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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy
The notions of the cosmic city and the common law are central to
early Stoic political thought. As Vogt shows, together they make up
one complex theory. A city is a place governed by the law. Yet on
the law pervading the cosmos can be considered a true law, and thus
the cosmos is the only real city. A city is also a
dwelling-place--in the case of the cosmos, the dwelling-place of
all human beings. Further, a city demarcates who belongs together
as fellow-citizens. The thought that we should view all other human
beings as belonging to us constitutes the core of Stoic
cosmopolitanism. All human beings are citizens of the cosmic city
in the sense of living in the world. But the demanding task of
acquiring wisdom allows a person to become a citizen in the strict
sense: someone who lives according to the law, as the gods do. The
sage is the only citizen, relative, friend and free person; via
these notions, the Stoics explore the political dimensions of the
Stoic idea of wisdom. Vogt argues against two widespread
interpretations of the common law--that it consists of rules, and
that lawful action is what right reason prescribes. While she
rejects the rules-interpretation, she argues that the prescriptive
reason-interpretation correctly captures key ideas of the Stoics'
theory, but misses the substantive side of their conception of the
law. The sage fully understands what is valuable for human beings,
and this makes her actions lawful. The Stoics emphasize the
revisionary nature of their theory; whatever course of action
perfect deliberation commands, even if it be cutting off one's limb
and eating it, we should act on its command, and not be held back
by conventional judgments.
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This is fundamentally a text about race and antiblack racism and their subsequent production of the problem of alienation (separation) of human beings from one another, from their bodies, and from themselves, globally, but with distinct and conscious focus on the historical context of apartheid and “post”-apartheid South Africa through the psychological lens of one of the country’s first and distinguished clinical psychologists, Noel Chabani Manganyi.
The book is a philosophically critical engagement with his work, and it constitutes, as it were, part of the author’s overarching project of attempting to reclaim and retrieve hitherto overlooked, ignored and invisibilised Black thinkers of the past and present. Although Manganyi has written over 10 books, the most important and popular being Being-Black-in-the-World (1973) and Alienation and the Body in Racist Society (1977), his ideas and work have, for one reason or another, been disregarded by mainstream South African psychology, let alone philosophy. The author foregrounds philosophy as also a culprit because Manganyi himself describes his work as that of “a psychologist who thinks and conceptualises psychological reality in a phenomenological way”.
Manganyi has the distinction of being the first Black clinical psychologist trained in South Africa as the title of his latest book, Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist (2016) indicates. His body of published work reveals that from the beginning he has been involved in an attempt to contextualise his discipline, psychology, to the lived realities of his country, that is, apartheid racism and the alienation it produced on Black people. In other words, his main concern has been to utilise psychological discourse to address issues relevant to what can broadly be called “the Black lived-experience” in an antiblack racist society and their experience of the condition of alienation. As such he stood as a solitary figure whose voice was pushed to the margins of the psychological establishment, which was either silent about or complicit in the oppression of Blacks by the apartheid regime.
By exploring Manganyi’s serious concerns about apartheid racism and its attendant devastating production of alienation among Black people, the author argues that the problem of alienation produced by continuing rampant antiblack racism (even from the hands of a Black government) constitutes itself as a lingering problem of “post”-apartheid South Africa.
The author demonstrates that apartheid and alienation are not only conceptually synonymous but experientially related because what connects antiblack racism (apartheid) and alienation is the fact of our embodied existence in the world and that Black alienation manifests itself through the body. After all, antiblack racism is predicated on bodily appearance and body differences among human beings. Manganyi himself places a high premium on the body precisely because, in his view, the Black subjects have inherited a negative sociological schema of their black bodies as a result of which most of them experience themselves as somethings or objects outside of themselves, that is.
The value of revisiting Manganyi’s contribution can be underlined by reference to imperatives posed in recent incidents of antiblack racism and contemporary approaches to race and embodiment in disciplines such as philosophy (Black existentialism), psychology, sociology, cultural studies and identity politics.
This book's focus spans a wide variety of disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, political philosophy, critical race studies and post-colonialism, and therefore will be of interest to a broad cross-section of undergraduate and graduate students, scholars and activists.
