Research Articles (Philosophy)

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The challenge that war poses to Levinas's thought
(Philippine National Philosophical Research Society, 2024-01) Hofmeyr, A.B. (Augusta Benda)
War is a " state of exception" that not only left an indelible mark on Levinas's life but confronts Levinas with a series of "hard questions" that pose a fundamental challenge to some of the most foundational tenets of his ethical metaphysics. Starting with the sole sustained consideration of war in Levinas's thought, the Preface of Totality and Infinity (TI), this study critically unpacks what it considers to be the three core questions or challenges posed by war: Firstly, the pivotal question raised in the Preface of TI: Does war not render ethics ineffective, as it does not just oppose but suspends this ethical relation? Secondly, the inquiry extends to the notion of a just war: If war indeed involves a suspension of morality, what normative basis can justify the idea of a just war? Thirdly, the complexity arises from the fact that the judgment required for considering a war just implies that the initial ethical relation, which exists prior to reflective thought and morality, cannot remain isolated from political considerations. How can we make sense of this seemingly impossible connection between ethics and politics in Levinas's thought or the apparent gap between ethics and justice in his philosophy? This paper concludes that a simple, either/or binary scheme cannot resolve the tension between the oxymoronic couplets (Totality/Infinity; War/Peace; Politics/Ethics) that pervade Levinas's thought. Instead, they appear to be inextricably linked in a Derridean double-bind of both/and that affirms that the ethical aspect of humanity is not an unwavering state but rather an ongoing struggle to combat the inhumanity associated with Totality, War, Politics, and even at times, "Justice." The burning issue of today of the justice/injustice of the Israel/Palestine war currently dividing the global citizenry is a testament to the fact that "Justice" constantly risks becoming unmoored from its ethical foundation in the necessary distinction between Neighbor and Enemy.
Responsibility gaps and technology : old wine in new bottles?
(Wiley, 2025-02) Oimann, Ann-Katrien; Tollon, Fabio
Recent work in philosophy of technology has come to bear on the question of responsibility gaps. Some authors argue that the increase in the autonomous capabilities of decision-making systems makes it impossible to properly attribute responsibility for AI-based outcomes. In this article we argue that one important, and often neglected, feature of recent debates on responsibility gaps is how this debate maps on to old debates in responsibility theory. More specifically, we suggest that one of the key questions that is still at issue is the significance of the reactive attitudes, and how these ought to feature in our theorizing about responsibility. We will therefore provide a new descriptive categorization of different perspectives with respect to responsibility gaps. Such reflection can provide analytical clarity about what is at stake between the various interlocutors in this debate. The main upshot of our account is the articulation of a way to frame this ‘new’ debate by drawing on the rich intellectual history of ‘old’ concepts. By regarding the question of responsibility gaps as being concerned with questions of metaphysical priority, we see that the problem of these gaps lies not in any advanced technology, but rather in how we think about responsibility.
Jecker and Atuire's African reflections on being a person : more welcome non-western thought about moral status
(BMJ Publishing Group, 2025-04) Metz, Thaddeus; th.metz@up.ac.za
No abstract available.
Benatar and Metz on cosmic meaning and anti-natalism
(Springer, 2024-04-19) Lougheed, Kirk
David Benatar argues that one important consideration in favour of anti-natalism is based on the fact that all humans lack cosmic meaning; we will never transcend space and time such that we will have an impact on the entire universe, forever. Instead of denying Benatar’s claim that we lack cosmic meaning, Thaddeus Metz recently argues that our lack of cosmic meaning is not that significant because we ought not to regret lacking a good that we could not have in the first place. He explains the principle behind this idea in modal terms: “the closer the world in which one could access a benefit, the more reasonable are attitudes such as sadness, disappointment, regret when does not acquire it.” I argue that this principle faces a serious counterexample in the form of death. The possible worlds in which one doesn’t die are incredibly distant. Yet, it is appropriate to express deep sadness, disappointment, and regret at the fact that one must inevitably face death. Metz is wrong that we shouldn’t regret lacking a good unavailable to us in the first place. His criticism of Benatar therefore fails. While it might be objected that immortality is not good, my basic point still stands when considering the fact that our lives are not significantly longer. Benatar’s claims about the significance of our lack of cosmic meaning might not be true, but not for the reasons suggested by Metz.
