You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The book is about providing a novel African moral theory; this means it provides a theory about what actions are permissible or impermissible. It does this by mining descriptive works of an African indigenous concept called life force. The book shows that there is a plausible way to secularise life force so the theory does not have to be inherently religious. The author argues that the theory does better at explaining various intuitions and hard cases than utilitarianism and other African moral theories like those that focus on personhood or relational harmony. It also contains a substantial section on metaethics which is about what grounds morality.
This handbook explores essential philosophical questions about the experience of difference and the other in African societies. The contributions go beyond a mere discussion of empirical manifestations. They offer a critical analysis of, among other things, the very nature and essence of difference that makes such manifestations possible. Coverage examines the philosophical basis for the African contexts of gender differences, bodily differences and disability; racial, religious, and cultural differences; xenophobia and xenophilia; and issues of the otherings of non-human beings from human beings. These insightful analyses detail the ontological, epistemological, and moral foundations of dif...
In African Somaesthetics: Cultures, Feminisms, Politics, Catherine F. Botha brings together original research on the body in African cultures, specifically interrogating the possibilities of the contribution of a somaesthetic approach in the context of colonization, decolonization, and globalization in Africa. The innovative contributions that consider the somaesthetic dimensions of experience in the context of Africa (centred broadly around the themes of politics, feminisms, and cultures) reflect a diversity of perspectives and positions. The book is a first of its kind in gathering together novel and focused analyses of the body as conceived of from an African perspective.
The Routledge Handbook of African Political Philosophy showcases and develops the arguments propounded by African philosophers on political problems, bringing together experts from around the world to chart current and future research trends. Africa’s recent history has been shaped by the experiences of colonization, anti-colonial struggle, and postcolonial self-rule, so it is perhaps not surprising that political questions are also central to African philosophy. This exciting new handbook provides insights into the foundations, virtues, vices, controversies, and key topics to be found within African political philosophy, concluding by considering how it connects with other traditions of political philosophy. In doing so, this book provides important fresh perspectives that help us to gain a richer understanding of the challenges of coexistence in society and governance not just in Africa, but around the world. This book will be an important resource for researchers and students across the fields of Political Philosophy, Political Science, International Relations, and African Studies.
Articulates the importance of oral traditions and symbolism as repositories of philosophical knowledge and reaffirms African systems of thought as philosophy.
This book investigates how knowledge is conceived and explored within the African context. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, has historically been dominated by the Western approach to the discourse of knowledge. This book however shines a much-needed spotlight on knowledge systems originating within the African continent. Bringing together key voices from across the field of African philosophy, this book explores the nature of knowledge across the continent and how they are rooted in Africans’ ontological sense of being and self. At a time when moves to decolonize curricula are gaining momentum, this book shows how understanding the specific ways of knowing that form part of the ev...
This book provides a rich synthesis of empirical research and theoretical engagements with questions of disability across different practices of colonialism as historically defined – post/de/anti/settler colonialism. It synthesises, critiques, and expands the boundaries of existing disability research which has been undertaken within different colonial contexts through the rich examination of recent empirical work mapping across disability and its intersectional colonialities. Filling an existing gap within the international literature through embedding the importance of grounding these within scholarly debates of colonialism, it empirically demonstrates the significance of disability for the broader scholarly fields of postcolonial, decolonial, and intersectional theories. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, critical studies, sociology of race and ethic relations, intersectionality, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and human geography.
Albinism is one of the foremost disability and public health issues in Africa today. It often makes headlines in local, national and international medias and forms the basis for intense advocacy at all levels. This is primarily due to the harmful representations of persons with albinism deeply entrenched in African traditions. These deeply rooted ideologies about albinism in African thought have largely promoted the continuous discrimination, stigmatization, harming, killing, commodification and violation of the human rights of persons with albinism in African places. How has albinism emerged as a thick concept in African traditions? What are these deeply entrenched ideas about the ontology ...
The Question of the Rationality of African Traditional Thought provides an introductory analysis of the primary concerns of the debate on the rationality of African traditional thought viewed through science's conceptual lenses. It shows that there is a fundamental problem with the manner in which the discussion on the rationality issue has ensued in the last six decades or so. Among other things, there is the fundamentally wrong assumption that the Western model is strictly scientific and the African model paranormal. Elvis Imafidon shows, however, that both Western and African societies are permeated with both the scientific and transcendental models. The difference however, lies in the fa...
Through the works of key figures in ethics since modernity this book charts a shift from dominant fixated, objective moral systems and the dependence on moral authorities such as God, nature and state to universal, formal, fallible, individualistic and/or vulnerable moral systems that ensue from the modern subject's exercise of reason and freedom.