Suchergebnisse

In contemporary political discourse, the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric often undergirds philosophical analyses of "democracy" both at home and abroad. This is nowhere better articulated than in Jacques Derrida's Rogues, in which he describes Islam as the only religious or theocratic culture that would "inspire and declare any resistance to democracy" (Derrida 2005, 29). Curiously, Derrida attributes the failings of democracy in Islam to the lack of reference to Aristotle's Politics in the writings of the medieval Muslim philosophers. This paper aims to analyze this gross misconception of Islamic philosophy and illuminate the thoroughgoing influence the Muslim philosophers had on their Christian successors, those who are so often credited as foundations of Western political philosophy. In so doing, I compare the ideal states presented by Averroes and Dante – in which Aristotelian influence is intimately interlaced – and offer an analysis thereof as heralds of what we might call the secularization of the political, inspiring those democratic values that Derrida believes to be absent in the rich philosophy of the Middle Ages.

Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning analyses the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the early modern period John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis Bacon's

In February 2022, a "round table" was held to discuss the concept of the "logic of sense", elaborated by A.V. Smirnov in a number of monographs and articles. The participants focused their attention on the following questions: • What are the implications of the thesis about the possibility of initially vari­able ways of sense-positing?• What philosophical conclusions are implied by non-universality of Euro­pean reason and non-universality of philosophy in its European version? • What are the epistemological perspectives of logic of substance and logic of process? • Do we recognize the variability of the ability of judgment, i.e. variability of methods of subject-predicate linking, modifying Kant's thesis postulat­ing its invariance? • Is P-logic possible as an organon of probative thinking? • If all the big cultures are based on specific logics of sense-positing, will then the philosophical culturology and typology of big cultures be a study of consciousness in its variability and typological completeness? • Is a philosophical study of non-Western cultures indispensable to philoso­phy of consciousness? The discussion opened up prospects for further research on this issue. The round table proceedings are published below.

The persistent resentment towards classical liberal principles especially individualism and free market in contemporary Africa, represents an outcome of decades of ambush against the ideology despite its clear connections with traditional African philosophy and relevance to the prosperity of modern African states. This work attempts to draw comparisons between social and economic organisation in traditional Africa and classical liberal principles. Contrary to literatures that portray the community as the real and only end in traditional African societies, elements like free trade; market economy; consensus; anarchy and limited governance negates this position. While tracing the cause of Africa's cling to socialism and communism, this paper presents an ideological transition from pre-colonialism to nationalist and post-independent Africa. It concludes by demystifying the arguments of individualism as antithetical to African morality. It also justified the inevitability of classical liberal principles in modern Africa.