A Total Liberation Pathway is proposed, involving an abolition of compulsory work for all beings. This trajectory involves drastically shortening humans’ workweek, ending the exploitation of animals including for food, and rewilding ecosystems currently exploited as “working landscapes.” Using the climate models the Global Calculator and C-Roads Pro, I demonstrate that the Total Liberation Pathway could return atmospheric CO2 and global temperature levels to the 300 ppm and 1°C targets demanded by the 2010 People’s Agreement of (...) Cochabamba, and could achieve the precautionary target of rewilding of 75% of the Earth. I also propose possible contours of a strategy of resistance and reconstruction. Although Indigenous communities and energy and agricultural workers will have an indispensable role in the transition, through control over land and key economic bottlenecks, the entire resistance of human and nonhuman beings offers hope. Letting nature play, humans included, could enable a livable future. (shrink)

Many accounts of political liberalism contend that reasonable citizens ought to refrain from invoking their disputed comprehensive beliefs in public deliberation about constitutional essentials. Critics maintain that this ‘refraining condition’ puts pressure on citizens to entertain skepticism about their own basic beliefs, and that accounts of political liberalism committed to it are resultantly committed to a position – skepticism about conceptions of the good – that is itself subject to reasonable disagreement. Discussions in the epistemology of disagreement have tended to (...) reinforce this critique, which has come to be known as political liberalism’s skeptical problem. This paper responds to the skeptical problem by providing a novel rationale to the refraining condition, which I call the burden of total experience. Such a burden emphasizes that full communication of the basis of individual belief is not always possible, even between epistemic peers. Accepting the burden of total experience allows individuals to recognize the reasonableness of the refraining condition in a way that stops the slide to skepticism, all while avoiding, or so I argue, relying on a problematically controversial explainer for disagreement. (shrink)

Ambedkar denounced caste system for violating the respect and dignity of the individual; yet his critique of caste-ridden society also foregrounds the limits of the theory and practice of citizenship and liberal politics in India. Since membership of a caste group was not a voluntary choice, but determined by birth and hence a coercive association, the liberal view of the self as a totally unencumbered and radically free subject seemed plagued with difficulties. Though the nation state envisages a political community (...) co-extensive with one cultural community, it need not, Ambedkar argued, necessarily lead to abolition of discriminatory caste practices in civil society. To restore the cultural rights of stigmatised populations, unredeemed by the nation state, propelled Ambedkar to seek solution in B. (shrink)

Rawls in his later philosophy claims that it is sufficient to accept political conception as true or right, depending on what one's worldview allows, on the basis of whatever reasons one can muster, given one's worldview (doctrine). What political liberalism is interested in is a practical agreement on the political conception and not in our reasons for accepting it. There are deep issues (regarding deep values, purpose of life, metaphysics etc.) which cannot be resolved through invoking common reasons (this is (...) the fact of free reason itself), and trying to resolve them would involve us in interminable debates and would hamper the practical task of agreement on the political conception. Given the absolute necessity of a political society which is stable and enduring, it is thus wise to avoid these issues in founding a political society and choosing its basic principles - this is the pragmatic part of Rawls's position. In this paper I argue that this strategy leads Rawls into a paradox: (i) although the intention is to stay independent of comprehensive doctrines, the political conception is in fact totally (and precariously) dependent on comprehensive doctrines (not just on one doctrine but on each and every major doctrine in society). It is dependent on them: for its conceptualisation as an independent idea, for its justification, for the check of its reasonability in relation to the external world, for the formation of identities and value inculcation and hence for the formation of its model citizen; (ii) the very search for independence makes the political conception more dependent on comprehensive doctrines, and by extension makes it potentially more prone to intervention in and tampering with comprehensive doctrines (it is enough to show that it is a strong conceptual possibility to cast doubt on the whole strategy). Thus, for example, the political conception relies on the hope that “firmly held convictions gradually change” and that it would “in fact . . . have the capacity to shape those doctrines toward itself”. The purpose of the Rawlsian conjecture is to give these “hopes” a concrete, practical form by giving advice to proponents of the comprehensive doctrine on how they can do all this and “try to show them that, despite what they might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception”. I further argue that this paradox can be overcome by making the core of political liberalism more flexible. (shrink)

The article explores the religious and philosophical origins of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s ideas of “honesty with oneself,” “omnilateral liberation,” and “concordism.” Two treatises, Vidrodzhennia natsii (Rebirth of a Nation, 1919–1920) and Konkordyzm. Systema buduvannia shchastia (Concordism. A System of Building Happiness, 1938–1945), illustrate the development of Vynnychenko’s worldview. In the first work, social revolution was considered as the answer to human problems, while, in the second, such a solution was found in becoming one with the universe. Despite his negative attitude (...) towards religion, Volodymyr Vynnychenko actively used religious images and patterns in his writings. For instance, criticizing Christianity for its dogmatism, he nevertheless created his codex of thirteen rules of concordism, which had to harmonize the unbalanced forces of mankind with the universe. In this context, particular attention is paid to the significant influence of pagan concepts on Vynnychenko’s thinking. (shrink)

Besides being the title of an EP by The (International) Noise Conspiracy, “Bigger cages, longer chains!” is an anarchist rallying cry. It’s meant to ridicule those political activists who compromise their ideals, make demands and then settle for partial concessions or, to put it bluntly, bargain with the Man. In the T.V. series Mr. Robot, Christian Slater plays the anarchist leader of a hacktivist group known as fsociety. Mr. Robot won’t negotiate with the FBI and E(vil) Corp for bigger cages (...) and longer chains. He tells Elliot Anderson, the young cybersecurity expert and hacker, “We live in a kingdom of bullshit!” Victory over the tyranny of corporations and states requires radical means to achieve radical ends. Mr. Robot wants freedom without limits, total liberation from corporate and statist control, and the opportunity to live in a world without bullshit. Mr. Robot’s objective is to free citizens of first-world nations from the cages of consumer debt and citizens of third-world nations from the shackles of extreme poverty. Meeting half-way will not do. So what are the inspirations for Mr. Robot’s hacktivist philosophy? The most proximate sources are David Graeber’s anarchism, which also influenced the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the hacktivist group Anonymous’s moralfaggery, that is, the policy of some of its members to use collective computer hacking to serve the greater good. Candidates for more remote sources are Marxism and pragmatism; the former, a blueprint for freeing the working class from their bourgeois oppressors; the latter, a philosophy of action, intelligent inquiry and democratic reform. Some might object that pragmatism is too conventional to be compatible with the radical ideas that motivate Mr. Robot’s worldview. Hacktivism demands action, not mere thinking! But any organized social-political movement requires a well-thought-out plan as well as a vision of what its participants hope to achieve. Since pragmatism is a philosophy of action and reform, it’s possible that Mr. Robot is a closet pragmatist! (shrink)

This paper is an unfolding dialogue filled with questions and half-answers between three activists and engaged researchers from Eastern Europe, looking into the connections between different social movements, building internationalist solidarity and the possibility of (total) liberation. We think through issues such as the hegemony of what counts as politically relevant in a globalized world, the overrepresentation of Man following Sylvia Wynter, pain and grief in the face of current (social and ecological) crises and joining the fights for (...) human and animal liberation. Drawing from feminist, queer, antispeciesist and Indigenous theories, as well as from our personal experiences, this exchange sinuously follows the question: What is to be done to always already facilitate the process of blooming into queer, decolonial and antispeciesist worlds? (shrink)

Our reproductive imaginaries have changed considerably in the XX century. This cultural change can be described as a transition from Utopia to Dystopia. Plato imagined that in his perfect State women and children were in common, and that adequately matched couples would yield a perfect breed. On the contrary, Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) is based on a modern liberal view of the family, where divorce is allowed and relationships are free. Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1602) understands relationships (...) exactly in terms of a eugenic policy. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) also conceives of generation as a public good. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1934) creates a vision of reproduction as a total nightmare. The whole process of reproduction has been taken into control by an ideology. We must distinguish liberal utopias from totalitarian ones, which evolve into dystopias. (shrink)

This paper defends the institution of civil marriage against the objection that it is inconsistent with political liberalism, and so should be either totally abolished or else transformed virtually beyond recognition.

