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The nature of human reason is one of the thorniest of mysteries in philosophy. The reason appears in many specific forms within general areas such as cognition, thinking, experiencing beauty, and moral judgment. These forms are "perfectly" known in philosophy, yet an unknown pattern has been noticed which shows us that they are all a variation of the same theme: truth is an identity relation between the "thought" and "reality"; justice is an identity relation between the given and the deserved; beauty is an identity relation as rhyme is an identity relation between the final sounds of words; rhythm is an identity relation between time intervals; symmetry is an identity relation between two halves; proportion is an identity relation between two ratios; anaphora is an identity relation between the initial words. Particular things are identities in themselves and universals are identities between particulars. One idea associates another idea identical to it; an analogy is an identity between relations; induction is an identification between the known and unknown instances; and all the logic rests on the law of identity. What is common for all of them is the nature of reason itself.

This collection is about composing thought at the level of modernism and decomposing it at the postmodern level where many cocks might crow with African philosophy as a focal point. It has two parts: part one is titled 'The Journey of Reason in African Philosophy', and part two is titled 'African Philosophy and Postmodern Thinking'. There are seven chapters in both parts. Five of the essays are reprinted here as important selections while nine are completely new essays commissioned for this book. As their titles suggest, in part one, African philosophy is unfolded in the manifestation of reason as embedded in modern thought while in part two, it draws the effect of reason as implicated in the postmodern orientation. While part one strikes at what V. Y. Mudimbe calls the "colonising structure" or the Greco-European logo-phallo-euro-centricism in thought, part two bashes the excesses of modernism and partly valorises postmodernism. In some chapters, modernism is presented as an intellectual version of communalism characterised by the cliché: 'our people say'. Our thinking is that the voice of reason is not the voice of the people but the voice of an individual. The idea of this book is to open new vistas for the discipline of African philosophy. African philosophy is thus presented as a disagreement discourse. Without rivalry of thoughts, Africa will settle for far less. This gives postmodernism an important place, perhaps deservedly more important than history of philosophy allocates to it. It is that philosophical moment that says 'philosophers must cease speaking like gods in their hegemonic cultural shrines and begin to converse across borders with one another'. In this conversation, the goal for African philosophers must not be to find final answers but to sustain the conversation which alone can extend human reason to its furthermost reaches.

This book is a culturally situated study of the experiences and perspective garnered from of a group of post-secondary Black African American, bi-multi-racial male students aged 19-37. The undergirding interest was to see if there was an awareness of the group's manly inclinations, tendencies and predispositions and understand how such awareness projects and influences their quest and discipline for learning and to academically achieve. The sociological construct of "habitus", as conveyor of dispositions, inclinations, and tendencies, provides an analytical framework permitting an appreciation of interactions between personal identity, social belonging and approaches to learning and education.The result is an original and powerful account of the ways in which unspoken dominant mainstream intergroup cultural relationships, involving social-political attitudes, decision making, and behavioral reactions and responses, interact with internalized self-in-group or in ascription with group, oppression, repression, intellectual-cognitive-physical strategies, determination, and work, that have brought men of Black African American, bi-multi-racial descent, in the U.S., to their current social position. Unlike some public discourse in U.S. society, this is not a blame game, nor is it one of relinquishing self or group responsibility, but one based upon and motivated by a deeper understanding of complex facts.The prose can be best described as an ethnographical narrative, synthesizing a wealth of original observations with insights from scholarly and popular literature and media. Its original and engaging style may appeal to a broad audience including postsecondary educators and students, researchers studying the sociology of gender, African American identity, intercultural relational communications, student services, social work, and social psychology as well as mental and physical healthcare practitioners.

Be it Foucault's insight into a society based on 'power-knowledge' or Fukuyama's attempts to predict the future based on the end-game situation of 'liberal democracy', both are like trying to work out a curvature of a line from a given point by using pre-calculus maths. No amount of elaborate narratives based on a quasi-dynamic, phenomenological concept like 'discourses' or a static concept like 'liberal democracy' will capture the dynamism of moving events and their fluid directions called 'future'. You need the methodology of operative concepts that process moving events.My essay is based on a holistic and dynamic concept with logical progressions. Instead of capturing movements as a still picture I try to record constantly changing situations in terms of modality of history. It is the necessity of tangencies and encompassments for Circles of Identity (CI) that forms history. The momentum of 'self' that bridges the past and the future is the propellant of CIs, which follows certain rules to suggest our destiny.