Helen Verran and the question of African logic
(Taylor and Francis, 2025) Ofuasia, Emmanuel
Hitherto, the African intellect had been decimated by notable European scholars such as David Hume, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Hegel, Lucien Levy-Bruhl to name a few. The common denominator among these male scholars is that the African intellect is not yet developed to the extent that it can accommodate logical reasoning. Whereas notable African scholars have responded to these charges as misleading whilst exploring ways of coming up with a logic system that can mediate the theory, thought and practice peculiar to Africans yet applicable in other climes, the role of women in this journey has usually been downplayed. This research thereby seeks to fill this void by making a case for the contribution of the Australian Helen Verran who did not engage in armchair scholarship as most of her European male counterparts who deny the African the ability to reason logically, but journeyed to Nigeria to perform some experiments with the Yorùbá numerical system. She is persuaded that through the traditional Yorùbá numerical pattern, an underlying logic system is implied. Even when her conclusions are questionable on several fronts, this research concludes that her role in instilling confidence in the development of artificial logic in Africa must not go unmentioned.
A critical consideration of Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality
(AOSIS, 2024-01-22) Hofmeyr, A.B. (Augusta Benda); benda.hofmeyr@up.ac.za
The background of this research is the status and significance of an ethics of care of the self in the history of morality. I followed the following methodology: I attempted to come to nuanced, critical understanding of the Foucault’s conceptualisation of morality in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality. In the ‘Ancients’, Foucault uncovered an ‘ethicsoriented’ as opposed to a ‘code-oriented’ morality in which the emphasis shifted to how an individual was supposed to constitute himself as an ethical subject of his own action without denying the importance of either the moral code or the actual behaviour of people. The main question was whether care of the self-sufficiently regulated an individual’s conduct towards others to prevent the self from lapsing into narcissism, substituting a generous responsiveness towards the other for a means-end rationale. I put this line of critique to test by confronting Foucault’s care of the self with Levinas’s primordial responsibility towards the other and put forward a case for the indispensability of aesthetics for ethics. In conclusion, I defended the claim that care of the self does indeed foster other responsiveness. INTRADISCIPLINARY AND/OR INTERDISCIPLINARY IMPLICATIONS : Foucault’s ethics, understood as an ‘aesthetics of existence’ has profound intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary implications, as it challenges traditional ethical normative ethical theories and engages with various fields of philosophy, social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinary fields greatly influenced by Foucault’s ethics include: psychology, literary, cultural, gender and sexuality studies, medical ethics, anthropology and history, among others.
Technology and the situationist challenge to virtue ethics
(Springer, 2024-03) Tollon, Fabio
In this paper, I introduce a “promises and perils” framework for understanding the “soft” impacts of emerging technology, and argue for a eudaimonic conception of well-being. This eudaimonic conception of well-being, however, presupposes that we have something like stable character traits. I therefore defend this view from the “situationist challenge” and show that instead of viewing this challenge as a threat to well-being, we can incorporate it into how we think about living well with technology. Human beings are susceptible to situational influences and are often unaware of the ways that their social and technological environment influence not only their ability to do well, but even their ability to know whether they are doing well. Any theory that attempts to describe what it means for us to be doing well, then, needs to take these contextual features into account and bake them into a theory of human flourishing. By paying careful attention to these contextual factors, we can design systems that promote human flourishing.
A relational theory of dignity and human rights : an alternative to autonomy
(Oxford University Press, 2024-07) Metz, Thaddeus; th.metz@up.ac.za
In this article I draw on resources from the Global South, and particularly the African philosophical tradition, to construct a theory of human rights grounded on dignity that presents a challenge to globally dominant, autonomy-based approaches. Whereas the latter conceive of human rights violations as degradations of our rational nature, the former does so in terms of degradations of our capacity to be party to harmonious or friendly relationships. Although I have in the past presented the basics of this relational approach, in this article I present new argumentation in support of it. I defend it from criticism and also go on the offensive by arguing that understanding the human rights violations of torture and rape to be (roughly) behavior that treats innocent parties in an extremely discordant or unfriendly way is, if not more plausible than standard Kantian understandings, at least a promising alternative to them.