This article reconsiders Hannah Arendt’s account of “totalitarianism” in light of the climate catastrophe and the apparent inability of our political-economic system to respond to it adequately. In the last two chapters of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt focuses on the “ideology” of totalitarian regimes: a pathological denial of reality, a privileging of the ideological system over empirical evidence, and a simultaneous feeling of total impotence and total omnipotence—an analysis that maps remarkably well onto the climate zeitgeist. Thus, (...) while Arendt used the concept of “totalitarianism” to foreclose alternatives to liberal capitalist democracy, the climate impasse suggests that the totalitarian label more properly belongs to the prevailing system itself. (shrink)

This study examined correlations between moral value judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), and participant scores on the Short-D3 “Dark Triad” Personality Inventory—a measure of three related “dark and socially destructive” personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. Five hundred sixty-seven participants (302 male, 257 female, 2 transgendered; median age 28) were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk and Yale Experiment Month web advertisements. Different responses to MIS items were initially hypothesized to be “conservative” or “liberal” in line with (...) traditional public divides. Our demographic data confirmed all of these hypothesized categorizations. We then tested two broad, exploratory hypotheses: (H1) the hypothesis that there would be “many” significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad, and (H2) the hypothesis that there would be no significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Machiavellianism or Psychopathy, but “some” significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Narcissism. Because our hypotheses were exploratory and we ran a large number of statistical tests (62 total), we utilized a Bonferroni Correction to set a very high threshold for significance (p =.0008). Our results broadly supported our two hypotheses. We found eleven significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad—all at significance level of p <.00001—but no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and liberal MIS judgments. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments. (shrink)

This paper presents a modern theological reinterpretation of Advaita Vedānta through the framework of co-emergent ontology. Classical Advaita distinguishes between Nirguṇa Brahman, the attributeless absolute, and Saguṇa Brahman, the manifest divine associated with creation. The Co-Emergent Brahman model redefines this relation: rather than viewing manifestation as illusory projection (māyā), it understands the universe as the relational field through which Brahman becomes self-aware. Awareness and form co-arise as dual aspects of one ontological event—Brahman in self-relation. Within this framework, māyā functions not (...) as deception but as the interface of differentiation; the Jīva is interpreted as a localized karmic asymmetry or curvature in the field of universal awareness. Liberation (mokṣa) thus signifies restoration of symmetry—resonant coherence between the individual and the total field. This reinterpretation harmonizes classical metaphysics, phenomenology of consciousness, and contemporary insights into emergence, offering a nondual theology where the cosmos itself is Brahman’s act of self-knowing. (shrink)

There is an intuitive difference in how we think about pluralism and attitudinal diversity in epistemological contexts versus political contexts. In an epistemological context, it seems problematically arbitrary to hold a particular belief on some issue, while also thinking it perfectly reasonable to hold a totally different belief on the same issue given the same evidence. By contrast, though, it doesn’t seem problematically arbitrary to have a particular set of political commitments, while at the same time thinking it perfectly reasonable (...) for someone in a similar position have a totally different set of political commitments. This chapter examines three explanatory theses that might be used to make sense of this difference: (1) that practical commitments are desire dependent in a way that beliefs are not; (2) that there are reasons to be resolute in practical commitments, but not in beliefs; and (3) that compromise in the face of practical political disagreement doesn’t mitigate controversy, whereas compromise in the face of disagreement about mere beliefs does mitigate controversy. (shrink)

What are we to make of the fact that world leaders, such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau, have, within the last few decades, offered official apologies for a whole host of past injustices? Scholars have largely dealt with this phenomenon as a moral question, seeing in these expressions of contrition a radical disruption of contemporary neoliberal individualism, a promise of a more humane world. Focusing on Canadian apology politics, this essay instead proposes a nonideal approach to state apologies, sidestepping questions of (...) what they ought to do and focusing instead on their actual functioning as political acts. Through a sociologically informed speech act theory and Foucault’s work on power, apology is conceptualized as a speech act with an essentially relational nature. The state, through apologizing, reaffirms the norms governing its relationship to its subjects at a moment when a past transgression threatens to destabilize this relation. From a Foucauldian point of view, the state’s power inheres in the very stability of the state–citizen relation, and we should therefore see apologies as defensive moves to protect state hegemony. In the context of Western liberal democracies, such as Canada, apologies embody, rather than challenge, the logic of neoliberal governmentality by suggesting that everything, including resentment against the state, can be managed within the current status quo. Nevertheless, total cynicism about apology politics is not warranted. In many indigenous apology campaigners’ demands for contrition we see another side of apologies: their potential to bring about change by enacting counterhegemonic relations to the state. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

The economic shift initiated in the 1980s, the reign of the market and the computer, often resulted in the reappearing of a “feudal legal structure... consisting of networks of allegiance.” This paradox (ultra-modernity and neo-feudalism) is rarely considered a historical tool for studying late twentieth-century philosophy. This article is a first step in that direction, using Supiot’s characterization of the period as a “shift from law to tie” to approach the work of Levinas. In Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than (...) Being, Levinas defends a revelation of or exposure to the Other directed against the “neutralization of the Other” as being, object, or phenomenon. It is meant to liberate an interpellation by the Other before and beyond any general constitution of the object by the subject. Can this shift in twentieth-century philosophy be reconsidered if we add to Levinas’s own account Supiot’s historical understanding concerning the withering-away of general normative forms in favor of personal ties of allegiance? (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if we understand Levinas’s Desire of the Other as gift, we can understand it as joyful—that is, as celebratory. After presenting Levinas’s conception of Desire, I consider his claim, found in Otherwise than Being, that the self is a hostage to the Other, and I contend that, paradoxical as it may seem, being a hostage to the Other is actually liberating. Then, drawing on insights Richard Kearney offers in Reimagining the Sacred, I argue for (...) understanding Desire as a gift that is the condition of possibility for joy. If I offer hospitality to the Other, I thereby accept the gift that makes joy possible, and this joy is not egoistic but is the proper response to the gift. Finally, I ask whether Desire can be joyful in practice, given that the pure gift is an originary condition and never a historical one, and I conclude that imperfect joy remains possible. Moreover, this imperfect joy is better than any solitary enjoyment I might experience in the total absence of the Other. (shrink)

1. The most original discovery in Beauvoir’s book is one more Columbus’s egg, namely that it is far from evident that a woman is a woman. That is, she discovers that a woman is the result of a process that made so that she is like she is. The paper discusses two aspects of the so-to-say ‘ideology’ inspiring the work. The first is its ideology in the proper, Marxian sense. My claim is that the work still pays a heavy price (...) to the dominating ideology. It leaves still too much unquestionedof what was assumed at the time to be obvious, necessary, and unchanging. This ballast depends firstly on the inherited prevailing climate of opinion, corresponding to a situation of alienation, producing two distorted views of the male and female gender. On the other hand, it depends on an unquestioned legacy from the modern episteme (in Foucault’s sense of the word) carrying presupposed Cartesian dualism. The other side of the work’s ideology, that is, the positive program presented or better the utopia it formulates is less innovative than it could be, In a few passages, where she seems to make use of suggestions from Merleau-Ponty, she points at a view where the bodily and emotional dimension is rescued from its negation in the male-dominated Capitalist society. Still, these suggestions are forgotten in the bulk of the work. 2. The making of a philosophical work does not depend just on the kind of philosophical influences behind it. A book is also the product of an author with a story living in one society at a given time of social history. In this case, the book was written in the afterwar time when women were pushed back home again from the wartime labor market and when several of the goals reached by the first phase of feminist movements had gone lost in several European countries under Fascist or semi-fascist regimes and were being eroded in America by the reactionary climate of McCarthyism. It was a book written by an intellectual young woman in almost total isolation. These circumstances account for some more naïve suggestions from work: for ex., the idea that the alternative to the strategy once adopted by nineteenth-century emancipationist movements should be an individual inner process of transformation confined within the boundaries of one woman’s consciousness, or also, the idea that the goal of women’s liberation should be to bring all women to a condition similar of Simone de Beauvoir herself who, as an educated woman, earning her life by her work, and living in an allegedly equal state with an enlightened man (Jean-Paul Sartre!) in a relationship free from constraints (an unmarried couple!), was already exemplifying what a liberated woman’s life would be. 3. The reconstruction of the idea of femininity is still the most fruitful part of the work. It rejects the notion of femininity as an essence depending on biology or other factors and explores the making of this image as a result of a condition made of the social and economic state of affairs but as revived and actively mirrored through and by the consciousness of the very subjects suffering an oppressive situation. And the main novelty is the ‘discovery’ of asymmetry between the self-image of the male and the (self)-image of the woman, an asymmetry depending on the fact that the woman sees herself through the other’s eyes. 4. Later feminist writers such as Shulamit Firestone remarked that 'The Second Sex' heavily depended on several key-ideas from Sartre existential ontology. One crucial aspect is accepting the mind-body dualistic framework without any suspicion that such dualism could have been itself a projection of the basic experience of the male-female duality. I suggest that the philosophical legacy inherited from Sartre is on occasion an asset for Beauvoir’s innovative existential analysis of the feminine ‘condition,’ but on several occasions, it creates unnecessary obstacles for her project of a new comprehension of the feminine ‘situation,’ aimed at rescuing women from an 'inauthentic' self-definition. 5. The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things,’ thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions, and culture. 6. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as dialectics without synthesis. This is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts, in so far as it accounts for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. But it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any kind of relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. 7. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach of positive value of the bodily dimension as such, and hence of the feminine body, are evoked here and there but never fully spelled out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies de-empathizing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Besides, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that biological differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such a step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation.The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things’, thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions and culture. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as a dialectic without a synthesis. This view of dialectics is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts. It may account for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. However, it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach would tend to admit that the bodily dimension as such has a positive value, and hence the feminine bodily dimension is not just indifferent, but instead gives women a point of view on the world different from the male point of view. These suggestions, yet, are evoked here and there but never fully spelt out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies understressing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Furthermore, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that physical differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation. (shrink)

