In this paper I apply a neocolonialist interpretation to Africa’s underdevelopment problem. I defend the view that the problem of political unrest and the associated problem of underdevelopment that adorn the landscape of Africa is a direct consequence of elite manipulation. I further contend that the solution to Africa’s instability issue lies within, and must be “derived” from personal responsibility. I conclude that blaming Africa’s misfortunes on external factors cannot be a substitute for the responsible leadership the continent has craved since independence but which, unfortunately, continues to elude her.

While African societies are still unable to attain development and are insulted because of this fact, many African scholars (especially philosophers) are busy struggling to create a unique African Identity/Value-system. They concentrate on Afro-centrism and on what Joseph Agbakoba termed ‘erranticism’ (a preference for polemical success over epistemological success). But this is a cause for worry. For this reason, this paper argues that: (i) the positions of these afro-centric and errantic philosophers are not consistent with the aim of Philosophy which is to uncover error, overcome error and improve the society wherein the philosopher carries out his mission; (ii) these positions are indications of self-deception and diversion of the focus of philosophical analyses away from the reconstruction of the fundamental values of African societies; and (iii) self-deception which defines majority of what is called ‘African Identity/Culture/value-system’ and so on, can be corrected by means of self-examination which reveals the need for system-clarification. This is because the principles of self-examination enable the ‘self’ to notice when the linking points of its system are weak and to accept it as such without fear of ‘a self-righteous system’. This is the only way philosophy can become a way of life in Africa.

Man’s life has been challenged in various ways. Despite the numerous challenges man faces in life, no man seems to give up easily on life. The ‘Tiv’ people are blessed with both human and natural resources, yet they have not been experiencing these endowments in their lives for several decades. There are new waves of knowledge which appear to be moTivating factors for an integral development of the society. The ‘Tiv’ people are yearning for change in every sphere of their lives. The desired change can come about when the people are able to answer the following questions; what is the true nature of development and how is metaphysics related to development? How virile is the ‘Tiv’ value system in meeting up with the challenges of development in the contemporary society? The answer to these questions is obtained in the way the ‘Tiv’ person conceives reality and the human person and how such understanding contributes to the actualization of the ‘Tiv’ society. The study recommends that the ‘Tiv’ aspirations are directly linked to ‘Tiv’ conception of reality which is the ‘Tiv’ metaphysics. This is the new approach to understanding the link between metaphysics and development of the ‘Tiv’ society.

Africa has not broken the jinx of its developmental conundrum. Many questions arise; is the issue of development in Africa a unique case study? What is the ultimate cause of this developmental challenge? The ultimate challenge before any Africa scholar is therefore to find ultimate answers to the questions posed above. This paper finds the answer in crass materialism that arose at a certain period of African history before colonialism. It goes further to agree that this materialistic stance was responsible for the weak response of the Africa during its contact with the West as it capitulated for “superior” materialistic ideology. It argues further that unless there is a complete recognition of collective agency as a way of exerting the will to change and the creation of an internalist-externalist development ideology, it will continue to wallow in total un-developable movement as it is currently doing.

The paper examines the globalization and world development from philosophical point of view. In the last decades the whole complex of global problems has been increased by a new danger, but the world community demonstrates its inability to react to such changes adequately. The global world, facing principally new challenges and having no adequate system of governance, fall more and more into the situation of increasing contradictions and uncertainty. The global and regional supranational organizations (G8, G20, World Trade Organization, World Bank, etc.) are built to provide cooperative efforts at the global level and they somehow manage to do it. At the same time, these organizations do not solve and are principally unable to solve the main contradiction of our time. The dialog of cultures and civilizations is the only possible way to resolve contradictions in a constructive way and to provide balanced social development both at the national and global levels. And the higher is the level of civilizational development of the interacting parties, the more productive this dialog can be.

The paper philosophically (critically) examines the concept of development. The views of International Development Ethics Association and the scholarly views of Amartya Sen, Kwame Gyekye and Julius Nyerere on the concept of development are considered. The paper rejects the economic or infrastructural conceptions of development. Contrary to the existing general approaches to the concept of development, it draws a line between the tools of development and the effects or impacts of the tools on human flourishing. It argues that the latter conception defines development better than the former. It provides some arguments in support of the thesis that development is the effect or impact of the tools of development on the life of the people. The paper also argues that the value of the impact or effect is measured in terms of the quality and quantity of freedom it guarantees the people. The paper adopts the method of critical analysis of relevant concepts and key issues central to development. It concludes, in agreement with Sen and Nyerere, that development is freedom. Scientific and technological inventions do not guarantee development if devoid of human freedom.

