Blyden, Edward Wilmot. Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race
1887, Black Classic Press
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, Contributed by: Quentin PharrPublisher’s Note:
A native of St. Thomas, West Indies, Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) lived most of his life on the African continent. He was an accomplished educator, linguist, writer, and world traveler, who strongly defended the unique character of Africa and its people. Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race is an essential collection of his writings on race, culture, and the African personality.Comment: This collection of essays is seminal in the intellectual foundations of Pan-Africanism, African Islamism, African Anti-colonialism, the Back-to-Africa Movement, and the educational revival in Liberia/West Africa. The essays are great for courses on African thought, or African anti-colonialism/postcolonialism. They would also be excellent companion texts for reading Marcus Garvey or Kwame Nkrumah, or vice versa.
Bodunrin, Peter Oluwambe. The Question of African Philosophy
1981, Philosophy. 56 (216): 161-179.
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Added by: Sara Peppe and Björn FreterAbstract:
Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophyComment (from this Blueprint): The article is focused on the theme of African philosophy giving a clear picture of the difficulties in defining what is African philosophy. This paper does not treat the theme of African philosophy and African language, but it provides a base for the above-mentioned debate giving an account picture of African philosophy. The paper indicates that the philosopher Oruka found four trends in African philosophy: Ethno-philosophy, Philosophy sagacity, Nationalist-ideological philosophy and Professional philosophy. The author highlights that the nature of African philosophy is understood differently by the various contemporary African thinkers. And, the article deeply considers the effects of contact with Western populations. Thus, the article links the philosophical problem of defining philosophy in Africa with colonialism. Moreover, Bodunrin examines the four categories of African philosophy proposed by Oruka in the light of the four challenges Africa faces after entering in contact with Western countries.
Booth, Annie. We are the Land: Native American Views of Nature
2003, in H. Selin (ed.), Nature Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht
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Added by: Kas BernaysAbstract:
This is how one Native American presents her interpretation of the indigenous understanding of nature. As we will see in this article, many Native Americans present similar understandings. Their reciprocal relationships with nature permeated every aspect of life from spirituality to making a living and led to a different way of seeing the world, what they might call a more “environmental” way of seeing the world. But is this a true picture? Increasingly there has been debate over the nature of the Native American’s relationship to the land, both past and present. This article will examine this debate and the way in which Native Americans view nature.Comment (from this Blueprint): An introduction to the views of nature which proliferate across different Native American philosophies, with a consideration of contemporary discourses about whether environmentalist readings are an accurate or appropriate treatment of Native American traditions of thought.
Brock, Gillian. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account
2009, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordPublisher’s Note:
Publisher: Gillian Brock develops a viable cosmopolitan model of global justice that takes seriously the equal moral worth of persons, yet leaves scope for defensible forms of nationalism and for other legitimate identifications and affiliations people have. Brock addresses two prominent kinds of skeptic about global justice: those who doubt its feasibility and those who believe that cosmopolitanism interferes illegitimately with the defensible scope of nationalism by undermining goods of national importance, such as authentic democracy or national self-determination. The model addresses concerns about implementation in the world, showing how we can move from theory to public policy that makes progress toward global justice. It also makes clear how legitimate forms of nationalism are compatible with commitments to global justice. Global Justice is divided into three central parts. In the first, Brock defends a cosmopolitan model of global justice. In the second, which is largely concerned with public policy issues, she argues that there is much we can and should do toward achieving global justice. She addresses several pressing problems, discussing both theoretical and public policy issues involved with each. These include tackling global poverty, taxation reform, protection of basic liberties, humanitarian intervention, immigration, and problems associated with global economic arrangements. In the third part, she shows how the discussion of public policy issues can usefully inform our theorizing; in particular, it assists our thinking about the place of nationalism and equality in an account of global justice.Comment: This text is a comprehensive set of arguments concerning global economic justice, with application to areas such as taxation, immigration, and military-humanitarian intervention. It responds to a wide variety of literature, but takes as its starting point Rawls' Law of Peoples. Individuals chapters could be taught in a lower-level undergraduate class, while entire sections could be taught in an upper-division undergraduate class.
Brock, Gillian. Contemporary Cosmopolitanism: Some Current Issues
2013, Philosophy Compass, 8 (8): 689-698.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: In this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism - such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain - and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates.Comment: This text is a clear and concise introduction to the contemporary state of debates concerning global justice. It would make an excellent addition to an introductory course in political philosophy, justice, or global ethics.
Burra, Arudra. The Lamps in our House: Reflections on Postcolonial Pedagogy
2021, Miami Institute for the Social Sciences blog
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Arudra Burra
Introduction: I teach philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. My teaching reflects my training, which is in the Western philosophical tradition: I teach PhD seminars on Plato and Rawls, while Bentham and Mill often figure in my undergraduate courses.
What does it mean to teach these canonical figures of the Western philosophical tradition to students in India? I have often asked myself this question. Similar questions are now being asked by philosophers situated in the West: Anglophone philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, seems to have arrived at a late moment of post-colonial reckoning. [...]
