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121Is there an inherent secularising tendency in Christianity (Gauchet)? Yes, but beware (Voegelin and Taylor)Studia Historicae Ecclesiasticae 1-15. 2022.The secularisation idea is that modernity leaves religion behind. But for Gauchet, modernity just is religion transformed, without remainder. The Axial Age discovery of the inner world of the psyche and its symbolic expressions, was at the same time a growth in understanding of God as creator, transcendent and incommensurable with all of creation. Henceforth, religion would be in the key of personal struggle and symbolic transformation, putting aside heteronomy. Taylor adds a caveat: the self-im…Read more
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10Traditional African Philosophy of Mind and World: Facilitating a DialogueIn Aribiah David Attoe, Segun Samuel Temitope, Victor Nweke, John Umezurike & Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam (eds.), Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence, Springer Verlag. pp. 79-94. 2023.This chapter is a preliminary to the development of a philosophy of mind and world that has learned from the African traditional understanding of the human person. The objective is to frame the discipline by reference to the norms internal to philosophy as a social practice, thus facilitating dialogue across traditions. The obstacle lies in the oversight of such normative framing in the more dominant Analytic approach to the philosophy of mind, for which science and scientific method is paradigm…Read more
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8Jack and the Beanstalk: The human plot in narrative traditions and contemporary global cultureSouth African Journal of Philosophy 39 (4): 361-370. 2020.
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12Is the essence of Christianity a disenchanted world? A critical discussion of Marcel GauchetSouth African Journal of Philosophy 38 (3): 313-329. 2019.Marcel Gauchet argues that whatever impulse previously gave rise to religion is now fully translated by the values of representative politics, empirical method, future orientation and productivity as an end in itself. The good and productive citizen replaces the dutiful Christian. His foundational thesis is twofold: (a) religion is the surrender of human autonomy to a power other than human beings, issuing in a hierarchical social structure thought to be given by nature; and (b), paradoxically, …Read more
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5Environmental Ethics in the Context of African Traditional Thought: Beyond the ImpasseIn Munamato Chemhuru (ed.), African Environmental Ethics: A Critical Reader, Springer Verlag. pp. 47-57. 2019.I approach environmental ethics here through an appeal to the human capacity for appreciating value wherever it is found, contesting the supposed disunity of person and external world that is arguably at the root of the global disrespect for the natural environment. In the more dominant non-anthropocentric approach attention is drawn to the overarching eco-system equalizing the functional roles of both human and non-human. But this seems self-undermining, as appeal is necessarily made to that hu…Read more
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251The human spirit and its appropriation: ethics, psyche and religious symbology in the context of evolutionReligion and Theology 25 88-110. 2018.The reductionist conclusions of some evolutionary theorists are countered by appealing to the transformation of feeling-traces from our evolutionary origins. Presupposed to the science of evolutionary biology is the capacity to get at the truth of things, and to live by values, which Rahner terms “spirit”; its appropriation comes about through the process of moral and intellectual “conversion” (Lonergan), extended into the realm of feelings and the psyche (Doran). This allows a non-supernaturali…Read more
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11Character and professionalism in the context of developing countries – the example of mercenariesEthics and Economics 4 (2). 2006.
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2Human agency and weakness of will: A neo-Thomist discussionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 35 (2): 197-209. 2016.
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A communitarian framework for understanding liberal social practices?South African Journal of Philosophy 16 (4): 150-157. 1997.
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32African Vitalogy: A Step Forward in African Thinking by Martin Nkafu NkemnkiaPhilosophia Africana 4 (1): 89-92. 2001.
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7Military Obedience: Does the Answer Lie in Professionalism?Professional Ethics, a Multidisciplinary Journal 10 (2): 207-230. 2002.