Can conversational thinking serve as a suitable pedagogical approach for philosophy education in African schools?
(Oxford University Press, 2024-04) Chimakonam, Jonathan Okeke; Ogbonnaya, L. Uchenna; jonathan.okeke@up.ac.za
This article investigates whether Conversational Thinking can suitably serve as a pedagogical approach for philosophy education in African schools (primary and secondary levels). We argue that there is a need to introduce and teach philosophy in schools in Africa. Additionally, we argue that it would be apropos to adopt a decolonial approach in developing such curricula, which, amongst others, could accommodate African approaches to philosophy. We contend that African homegrown frameworks, such as Conversational Thinking, can serve as appropriate decolonial strategies for philosophy education in parts of Africa. Our reason is that the proposed approach can train the emerging young generations in Africa, not only to be critical, creative, and innovative, but also to view reality from African epistemic perspectives. This stems from the fact that Conversational Thinking is one strategy amongst others that can promote African culture-inspired approaches to knowledge that combine with basic thinking skills to offer truly African forms of epistemic liberation.
Is ‘Africa’ a racial slur and should the continent be renamed?
(Routledge, 2024) Chimakonam, Jonathan Okeke; Egbai, Uti O.; jonathan.okeke@up.ac.za
In this paper, we will investigate whether or not the name ‘Africa’ can be seen as a slur. Since the name was given by European exploiters, slavers and colonists, it raises the question of whether such a name should continue to be accepted or abandoned. It may seem that just as the slavers renamed their victims and the colonists renamed the territories they conquered, the name Africa/ns similarly was an imposition on the continent and its peoples. It can also be argued that the naming of the continent by an external aggressor is a form of epistemic subordination that vitiates the dignity of the inhabitants. That is to say that European slavers took it upon themselves to give the inhabitants an identity that highlights climate and possibly skin colour because it was something they could not do for themselves. This presents the inhabitants as inferior to their namers and whose millennia-old civilisational achievements can comfortably be overlooked. We argue that the two preceding arguments constitute compelling reasons to abandon the name Africa as a compromised identity and offer an idea for the renaming of the continent.
Ethics in electoral democracies : a critical reflection on Lesotho’s 2022 elections
(Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, 2023-06) Mofuoa, Khali
This study is a critical reflection on how the positive impact of ethics in Lesotho’s political elections and democracy could be amplified for lasting peace and political stability. It is based on secondary data from available literature against the background of Lesotho’s existing, mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system. The MMP system has given birth to the political phenomenon of inconclusive electoral results and unstable coalition governments in recent years. This political phenomenon emanates from intra- and inter-party conflicts, which often led to undesirable and premature dissolutions of parliament and snap elections. Here, ethics should be understood as an essential component of a healthy process in electoral democracy and a practice necessary for arresting the enduring political instability in Lesotho.
Is there any evidence for hell in the Ifá Iiterary corpus?
(MDPI, 2023-11) Ofuasia, Emmanuel
Recent scholarship on Yorùbá theology that has tried to model it after the Abrahamic monotheisms as the distinction between Ọ̀run rere (Heaven) and Ọ̀run àpáàdì (Hell) is now replete but has not, before now, commanded critical scrutiny. Specifically, the works of Ogunnade, Odebolu, Shittu and Odeyemi have argued for a Yorùbá notion of Hell even when there is no evidence for such in the theology and traditional practices of the peoples. The aim of this research, then, is to correct this unreliable and uncharitable misrepresentation of Yorùbá theology. To achieve this aim, this research employs the Kawaida methodology, which thrives on reason and tradition. In reinforcing its stance, this study relies on the sacred ritual archive of the Yorùbá, which is the Ifá corpus, to establish the absence of any form of Ọ̀run àpáàdì, as a place of eternal anguish and suffering for evil doers among the Yorùbá.