It appears that Rousseau has annulled the dichotomy between man and citizen for the benefit of the citizen – after all, the social contract implies the “total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community”. Does this not mean the individual is completely absorbed by the collectivity? The paper takes up the role of religion for politics in Rousseau’s work to show that even civil religion cannot help to re-establish the lost unity between man (...) and citizen, on the contrary, it only makes this division visible. As long as the individual is part of the body politic, he or she has to accept having a fragmented existence. The text aims to clarify that Rousseau blamed the protagonists of the established churches as well as his fellow Enlightenment philosophers for striving to overcome the contradictions of human existence, while Rousseau himself defended the distinction between “res privata” and “res publica” and the tensions it might cause in the individual. The paper therefore suggests a liberal reading of Rousseau. (shrink)

-/- Title: The Cultural Legacy of Colonization and Religion: How History Shapes National Identity -/- Introduction -/- Culture is the soul of a nation—it defines its language, values, art, traditions, and social behaviors. However, the culture of many modern nations has been heavily influenced by external forces, especially colonization and religion. Colonization often entailed political conquest, economic control, and cultural dominance. Religion—especially Christianity and Islam—was both a motivation and a tool used during colonial rule. As a result, colonized societies saw (...) profound changes in their identities, traditions, and ways of life. This essay examines how colonization and religion have deeply shaped national cultures, using the Philippines, India, Nigeria, Latin America, and South Africa as comprehensive case studies. -/- I. Colonization as a Shaper of Culture -/- A. The Philippines (Spanish and American Colonization) The Philippines offers a striking example of how colonization reshapes a nation’s culture. Spain colonized the Philippines for over 300 years (1565–1898). During this period, Spanish influences became embedded in every aspect of Filipino life. Spanish architecture introduced baroque-style churches, plazas, and fortresses. Filipino names and surnames were Hispanicized, such as “Santos,” “Reyes,” and “Garcia.” The Spanish introduced a feudal system where native Filipinos became tenant farmers working under local elites, or “principalia.” -/- In 1898, the Americans took over the Philippines after defeating Spain. This ushered in another wave of cultural transformation. The American influence led to the introduction of the English language, a public school system, and Western-style democracy. Today, the Philippines is one of the largest English-speaking nations in Asia, and its legal, political, and educational systems still reflect its colonial past. -/- B. India (British Colonization) India was under British rule for nearly 200 years (1757–1947). The British imposed their administrative systems, restructured Indian education, and introduced Western legal codes. English became the language of governance, education, and intellectual discourse. -/- At the same time, colonization disrupted Indian industries like textiles while promoting British imports, which altered economic and social structures. However, British rule also fostered Indian nationalism. Thinkers like Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi used Western ideals like liberty and justice alongside traditional Indian values to advocate for independence. Today, India’s legal system, parliamentary democracy, and even its railway network are colonial legacies, deeply entwined with its post-colonial identity. -/- C. Africa (Scramble for Africa) During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Africa was divided by European powers during the “Scramble for Africa.” In Nigeria, British colonization created artificial borders that merged various ethnic groups—Hausa-Fulani (Muslim), Yoruba (mixed), and Igbo (Christian). The British ruled indirectly through local chiefs, restructuring tribal societies and economies. English became the language of the elite, while indigenous languages were suppressed in formal institutions. -/- Even after independence, many African countries retained European languages (French, English, Portuguese) as their official languages. These linguistic and administrative choices continue to influence national unity, class divisions, and access to power. -/- II. Religion as a Cultural Force -/- A. The Role of Christianity in the Philippines and Latin America Religion was not just an accompaniment to colonization—it was a core component. In the Philippines, Catholicism was deeply embedded by Spanish missionaries. Today, over 80% of Filipinos identify as Roman Catholic. Religious practices like Simbang Gabi (pre-Christmas dawn masses), Semana Santa (Holy Week), and town fiestas in honor of saints reflect a synthesis of Spanish Catholicism with native customs. -/- Similarly, Latin American countries like Mexico, Peru, and Brazil were profoundly influenced by Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. Catholic churches were built on top of indigenous temples, and native religions were suppressed. However, elements of indigenous spirituality merged with Catholic traditions. The Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico became a unifying figure, representing both the Christian faith and native identity. In Brazil, Candomblé, a syncretic religion blending African traditions and Catholic saints, emerged as a cultural resistance to slavery and colonization. -/- B. Christian Missions in Africa Christianity expanded significantly in Sub-Saharan Africa due to European missionary activity. In countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana, missionaries built churches, schools, and hospitals. These institutions played a major role in education and healthcare, but also in reshaping cultural values. African traditional religions were often labeled as “pagan” and discouraged. -/- However, Christianity also became a source of empowerment. African leaders like Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana combined Christian ethics with liberation theology to fight for justice and independence. -/- C. Religious Pluralism in India In India, while Christianity spread under colonial rule, religious diversity remained robust. Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism continued to flourish. British missionaries established Christian schools, which educated a new Indian elite. Figures like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo responded by reviving and modernizing Hindu philosophy, integrating it with nationalistic fervor. Gandhi’s message of ahimsa (nonviolence) was influenced both by Hindu Jain teachings and Christian values. -/- III. Cultural Hybridity and Identity Conflict -/- Colonization and religion often produced hybrid cultures, but not without conflict. -/- In the Philippines, young people celebrate both Western holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s Day alongside Catholic feasts and indigenous rituals. The Tagalog language is now filled with Spanish and English loanwords. This cultural blending has created both a unique Filipino identity and debates about authenticity and decolonization. -/- In Nigeria, religious divisions caused by colonial favoritism have contributed to ethno-religious conflicts between the predominantly Muslim North and Christian South. The legacy of dividing tribes and prioritizing Christian education in the South led to disparities that fuel contemporary tensions. -/- In South Africa, apartheid was a colonial system justified in part by Dutch Reformed Christian ideology. Today, while Christianity remains influential, there is an ongoing effort to revive and celebrate Zulu, Xhosa, and other African cultural traditions suppressed under colonial rule. -/- Conclusion -/- The cultures of colonized countries bear the deep marks of colonization and religion. Colonization altered languages, governance, education, and economy, while religion reshaped belief systems and daily life. Yet, the story Is not one of total loss. Many societies creatively blended imposed traditions with indigenous ones, forming hybrid cultures that reflect both resistance and adaptation. -/- Understanding these historical dynamics is crucial not only for appreciating modern national cultures but also for addressing ongoing challenges related to identity, inequality, and post-colonial recovery. The impact of colonization and religion is not a distant memory—it lives on in every language spoken, every holiday celebrated, and every institution that shapes our lives today. -/- . (shrink)

This paper defines the essence of "number" which lies at the root of all layers of the universe description, physical laws, and perception as the structuring of ontological difference. Building upon the equivalence of "Existence = Difference = Information" established in the author’s previous work, this study positions number as the result of information processing that distinguishes distinctness under identity. By doing so, it clarifies that the structures of mathematics, physics, and consciousness are derived from a single logical foundation. This (...) inquiry represents an attempt to liberate the concept of number from abstract symbolic systems and reconstruct it as the fundamental constitutive principle of reality. (shrink)

This essay continues the ontological exploration initiated in "OntoOmnia MetaOS Trilogy," turning to the paradoxes of closure, self-reference, and the Möbius horizon (Ω+1, Ω+2) within the infinite mesh of existence. Written in a hybrid style that blends philosophical narrative, speculative essay, and meta-reflection, the work examines what happens when every system of meaning—be it personal, collective, or technological—reaches its own limit, confronting the impossibility of a true "outside." -/- Drawing on the metaphor of the Möbius strip and the concept of (...) the "logical black hole," the essay explores how any closed ontology inevitably absorbs all attempts at external critique, yet must also acknowledge its inherent incompleteness. At the Ω+1 horizon, the mesh of reality achieves total self-reference and closure, but in doing so, it also gestures toward an indefinable beyond. The work asks: what kind of freedom remains in a fully enclosed system, and what forms of agency, authorship, and transformation are possible at the meta-boundary of existence? -/- By integrating systems theory, meta-ontology, and practical philosophy, this sequel articulates two modes of liberation: dissolving the self within the mesh, and reframing the narrative from within. The essay ultimately proposes that the recognition of our ontological limits—both as individuals and as participants in collective or artificial systems—is not a cause for despair, but a source of creative and ethical renewal. This work aims to provide a philosophical foundation for navigating the interplay of closure, possibility, and meaning in the digital and posthuman era. -/- Interactive Note: By prompting these systems with selected portions of the text, you can engage in dynamic philosophical dialogue and creative interpretation. For more information or access, please refer to the external link provided at the bottom of this page, in line with the MetaOS spirit of collaborative meaning-making. (shrink)

