This paper deals with the concept of alienation which is present in Kafka’s writings. “The Hunger Artist” is one of the best known and most discussed stories written by Kafka which displays the theme of alienation. The paper argues that alienation is a concept which originated in the philosophical discussions proposed by Hegel and which went through changes and started to be contextualised from a sociological perspective by Marx. The paper suggests that the short story entitled “The Hunger Artist” displays the artist’s alienation which can be compared with the conceptualisations made by Marx. In order to examine this relation firstly, Kafka as an artist with the striking themes and style of his writings is covered deeply. Then, the concept of alienation as discussed by Marx is examined. The final section is spared for establishing a bridge between Marxist theory of alienation and Kafka as can be observed in “The Hunger Artist.”“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumelyThe pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin?” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Like many of his contemporaries such as Bradley and Collingwood, Whitehead wrote at a time when positivism was the dominant philosophical influence in British philosophy, following the disintegration of the Hegelian synthesis. Central to Whitehead’s philosophical project is the task of rehabilitation of metaphysics against the backdrop of its deconstruction by logical positivism. While Whitehead is broadly sympathetic to the ideal of metaphysics, he believes that the grandiose conception of metaphysics as science of being qua being associated with traditional metaphysics is out of tune with scientific rationality and as such is problematic. At the core of Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics, therefore, is an attempt to broker rapprochement between metaphysical rationality and scientific rationality by converting metaphysics into speculative metaphysics, with the ambition of focusing on our universe of experience rather than all universes of discourse, as is typical of traditional metaphysics. While there is no doubt that Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics is an answer to positivism, it is at the same time an attempt to tone down the claims of metaphysics such as to bring it in accord with scientific rationality. Yet it remains to be seen whether Whitehead’s rehabilitation of metaphysics is successful in so far as the reconciliation of metaphysical rationality and scientific rationality through speculative philosophy focuses only on particular experiences rather than universal experiences, so that the concern of metaphysics to address the fundamental nature of the real in all its expressions remain pressing beyond the ideal of speculative philosophy.

My advocacy is teachers’ continuing professional growth, the practice and beliefs of which must be constantly fine-tuned with the school’s philosophy. One must purposely get out of the comfort zone to get a more philosophical view. I teach in a learner-centered school, which puts the learner at the center of the educative process. Some pedagogical techniques are recognized as more learner-centered than others, but other methods could be transformed as well. It helps to consult literatures on how to grow more learner-centered. In this article, I share how I used McCombs and Miller’s attributes of learnercentered leaders and best teachers, and Blumberg’s model for transitioning to learner-centered instruction. I realize that I have yet to improve on sharing the responsibility in learning with my students. I anticipate pleasure and pain in shifting my beliefs on the boundary between teacher and students. The exercise demonstrates that the learner-centered mindset compels planning and adapting; preparing the classroom, lessons and instruction; and seeking new information and technology, all for making a teaching moment more helpful to each learner. For this reason, the learner-centered pedagogy contributes not only to the learner’s growth but also to the teacher’s growth in his or her own pedagogy.

An important contribution of the so-called ‘Indian logic’ is the set of predications developed by Jain philosophers. However, if assessed based on western classical logic, Jaina logic in general and its predications in particular are clear examples of incorrect or inconsistent frameworks. Against this last idea, in this paper, it is argued that Jaina logic has a great potential to explain the way human beings really make inferences, and that comparing it to modern standard logic can be a mistake. To do that, a current semantic approach about reasoning, the one of the mental models theory, is used.

The damaging and harmful effects of the activities of some corporations on the consumers, employees, and natural environment, have given rise to the need to subject corporate policies, decisions, and actions to a moral evaluation. But due to the peculiar nature of the corporation, being a collective and a legal creation engaged in the activity of business, such evaluation has become a controversial matter, at least among philosophers. This controversy can be formulated as a question of whether corporations have certain moral obligations which are over and above their legal and economic duties. Among the various ways of approaching this question, I focus on two general ones. The first concerns the ethical nature of corporate acts. Here I show why the business nature of corporate acts is no reason to exempt corporations from having moral obligations. The second concerns the moral status of corporations. Here I show why it remains meaningful to regard corporations as moral agents and thus as appropriate bearers of moral obligations. On the whole, I therefore argue for the view that corporations have moral obligations of their own.

It is not enough to simply claim that one has every right to do whatever they desire to do because there is always the possibility of false empowerment. Through the presence of BDSM in mass media, it has caught enough attention for it to elicit influence and uneducated inclusion to their lifestyle. I attempt to revive the debate between the abolitionist versus the sex-positive because there is a necessity to provide a critical analysis of BDSM today in the age of post-sex revolution. Despite of the backlash it received from the thinkers from different walks of field, it is an empowering act because there is mutual respect, condemnation of abuse, and recognition of one’s individuality despite of its coercive, violent, and possessive act.