A social constructivist understanding of culture for environmental justice and policy
(SUNMeDIA, 2023-12-06) Afolabi, Abiodun Paul
In addressing the environmental threats to cultural resources, some environmental ethicists have taken for granted the idea that culture has an essential character of change that is to be welcomed. In this article, I show that there are pressing moral issues, in this age of environmental crisis, that lurk behind the idea that culture has an essential nature of change. One question that I address is whether, if change is always a pervasive part of culture, we should be morally neutral about changes to cultural values and resources, especially when such change is harmful and external forces are responsible. To address this question, I adopt a social constructivist understanding of culture to show why concerns for loss of culture in the event of environmental crisis that is qualified as cultural change is normatively flawed. I argue that this perspective on culture, yet to be considered in environmental justice literature, prescribes not being neutral about cultural change in addressing environmental issues that affect cultural resources. I demonstrate that seeing culture in this new light has revealing implications for environmental justice. I conclude that failure to integrate this idea of environmental justice runs the risk of dismissing what is harmful to some cultural groups under the guise of 'normal' cultural change.
Examining the logical argument of the problem of evil from an African perspective
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-06) Chimakonam, Jonathan Okeke; Chimakonam, Amara Esther; jonathan.okeke@up.ac.za
We argue that the problem of evil, logically, stems from the unequal binary that characterizes the bivalent structure of Western discourses in the philosophy of religion. This structure pits God against the devil, but also the value of good against evil they are believed to represent. The difficulty is that those who subscribe to creationism, for example, hold that God as an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect entity created everything. Ironically, this must include evil or the devil himself. If one says He did not create evil, then one is faced with the challenge of explaining how evil emerged and how an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect God could continue to allow evil in the world. Our strategy would be to dilute the problem by dismantling logical bivalence. With an appropriate logic background like the African truth-glut three-valued system of Ezumezu as an explanatory mechanism, we will demonstrate that the problem of evil is resolvable, even if negatively. Using the principle of value-complementarity, we will argue that the notions of good and evil are not merely opposites but complementary. In this way, God, would be construed, especially from logical ideas inspired by the viewpoint of the African Traditional world-view, as ‘harmony-God’.
How African conceptions of God bear on life’s meaning
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-06) Metz, Thaddeus; th.metz@up.ac.za
Up to now, a very large majority of work in the religious philosophy of life’s meaning has presumed a conception of God that is Abrahamic. In contrast, in this article I critically discuss some of the desirable and undesirable facets of Traditional African Religion’s salient conceptions of God as they bear on meaning in life. Given an interest in a maximally meaningful life, and supposing meaning would come from fulfilling God’s purpose for us, would it be reasonable to prefer God as characteristically conceived by African philosophers of religion to exist instead of the Abrahamic conception of God? At this stage of enquiry, I answer that, in respect of the range of people to whom God’s purpose would apply, a more African view of God would plausibly offer a greater meaning, but that, concerning what the content of God’s purpose would be, the Abrahamic view appears to offer a greater one. I conclude by reflecting on this mixed verdict and by suggesting respects in which non-purposive facets of the African and Abrahamic conceptions of God could also have implications for life’s meaning.