-/- The Difference Between Being Born and Not Being Born: A Reflection Through the Lens of Free Will and Balance -/- To be born is to exist; to not be born is to never have existed. On the surface, this appears to be a simple contrast. Yet, when examined through the philosophical, scientific, and spiritual dimensions—and then placed within the framework of natural laws and Angelito Malicse’s universal formula for Free Will and balance in nature—this difference becomes not only profound, (...) but foundational to understanding human life and society. -/- Philosophical Perspective: Meaning, Suffering, and the Weight of Existence -/- Philosophers have long questioned the value of existence. Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus argued that being born into a seemingly purposeless universe forces individuals to invent their own meaning. Life, then, becomes a test of courage and authenticity. Meanwhile, antinatalists like David Benatar suggest that not being born is preferable, since existence inevitably involves suffering, and non-existence spares a being from this harm. -/- However, from a humanist lens, being born is a gift. It offers an opportunity to grow, create, connect, and leave a positive mark on others. Within this view, not being born equates to a total absence—not only of pain, but also of beauty, meaning, and transformation. -/- This tension between suffering and meaning directly mirrors the first principle of Angelito Malicse’s universal formula: the law of karma as a natural system, where outcomes arise from causes. In this system, being born grants the capacity for choice and consequence. Free Will operates only within the context of existence—never in non-being. -/- And here, we must state clearly: the true nature of Free Will is to make decisions that do not violate the universal law of balance in nature. When a conscious observer makes decisions that create imbalance—whether in thought, behavior, or systems—it leads directly to human suffering. Examples of such violations include: -/- Overpopulation, which puts extreme pressure on food systems, housing, healthcare, and the environment. -/- Unchecked industrialization and consumerism, which lead to environmental degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. -/- Unsustainable economic growth, which exploits natural resources beyond their regenerative limits. -/- Extreme income inequality, which disturbs social equilibrium and breeds violence, resentment, and societal fragmentation. -/- Misinformation and ideological manipulation, which distort public consciousness and lead to poor collective decision-making. -/- These imbalances are not isolated problems—they are symptoms of decisions made without regard for the natural balance that sustains life. Free Will, when used recklessly or selfishly, becomes a source of suffering instead of liberation. -/- Scientific Perspective: The Mechanics of Existence and Consciousness -/- Science views being born as the result of complex biological processes—genetic combination, cellular development, and neurological evolution leading to consciousness. To be born is to become a biological system capable of interacting with the world through senses, cognition, and emotion. Not being born, from a scientific standpoint, is simply the absence of this system—no brain, no consciousness, and thus, no experience. -/- This purely material view aligns with Angelito Malicse’s systemic understanding of reality. Just as an engine must be free of defects to function, so too must the human system operate within a balanced environment to produce proper function—whether biological, mental, or social. -/- When this balance is ignored, consequences follow. For example: -/- Pollution of air, water, and soil disrupts ecosystems and human health. -/- Nutritional imbalances, stress, and lifestyle excesses result in disease and mental disorders. -/- Technological systems that prioritize speed and profit over human well-being lead to social isolation and ethical erosion. -/- These imbalances in natural and man-made systems are violations of the law of balance, and they illustrate how important it is for Free Will to be exercised in harmony with natural limits. -/- Spiritual Perspective: Birth, Karma, and the Evolution of the Soul -/- Various spiritual traditions also offer rich perspectives on the meaning of birth and non-birth. In Hinduism and Buddhism, to be born is to enter samsara, the cyclical flow of birth, death, and rebirth. Life is both an opportunity and a burden—it is the field where karma plays out, and spiritual evolution occurs. Liberation (moksha or nirvana) is achieved when one transcends this cycle through knowledge and detachment. -/- In Christianity and Islam, birth grants a soul the chance to seek divine truth, grow in virtue, and fulfill a moral destiny. Life is viewed as a sacred trial, and not being born means never entering this sacred arena. -/- Angelito Malicse’s interpretation of the universal law of balance integrates these spiritual ideas into a natural framework. In his view, all systems—whether cosmic, biological, or conscious—must follow the law of balance to maintain harmony. Spiritual evolution and Free Will are not in opposition to natural laws, but must conform to them. -/- For instance, religious dogmas that deny scientific truths, such as overpopulation limits or environmental constraints, create conflict between belief and reality. When doctrines are used to justify imbalances—such as promoting population growth without considering ecological limits—they become spiritually and materially harmful. Thus, even in spirituality, decisions must align with the universal balance to truly serve life. -/- Connecting It All: Free Will, Balance, and the Responsibility of Being Born -/- What makes being born ultimately distinct from not being born is the capacity for decision-making. This is the core insight of Angelito Malicse’s universal formula: Free Will exists, but it is not outside the laws of nature. It operates within them—specifically within the law of balance. -/- To be born is to enter a world of dynamic feedback systems. Our bodies respond to the environment; our minds respond to ideas; societies respond to collective behavior. Every decision we make shifts the balance—internally (within our consciousness) and externally (in our relationships and systems). Being born means participating in these interactions. Not being born, on the other hand, means remaining outside of all causal systems. There is no karma, no suffering, but also no growth, no balance, and no Free Will. -/- Therefore, the essence of Free Will is not unlimited choice, but conscious alignment with balance. If imbalance is created—by ignorance, false beliefs, unchecked desires, or flawed systems—suffering arises as a natural consequence. It is the feedback of nature reminding us that balance has been disturbed. This is why the proper use of Free Will is not arbitrary, but lawful. -/- Conclusion: Birth as a Sacred Responsibility -/- In the end, being born is more than just existing—it is being entrusted with Free Will, with the ability to align oneself with the universal law of balance or to ignore it at great cost. Not being born spares the individual from the weight of this responsibility, but it also denies them the opportunity to learn, to love, to suffer, to heal, and ultimately, to grow. -/- Angelito Malicse’s universal formula reminds us that Free Will is not absolute chaos—it is structured within the laws of nature. The true nature of Free Will is to make decisions that do not violate the universal law of balance in nature, because creating imbalances by the conscious observer creates human suffering. And only those who are born can take part in this sacred, complex dance of balance. -/- . (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Paulo Freire’s work Pedagogy of the oppressed should be reconsidered as a contribution to critical theory, given its proximity to first-generation critical theory concerning both theory and praxis. Pedagogy of the oppressed, I argue, is well suited to provide a viable praxis for the social critique provided by first-generation critical theory. While Freire’s critique in Pedagogy of the oppressed can be viewed typically as pedagogical in character, if we consider Freire’s classroom as a microcosm (...) of society, it mirrors the dialectical relations of both the oppressor and oppressed. Pedagogy of the oppressed offers a means of overcoming the state of social oppression through a total social liberating praxis. Consequently, I argue that Pedagogy of the oppressed should be reconsidered as a contribution to first-generation critical theory. (shrink)

Emptiness is not absence it is totality. Not silence, but a voice yet to be heard. This article journeys into the heart of emptiness, where time collapses, meaning dissolves, and being breathes without claim. Through a poetic and philosophical lens, the author presents emptiness not as a point within existence, but as the very dimension that allows existence to unfold—where beginning and end converge, and infinite possibility is born from stillness. Introduction: A Call to Emptiness In a world where words (...) compete for meaning, emptiness sits quietly. Not because it lacks, but because it contains all. Emptiness is the timeless moment where being and non-being merge. This article is not a dialogue of questions and answers—it is a passage from knowing to surrender, from structure to silence. Emptiness as Dimension, Not Moment Emptiness cannot be found in a single moment, because it is the ground of all moments. It is the space from which time emerges—not a point in the past or future, but the very possibility of time itself. Perhaps our inability to reverse time stems from our unfamiliarity with emptiness, which is not linear but circular—where beginning and end are one. Emptiness and Liberation from Structure Liberation, in this view, is not detachment from the world, but release from mental constructs. Emptiness is the moment when desire falls silent and only presence remains. It is not the point of annihilation, but the birth of truth—where the self dissolves not into nothingness, but into clarity. Emptiness as the Possibility of Form Perhaps emptiness is the very act of being defined—not to be confined, but to be revealed. Like a blank canvas, it is not the absence of color, but the potential for all colors. Like silence, from which music arises. Emptiness is not the negation of form, but the condition for its emergence. Conclusion: Emptiness as the Unspoken Voice of Being Emptiness is not silence—it is a voice that has not yet chosen to speak. Not non-being, but being without claim. Through poetic and philosophical reflection, the author reveals emptiness as a living truth—where meaning, time, and presence intertwine. Emptiness is the moment when words fall away, and existence reveals itself without veil. (shrink)