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36African Traditional Thought and Growth in Personal UnityInternational Philosophical Quarterly 42 (3): 315-327. 2002.In traditional African ethics the emphasis is on respect and hierarchy. This is underpinned by a conception of the person as normative, developmental, and communitarian. But in this conception the person is only problematically unified. Further elaboration is needed on how one’s motivational structure is critically integrated if the tradition is to be reformulated so as to meet the challenges of a liberal, and often relativist, global culture. The psychological and intersubjective conditions for…Read more
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1Does Character Matter? Guardian Values in an Age of CommerceTheoria 54 (113): 53-75. 2007.Standards of excellence in the sphere of work are often taken to be at odds with our ethical obligations in general. In an age of commerce little attention is paid to how the manner in which things are done impacts on the agent's character. Jane Jacobs' phenomenology of our moral intuitions about the public world of work reveal two frameworks, the 'commercial moral syndrome' stressing fairness, and the 'guardian moral syndrome' emphasizing loyalty. In the latter set of values we have a way of co…Read more
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33Does character matter? Guardian values in an age of commerceTheoria 54 (113): 53-75. 2007.Standards of excellence in the sphere of work are often taken to be at odds with our ethical obligations in general. In an age of commerce little attention is paid to how the manner in which things are done impacts on the agent's character. Jane Jacobs' phenomenology of our moral intuitions about the public world of work reveal two frameworks, the 'commercial moral syndrome' stressing fairness, and the 'guardian moral syndrome' emphasizing loyalty. In the latter set of values we have a way of co…Read more
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Prem Xalxo, Complementarity of Human Life and Other Life Forms in Nature (review)Ethical Perspectives 15 (4): 552-554. 2008.
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25Objectivity and Subjectivity: an Argument for Rethinking the Philosophy SyllabusSouth African Journal of Philosophy 28 (4): 359-376. 2009.An analysis of the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity at work in standard introductions to philosophy reveals an oversight of self-knowledge and tracing the move from a common-sense culture to a scientific one throws up the idea of self-appropriation as the hidden heart of modern thought. The aftermath of the rise of modern physics has been a picture of reality as alienated from our commonly experienced sense of purposes, aims, and intentions as defining our everyday lives, what we may cal…Read more
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27Attention, People of Earth! Aristotelian Ethics and the Problem of ExclusionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 357-372. 2010.Growth in human happiness seems to do in part with insights gained through attentive emotional engagement with fictional characters and their identities. For this reason it is important to pay attention to the critique that founding ethics on what we cannot but affirm of ourselves, our identity (rationality and sociability, in Nussbaum’s reading of Aristotle), amounts to a moral elitism, excluding those who fail to meet these marks of human identity. This objection throws light on the importance…Read more
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30Special Divine Action and How to Do Philosophy of ReligionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 143-154. 2011.Any notion of a god that is of relevance to us must show how it makes a difference in the world. But this idea of an interventionist god doesn’t make sense for a secular and scientific mentality such as ours. I take Brenda de Wet’s five sticking points for any religious believer that seem to fail to make the grade of intellectual integrity (2008), and argue that starting from creedal and popular formulations of the notion of a god, as she does along with most standard textbooks in the philosophy…Read more
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31Why Theology Can and Should be Taught at Secular Universities: Lonergan on Intellectual ConversionJournal of Philosophy of Education 45 (3): 527-543. 2011.Drawing on Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because critical engagement with basic ways of taking one's life as a whole (religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typical oversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one's subjectivity entails an awareness of an existential dialectic that pushes towards a deci…Read more
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Suvremena multikulturna društva velikim se dijelom okviruju u smislu proceduralne prije nego supstantivne etike, naglašavajući ispravnost umjesto dobrote, te uzdižu toleranciju kao ključnu vrijednost. No to ne može sâmo zamijeniti supstantivnu i motivacijsku normu dobroga života te se može iskusiti kao gubitak, otuđenje građana. Isto tako neće uspjeti suočiti se s granicama prihvatljivog djelovanja, neuvjetovanošću povezanom s moralnim gledištem. Klasična tradicija u etici, koja predlaže normu l…Read more
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18The Ideal of African Scholarship and its Implications for Introductory Philosophy: The Example of Placide TempelsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 31 (3): 504-516. 2012.Thinking of an academic discipline in terms of a ‘social practice’ (MacIntyre) helps in formulating what the ideal captured in the slogan ‘African scholarship’ can contribute to the discipline. For every practice is threatened by the attractiveness of goods external to the practice – in particular, competitiveness for its own sake – and to counter this virtues of character are needed. African traditional culture prioritizes a normative picture of the human person which could very well contribute…Read more
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41Više od tolerancije: etika za multikulturno društvoSynthesis Philosophica 27 (2): 363-376. 2012.
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13Plus que la tolerance : l'éthique pour une société multiculturelleSynthesis Philosophica 27 (2): 363-376. 2012.
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12Mehr als Toleranz: Ethik für multikulturelle GesellschaftSynthesis Philosophica 27 (2): 363-376. 2012.
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49More Than Tolerance: Ethics for a Multicultural SocietySynthesis Philosophica 27 (2): 363-376. 2012.
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
Philosophical Traditions |
Other Academic Areas |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Philosophical Traditions |
Other Academic Areas |
Value Theory |
Philosophy, Misc |