Nie die einde van die wêreld nie : eskatologie en tyd in Levinas
(Suid Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 2024-06) Hofmeyr, Augusta Benda; benda.hofmeyr@up.ac.za
Levinas mainly deals with the notion of eschatology in the preface of Totalité et infini (1961). There it appears in the context of his agreement with an entire tradition of philosophers claiming that the very nature of being is one of violence and war, which becomes manifest in the pervasive waging of political battles and wars. He further contends that a conception of morality based on the “pure subjectivism of the I” is powerless to shield humankind against such violence. The alternative he offers to such an impotent morality is an ethics of alterity. Eschatology is Levinas’s answer to how such an ethics of alterity would be capable of insulating humankind against calculative reason and the pressures of politics and war. To understand how eschatology succeeds in doing so and how Levinas fills in the notion, I argue that it should be understood within the context of his conceptualisation of time. Levinas offers novel analyses of the forms and the work of time. Time, in Levinas, is the very inner structure of an existent’s movement of existing – I refer in this regard to the inherent chronological inconsistency of the human condition. In Levinas’s ethical metaphysics this inherent chronological inconsistency is theorised as the other (autre) within the self, an affective infection that dates back to a past that has never been present – it hails from the diachronic time of the Other – and is opened to the future, “to the newness of the unknown”. While this past is impossible to grasp, it nevertheless concerns me. I cannot remain unaffected in relation to it; it has left a trace. This alterity within the self becomes manifest as an inherent Desire for time, time that can only be given by the other person, which for Levinas is the Other (l’Autrui). This means that the singular time of my being is not yet time, does not yet have time, but the singular I bears an inherent Desire for time within. This Desire for time, then, emanates from the inherent chronological inconsistency which typifies the existent being “out of sync” with itself, a diastasis or a “standing apart from itself”. To be sure, this Desire is not a need to be filled, but as Desire, it is essentially insatiable. This Desire conquers the ecstatic time of need and satisfaction and the inevitable return to the self, the collapse back upon oneself that follows when needs are satiated, and the return of the unbearable heaviness of being that it signals. The early Levinas (De l’évasion, 1935) was looking for an escape from this irremediable Being. Only four decades later in Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (1974) will Levinas come to fully plot out “a new path out of being,” a temporal path that he started to chart in Le temps et l’autre (1948), which forges a fundamental link between time and ethics. The time that the future brings is not merely the recurrence of the present instant or its continuation, but the possibility of another instant or a new beginning. How can an existent in the instant recommence otherwise? The coming of the future announces another original instant that cannot be approached but that comes; that cannot be assumed, since it appears as an epiphany. The existent is able to welcome the absolutely strangeness of the epiphany of the future because of the inherent susceptibility to fraternity and sociality, which is made possible by time. This, however, is not time that the existent has like a possession but a capacity to welcome time that springs from an existential chronological inconsistency – a being temporally out of joint. To further specify, this “capacity” is not a power that the individual instant is endowed with. Quite to the contrary, faced with the radical strangeness of the future, with the alterity of the face of the Other, the existent is reduced to a “radical passivity.” Passivity is the radix or root of ethical agency. The capacity that time gives, is the capacity for generosity, the power to be able to give of the riches accumulated. This is not to turn away from one’s egotistical selfish life once and for all, but a being turned to be able to welcome the Other without being obliterated in the face of an absolute Mystery. The instant as an interruption announces the possibility of a new beginning, which is not the effacement of the past, but the pardon that purifies the past and the injustices committed. Pardon consists in a retroactive action that inverts the natural temporal order of things and implies the “reversibility of time”. Now the past instant has not passed but can be lived again, differently. In Levinas we find a non-teleological conception of time. Truth, Levinas contends, requires both an infinite time and a completed time conceived as “messianic time”. Messianic time, more precisely, may be conceived as the “extreme vigilance of the messianic consciousness”, since it is only such vigilant consciousness that can protect us against the revenge of evil – which infinite time cannot do. This notion of “messianic consciousness” is encapsulated in Levinas’s conceptualisation of eschatology, which is the infinity beyond totality or beyond history, without denying history. The eschatological is not realised at the end of time but rather in each instant in which our responsibility vis-à-vis the Other is realised. If this responsibility exempts us from the jurisdiction of history and the future, salvation is not to be found at the end of history but remains at each moment possible. When Levinas speaks of eschatology in Totalité et Infini he does not refer to a doctrine but to a vision: “the eschatological vision” that consummates moral experience. It is not a spiritual relationship; it leads to action. To see (envision) is already to act. This action is evoked in feeling responsible in the face of the future one hopes for others. The future one hopes for others – a better future – is the eschatological vision realised in the eruption of the present as a purified past.