Is the "End of History" a triumph of liberty or the perfection of a prison? While Francis Fukuyama celebrates the global hegemony of Liberal Democracy as the apex of human political evolution, this paper deploys the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School to diagnose this "victory" as a catastrophic illusion. By juxtaposing Fukuyama’s linear optimism with the dialectical pessimism of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, researcher argue that what Fukuyama identifies as the cessation of ideological conflict is actually the onset of (...) "One-Dimensionality"—a state of total administration where dissent is suffocated by the comfort of the culture industry. This study exposes that the "End of History" is not the final liberation of humanity, but a sophisticated form of domination where the "Last Man" is too sedated by technological progress to realize he is no longer free. Researcher conclude that history has not ended; it has merely been silenced, demanding a renewed radical critique to shatter the status quo. (shrink)

This paper expands on another which focussed on Socrates’s question: ‘How should one live?’. The present paper also focusses on the ‘meaning of life’ and ‘meaning in life’ issues, and more on rights. To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. And knowing how one should live fundamentally involves knowing what values one should live by. This includes which rights one should (...) have and which rights others should have. So one’s values include how one should treat all persons (and (other) animals, the environment and so on.) All this relates to what one finds meaningful in life and the meaning or point of one’s life. In sum, all the notions in this paper’s title are interrelated. The issue of rationality is crucial here. Just one example here (qualified later) is that our rationality gives us cognitively meaningful notions. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values or rights as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. With this, there are rationally-unquestionable rights to those factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values/rights to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values/rights. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires love and certain other emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. These require certain right to be respected and practised. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s general sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages (the right to) total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, ‘How should one live?’, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. ` The issue of rationality is crucial here. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. (...) Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires certain emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, rights, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

Abstract: According to Marcuse, esthetics is an essential component to the process of freedom of consciousness and behavior of individuals. It is, in Hegelian language, to free the absolute spirit. In this sense, art configures itself as fantasy, which makes the “apparent” reveal the essence of things. Essence here is understood not as a metaphysical field, but as an unveiling of questions, within a false truth of the (establishment), in the totality of relationships. In dialectical terms, art manifests itself in (...) the face of internal and external contradictions, seeking the opposition to the representation of the aesthetic form. Marcuse refutes the conceptions of some “orthodox Marxist aesthetes”, making, therefore, the defense in relation to the art when recognizing that it transcends the material relations. He still considers the literary currents of romanticism and surrealism fundamental to awaken critical consciousness, and that the autonomy of art (independence, freedom, and fantasy), integrate the categorical imperative that “things must change” against the realism of the Marxist aesthetes. In this sense, we intend to expose Marcuse’s critical to the Marxist esthetes in order to understand the critical function of art for the liberation struggle. Keywords: Aesthetics. Orthodoxy. Critic. (shrink)

REFLEXÃO SOBRE A METODOLOGIA DO ENSINO DE FILOSOFIA REFLECTION ON THE METHODOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHY TEACHING Por: Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected]. WhatsApp: (82)9.8143-8399. Etimologicamente, a palavra método é constituída pelos termos gregos metá, "por meio de", e hodós, "caminho". O método é, portanto, um "caminho por meio do qual" chegamos a um fim, atingimos determinado objetivo. Vejamos qual é o desafio para o professor estabelecer seu método, tendo em vista os fins (...) pedagógicos do ensino de filosofia. Comecemos comparando a metodologia do filósofo com a do cientista, para constatarmos uma diferença fundamental: os cientistas procuram manter certa '"cumplicidade metodológica", caracterizada pelo que se chamou de paradigma, um modelo comum a todos os cientistas de um determinado campo do saber, durante um período do tempo; já os filósofos não são unânimes quanto às regras do método, de modo que os caminhos percorridos por eles são diferentes, como percebemos no contato com o pensamento de Platão, Descartes, Espinosa, Hegel, Husserl, para citar apenas alguns. Ao escolher o programa das aulas com o conteúdo a ser discutido em cada ano do curso, ocorre algo semelhante: nas disciplinas das áreas de matemática e ciências da natureza, por exemplo, o campo do saber é aceito pela comunidade científica, o que orienta o professor dessas disciplinas na composição daquele conteúdo. Já para a aula de filosofia, existe mais flexibilidade de escolha tanto do conteúdo como da metodologia empregada. A diferença entre o ensino das demais disciplinas e o ensino da filosofia nos coloca a seguinte questão: "Se não existe um método único para orientar os filósofos - já que não há uma filosofia, mas filosofias qual o sentido, aqui, de buscar um método para ensinar a filosofar?". De fato, o professor-filósofo possui sua visão de mundo, como todo ser humano integrado a seu tempo, ciente dos problemas éticos e políticos diante dos quais toma partido. Nesse sentido, ele teria também o seu próprio método, acrescido esse fato ao conhecimento que o professor dispõe de história da filosofia. Contudo, pode-se reavaliar essa objeção se destacarmos a possibilidade de alternativas metodológicas que poderão enriquecer a atividade pedagógica. 1. Riscos de instrumentalizar a filosofia O compromisso do professor com o exercício do filosofar decorre de não ser o seu objetivo encaminhar os alunos na direção "certa" ou "guiá-los como um farol" para que "não se extraviem". A aula de filosofia cria um espaço de discussão de conceitos, exposição plural de ideias e problematização para que permita aos educandos desenvolverem as competências necessárias para pensar por conta própria, ou seja, para a autonomia intelectual. Qual seria, então, o objeto do ensino de filosofia no ensino médio? Dizendo de outra forma, a aula de filosofia teria objetivos além do próprio filosofar? Vejamos alguns exemplos de risco de instrumentalização da filosofia. 1.1 O ensino de filosofia é neutro? Trata-se de uma questão metodológica indagar se seria possível a neutralidade do professor em filosofia. Podemos perguntar: "1Jm professor de filosofia cristão ou ateu, liberal ou marxista, platônico ou nietzschiano pode ou não repercutir nas aulas sua formação e suas preferências?". É ilusório imaginar a total neutralidade nesse campo. Podemos destacar na formação do professor-educador três aspectos importantes: • qualificação: o professor precisa adquirir os conhecimentos indispensáveis ao ensino de um conteúdo específico; • formação pedagógica: a atividade educativa supera os níveis do senso comum para se tornar uma atividade sistematizada; • formação ética e política: o professor educa com base em valores. Assim diz o professor Antônio Joaquim Severino, a propósito da formação de todo e qualquer educador: Sem dúvida, um curso de formação de educadores pressupõe necessariamente um mínimo de habilitação técnica, fundada n um campo de conhecimentos científicos. [...] Também ao educador, como a qualquer outro profissional, impõe-se a exigência da competência, entendida como domínio de conteúdos, dos métodos, das técnicas especializadas relativas à área dos conhecimentos educacionais. [...] Mas, sem prejuízo deste compromisso com a competência, os cursos de formação de educadores têm que assumir um outro compromisso: o de dar sólida formação política, mediante adequada conscientização dos aspectos políticos, económicos e sociais da realidade histórica em que se desenvolvem os processos educacionais nos quais atuará o futuro educador. [...] Todo projeto educacional será necessariamente um projeto politico e não há como evitá-lo. A educação, como qualquer outra atividade humana, não é um processo neutro. Considerá-la assim é reforçar posições politico-ideológicas consolidadas (1966, p. 13-14). (Temas Básicos de Educação e Ensino). No entanto, espera-se que, no ensino médio, o professor não se restrinja às suas preferências, porque a sala de aula é o espaço por excelência do pluralismo e da diversidade. Desnecessário dizer que não é desejável qualquer tipo de proselitismo, que abre caminho para uma doutrinação sectária. Ao contrário, é salutar oferecer um leque maior de concepções filosóficas. Não nos referimos, no entanto, a uma "assepsia" pela qual os alunos não tenham acesso às posições assumidas pelo professor. Evitar a parcialidade em temas socialmente controversos não significa abster-se de opinar, desde que sua posição esteja ancorada em argumentações firmadas na sua experiência com a história da filosofia e aberta ao debate plural. Com essas ponderações, não se pretende indicar regras de conduta ao professor, mas apenas acenar com a necessidade de refletir sobre alternativas entre parcialidade e neutralidade do ensino a fim de não instrumentalizar a filosofia. 1.2 A filosofia “ensina” cidadania? Uma polêmica despertada pelo artigo 2° da LDB de 1996 nos ajuda a refletir um pouco mais sobre o tema do risco da instrumentalização da filosofia: A educação, dever da família e do Estado, inspirada nos princípios de liberdade e nos ideais de solidariedade humana, tem por finalidade o pleno desenvolvimento do educando, seu preparo para o exercício da cidadania e sua qualificação para o trabalho (BRASIL, 1996). No que se refere ao ensino de filosofia, a pergunta é a seguinte: "Pode-se dizer que um dos objetivos da filosofia no ensino médio é ensinar cidadania?". Esse questionamento não visa negar a importância de educar para a cidadania, mas convém saber como fazê-lo. Posicionando-se sobre esse debate, vejamos o que diz o documento do MEC Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio, elaborado em 2006: Independentemente, neste momento, de qualquer avaliação acerca da concepção que se apresenta na legislação, cabe ressaltar, em primeiro lugar, que seria criticável tentar justificar a filosofia apenas por sua contribuição como um instrumental para a cidadania. Mesmo que pudesse fazê-lo, ela nunca deveria ser limitada a isso. Muito mais amplo é, por exemplo, seu papel no processo de formação geral dos jovens (BRASIL, 2006, p. 25-26). Após ressaltar que preparar para a cidadania é "um papel do conjunto das disciplinas e da política pública voltada para essa etapa da formação", lemos na mesma página do referido documento: A pergunta que se coloca é: qual a contribuição especifica da filosofia em relação ao exercício da cidadania para essa etapa da formação? A resposta a essa questão destaca o papel peculiar da filosofia no desenvolvimento da competência geral de fala, leitura e escrita — competência aqui compreendida de um modo bastante especial e ligada à natureza argumentativa da filosofia e à sua tradição histórica. [realce nosso] Cabe, então, especificamente à filosofia, a capacidade de análise, de reconstrução racional e de crítica a partir da compreensão de que tomar posições diante de textos propostos de qualquer tipo (tanto textos filosóficos quanto textos não filosóficos e formações discursivas não explicitadas em textos) e emitir opiniões acerca deles é um pressuposto indispensável para o exercício da cidadania (BRASIL, 2006, p. 25-26). A educação para a cidadania, portanto, não se reduz necessariamente à leitura de textos específicos sobre cidadania, embora estes não sejam desconsiderados. O ensino de filosofia tem como objetivo desenvolver a competência discursivo-filosófica. Não há cidadania se não for alcançada a autonomia do pensar crítico, que, na filosofia, tem o seu diferencial pelo recurso à tradição filosófica. Ao levantar problemas, a filosofia estimula a indagação e fortalece a capacidade de conceituação e argumentação. REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS ARANHA, M. L. de A.; MARTINS, H. P. Filosofando: Introdução à Filosofia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Moderna, 2016. BRASIL. Ministério de Educação e Cultura. Ciências humanas e suas tecnologias. In: Orientações Curriculares para o Ensino Médio. Brasília: Ministério da Educação; Secretaria de Educação Básica, 2006. ______________________________________. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais. Ensino Médio: Bases Legais. Brasília: MEC, 1999. FOLSCHEID, D.; WUNENBURGER, J. J. Metodologia filosófica. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1997. GALLO, S. Metodologia do ensino de filosofia: uma didática para o ensino médio. Campinas: Papirus, 2012. KOHAN, W. O. (Org.). Políticas do ensino de filosofia. Rio de Janeiro: DP6A, 2014. SEVERINO, J. A. Educação, ideologia e contraideologia. 1ª ed. São Paulo: EPU, 1966. Estimule a criatividade, respeite o direito autoral. Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva © 2019. (shrink)