Comment: This is a long blog post originally published in an online forum on philosophy in the Global Majority organised by the Miami Institute of Social Sciences. It defends a place for thinking and teaching the Western philosophical canon in postcolonial educational spaces such as India, bringing together both recent discussions of decolonising philosophy in the West, as well as older discussions within India about the place of the Western canon. It concludes with a debate on these themes between Mahatma Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore. I wrote it as a reflection on my own pedagogical practice teaching philosophy in India, but it has also been used in a course on Indian philosophy taught at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. I think it would be a useful counterpoint to think with while talking about the importance of diversity in philosophy -- among other things because it points out that even the question of what constitutes 'diversity' might vary from place to place; and in that sense it might be seen as an instance of philosophical diversity in action. This is a long blog post originally published in an online forum on philosophy in the Global Majority organised by the Miami Institute of Social Sciences. It defends a place for thinking and teaching the Western philosophical canon in postcolonial educational spaces such as India, bringing together both recent discussions of decolonising philosophy in the West, as well as older discussions within India about the place of the Western canon. It concludes with a debate on these themes between Mahatma Gandhi and the poet Rabindranath Tagore. I wrote it as a reflection on my own pedagogical practice teaching philosophy in India, but it has also been used in a course on Indian philosophy taught at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. I think it would be a useful counterpoint to think with while talking about the importance of diversity in philosophy -- among other things because it points out that even the question of what constitutes 'diversity' might vary from place to place; and in that sense it might be seen as an instance of philosophical diversity in action.
Butnor, Ashby, Matthew MacKenzie. Enactivism and Gender Performativity
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 190-206
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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
The enactivist paradigm of embodied cognition represents a powerful alternative to Cartesian and cognitivist approaches in the philosophy of mind. On this view, the body plays a constitutive role in the integrated functioning of perception, affect, and other cognitive processes. Enactivism shares many of the central themes of feminist theory, and is extended to apply to social and political concerns. Following a discussion of the key components of the enactive approach, we apply it to explain more complex social manifestations, specifically gender performance and its reproduction through time. By employing Judith Butler's notion of performativity, we demonstrate how gender, as one marker of social identity and difference, emerges through processes of embodied and embedded sense-making as articulated by enactive theory. We argue that more attention to embodied and embedded values allows for the interruption and transformation of histories of oppressive practices and opens the door to more liberatory possibilities.Comment (from this Blueprint): Butnor and MacKenzie apply a specific paradigm - the enactive model of cogniton - to the understanding of gender identity in this chapter. This chapter is thus a useful introduction to the enactive framework, but is also an important reading for those already familiar with the literature as it both tries to consider how gender can be 'natural' but also deeply social and political. As such, Butnor and MacKenzie straddle the line between the scientific and the political by provising a non-reductive, natural account of gender that does liberatory work. This reading is also highly relevant to feminists who are critical of essentialist views of gender and poses to them the question of whether we can have our naturalist cake and eat it too.
Carpenter, Amber. Illuminating Community – Animals in Classical Indian Thought
2018, In Peter Adamson and G. Fay Edwards (eds) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
This chapter presents a discussion of the rich tradition of reflection on animals in ancient Indian philosophy, which deals with but is not restricted to the topic of reincarnation. At the center of the piece is the continuity that Indians saw between human and nonhuman animals and the consequences of this outlook for the widespread idea of nonviolence. Consideration is also given to the philosophical interest of fables centrally featuring animals, for example the Pañcatantra. In general it is suggested that ancient Indian authors did not, unlike European counterparts, focus on the question of what makes humans unique in contrast to all other animals, but rather on the ethical and metaphysical interconnections between humans and various kinds of animals.Comment (from this Blueprint): An overview of the role of non-human animals in Indian Thought pointing out that there is not much evidence of that presumption of a fundamental difference between human and nonhuman forms of life that allows us in English to use the word “animal” simply to mean “nonhuman animal.” The concept of the animal is thus not best suited to explore the nature of the human by contrast. Instead we more often find a background presumption of a common condition: whatever lives seeks to sustain its life, wants pleasure and not pain, wants its desires and aims satisfied rather than thwarted.
Carpenter, Amber. Amber Carpenter on Animals in Indian Philosophy [Podcast]
2018, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps [Blog]
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract:
An interview with Amber Carpenter about the status of nonhuman animals in ancient Indian philosophy and literature.Comment (from this Blueprint): An interview about the status of nonhuman animals in ancient Indian philosophy and literature; a very good complement to her paper.
Carter, June. La Negra as Metaphor in Afro-Latin American Poetry
1985, Caribbean Quarterly, 31(1): 73–82
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Added by: Adriana Clavel-VázquezAbstract:
Carter examines the anti-Black sentiment in Latin American culture and pays particular attention to how, even in negrista poetry aimed at contributing to the fight against oppression of Black people, Black women are used as a symbol of sensuality and primitiveness. The paper argues that when Black women feature in poetry in the figure of la mulata, they are associated with nature and portrayed as inherently evil, sensual and primitive. Moreover, while representations of Black men evolved to focus on their inner consciousness, rather than on their physical attributes, and to combat oppressive imagery and symbolism, la mulata continued being used as a satire aimed at inviting Afro-Latin communities to take positive steps towards improving their social conditions. They were used to advance a criticism for how the anti-Black sentiment at the heart of popular conceptions of mestizaje ends up being internalized by members of Afro-Latin communities, so that Black women are represented as renouncing Blackness and engaging in a “whitening” process.Comment (from this Blueprint): Carter’s discussion of Afro-Latin women offers a good opportunity to reflect on what an intersectional approach to race in Latin American needs to involve. As evidenced by the analysis of Rosario Castellanos’ Balún Canán, mestizas in Latin American societies face a double displacement: first as being in-between cultures, and second, as not quite part of the mestizo nation. In addition to this condition of mestiza womanhood, Afro-Latin women face another dimension of displacement. They are part of mestizo nations, but, as Black, they are not fully recognised as such; they are part of mestizo nations, but, as women, they are not fully recognised as such; they are part of Afro-Latin communities, but, as women, they are not fully recognised as such.
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