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Play
(Paperback)
Dr Bill Thompson
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R187
Discovery Miles 1 870
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Between every intellect and an understanding of materiality there
is a zone of possible meaning. This is the common experience of the
human condition. We can call what appears in the zone of meaning -
phenomena. These are the closest we ever get to materiality. We
either make sense of phenomena or we fail. When we make sense of
phenomena we can share our ability to make phenomena in similar
ways because we are similar beings. In particular and uniquely on
the earth we make linguistic phenomena in a highly diverse and
developed manner. This we know. Unfortunately many intellects make
their propositional linguistic phenomena and impose them on other
intellects. In the UK we executed a despot in order to get at a
democratic process in which the only voices governing us were human
voices. We are still struggling with propositional linguistic
phenomena in that regard and I hope Play will help us with our
struggle
So long as large segments of humanity are suffering chronic poverty
and are dying from treatable diseases, organized giving can save or
enhance millions of lives. With the law providing little guidance,
ethics has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the
philanthropic practices of individuals, foundations, NGOs,
governments, and international agencies are morally sound and
effective. In Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, an
accomplished trio of editors bring together an international group
of distinguished philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and
practitioners to identify and address the most urgent moral
questions arising today in the practice of philanthropy. The topics
discussed include the psychology of giving, the reasons for and
against a duty to give, the accountability of NGOs and foundations,
the questionable marketing practices of some NGOs, the moral
priorities that should inform NGO decisions about how to target and
design their projects, the good and bad effects of aid, and the
charitable tax deduction along with the water's edge policy now
limiting its reach. This ground-breaking volume can help bring our
practice of charity closer to meeting the vital needs of the
millions worldwide who depend on voluntary contributions for their
very lives.
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Voices
(Paperback)
Dr Bill Thompson
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R224
Discovery Miles 2 240
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Voices tells you how the body manages the understanding you have of
the world you live in. The text struggles with contemporary
philosophy relating the world of objects and the world of ideas
that Smile explained as the struggle to understand the world we are
immersed in. In effect Voices continues the work of Husserl and
Hegel and links to related chapters in Zizek's work when he deals
with liberalism and the issues of democracy. As we evolve from
deeply internalized superstitions to individual understandings that
must be reciprocated in order to manage living in the same way we
need to change our belief in truth and knowledge so that nature
becomes evolution for us.
Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of
the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book,
he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in
Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are
predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that
Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. He goes on to clarify
Spinoza's understanding of infinity, mereological relations,
infinite modes, and the flow of finite things from God's essence.
In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this
interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of
infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the
structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in
Spinoza's metaphysics. First, he shows that Spinoza had not one,
but two independent doctrines of parallelism. Then, in his final
main thesis, Melamed argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a
multifaceted (in fact, infinitely faceted) structure that allows
one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which
are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns
out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot
embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of
his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet,
within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the
other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as
elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God.
Data Ethics of Power takes a reflective and fresh look at the
ethical implications of transforming everyday life and the world
through the effortless, costless, and seamless accumulation of
extra layers of data. By shedding light on the constant tensions
that exist between ethical principles and the interests invested in
this socio-technical transformation, the book bridges the theory
and practice divide in the study of the power dynamics that
underpin these processes of the digitalization of the world. Gry
Hasselbalch expertly draws on nearly two decades of experience in
the field, and key literature, to advance a better understanding of
the challenges faced by big data and AI developers. She provides an
innovative ethical framework for studying and governing Big-Data
and Artificial Intelligence. Offering both a historical account and
a theoretical analysis of power dynamics and their ethical
implications, as well as incisive ideas to guide future research
and governance practices, the book makes a significant contribution
to the establishment of an emerging data and AI ethics discipline.
This timely book is a must-read for scholars studying AI, data, and
technology ethics. Policymakers in the regulatory, governance,
public administration, and management sectors will find the
practical proposals for a human-centric approach to big data and AI
to be a valuable resource for revising and developing future
policies.
In Norms in the Wild, distinguished philosopher Cristina Bicchieri
argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists
place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, she says,
many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Two people
passing in a corridor automatically negotiate their shared space;
cars at an intersection obey traffic signals; we choose clothing
based on our instincts for what is considered appropriate.
Bicchieri's theory of social norms accounts for these automatic
components of coordination, where individuals react automatically
to cues that focus their attention on what the norm is in that
situation. Social norms thus act as rules for making choices in a
social world where people expect others - often unconsciously - to
follow the same rule. Some norms enable seamless social
co-operation, while others are less beneficial to human
flourishing. Bicchieri is famous for her interdisciplinary work on
game theory and most recently her work on social norms, and Norms
in the Wild represents her latest challenge to many of the
fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. Bicchieri's work
has broad implications not only for understanding human behavior,
but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strongly
conditioned preference for following social norms, but that also
means that manipulating their expectations can cause major
behavioral changes. Bicchieri has been working recently with UNICEF
and other NGO's to explore the applicability of her views to issues
of human rights around the world. Is it possible to change social
expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and
public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so,
how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how social
norms work, and how changing them - changing preferences, beliefs,
and especially social expectations - can potentially improve lives
all around the world. It will appeal to an unusually broad range of
readers including philosophers, psychologists and others in
behavioral sciences, and anyone involved in public policy or at
NGOs.
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