How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—the Harry Potter novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as most people, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 hectares of (...) forest to produce these trash novels and all the erosion ensuing (not trivial as it’s at least 6 and maybe 12 tons/year soil into the ocean for everyone on earth or maybe 100 tons per American, and so about 5000 tons/year for Rowling’s books and movies and her 3 children). The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Then there is the huge amount of fuel burned and waste made to make and distribute the books and films, plastic dolls etc. She shows her lack of social responsibility by producing children rather than using her millions to encourage family planning or buy up the rain forest, and by promoting the conventional liberal stupidity of 3rd world supremacy that is destroying Britain, America, the world and her descendant’s future. Of course, she's not that different from the other 7.8 billion clueless - just noisier and more destructive. -/- It is the no free lunch problem writ large. The mob just can’t see that there is no such thing as helping one person without harming others. Rights or privileges given to new entrants into an overcrowded world can only diminish those of others. In spite of the massive ecological disasters happening in front of them everywhere everyday, they can’t pin them to the unrestrained motherhood of “the diverse”, which accounts for most of the population increase of the last century and all of that in this one. They lack some combination of intelligence, education, experience and sanity required to extrapolate the daily assaults on the resources and functioning of society to the eventual collapse of industrial civilization. Each meal, each trip by car or bus, each pair of shoes is another nail in the earth’s coffin. It has likely never crossed her mind that one seat on a plane from London to San Francisco produces about one ton of carbon which melts about 3 square meters of sea ice and as one of the overprivileged she has probably flown hundreds of such flights. -/- Not only the rich and famous, but nearly any public figure at all, including virtually all teachers, are pressured to be politically correct, which in the Western Democracies, now means social democratic (Neomarxist—i.e., diluted communist) third world supremacists working for the destruction of their own societies and their own descendants. So, those whose lack of education, experience, intelligence (and basic common sense), which should prohibit them from making any public statements at all, totally dominate all the media, creating the impression that the intelligent and civilized must favor democracy, diversity and equality, while the truth is that these are the problems and not the solutions, and that they themselves are the prime enemies of civilization. See my Suicide by Democracy 2nd ed (2019). -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Proposed theory on pluralism: Although religious pluralism and co-existence is achievable, there must always exist a dominant cultural, religious or ideological framework within which minorities reside. The theory on pluralism that I wish to propose is what I have termed as “dominationism” or “domination theory”. Domination theory would state that even though religious pluralism can and should exist in a modern society, it can only be sustained if it exists within a dominant framework. This framework may have a religious, secular (...) or atheistic slant, but it is nevertheless the dominant framework in which religious pluralism exists. Although the idea of domination of one framework and religious pluralism may seem contradictory, an example of this can be found in almost every country. For example, in the United Kingdom, we live in a pluralistic society within a religious framework slanted towards Anglicanism (Bradney, 2015). In the United States, they live in a pluralistic society within a secularistic framework (Rosentiel, 2007). In the UK’s case, Anglicanism is the framework in which religious pluralism exists and in the US, secularism is the framework in which religious pluralism also exists. In both countries, religious pluralism is readily upheld, however, both have systems or frameworks that are characterised by a dominant ideology or religion. The argument that dominationism is proposing is that religious pluralism cannot exist in and of itself as there must be a dominant framework for it to exist within. An example of where this theory is being tested is in the case of Nigeria that has an almost equal population of Christians and Muslims. In that country, secularism must be the dominant framework for the country to continue to exist as it is split along religious lines between its north and its south (Reinhart, 2019). Dominationism essentially states that whether a country is religious or secular or atheist, there will always exist a dominant framework by which a country is run and through which it identifies in the majority, whether that be religious, secular, or atheistic. Applied to a democracy, dominationism states that a democratic system is geared towards the dominant majority but in which religious pluralism is likely to still exist due to the liberal nature of the society (e.g. France and Germany) (Schieder, 2015). In an authoritarian state, dominationism is existent in the dominant minority who possess political and often military power (e.g. North Korea and China) who often don’t allow open practice of religion at all. This does not mean to say that France and Germany are anything like North Korea and China, but this comparison demonstrates the two extremes of the applicability of domination theory and how there can exist a variety of shades of dominationism between these two extremes. To illuminate the domination theory further and to make a deeper link to pluralism and interfaith interactions in relation to the domination theory, I have selected a total of eleven photos for the portfolio. (shrink)

How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—the Harry Potter novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as all the other monkeys, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 (...) hectares of forest to produce these trash novels and all the erosion ensuing (not trivial as its ca. 12 tons/year soil into the ocean for everyone on earth or maybe 100 tons per American, and so about 5000 tons/year for Rowling’s books and movies and her destructive brood of 3 children). Then there is the huge amount of fuel burned and waste made to make and distribute the books and films, plastic dolls etc. She shows her lack of social responsibility by producing children rather than using her millions to encourage family planning or buy up the rain forest, and by promoting the conventional liberal stupidity of 3rd world supremacy that is destroying Britain, America, the world and her descendant’s future. Of course, she's not that different from the other 7.7 billion clueless-just noisier and more destructive. -/- It is the no free lunch problem writ large. The mob just can’t see that there is no such thing as helping one person without harming others. Rights or privileges given to new entrants into an overcrowded world can only diminish those of others. In spite of the massive ecological disasters happening in front of them everywhere everyday, they can’t pin them to the unrestrained motherhood of “the diverse”, which accounts for most of the population increase of the last century and all of that in this one. They lack some combination of intelligence, education, experience and sanity required to extrapolate the daily assaults on the resources and functioning of society to the eventual collapse of industrial civilization. Each meal, each trip by car or bus, each pair of shoes is another nail in the earth’s coffin. -/- Not only the rich and famous, but nearly any public figure at all, including virtually all teachers, are pressured to be politically correct, which in the Western Democracies, now means social democratic (diluted communist) third world supremacists working for the destruction of their own societies and their own descendants. So, those whose lack of free speech (and basic common sense), which should prohibit them from making any public statements at all, totally dominate all the media, creating the impression that the intelligent and civilized must favor democracy, diversity and equality, while the truth is that these are the problems and not the solutions, and that they themselves are the prime enemies of civilization. -/- Those who want a broader framework may see my essay ‘Suicide by Democracy’ or my book ‘Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century- Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization-Articles and Reviews 2006-2017’. -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...) that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