The Asia’s Century is not an unrealistic concept. In the 21st century, China, East Asia and South East Asia will continue to grow and become more prosperous. The Pacific Century is also a real concept, reflecting the volatility and complexity of geopolitics in this region. The practical impacts on implementing this strategy have implication to the concept of Asia’s Century. The East Sea plays a growing political role all around the world. It will serve as the “training grounds” for various opinions, strategies, methods (including tricks) and attitudes (including compromises) in relation to all aspects of the economy, politics, military, diplomacy of affected countries, in particular those countries that are directly affected. To realize the concept of Pacific Century, the US will certainly consolidate its presence in the East Sea. As a result, America’s inherent strength needs to grow yet greater in order to compete strategically. Therefore, America cannot fade away just yet and so the West cannot meet its demise. And indeed, many countries can still gain invaluable knowledge from the west. However, if the social progress is a law of nature, hence, despite there being numerous obstacles and dogmatic views, the 21st century seems to be promising for Asia and for all of mankind.

Following decades of abysmal developmental performance in most of post-colonial Africa, the collapse of centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe and the consequent triumph of the neoliberal ideology, there has been a paradigm shift in international policy circles and in mainstream academia about the appropriate developmental trajectory for the underdeveloped states of the African continent. Thus, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO actively canvass for the “rolling back of the state” in order to unleash the potential of market forces in the developmental process. This paper attempts an ethical critique of the neoliberal model of development. It specifically demonstrates that the combination of the logics of unbridled market capitalism, reckless state apparatus and hostile international environment generates consequences which are not only morally indefensible but also deepens Africa’s developmental crisis. In addition, it argues that unless Africans relentlessly pursue the reconstruction of their domestic societies as well as the global economic architecture along the lines of egalitarianism, justice and humanity, Africa will continue to be plagued by the pathologies of underdevelopment. The paper concludes by sketching the outlines of the way forward.

Taking “culture” as a “way of life”, which means the customs, tradition, the system of education, the system of a family (as Koneczny would say) of given society, we can ask the question: which culture is better for human being and society? To answer this question we need a tool –the theory that includes somehow defined notion of humanity and its methodology possess the ability to evaluate qualitatively human and society. The Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) is a proposition of such a tool –it is a psychological theory of personal development, but also determined by philosophical fundaments. Created by Kazimierz Dabrowski, TPD is a chance to look at the culture and society either in philosophical and in psychological way, based on empirical data. With TPD we could track the elements of our culture that block the personal development.

In the article the problem of sustainable development of modern society is described. It is proved, that justice is not only morally-ethical coordinate, but wider: it is social-philosophical phenomenon. The phenomenon of justice has an attribute: “universality”. The phenomenon of justice is not the ordinary worldly phenomenon, but it is full-fledged existential, because justice has a number of existential features, selected by modern researchers. Within the framework of this proof the multidimensional role of justice in providing of sustainability of social development is discovered: justice is a criterion, an indicator, a moral imperative, a norm, a purpose, a factor, a mechanism and a motive force in providing sustainable development for modern society.

As a developing country, China is engaged in modernization, which is of later-generating. Therefore, Today’s China, in the process of modernization and the state of later-developing, possesses the special property of later-generating modernity. In sum, Scientific Outlook on Development is the concrete and complete interpretation of today China’s Later-generating Modernity and the full representation of the meaning of Later-generating Modernity in China today.

My objective here is to motivate certain distinctive forms of dynamic normativity at some level deeper than that of our ordinary usage of ‘norm’ or ‘rule’ in the prescriptive sense of ‘ought’-forms of normativity (viz., interpretive and constitutive forms) not only bound by evolution but ultimately, via the same dynamic process, giving rise to our prescriptive-normative practices. As a theoretical backdrop for this motivation, I give a review of the familiar frog case in the studies of representational content from a new perspective: i.e., try to reveal the diachronic holism embedded (but undeveloped) in Millikan’s teleo-semantic functions via a thought experiment called ‘the frog prince’. Then I will show how such a version of diachronic holism relates to my proposed notions of dynamic normativity.

