Objectionable Commemorations: A Survey

What should we do about “objectionable” commemorations, especially statues or monuments that honour people responsible for injustice? The view that we should leave the decision to the tussle of politics appears implausible. In this blueprint, we consider several philosophical issues connected to the issue of objectionable commemorations. The blueprint is organised thematically, with several suggested readings per theme.

For a more streamlined version of this Blueprint, with a special focus on Aesthetics, see Immoral Monuments and the Commemoration Debate.

Non-Western Ecologies: A Selection

Environmental Philosophy is rarely taught as a stand-alone topic. It may be taught within a course dedicated to the philosophy of science, applied ethics, or even aesthetics, but despite its global importance, it remains marginalised in English-speaking teaching. Further, attention is very rarely given to non-western conceptions of the environment and ecology and non-western approaches to the climate crisis. This Blueprint offers a selection of readings that will provide readers with a better sense of how these topics have been approached by a variety of non-western geographical, historical, and religious traditions. This selection is just that: a non-exhaustive presentation of sources. Readers are welcome to follow the entire Blueprint, or to pick a specific week to explore. The Blueprint also offers a large selection of excerpted primary sources as well as full anthologies, which can be used as a jumping board for deeper learning.

Female Philosophers in African Philosophy: A Selection

The contribution of women philosophers has often been confined to the margins of African philosophical historiography. This blueprint seeks to challenge and expand the traditional canon by foregrounding the philosophical reflections of African women. It aims to develop an alternative perspective that acknowledges and critically engages with the intellectual labor of women across diverse African contexts.


The selection of texts spans over three centuries, encompassing thinkers from varied geographical regions, linguistic traditions, and cultural backgrounds. These works demonstrate the depth and diversity of African women’s philosophical engagement, addressing a range of critical issues such as the place of women in the African philosophical world, feminism in African societies, the politics of decolonization, and women’s relationship to religion and spirituality.


By situating these texts at the center of philosophical inquiry rather than the periphery, this blueprint not only broadens the scope of African philosophy but also disrupts the gendered silences that have shaped its historiography. In doing so, it opens up a space for a more inclusive and pluralistic understanding of Africa’s rich intellectual traditions.

Chinese Philosophy of Mind

Chinese philosophy has a long and distinguished history of development spanning a period of more than two thousand years. The historical development of Chinese philosophy can be divided into three major periods: the classical period (6th century-3rd century BCE), the period of the independent growth of Chinese Buddhism (6th century-9th century CE) and neo-Confucianism (11th century-18th century). Chinese philosophy is mostly known for its moral and political thought. Questions concerning moral cultivation, good governance and how to live a good life occupy the centre of Chinese thought and consequently draw most of the contemporary Western scholarship. Topics in philosophy of mind are, in this sense, relatively marginal aspects of Chinese philosophy. However, ancient Chinese thinkers have made important contributions by developing distinctive concepts such as ‘xin 心’ (heart-mind), ‘qing 情’ (emotion) and ‘zhi 知’ (knowing), which play important roles in their accounts of moral epistemology and ethics. For example, in contrast to the Western conception of the mind which distinguishes between cognitive states (such as beliefs and perceptions) and affective states (such as desires and feelings), the Chinese concept ‘xin’ (heart-mind) denotes an entity that is not only the centre of cognition but also of emotion, understanding and intuition. Early Chinese thinkers endorsed a holistic view about the mind-body relationship, leading to the important concept of bodily recognition ‘tiyan 体验’ or ‘tiren 体认’, which is one of the fundamental methods of perception.

This blueprint aims to (1) introduce and trace the development of concepts such as ‘xin’ ‘qing’ and ‘zhi’ and (2) examine and address surrounding issues in mind, moral epistemology and ethics in major Chinese thinkers and schools throughout the three periods. The readings will cover primary sources such as Mengzi, Xunzi, Zhuangzi, Chinese Buddhism and neo-Confucian texts as well as secondary literature.

Mind, Cognition, and the Self: an Embodied Perspective

Embodied cognition is a subset of theses that pertains to what is known as 4EA approaches or situated approaches to cognition. The acronym “4EA” refers, more specifically, to the theses that cognition is Extended, Embodied, Enacted, Embedded, and Affective. While typically treated as a block, the views and theses that populate the 4EA approach are often disparate. Regardless, they are united by a revisionary attitude towards cognitivism, the paradigm that dominates cognitive sciences, and an emphasis on the non-trivial roles played by the non-neural body and the environment on cognition. The views that can be identified as committed to the embodiment of cognition are neither entirely unified nor homogeneous, either. In fact, it is possible to find some formulation of the embodiment of cognition in many of the theses that populate the 4EA approach. In this blueprint, we mostly focus on proposals that fall within enactivism, a framework that thinks of the mind as continuous with life. From this perspective, meaning arises from the interactions between an agent and its environment. Enactivism also emphasizes the active nature of cognition, broadly construed. In virtue of its themes and theses, enactivism offers a rich alternative to think about cognition and the mind, while maintaining an open dialogue with various disciplines and traditions. Despite the focus on enactivism, we have also included papers that are, more broadly, committed to the embodiment of cognition and that have enriched these debates. The result is a collection of papers characterized, thus, not only by their commitment to the thesis of embodiment, but also by the diversity of approaches they bring together and their interdisciplinarity.

This blueprint focuses on the work of female researchers working in embodied cognition. The aims of this blueprint are to: (1) introduce key concepts within the embodied cognition program, (2) introduce the work of central researchers within the program, and (3) discuss the contributions of the research program to other philosophical disciplines. To this end, the blueprint is organized in two main parts. The first part (weeks 1 to 6) focuses on key aspects of this research program and the contributions of female researchers to it. The second part (weeks 7 to 11), in turn, focuses on the contributions of the embodied cognition program to and from topics that have been traditionally overlooked in philosophy. This second section has been labelled feminist embodied cognition because these topics have received attention from feminist philosophers. However, these topics have been widely discussed in the context of other (philosophical) disciplines. The papers selected as essential were considered, in most cases, more accessible for students who are less familiar with the literature. They also allow for a good organization of the topics discussed. The discussion questions are related to these essential readings. Suggested readings might constitute key contributions to the debate, or discuss important implications and provide alternative perspectives.

A Comparative Introduction to the Philosophy of Non-Human Animals

A comparative, explicitly non-eurocentric and non-anthropocentric introduction to philosophical thought about the non-human animal. This blueprint aims to develop a deeper understanding of the problem of speciesism and advocatesf the inclusion of non-human animals in philosophical thinking. It is divided into two parts. First, the understanding of non-human animals in Western, Zen-Buddhist, Maori, Indian and African thought is examined. In the second part, with the help of what was learned in the first part, special problems in dealing with non-human animals are dealt with, including the problem areas of meat consumption, the rights of non-human animals, and speciesism. The texts given are all essential readings for holding the respective weekly units.

Class, Status, and Aesthetics

When it comes to how class and status structures might shape our aesthetic preferences, as well as how such structures might be challenged or reinforced by our interactions with various aesthetic objects, there are a number of questions to explore. Typically, these questions are treated separately in such disciplines as: sociology, critical theory, cultural studies, or art history. But, in large part, they have not been discussed together, let alone discussed all that much within analytic aesthetics. Through this blueprint, though, our hope is to introduce intermediate philosophical readers to a range of topics which bear on class, status, and aesthetics in order to illustrate the roles that aesthetics can play in both class and status structures, and vice versa.