irrelevant: it remains a prestigious subject in most universities (not only because it offers a better opportunity for entering into a civil service career), and national historians command a measure of public esteem which is becoming rare elsewhere. On the other hand, history has been displaced from its pre-eminent position in the West. The profession no longer enjoys the prestige which it enjoyed among nineteenth-century intellectuals: many social scientists consider that “the destruction of the conventional historian's conception of history is a necessary stage in the construction of a true science of society”; “a significant number of philosophers seem to have decided that history is either a third-order form of science, related to the social sciences as natural history was once related to the physical sciences, or that it is a second-order form of art, the epistemological value of which is questionable, the aesthetic worth of which is uncertain.”. (shrink)

This Handbook provides in one volume rich, comprehensive and rigorous coverage of specific subject areas and thematic concerns in the ever-evolving academic discipline of African philosophy. This Handbook is unique in its focus on central and emerging areas within African philosophy such as Afro-communitarian philosophy, ethics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, existentialism, philosophy of religion, gender philosophy, philosophy of education, phenomenology, transhumanism, African philosophy futures, and philosophy of the non-human. The thirty-two chapters in this Handbook explore the rich (...) textual and non-textual forms of philosophical knowledge in Africa and adequately represent the broad and diverse scope of African philosophy, showing the richness and depth of the philosophical tradition. This reference work is indispensable to students and researchers in African philosophy, comparative philosophy and world philosophies. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Buscamos analisar de um ponto de vista epistemológico três teses produzidas recentemente pelo Departamento de Educação III -FACED/UFBA que têm como objeto de estudo a capoeira. A metodologia do estudo foi de natureza qualitativa, destacando elementos da racionalidadediferenciada para pesquisa e produção do conhecimento na educação físicapresente nestas teses. Os resultados apontaram alguns indicadores duma orientação teórico-epistemológica no campo acadêmico da educação física no estado da Bahia, a partir do diálogo com formas de manifestação da cultura corporal dos povos (...) class='Hi'>afro-descendentes.This research aimed at analizing three doctorate theses from the Department of Education III - FACED/UFBA which have as study object the capoeira. The theoretical reference used here was related to pressupositions of Habermas’s epistemology. The methodology of the study was one of qualitative nature. The results indicated pointers of a possible theoretical-methodological reorientation in the field of Physical Education in the state of Bahia, from the necessities of the social and cultural contexts in the contemporary society, mainly of Africandescendent peoples. (shrink)

The Color Purple problematizes tradition-bound origin myths and political discourse in the hope of creating and addressing an Afro-American nation constituted by a rich, complex, and ambiguous culture. But rather than using patriarchal language and logics of power to describe the emergence of a postpatriarchal Afro-American national consciousness, Celie’s narrative radically resituates the subject’s national identity within a mode of aesthetic, not political, representation. These discursive modes are not “naturally” separate, but The Color Purple deliberately fashions such a (...) separation in its attempt to represent a national culture that operates according to “womanist” values rather than patriarchal forms.5 While political language is laden with the historical values and associations of patriarchal power, aesthetic discourse here carries with it a utopian force that comes to be associated with the spirit of everyday life relations among women. 5. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens , p. xi. “Womanist” is a neologism of Walker’s invention. Much more than an idiosyncratic translation of “feminist” into a black/third-world female tradition, the term describes the “woman” in a range of personal and social identities: “Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good’ for one…. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually…. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually…. Traditionally universalist, as in … ‘the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.’ ” In calling the new nationalist epistemology imaged and advocated in The Color Purple an “aesthetic/symbolic” logic, I mean to honor the careful historical and categorical distinctions that operate in the novel and in Walker’s critical work around it. Central to her practice is a delegitimation of traditionally patriarchal-racist political practices, institutions, and language. Lauren Berlant is assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is currently working on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s readings of the cultural/sexual politics of national identity. (shrink)