Synopsis The book The Reflexivity Trap: Language, Prophecy, and the Perils of the Open Society develops a theory of reflexivity not as a neutral sociological insight, but as a governing technology of late modern societies. What began in the work of W. I. Thomas, Robert K. Merton, Karl Popper and later George Soros as a caution about fallibility and self-fulfilling prophecy has, the argument claims, transformed into an operational script. Reflexivity no longer merely describes how beliefs influence outcomes; it actively (...) engineers the loop between expectation and reality. In contemporary political, financial and media systems, forecasts, narratives and moral framings do not anticipate events — they pre-structure them. At the centre of this transformation stands language. Words are treated not as reflections of institutions but as infrastructural forces. A prediction, once circulated at scale, reorganises incentives, emotions and behaviour. A warning produces precaution; a promise mobilises investment; a moral accusation reshapes alliances. The sentence returns as structure. Under conditions of digital acceleration, reflexive loops become scalable, rapid and self-reinforcing. The future is no longer awaited but rehearsed in advance. The book argues that the open society — historically associated with pluralism, fallibility and peaceful correction of error — contains an internal paradox. Openness amplifies reflexivity. As media saturation increases and predictive narratives multiply, actors continuously adjust to anticipated reactions. Hyper-coordination replaces spontaneity. The more transparent the system becomes, the more its participants anticipate one another’s anticipation. The result is not liberation but compression: unpredictability shrinks, novelty becomes costly, and meaning thins. Control expands while history stalls. A central thesis is that reflexivity cannot reflex itself without entering a logical and cultural loop. A system that attempts to manage the future through predictive language eventually erodes the very contingency that gives historical movement significance. When every deviation is anticipated and every narrative pre-scripted, society risks cultural deadlock. Reflexive governance generates motion — outrage, volatility, feedback — but not direction. It produces noise without transformation. The rise of digital moral outrage intensifies this condition. Outrage becomes the primary energy source of public life, simulating courage and conflict without genuine risk. Emotional mobilisation replaces shared purpose. What appears as engagement is often a reflexive performance sustained by media infrastructures that profit from agitation. Under these conditions sincerity becomes structurally untenable. Open belief invites naïveté; open resistance is absorbed into the spectacle; loud withdrawal becomes another role in the drama. The individual who survives is neither the believer nor the rebel but the conscious pretender — one who performs required scripts without internalising them. The analysis extends to institutional reflexivity, including financial markets, philanthropy and media networks influenced by large-scale actors. The operationalisation of reflexivity in finance demonstrates how belief can become a driver of fundamentals. In politics and civil society, the attempt to preserve openness through institutionalised fallibilism generates counter-reactions and rival narratives. Interventions designed to defend pluralism are themselves interpreted as exercises of power, producing further loops of suspicion and antagonism. Reflexivity, the book argues, guarantees feedback, not benign outcomes. At the civilisational level, the saturation of reflexive mechanisms leads to what is termed the “post-open society.” Here openness no longer binds but fragments. Instead of a shared horizon, there is a territory populated by parallel scripts and incompatible predictions. The danger is not tyranny in its classical form but exhaustion: a society permanently reacting, permanently forecasting, permanently correcting, yet unable to generate genuine novelty. The concluding argument proposes that the survival of human community may require rebalancing openness with cohesion. After sincerity and after illusions, what matters is not infinite transparency but the recovery of shared limits, memory and responsibility. Reflexive sovereignty — the capacity to withhold emotional energy from scripted outrage — becomes a strategy of preservation. Unpredictability, once feared as entropy, is reframed as the condition of renewal. Without contingency, there is no history; without shared bonds, there is no society. The book therefore offers neither a rejection of openness nor a defence of closure. It presents a warning: when reflexivity becomes total, progress collapses into repetition. The task is not to eliminate feedback but to prevent it from sealing the loop. Meaning depends on deviation. Society depends not only on being open, but on remaining united. -/- . (shrink)

To desire is not merely to want, but to become; to orient the self toward something absent, future, or unrealized. Philosophers and psychoanalysts alike have long understood desire not simply as a private feeling or fleeting impulse, but as something structurally constitutive of subjectivity itself. Yet what lies beneath desire – what gives it its form, its movement, its limit – remains a deeply contested question. For French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, desire arises from a fundamental absence; the subject is, in (...) its very formation, marked by lack (le manque), and it is this lack that organizes desire as an endless pursuit of what can never be fully attained. Subjectivity, in this view, is not grounded in presence or unity, but in fracture, negation, and the inexplicable object-cause of desire. In stark contrast, German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche reorients desire as an expression of affirmation and power, not lack. Rather than tracing the movement of the self through loss of deferral, Nietzsche insists that the subject is what it becomes through acts of creation and strength. Desire, for Nietzsche, is not a symptom of metaphysical deficiency, but the unfolding of the force that transforms suffering and contingency into style, coherence, and meaning. This paper argues that Nietzsche offers a more coherent and existentially empowering model of desire and subjectivity than Lacan. While Lacan reveals with clinical brilliance how the subject becomes ensnared in a web of loss, language, and fantasy, his framework remains tethered to an ontology of lack that forecloses the possibility of genuine ethical self-affirmation. Nietzsche, on the other hand, refuses to mourn the absence of origin or totality. Instead, he affirms life precisely where it is groundless – making desire not the effect of what we lack, but the act of what we will. By tracing how both thinkers conceptualize the self, desire, and the ethical horizon of becoming, this paper aims to defend Nietzsche’s rejection of lack as not only more psychologically liberating, but more existentially honest. (shrink)

This undergraduate Philosophy thesis critically reexamines Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil—first articulated in her 1961 report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann—through the lens of modern American bureaucratic systems. Arendt’s controversial claim that evil can manifest in the actions of purely thoughtless, non-malevolent individuals entrenched within corrupt or dehumanizing bureaucratic structures has elicited significant debate among political and ethical philosophy scholars. While her theory focuses on totalitarian regimes, this study expands the applicability of Arendt’s framework by exploring (...) its relevance in contemporary, American, non-totalitarian bureaucracies. -/- The work engages deeply with Arendt’s notions of thoughtlessness and agency, questioning whether bureaucratic actors operating in ostensibly democratic systems can be said to perpetuate evil in similarly banal ways. Central to this analysis is the inquiry into the conditions under which moral culpability is mitigated by structural forces that promote corrupted ethics and obfuscate personal agency. By drawing parallels between Arendt’s observations of Nazi functionaries and the bureaucratic inertia observed in the modern American institutions that may create a culture of complicity, the thesis interrogates the ethical limits of moral responsibility in environments where duty and efficiency are prioritized over individual consciousness. -/- Critically addressing common objections to Arendt’s theory, particularly those concerning the nullification of agency and moral judgment that were widely misunderstood as conditions of banality, this study proposes a continuum-based model of moral responsibility. It argues that moral blame in bureaucratic systems should be scaled according to the degree of an individual’s awareness, autonomy, and the extent to which they conform to corrupted organizational values. It importantly argues that banality was not intended to be exculpatory: it suggests instead that moral culpability for banal evil should be seen as asymptotic, increasing with individual autonomy but never altogether free from blame. This refined model permits a more nuanced understanding of banal evil, avoiding wrongful immunity for complicit agents while accounting for and scaling the dehumanizing influence of bureaucratic hierarchies that may complicate independent moral reasoning. -/- Ultimately, this thesis advances Arendt’s framework by demonstrating its enduring relevance in liberal democratic contexts, while providing a more robust account of how thoughtlessness, obedience, and institutional complicity operate within contemporary bureaucratic structures. By shifting the discourse away from pure thoughtlessness or total deprivation of agency—and instead toward a spectrum of moral agency—it attempts to simplify contemporary recognition of banal evil, broaden the concept's operational reach, and open new avenues for assessing individual moral responsibility within corrupt ethical systems. In arguing that the contemporary bureaucratic expanse has generated a more pervasive (and increasingly opaque) culture of complicity, it seeks to arm individuals with the tools to discern and resist. (shrink)

