SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

{"title":"Priority of duties, substantive human rights, and African communalism","authors":"P. Ikuenobe","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.2010174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.2010174","url":null,"abstract":"I argue for a plausible view of the African idea and practice of substantive individual rights. This view indicates that rights are a means of enhancing individual dignity in the context of a communal system of correlativity of duties and rights. This view is exemplified in Menkiti’s idea of the priority of duties. I explicate this idea and indicate how it highlights the inherent social-communal nature of humans that is implicated in African normative conception of “personhood”.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"421 - 435"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41391088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Critical pedagogy, scholar activism and epistemic decolonisation","authors":"V. O. Akoleowo","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.2010175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.2010175","url":null,"abstract":"African universities’ curricula remain largely Eurocentric, and this constitutes a factor in the continuing epistemicide against indigenous knowledge systems. While calls for epistemic decolonisation have highlighted this epistemic violence, the role of African scholars in the actualisation of such epistemic decolonisation has not been sufficiently exposed. This article, therefore, proffers Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy (CP) as a framework for the transformative reconstruction of Western epistemologies in African universities. While Freire’s CP is typically utilised as a pedagogical method through which the teacher stimulates students’ critical consciousness, this article exposes its nature as a means of stimulating African scholars to the critical consciousness of their role in the process of deconstructing epistemic hegemonies. It argues that African scholars have a crucial role to play in epistemic decolonisation – as stimulants through which students learn to be critically conscious and as bastions of ideas and ideals guiding progressive social movements.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"436 - 451"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42480854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Interrogating the mistreatment of sacred objects as art(efacts)","authors":"A. D. Attoe, M. Enyimba","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1996140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1996140","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we argue against the assumptions that allow for the exploitation of certain types of relics under the guise that these objects are merely artistic and/or artifactual. Our thesis, therefore, is that sacred objects cannot be counted as art or treated as artefacts. To buttress our point, we first present some understandings of art and show how they aid these misconceptions. We then zoom in on two instances where the assumptions we refer to are at play. Specifically, we talk about certain objects with spiritual significance, and human bodies that are inherently sacred as examples that buttress our point. We show that the cultural and spiritual/religious significance that these sacred objects have do not make them artworks, and that the sacredness and the right to dignity that corpses possess are good enough reasons to reject the intuitions that make us believe they can become artefacts or can be treated as such.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"15 1","pages":"337 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41289419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"People and power in an African consensual democracy","authors":"Richmond Kwesi","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1996142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1996142","url":null,"abstract":"Some African thinkers have argued that the governance systems in traditional precolonial African societies were democratic, and the kind of democracy they practised was consensual democracy. It was democratic because it ensured the maximal participation of all members in the governance of the society, and it was consensual because it involved the rational deliberation of issues where decisions were primarily reached by consensus. The aim of this article is to examine, on the one side, the nature of the demos and kratos in traditional African systems of governance that warrants characterising them as democratic, and, on the other side, the decision- making process that marks it as a distinctive form of democracy – consensual democracy. Reflecting on Akan proverbs and archival records of deliberations, I argue that the question of democracy in relation to the traditional African systems of governance should be pursued not from how they cherish consensual decision- making, but by how they uniquely conceptualise the demos and kratos in the political experiences of African societies. This unique conception of people-power and the institution of decisional dissensus is what distinguishes traditional African consensual democracy from both populism and deliberative democracy.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"362 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46660675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to mitigate the horrific consequences of witchcraft belief in Africa","authors":"E. Ofuasia","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1996141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1996141","url":null,"abstract":"It is pertinent, at this point in human intellectual history, to address the pervasive but misleading position among Africans that witchcraft is necessarily feminine and cruel. The medieval era’s untenable conception and detection of witchcraft as an absolutely callous and womanly affair filtered into colonial and then contemporary Africa to become full-blown via Pentecostalism, with horrendous social consequences. From personal research, I foreground two fundamental theses: (1) for ancient Africans, witches are neither necessarily malicious (since they can be benevolent sometimes, if propitiated correctly) nor essentially feminine (since it is possible for men too, to engage in the “craft”); and (2) there is no conclusive evidence from revealed scriptures which endorses Christianity’s understanding of witches as predominantly women. I arrive at this finding by employing the methods of philosophical and hermeneutical analyses of the Ifá literary corpus and the Judeo-Christian Bible. These findings do not, however, excuse the evil done in the name of the craft in contemporary Africa, hence the urgency for intellectual intervention. As a panacea, this study posits that with proper medical and scientific explanations, the horrific scourges induced by the belief in witches among contemporary Africans can be tackled almost effortlessly.