In his [Africans are not Black: The Case for Conceptual Liberation], Kwesi Tsri relies extensively on myths and non-fictional narratives to dictate the origin of the racial disparagement of Afro-Americans and Africans from south of the Sahara. Owing to the synonymy between ‘black’ and ‘Africa’ as well as the derogatory symbolism in the former that fuels the latter, Tsri submits the need to disassociate Africans from the concept, ‘black.’ Upon a critical conversation with Tsri’s text however, Chimakonam discerns three (...) flaws. Granted, the objections are salient, I augment herein, one of Chimakonam’s critiques – the exclusion by Tsri, of nonfictional or scientific texts on the race discourse. Whereas I agree with Chimakonam that both the fictional and non-fictional accounts on race are pertinent for intellectual balance in Tsri’s disquisition, I further suggest that in most cases, non-fictional or scientific theories on race are undergirded by the prejudice initiated by mythical and/or fictional narratives. I substantiate my thesis, relying on Karl Popper’s evolutionary epistemology, with 21 st century science admission that human genetic diversity cannot be captured by scientific theories of race. Keywords: Africa, Blackness, Jonathan Chimakonam, Karl Popper, Kwesi Tsri. (shrink)

Dans ce livre, examiné par un comité diversifié et international d’avocat.e.s en exercice et agréés, j’aborde la réinsertion dans la société des jeunes afro-américains ayant vécu l’incarcération et confrontés à des défis sociophysiologiques. En particulier, je traite des défis auxquels ces jeunes individus ont été confrontés, en explorant une gamme de problématiques liées à la transition des établissements correctionnels pour jeunes vers la société en général. Tout d’abord, je présente les informations contextuelles pertinentes. Ensuite, je mets en lumière les (...) obstacles liés à la transition et propose des solutions systémiques pour les surmonter. Enfin, je plaide en faveur de réformes juridiques spécifiques pour faciliter cette réintégration. Dans la rédaction de cette étude évaluée par des pairs, je me suis appuyé sur des données issues de recherches basées sur des preuves, des études de cas, ainsi que des témoignages tirés de mon expérience personnelle au sein d’une organisation dédiée à la défense des intérêts et au mentorat auprès de jeunes d’origine afro-américaine. (shrink)

Philosophizing the Americas establishes the field of inter-American philosophy. Bringing together contributors who work in Africana Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Afro-Latin philosophy, decolonial theory, and African American philosophy, the volume examines the full range of traditions that have, separately and in conversation with each other, worked through how philosophy in both establishes itself in the Americas and engages with the world from which it emerges. The book traces a range of questions, from the history of philosophy (...) in the Americas to philosophical questions of race, feminism, racial eliminativism, creolization, epistemology, coloniality, aesthetics, and literature. The essays place an impressive range of philosophical traditions and figures into dialogue with one another: some familiar, such as José Martí, Sylvia Wynter, Martin R. Delany, José Vasconcelos, Alain Locke, as well as such less familiar thinkers as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hilda Hilst, and George Lamming. In each chapter, the contributors find fascinating and productive matrices of tension or convergence in works throughout the Americas. The result is an original and important contribution to knowledge that introduces readers from various disciplines to unfamiliar yet compelling ideas and considers familiar texts from novel and prescient perspectives. Philosophizing the Americas stands alone as a representation of current scholarly debates in the field of inter-American philosophy. Contributors: Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Jacoby Adeshei Carter, Nadia Celis, Tommy J. Curry, Hernando A. Estévez, Daniel Fryer, James B. Haile III, Chike Jeffers, Lee A. McBride III, Michael Monahan, Adriana Novoa, Susana Nuccetelli, Andrea J. Pitts, Dwayne A. Tunstall, and Alejandro A. Vallega. (shrink)

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a (...) regress of reasons looms. In this new study, Aikin presents a full case for infinitism as a response to the problem of the regress of reasons. Infinitism is the view that one must have a non-terminating chain of reasons in order to be justified. The most defensible form of infinitism, he argues, is that of a mixed theory – that is, epistemic infinitism must be consistent with and integrate other solutions to the regress problem. (shrink)

This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students in epistemology.

Testimony is a crucial source of knowledge: we are to a large extent reliant upon what others tell us. It has been the subject of much recent interest in epistemology, and this volume collects twelve original essays on the topic by some of the world's leading philosophers. It will be the starting point for future research in this fertile field. Contributors include Robert Audi, C. A. J. Coady, Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Sanford C. Goldberg, Peter Graham, Jennifer Lackey, Keith (...) Lehrer, Richard Moran, Frederick F. Schmitt, Ernest Sosa, and James Van Cleve. (shrink)

A common complaint against contemporary epistemology is that its issues are too rarified and, hence, of little relevance for the everyday assessments we make of each other=s beliefs. The notion of epistemic rationality focuses on a specific goal, that of now having accurate and comprehensive beliefs, whereas our everyday assessments of beliefs are sensitive to the fact that we have an enormous variety of goals and needs, intellectual as well as nonintellectual. Indeed, our everyday assessments often have a quasi-ethical (...) dimension; we want to know, for example, whether someone has been responsible, or at least non-negligent, in forming opinions. Nevertheless, epistemology, properly conceived, is relevant to our commonplace intellectual concerns. Epistemic rationality is an idealized notion, but its idealized character makes it suitable to serve as a theoretical anchor for other notions of rationality, including notions that are less idealized and, hence, potentially more directly relevant to our everyday assessments. (shrink)

Despite its importance, the work is rather secondary in the sense that it relies, for the most part, on the Buddhist logical legacy. The first extant commentary is the Nyayavatara-vivrti of Siddharsigani.