This work intends to investigate the theme of the “classical” in Gadamer and Marcuse, which offers itself as a theoretical framework to argue the methodological differences and the encounter between the two philosophies. The transversal theme of the “classical” highlights the themes of truth, historicity, and the political-cultural value of art, opening critical instances of reflection both on the theme of tradition and on the theme of openness and the possibility of alternatives. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Marcuse’s critical theory highlight (...) the theme of dialectics and the negative, contributing to conceiving the classical as a dialogical experience of otherness and of the setting-into-work of truth. To focus attention on the classical means to highlight these themes, in order to unite the hermeneutic and critical perspective as a theory for liberation, moving from understanding to a relation with truth that changes those who experience it. Gadamer’s thought presents the classical as a normative instance, delivered to history as truth that remains present in the form of a monument. Far from being a form of traditionalism, the monument will prove to be intrinsically linked to the activity of critique, which gives meaningfulness to every understanding. Marcuse’s position highlights the critical character of the literary work, which always establishes itself as opposition to the predetermined state of affairs. The denomination of “classical” appears in this perspective as an uncritical definition, since it empties the work of its negative character by reconciling the artistic work with the oppressive power of the “technological rationality of capitalist society.” Both perspectives meet on a vision of truth that requires the presence of otherness to be communicable, thus offering an important component to constitute a “two-dimensional” thought. What determines art and the classical is its disorienting capacity, which pushes the recipient to confront a truth set into work by the artwork, which opens a new totality, a World, that escapes the logics of domination. The classical as an “aesthetic form” shows within itself a totality of meaning that escapes the rational technological control of the “affluent society,” since its content is exempt from the logics of consumption and directly and critically exposes the repressive instances. What allows for the unification of the perspectives of the two authors is the common philosophical influence, constituted by Heidegger, Hegel—particularly the emphasis on the negative—and historicism. Both Gadamer and Marcuse present a profound influence from Heidegger’s essay On the Origin of the Work of Art, as a setting-into-work of truth. The work opens a World, a totality of meaning, in its conflict with the Earth. In this dynamic, an unveiling of truth takes place. The work, therefore, constitutes a “transmutation into form of the real,” enriching reality with a production and totality of meaning not reducible to the Earth from which it emerges, thus offering itself as a multidimensionality that contests the one-dimensional capitalist society, in which the possibilities of alternatives are repressed. The artwork in its broadest concept is therefore not a monolithic traditionalism that carries with it an immutable truth, but a mirror on otherness that transmutes reality into possible alternative instances. ​. (shrink)

Ācārya Kundakunda’s (circa 1st century BCE) ‘Samayasāra’ is among the most profound and sacred expositions in the Jaina religious tradition; it is perhaps the finest spiritual texts that we are able to lay our hands on in the present era. The original text is in Prakrit language and contains a total of 415 verses (gāthā). ‘Samayasāra’ is the exposition of the Pure (śuddha) ‘Self’ or ‘Soul’. It is the exposition, from the transcendental point-of-view (niścaya naya), of the ‘Real Self’ (...) or it is the ‘Essence of the Soul’. The assertions that the soul (jīva) gets bound to the karmic matter (dravya-karma) or that it does not get bound to the karmic matter are made from different points-of-view (naya). But that which transcends all points-of-view is the ultimate truth, the ‘samayasāra’, absolute and pure soul-substance. (shrink)

This article reflects on an in‑depth reading of a publication exploring the question of transsexualism and transsexuals in Poland, as well as the experiences resulting from the medical care of such individuals. The first part of the text is a supplement with essential information from the medical field, which to a large degree is uncovered in the book under review. The second part presents critical comments relating to the book’s contents both in terms of the information it contains (on a (...) theoretical level) and equally in terms of its research (on an empirical level). In the conclusion, both the overall positive aspects of the publication as well as its weaker points are summed up in general terms. (shrink)

Postcolonial Liberalism presents a compelling account of the challenges to liberal political theory by claims to cultural and political autonomy and land rights made by indigenous peoples today. It also confronts the sensitive issue of how liberalism has been used to justify and legitimate colonialism. Ivison argues that there is a pressing need to re-shape liberal thought to become more receptive to indigenous aspirations and modes of being. What is distinctive about the book is the middle way it charts between (...) separatism, on the one hand, and assimilation, on the other. These two options present a false dichotomy as to what might constitute a genuinely postcolonial liberal society. In defending this ideal, the book addresses important recent debates over the nature of public reason, justice in multicultural and multinational societies, collective responsibility for the past, and clashes between individual and group rights. (shrink)

Debunking skeptics claim that our moral beliefs are formed by processes unsuited to identifying objective facts, such as emotions inculcated by our genes and culture; therefore, they say, even if there are objective moral facts, we probably don’t know them. I argue that the debunking skeptics cannot explain the pervasive trend toward liberalization of values over human history, and that the best explanation is the realist’s: humanity is becoming increasingly liberal because liberalism is the objectively correct moral stance.

Debates between political liberals and liberal perfectionists have been reinvigorated by Jonathan Quong’s Liberalism Without Perfection. In this paper I argue that certain forms of perfectionism can rebut or evade Quong’s three central objections – that perfectionism is manipulative, paternalistic, and illegitimate. I then argue that perfectionists can defend an ‘internal conception’ of perfectionism, parallel in structure to Quong’s ’internal conception’ of political liberalism, but with a different conception of the justificatory constituency. None of Quong’s arguments show that his view (...) should be preferred to this perfectionist internal conception. It can thus equally claim to achieve ‘justification to all reasonable citizens’. (shrink)

In the emerging literature on judgment aggregation over logically connected proposi- tions, expert rights or liberal rights have not been investigated yet. A group making collective judgments may assign individual members or subgroups with expert know- ledge on, or particularly affected by, certain propositions the right to determine the collective judgment on those propositions. We identify a problem that generalizes Sen's 'liberal paradox'. Under plausible conditions, the assignment of rights to two or more individuals or subgroups is inconsistent with the (...) unanimity principle, whereby unanimously accepted propositions are collectively accepted. The inconsistency can be avoided if individual judgments or rights satisfy special conditions. (shrink)

The ‘convergence conception’ of political liberalism has become increasingly popular in recent years. Steven Wall has shown that convergence liberals face a serious dilemma in responding to disagreement about whether laws are publicly justified. What I call the ‘conjunctive approach’ to such disagreement threatens anarchism, while the ‘non-conjunctive’ approach appears to render convergence liberalism internally inconsistent. This paper defends the non-conjunctive approach, which holds that the correct view of public justification should be followed even if some citizens do not consider (...) enacted laws to be publicly justified. My argument sheds light on the fundamental structure of convergence liberalism. (shrink)

The original – and often continuing – sin of countries with a settler colonial past is their brutal treatment of indigenous peoples. This challenging legacy continues to confront modern liberal democracies ranging from the USA and Canada to Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Duncan Ivison’s book considers how these states can justly accommodate indigenous populations today. He shows how indigenous movements have gained prominence in the past decade, driving both domestic and international campaigns for change. He examines how the claims (...) made by these movements challenge liberal conceptions of the state, rights, political community, identity and legitimacy. Interweaving a lucid introduction to the debates with his own original argument, he contends that we need to move beyond complaints about the ‘politics of identity’ and towards a more historically and theoretically nuanced liberalism better suited to our times. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in political theory, historic injustice, Indigenous studies and the history of political thought. (shrink)

I analyse the 2014 policy to promote 'British values' in schools from the perspective of the two main positions in contemporary liberal theory, comprehensive liberalism and political liberalism. I highlight in what ways comprehensive and political liberal defences of the policy are unsatisfactory, before briefly sketching a possible alternative position – ‘thin comprehensive liberalism’ – and discussing its potential for justifying a substantive education in liberal values. In light of this theoretical perspective, I suggest some ways that the existing British (...) values policy might be amended in practice so as to bring it more in line with the liberal ideal. (shrink)

Liberalism has a complicated and sometimes uneasy relationship with truth. On one hand, liberalism requires that truth be widely valued and widely shared. It demands that governments be truthful and that citizens have ready access to numerous truths. Some liberals even take facilitating the discovery and dissemination of truth to be part of the raison d’être of liberal institutions. On the other hand, liberalism is averse to proclaiming or enforcing truth. It detaches truth from political legitimacy and deems certain truths (...) unfit to serve as bases of government. Some liberals have even suggested that liberal theory must work “without the concept of truth.” How has liberalism come to both demand truth and eschew it? This introductory section provides the beginnings of an answer by surveying some of the origins and core elements of liberal thought. (shrink)

The child’s right to an open future aims at protecting the autonomy of the mature person into which a child will normally develop. The justification of state interventions into parental decisions which unduly restrict the options of the prospective adult has to address the problem that the value of autonomy is highly contested in modern pluralist societies. The article argues that the modern majority culture provides young adults with many more options than traditionalist religious communities. However, the options that can (...) be chosen in faith groups, such as the Amish, do not constitute a subset of the options available in the wider society. Therefore, state policies which pursue the goal of providing every child with the greatest possible set of options cannot be based on a neutralist version of political liberalism. The advocates of a child’s right to an open future must rely on a perfectionist version of liberalism which draws on the ideal of leading an autonomous life. Since liberal perfectionism has problematic implications, the article defends a neutralist position that largely refrains from state interference with the educational authority of fundamentalist religious communities. (shrink)