Is Ifá divination girded by logic? A case for Ezumezu logic
(Routledge, 2023) Dasaolu, Babajide Olugbenga; Ofuasia, Emmanuel; Oladipupo, Sunday Layi
Several criteria for what constitutes African philosophy have been offered by different African and non-African scholars. For Jonathan Chimakonam (Ezumezu: A System of Logic for African Philosophy and Studies. Cham: Switzerland, 2019), a philosophy is either African, Western, or Asian because of the logic that fortifies it. Chimakonam, following this conviction, foregrounds Ezumezu logic as a prototypical African logic which mediates thought, theory, and method within the African sphere, yet is also applicable in non-African contexts. To interrogate its stance as a prototypical African logic, this study examines Ezumezu logic apart from its Igbo inspiration, via the traditional Yorùbá ritual archive. We embark on a foray into the Ifá divination procedure for this exploration. Through critical analysis and hermeneutics, this study finds that in most cases, Ifá divination, through employing ìbò in its procedures, conforms to the classical laws of thought. However, when further reflection is given to the method through which the truths and insights of O ̣̀rúnmìlà are sought during divination, one may easily discern the presence of a trivalent logic therein. This understanding is demonstrated side by side with Chimakonam’s description of the ways in which his logic functions. Hence, this article submits that the logic criterion for African philosophy is apt and that, when it is applied to an African ritual archive in Ifá divination, there is no doubt that Chimakonam’s attempt to prove the originality of the African way of thought, theory, and method is well articulated.
Completing the complete understanding argument: a rejoinder to Roberto Di Ceglie
(Springer, 2023-04) Lougheed, Kirk
In The Axiological Status of Theism and Other Worldviews (2020), I defend the Complete Understanding Argument for anti-theism, which says that God’s existence makes the world worse with respect to our ability to understand it. In a recent article, Roberto Di Ceglie offers three objections to my argument. I seek to rescue my argument by showing (1) that understanding can come in degrees; (2) that I’m not a consequentialist about the value of understanding; and (3) that my argument is consistent with God providing us with sufficient knowledge of important spiritual matters. Di Ceglie’s objections point to future areas for fruitful exploration but do not defeat my argument.
Gender relations and social justice in Africa : toward a duty-based approach to gender-based violence
(NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group), 2023) Afolabi, Abiodun Paul; Etieyibo, Edwin
A large and important part of social relations is gender relations between men and women. Over time, the manifestation of such relations has often been one of violence, particularly violence against women. Different approaches have been deployed to deal with the experience of gender-based violence (GBV). One popular approach is the human rights framework that suggest that GBV can be addressed by granting certain rights to women. We argue that while a human rights framework holds some promise in resolving GBV, it is limited in some ways because it does not take the cultural perceptions of gender relations that envision gender duties into account. As part of our argument, we show that social relations in African communities ought to be primarily based on the principle of duty to the other, rather than an emphasis on rights. We conclude that there is a need to complement the rights-based approach with a duty-based approach to effectively address GBV.
Knowledge work compulsion : the neoliberal mediation of working existence in the network society
(NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group), 2023) Hofmeyr, A.B. (Augusta Benda); benda.hofmeyr@up.ac.za
This contribution seeks to understand the pervasive phenomenon of work compulsion among knowledge workers in our present network society. Knowledge workers not only have to work all the time from anywhere, but they also appear to want to. This study argues that this curious phenomenon may be attributed to the thumotic satisfaction that knowledge work generates. What is more, the neoliberal theory of human capital has found a way to harness thumotic satisfaction to the profit incentive, and has created arguably the most productive working subject to date. The argument is divided into four parts: First, the paper analyses the government(- ality) of control operative in the network society by defining “neoliberalism”. It then focuses on Foucault’s examinations of German and American neoliberalism in the 20th century, treating them as instances of governmentality. The aim is to assess whether employing a governmentality lens is a valid approach for critically analysing present-day neoliberalism. If it proves justifiable, which I argue it does, the study explores the potential valuable insights gained from examining contemporary neoliberalism through this particular analytical framework. Second, the study turns to the “spiritedness” of knowledge workers under the conditions of stealth control that typify the neoliberal network society. Curiously, these highly engaged workers have reportedly experienced increased overall well-being. However, their overinvestment in work appears to be disproportionate to absolute necessity, increased earnings or improved overall quality of life. This paper contends that work compulsion generates and is in turn fuelled by thumotic satisfaction. Third, the study tries to ascertain the connection between neoliberal governmentality and thumos. Neoliberal governmentality appears to have found a way to appropriate thumotic satisfaction to produce and sustain the competitive entrepreneurial spirit. The fourth part of the study considers how the knowledge worker might resist the compulsion to work incessantly.

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