Here is the compact story of this famous man, from the smiling contrarian in his grade school picture to the nonconformist adult who refused to groom his hair. As such, it fills a gap: the need for a very short book on Einstein that gives a brief but up-to-date story of his life and thought, with a simple explanation of what he contributed to 20th century physics and beyond.There is a chapter on his habitually thorny relationships with women and close relatives. His first love, his first and second wives, his parents and his children - none of which was a painless union. The birth of an illegitimate daughter, the estrangement of his sons after divorcing his first wife, his incessant struggle with his controlling mother - all had a strong physiological effect on Einstein's personality.Next is a chapter on the young Jew struggling with self-identify, who in adulthood was unwaveringly committed to social justice that he believed was rooted in Jewish ethical values. It began with his early flirtation with Orthodox Judaism, only to be vehemently rejected by the science-obsessed teenager. Then his exposure to overt anti-Semitism when he moved to Germany was followed by his subsequent espousal (with reservations) of the Zionist movement. Lastly he moved to the USA fleeing Nazi Germany, only to be confronted with endemic racism towards African-Americans, to which he boldly spoke-out supporting the burgeoning civil rights movement.Finally, there is the scientist who expresses his ideals through his radical ideas about the physical world, as he reworked our conceptions of space, time, and motion. The result was a new cosmic model of the universe that is being developed further today. As well, his commitment to an ordered and predictable universe was ultimately expressed in his final (but still unfulfilled) quest for a theory unifying all forces of nature into one whole.

With an introduction by Manfred Rehbinder.The Bibliographic Index EUGEN EHRLICH is a guide through available materials containing information about the life, scientific, educational, legislative and social activities of the Austrian lawyer and university professor in the period of 1896-1918. Eugen Ehrlich was the Dean in 1901-1902 and 1908-1909 and the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law in 1902-1903 and 1909-1910, the Vice-Rector in 1907-1908, and the Rector of Franz Joseph University in Czernowitz in 1906-1907 (now Ukrainian: Chernivtsi). Moreover, ex officio, he was a member of the local parliament.The Index includes the foreword of the compilers, an introductory article, a selected basic chronology with the dates of the life and work of Eugen Ehrlich, and the four main structural parts: "List of works by Eugen Ehrlich", "Eugen Ehrlich as editor", "Literature about Eugen Ehrlich's life and activity" and "Appendices: Documents from Chernivtsi University Scientific Library holdings". "List of works by Eugen Ehrlich", "Periodicals with Eugen Ehrlich's publications", "List of used periodicals", and "Name index" are all provided for the convenience of users. The "Name index" includes all the names recorded in the main text of the publication (numbers of bibliographic records of works devoted to individual persons are enclosed in parentheses).The book contains photographs of Eugen Ehrlich and photographs of materials linked to his life and activities. They have made the bibliographic index more attractive and more interesting for readers. The Index can help users find necessary documents and verify the accuracy of existing information, that it becomes a prerequisite for further research, and finally, it will be useful to all who are interested in Eugen Ehrlich's life journey and scientific legacy.

This collection is about composing thought at the level of modernism and decomposing it at the postmodern level where many cocks might crow with African philosophy as a focal point. It has two parts: part one is titled 'The Journey of Reason in African Philosophy', and part two is titled 'African Philosophy and Postmodern Thinking'. There are seven chapters in both parts. Five of the essays are reprinted here as important selections while nine are completely new essays commissioned for this book. As their titles suggest, in part one, African philosophy is unfolded in the manifestation of reason as embedded in modern thought while in part two, it draws the effect of reason as implicated in the postmodern orientation. While part one strikes at what V. Y. Mudimbe calls the "colonising structure" or the Greco-European logo-phallo-euro-centricism in thought, part two bashes the excesses of modernism and partly valorises postmodernism. In some chapters, modernism is presented as an intellectual version of communalism characterised by the cliché: 'our people say'. Our thinking is that the voice of reason is not the voice of the people but the voice of an individual.The idea of this book is to open new vistas for the discipline of African philosophy. African philosophy is thus presented as a disagreement discourse. Without rivalry of thoughts, Africa will settle for far less. This gives postmodernism an important place, perhaps deservedly more important than history of philosophy allocates to it. It is that philosophical moment that says 'philosophers must cease speaking like gods in their hegemonic cultural shrines and begin to converse across borders with one another'. In this conversation, the goal for African philosophers must not be to find final answers but to sustain the conversation which alone can extend human reason to its furthermost reaches.

This volume constitutes an attempt at bringing together philosophies of time-or more precisely, philosophies on time and, in a concomitant way, history-emerging from Christianity's and Islam's intellectual histories. Starting from the Neoplatonic heritage and the voice of classical philosophy, the volume enters the Byzantine and Arabic intellectual worlds up to Ibn Al-Arabi's times. A conscious choice in this volume is not to engage with, perhaps, the most prominent figures of Christian and Arabic philosophy, i.e., Augustine on the one hand and Avicenna/Ibn Sina on the other, precisely because these have attracted so much attention due to their prominence in their respective traditions-and beyond. In a certain way, Maximus the Confessor and Ibn Al-Arabi-together with Al-F¿r¿bi-emerge as alternative representatives of their two traditions in this volume, offering two axes for this endeavor. The synthesis of those approaches on time and history, their comparison rather than their mere co-existence, is left to the reader's critical inquiry and philosophical investigation.