L’image du XVIIIe européen est celle d’une époque éprise de liberté et de raison. A l’opposé, l’Afrique, bien que matériellement riche, baigne dans l’ignorance, l’obscurantisme et la superstition. C’est dans ce contexte que Hegel, dans son projet d’historiciser la philosophie, arrive à exclure le continent du cours de l’histoire universelle. A travers sa phénoménologie, il démontre que seule l’Europe en général et la race germanique en particulier a pu se libérer des conditions extérieures et intérieures et se débarrasser des limitations et penser l’universalité. En invitant l’Afrique à en faire autant pour son développement, l’idéaliste allemand dévoile d’une part les motifs qui l’ont poussé à mettre l’Afrique et ses habitants hors-jeu et prescrit d’autre part aux intellectuels africains une démarche à suivre pour le décollage du continent.

Three viewpoints can be distinguished in the literature about globalization: globalization began in the “dawn of history”; globalization is contemporary to “modernization” and the development of capitalism; globalization is a phenomenon of recent history related with “post-industrialism” and “postmodernism”. In our view, the second viewpoint enables us to talk about the formation of paradigms of the process which is denoted nowadays by the term globalization. This paper aims at interpretation of this complex and contradictory socio-cultural phenomenon in the light of innovations.

Образование – необходимый атрибут стабильного и успешного развития общества. Человек становится подлинным человеком лишь тогда, когда он обогащает свой субъективный мир духовными ценностями. А это, конечно, зависит от наличия образовательных институтов, вообще от уровня духовного производства. Особенно актуальным становится образование в современном глобализирующемся мире высоких технологий, новых информационных и коммуникативных средств.

The term “development” is used in so many different ways, in so many various spheres of life that there is no common approach to what “development” actually is. At the moment we are facing the urgent need to re-conceptualize “development”, and the inevitable step here is to come back to the truly philosophical studies of this phenomenon. But the phenomenon of development (due to its very nature) is deeply interconnected with the phenomenon of governance. In this regard the problem of “governance of devel-opment” emerges. It has now become an independent and very important for humanity on all its levels. The basis of this problem is the urgent need to move towards mass and conscious (reasonably determined) cultural and historical creative activity. But the key to this problem lies within the modern philosophy of development. “Governance of development” or “development governance” implies that the very method of development is under discussion and is something that has to be constructed. The highly significant concepts for the modern study of development are “reflexivity” and “sustainability”. Both of them should be discussed in terms of philosophy of development that is also the key to the modern philosophy of governance.

Научиться различать вид материи, способствующий развитию человека, и виды материи, препятствующие развитию человека, - таков, на наш взгляд, путь решения глобального антропологического кризиса. Этот кризис проявляется в том, что современному человеку всё сложнее самостоятельно поставить себе цель жизни, определить её смысл. Последнее обстоятельство ведёт человека к нежеланию выбирать профессию, заводить семью, иметь более одного ребёнка, другими словами, к нежеланию развиваться и жить полноценной жизнью. В этой связи девиз конгресса «Философия как познание и образ жизни» можно интерпретировать следующим образом: именно философия позволяет современному человеку узнать цель своей жизни и обрести образ жизни, наполненный глубоко личностного смысла. Попытки непрямого управления развитием пришли сегодня к своему логическому завершению из-за того, что на анализаторы человека воздействует не актуальная материя, создающая цель и смысл жизнедеятельности человека, а бывшая материя. Системы фильтрации как человека, так и общества не справляются с остатками бывшей материи. Выходом и условием дальнейшего развития человека может быть резкое наращивание репертуара двигательных паттернов при ведущей роли двигательного анализатора среди всех других анализаторов. Только так можно восстановить полноценную связь человека с его популяцией. Русская национальная идея – экспансия в сторону неведомого. Освоение новых двигательных паттернов поставит заслон для отрицательного воздействия бывшей материи на органы чувств человека.

Energo-evolutionism, as my theory is called, considers social evolution as a legitimate step in the evolution of the Universe. As a baseline level of examination of the problem is taken the aspect of thermodynamics, i.e. the evolution of the initial energy of the Big Bang. Energy and matter are assumed to be aggregate states of a single entity. The evolution of the Universe is the struc-turing of the initial energy in material systems of increasing complexity, with their subsequent decay and release of energy, followed by another structuring of simple systems into more complex ones. Moreover, this process is accelerated and finally tends to the binding the maximum of energy in the material structures and their subsequent decay and release of all their energy – that is, to the closure of the Genesis cycle and the start of a new cycle through a new Big Bang. The man is a significant link in this chain. He is a strongly non-equilibrium bio system, located today at the top of energo-evolution, that is in the process of ex-istence it consumes and emits per unit of its weight the maximum energy of its surrounding environment per unit of time. The evolution of the self-structuring societies aims at maximizing the energo-transformation of the environment.