This book creates a conceptual schema that acts as a correlation between Epistemology and Epistemic Logic. It connects both fields and offers a proper theoretical foundation for the contemporary developments of Epistemic Logic regarding the dynamics of information. It builds a bridge between the view of Awareness Justification Internalism, and a dynamic approach to Awareness Logic. The book starts with an introduction to the main topics in Epistemic Logic and Epistemology and reviews the disconnection between the two fields. (...) It analyses three core notions representing the basic structure of the conceptual schema: “Epistemic Awareness”, “Knowledge” and “Justification”. Next, it presents the Explicit Aware Knowledge Schema, using a diagram of three ellipses to illustrate the schema, and a formal model based on a neighbourhood-model structure, that shows one concrete application of the EAK-Schema into a logical structure. The book ends by presenting conclusions and final remarks about the uses and applications of the EAK-Schema. It shows that the most important feature of the schema is that it serves both as a theoretical correlate to the dynamic extensions of Awareness Logic, providing it with a philosophical background, and as an abstract conceptual structure for a re-interpretation of Epistemology. (shrink)

Is the nature of testimonial warrant epistemically internalist or externalist? I will argue that the question should be answered ‘yes!’ The disjunction is not exclusive. Rather, a testimonial belief may possess epistemically internalist warrant—justification—as well as epistemically externalist warrant—entitlement. I use the label ‘pluralism’ to denote the view that there are both internalist and externalist species of genuinely epistemic warrant and argue for pluralism in the epistemology of testimony.

This chapter addresses some basic questions about the cultivation of responsibilist intellectual virtue. What is intellectual virtue? How are specific intellectual virtues defined and how do they contribute to intellectual virtue in general? What are the epistemic goods at which intellectual virtue and virtues aim? What justifies education in epistemic virtue, understood as a state of intellectual character? How should the motivational aspect of epistemic character be understood? How can educators cultivate a devotion to epistemic goods for themselves? How can (...) curricula, methods of instruction, and the evaluation of student learning and schools best support and not undermine the cultivation of intellectual virtue? (shrink)

The previous chapter offers a distinctive virtue-theoretic account of knowledge, which the chapter describes as dispositional robust virtue epistemology. It is argued that this view is ultimately untenable because it cannot accommodate what we refer to as the epistemic dependence of knowledge. This point is motivated by employing what we call an epistemic Twin Earth argument, and also by appealing to some familiar claims in the epistemology of testimony. In addition, it is claimed that there is an alternative (...) proposal available, which we refer to as anti-luck virtue epistemology, that can accommodate epistemic dependence and which can thus offer a more satisfactory account of knowledge. (shrink)

Drawing on resources from both the Analytical and Continental traditions, Form and World argues that a comprehension of Kant's aesthetics is necessary for grasping the scope and force of his epistemology. Fiona Hughes draws on phenomenological and aesthetic resources to bring out the continuing relevance of Kant's project. One of the difficulties faced in reading the Critique of Pure Reason is finding a way of reading the text as one continuous discussion. This book offers a reading at each stage (...) of Kant's epistemological argument, showing how various elements of Kant's argument, often thought of as extraneous or indefensible, can be integrated. This incisive study, arguing for the centrality of aesthetics in philosophy, and within experience in general, challenges a blind spot in the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy and will contribute to a growing interest in the general significance of aesthetic culture. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a new kind of hinge epistemology which is called transcendental hinge epistemology. According to this view, hinges are immune from doubt because it is impossible to doubt them coherently, and this impossibility arises because any attempt to doubt them will presuppose their truth. Such an immunity is possessed only by inescapable hinges, that is, hinges that must be presupposed in every inquiry. I will argue that current hinge epistemologies fail to provide a satisfactory (...) anti-sceptical strategy because they focus on escapable hinges, that is, hinges with respect to which one can entertain coherent doubts. (shrink)