Atheism and the Christian Faith is an anthology of the proceedings from a conference of the same name which convened at Concordia University of Edmonton in May 2016. The book represents a wide diversity of subtopics-primarily from a philosophical perspective-including submissions from atheists, agnostics and theists. This combination of topics and perspectives makes the book totally unique. There are arguments for and against theism. The foreword to the book is by Professor Richard Swinburne, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Oxford University, who contributes two chapters to the book: "Why Believe That There is a God?" and "Why God Allows Suffering". The book includes a chapter from renowned astrophysicist, and former student of Stephen Hawkins, Professor Dr. Don Page from the University of Alberta "On the Optimal Argument for the Existence of God". Atheism and the Christian Faith advances arguments around serious philosophical issues of direct relevance to contemporary society. It will be of interest to a broad range of scholars in philosophy, theology and epistemology.

Every kind of exploration is touched in some way by a philosophy of persons; touched and often vitally enhanced. This collection sets out to mine this rich seam of influence, bringing together authors keen to strike new developments and applications. Together, they have put their philosophy of persons to work in fields as wide-ranging as the moral and the metaphysical, the practical and the political, the cultural and the cosmological. In doing so, they have drawn on and illustrated the depth and breadth of modern Personalist thought, demonstrating its crucial relevance to debates across the entire philosophical spectrum.Whether they are familiar with the Personalist tradition or no, readers from every corner of the philosophical world will find much here to challenge and stimulate them. Most importantly, they will find a new and badly needed philosophical perspective.

The anthology explores the interrelationship between migration and a supposedly existent crisis of the modern nation state. The argument of such a crisis is mainly used by the New Right to stimulate nationalist feelings and provoke hate and aggression. We, in contrast to this perception, argue that from a historical and current perspective, migration is not endangering the nation state, but rather changing the idea of a nation itself by redefining it. In historical as well as current case studies, the authors determine the political dangers of right wing demagogues, while emphasizing the chances, immigration is offering the progress of the nation state.While it will be discussed how nationalism is impacting on the perception of migration, we also want to emphasize how it is perceived by the people in the specific regions, which are either confronted with migration or those which are not. The authors for the volume come from different fields, namely history and political sciences, and are consequently able to offer the reader a broad insight into the historical roots and the current consequences nationalism had or has on the perception and the local as well as global policies towards migration. The analysis of particular immigrant groups (e.g. North Koreans in post-war Korea, South Asians in the Emirates, Middle Eastern refugees in Europe, Hispanics in the United States) as well as a close reading of crisis related media (newspapers and other media in Europe and the US) will, all in all, establish a broad perspective, due to which the reader will be able to compare and connect the national events to a larger global picture.

European economic recovery appears to be taking hold. So is the European crisis over? The acute phase of the crisis passed, however a number of medium and long term issues remain. The policies of "internal devaluations" are working, albeit slowly, to restore competitiveness in the countries most affected by the crisis. However, growth remains at best sluggish. The medium and long term outlook remains highly uncertain, fomenting social tensions and endangering political stability.The restoration of economic dynamism is increasingly perceived as the answer to the question of the "European" future - economically, politically and socially. There is a broad consensus that dynamic structural reforms and the restoration of competitiveness at the level of the global economy are key answers to current European challenges.However, whatever the form these may take, the transfer of resources is implicit (and seemingly necessary), to underpin the current structure of eurozone. This indeed raises the question of governance - both fiscal and monetary. After all, the provision of resources implies an allocation - and it is hard to imagine that resources will be provided to the common pool unless the providers have some say with respect to allocation. And that requires some form of common (i.e. centralized) decision-making procedures, in all likelihood exceeding the common understanding of the acquis communautaire as it exists today - i.e. some form of the effective political arrangement.In this context, the basic idea which connects all contributions in this volume is the analysis of the problems which affected the Eurozone in the past decade and the challenges and dilemmas the Eurozone will face in the coming years.

Almost five decades after his death, there is still ample reason to pay attention to the life and legacy of Bertrand Russell. This is true not only because of his role as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, but also because of his important place in twentieth-century history as an educator, public intellectual, critic of organized religion, humanist, and peace activist. The papers in this anthology explore Russell's life and legacy from a wide variety of perspectives. This is altogether fitting, given the many-sided nature of Russell, his life, and his work.The first section of the book considers Russell the man, and draws lessons from Russell's complicated personal life. The second examines Russell the philosopher, and the philosophical world within which his work was embedded. The third scrutinizes Russell the atheist and critic of organized religion, inquiring which parts of his critical stance are worth emulating today. The final section revisits Russell the political activist; it directs an eye both at Russell's own long career of peace activism, but also at his place in a highly political family tradition of which he was justifiably proud.This book thus constitutes an invitation, if one were needed, to the world of Bertrand Russell. Those new to Russell, but with an interest in biography, philosophy, religion, or politics, will hopefully find something to learn here. This may spark an interest in learning more about Russell. But this book is not just intended for the Russell neophyte. The book sheds fresh light on a number of topics central to Russell studies-his connections to other philosophers, for example. Scholars well-versed in Russell studies will enjoy grappling with the treatment given to these topics here.