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"350 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47609813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On law as poetry: Shelley and Tocqueville","authors":"Joshua M. Hall","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1964205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1964205","url":null,"abstract":"Consonant with the ongoing “aesthetic turn” in legal scholarship, this article pursues a new conception of law as poetry. Gestures in this law-as-poetry direction appear in all three main schools in the philosophy of law’s history, as follows. First, natural law sees law as divinely inspired prophetic poetry. Second, positive law sees the law as a creative human positing (from poetry’s poesis). And third, critical legal theory sees these posited laws as calcified prose prisons, vulnerable to poetic liberation. My second and third sections interpret two texts at the intersections among these three theories, namely Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Shelley identifies a poetic rebirth in the ruins of natural law, suggesting a philosophy of law as “natural poesis”. And Tocqueville names several figurative aristocracies capable of redeploying aristocratic law against democratic despotism, suggesting a philosophy of law as “aristo-poetic counterforce”. Finally, I propose a new theory of law as poetry bridging these two theories, “natural aristo-poetic counterforce”.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"304 - 318"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49237653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Laughter in the economic philosophy of Adam Smith","authors":"M. Rathbone","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1949557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1949557","url":null,"abstract":"Laughter is relatively unexplored in Adam Smith’s economic philosophy. In this article, laughter in Smith’s two major works The theory of moral sentiments and An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations will be surveyed to assess the role it possibly played in his work, and whether there is a link between laughter and economics. It will be argued that although it is not a major theme in Smith’s work, there is a link between laughter and economics. Laughter is understood from the perspective of the instincts of self-interest and sympathy with the corresponding socio-ethical assessment in which the impartial spectator plays a central role. Hence, Smith understood laughter as a social deliberated phenomenon, and not an individual response to an event. This social dimension is where the assessment of laughter takes place to gauge propriety. It will be highlighted that the assessment in many of the references that Smith makes to laughter are mostly embedded in a disjunction or binary connective that consists of self-interest and sympathy. This disjunction is cross-categorical and often of the weak type which results in a tension between self-interest and sympathy. It will be argued that disjunction resists reduction of self-interest that is seen in the excess and narcissism of contemporary capitalism.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"242 - 253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43492566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Testimony in African epistemology revisited","authors":"Mikael Janvid","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1954766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1954766","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses important epistemological issues raised by Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo’s pioneering philosophical fieldwork among Yoruba herbalists or masters of medicine (onisegun). More precisely, I shall primarily investigate, as well as object to, the unduly restrictive view they take on testimony in Yoruba epistemic practice. With this criticism as the starting point, but still based on the cases Hallen and Sodipo provide, I explore different ways in which an “oral culture” like Yoruba (as traditionally depicted) can rely on testimony as a source of justification without succumbing to the gullible and uncritical attitude towards tradition such societies have been charged with. To this purpose, I put to use relevant developments in analytic epistemology taking place after Hallen and Sodipo published their work.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"279 - 289"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48677947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Naturalised modal epistemology and quasi-realism","authors":"Michael Omoge","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1949556","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1949556","url":null,"abstract":"Given quasi-realism, the claim is that any attempt to naturalise modal epistemology would leave out absolute necessity. The reason, according to Simon Blackburn, is that we cannot offer an empirical psychological explanation for why we take any truth to be absolutely necessary, lest we lose any right to regard it as absolutely necessary. In this article, I argue that not only can we offer such an explanation, but also that the explanation will not come with a forfeiture of the involved necessity. Using “squaring the circle” as evidence, I show that, contrary to quasi-realism, absolute necessity will not be left out in attempts to naturalise modal epistemology.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"229 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41721299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chieftaincy and traditional authority in modern democratic Ghana","authors":"Lord Mawuko-Yevugah, Harry Anthony Attipoe","doi":"10.1080/02580136.2021.1964206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2021.1964206","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to the expectations of several theorists belonging to the modernisation school, chieftaincy as a traditional institution survived various political changes throughout the 19th and 20th century in most African states. Nonetheless, their existence thereafter has varied in these states. Some states have lauded, recognised and employed chiefs for state development, while other states have blatantly ignored and designated the offices of chiefs as an obsolete governance institution that has outlived their usefulness. The variance in the disposition to chiefs is identified as deeply rooted in a long-standing debate over the relationship between modernity and tradition. This study explores this debate, adopting the Ghanaian chieftaincy institution in its modern form as a case study. A synthesis of existing literature on the relevant concepts was developed and discussed in the development of the study. The study identified the major debate on tradition and modernity to be situated in a binary school, where one strand believes they can both exist together, and the other situates their argument in the need to abolish tradition completely from modern societies. For the Ghanaian setting, however, the chieftaincy institution is recognised and accorded its autonomy in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. This has created a bifurcated state where constitutional law and customary law are implemented at the same time. Over the years, the interaction between both systems of governance has been seen mostly in land administration, local governance, and development. Chiefs as such are identified as playing extensive roles in state development and investment promotion through land administration, serving as gatekeepers between the central government and their subjects, promoting solidarity and employing their influence and expertise as a means for introducing sustainable development initiatives in their localities. However, conflicts and land mismanagement have been areas of contention, affecting their influence and relevance in recent times. The study recommends capacity building and further integration with the modern democratic Ghanaian institutions to improve the contribution of chiefs to the development of Ghana and other contexts where they exist.","PeriodicalId":44834,"journal":{"name":"SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 1","pages":"319 - 335"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43717123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}