Rethought Forms: How Do They Work?

This paper is a critical evaluation of Holger Thesleff’s thinking on Plato’s Forms, especially of his “rethinking” of the matter, as he puts it in the title of his most recent contribution. It lays out a broadly sympathetic perspective through dialectical engagement with the main lines of his interpretation and reconstruction of Plato’s world. The aim is to launch the formal academic reception of that reconstruction (rethinking), which Thesleff cautiously and modestly presents as a “proposal” — his teaser to elicit a reaction, positive or negative. The exegetical focus is on tracing the inspiration and reasoning behind his “two-level” model of Plato’s ontology, which, in turn, supports his tripartite classification of Forms. The critical focus is on identifying potential areas of misunderstanding and supplying any explanations, analyses, or arguments that may enhance the clarity of the respective positions

The Afrocentric Project: The Quest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity

This article is a philosophical critique of a very controversial paradigm within Africana Studies. The methodology employed in this paper is a philosophical critique of the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of Afrocentricity. The quest for a distinctive (metaphysical) Africanist perspective has cast Afrocentricity as a subjectivist approach to affirming the integrity of an Africana existential condition. While in the course of African American intellectual history a number of scholars and thinkers have supported the notion of an unique Black metaphysics, Afrocentricity brings to the table a particular approach to the tradition of affirming an African metaphysical exclusivism. What I mean by the quest for particularity is the notion that there is a unique Africana presence in the world, such that it stands antithetical to the European/Western experience. I explore what I call weak Afrocentricity, i.e., a cultural determinism demarcating the African and European experience. Afrocentricity, in positing a cultural relativism, renders that not only is Eurocentrism a false universality, but that universality per se is false. This denial of universality (at the ontological level ) has as a corresponding category the negation of objectivity (at the epistemological plane). I examine the works of two leading Afrocentric proponents, Molefi Asante and Marimba Ani, arguably two of the most significant contributors to the philosophical foundations of Afrocentricity

Call and response: Identity and witness in legitimating CSR

How do social actors adopt a path alien to their organizational environment and, against the odds, get that environment to accommodate them? This developmental paper sketches an approach to answering that question, building on evidence from a series of conferences of themes related to corporate social responsibility. We see these events as facilitating construction of an identity that shields the participants from backlash in a less than accommodating institutional setting. Drawing on the concept of witness in religious practice, it suggests that a purpose of the events is the ritual enactment of practices that reinforce that identity, providing protection against hostility in the work environment. This version of the paper concludes with indications of the direction of the development and a request for suggestion

Iris Murdoch and the art of imagination: imaginative philososphy as response to secularism

This dissertation examines the work of the British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch. A centre concern of this work is a question Murdoch poses more than once: ‘How can we make ourselves morally better?” This question is understood to initiate a form of philosophy which is critical of much of its tradition and its understanding of reasoning and argument. It also recognises its dependence on other disciplines. Murdoch develops this form of philosophy in reply to the cultural phenomenon of secularisation. In the absence of God, she attributes tasks to philosophy formerly performed by religion. Most importantly, she advocates a concept of transcendent reality in philosophical discourse. This reality is the Good. She finds that in order to do so, she has to reconsider philosophy’s central faculty of reason. Drawing on literary, philosophical and theological sources, Murdoch develops an understanding of reason and argument in which images, imagery and imagination are central. This study has three objectives. It first aims to present Murdoch as an imaginative philosopher by exploring the role of literature in her philosophical writing. In doing so, it challenges various presuppositions about philosophy, held by both philosophers and non-philosophers. Its second aims is to reconsider these assumptions in general terms. This part draws significantly on the work of Le Doeuff. In particular, it considers the presence of imagery in philosophy as well as philosophy’s assumed neutrality, which has arisen from its long affiliation with science. Thirdly, the thesis presents a reconsideration of the notion of imagination. This notion is often involved in the interdisciplinary debate between theology, philosophy and the arts. Murdoch’s notion of imagination challenges two important assumptions. By releasing imagination from the limited corner of art, it first challenges a strict distinction between literary and systematic writing. By introducing fantasy as the bad opposite of good imagination, it secondly critically assesses unconditional ‘praises of imagination’

How Plato Silenced the Cosmopolitans

time: 2.30-4.30pmroom: Osgoode Hall – IKB 2010speaker: Detlef von Daniels (Witten)respondent: Michael Giudice (York