In this paper, I will focus on the nature and appropriation of political power, and explore the right appropriation of political power given the present political and social condition. I discuss first the nature of political power, and then the three political alternatives in the appropriation of political power, namely, the centralized, the dispersed, and the balanced power. I argue that although there are still states that hold on to the centralized power, given the present political and social condition, the balanced appropriation of political power is the best alternative.

The question of excusing in law has been the subject of different philosophical theories of responsibility. These theories attempt to shed light on the nature and function of legal excuses and to justify their role in the criminal justice system. This paper examines the issue of excusing in law from two theoretical standpoints: the character theory and the choice theory of responsibility. The two theories differ on the kinds of causes of action they each find to provide the basis for holding people responsible. The character theory focuses on character, the choice theory on choice and the capacity to choose. Following a brief introduction in which the fundamental distinction between justification and excuse is outlined, the character theory of responsibility is explained with special attention being paid to the work of George Fletcher, which has made a significant impact on the field of criminal law philosophy in recent years. Then follows a critical discussion of the choice theory as elaborated by H.L.A. Hart, one of the most influential legal theorists of our times. The paper concludes that the character theory of responsibility, by drawing attention to what lies behind and motivates actual choices, offers a better basis for interpreting the moral significance of human actions and for explaining our actual blaming judgements regarding those actions.

Due to the increased cases of sexual impurity among the contemporary Filipino teens I felt the dire need to search for an appropriate approach in formulating a content of sexual ethic that is relevant for them. Three approaches were the subject of investigation namely: positive church norms; various cultural norms; and philosophically-oriented conception of the person. I realized that to generate a more comprehensive one, the approach should be based on the socio-cultural influences that affect their everyday life. This is where I suggest Ferdinand Dagmang’s solidarity ethics of malasakit at damay which essentially embodied this quality. However, this ethic needs to be reconstructed in order to be more contextualized and non-discriminatory for these teens. Thus, a new ethic called free and creative communal compassion is presented. This proposed ethic revolves around the concepts of caring community, purified intimacy, and free and creative show of compassion.

In this paper, I endeavor to provide a critical examination of a recent pioneering work that engages Jean-Paul Sartre’s insights in analyzing social media interactions – Michael Lopato’s “Social media, love, and Sartre’s look of the other: Why online communication is not fulfilling?”. I shall show that in so far as Sartrean insights are concerned in Being and Nothingness, Lopato misconstrued what Sartre really meant with the Look of the Other and love, and is mistaken in appropriating such insights in arguing that online interactions are not fulfilling. I shall proceed by first discussing Sartre’s third region of being which is being-for-others which will comprise of the Look of the Other and the two attitudes to retrieve one’s freedom. Second, I shall flesh out the arguments of Lopato. Lastly, I shall present my critique of Lopato’s arguments which constitutes my reply to his work.

In his earlier work on the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), which combined Naturphilosophie and transcendental philosophy, Schelling argued that it is only by becoming-art that philosophy can complete itself as a discipline. He proposed this formulation in response to Kant’s critical inventory of reason offering to reclaim philosophy from its entanglement in pre-critical or dogmatic traditions. But Kant avoided to ground reason in the notion of externality, the in-itself, which, owing to its pre-critical derivation, must give way to the a prioris and categories of the understanding. Meanwhile, by renewing the problem of the in-itself via the self-positing ego, Fichte was the first to challenge the Kantian legacy. But the emphasis on subjectivity through its power of self-positing gave way to what in principle negates nature as the true ground of the initself; in Schelling’s description, the equivalent of the annihilation of nature. Comparatively, Schelling proposed to demonstrate the reverse, which is the extinction of the subject that has continued to nourish the reflexive standpoint of reason. To accomplish this end, Schelling invoked in his Philosophy of Art, one of the places in which he extended his discussion of the so-called identity-system, the concept of the ideal type, or rather, the destroyer of known world established by critical reason.

Kwasi Wiredu proposed a democracy by consensus, inspired by the consensual practices of the traditional Akan of Africa. But his presentation of the traditional consensual practices has been criticized for inaccurateness. Helen Lauer embarks on what she sees as cleaning the debate of the misreading of Wiredu’s presentation of traditional consensual practices by his critics. This is commendable. However, we claim that she does not succeed in the task that she set out to do. We argue that her failure partly has to do with her subscribing to a one-sided assessment of such a history, which influenced the manner she evaluated the debate and some of the fallacies that crept into analysis.

In an effort to address the image of the nude as a concern of both feminist aesthetics and existentialism, this paper shall provide a critique on the male gaze in visual art by means of Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of the image and the imagining consciousness. This paper aims to reassess not only the aspects surrounding the male gaze but the nature of its image. In this sense, while objectification is part of the nature of the nude, both the representation and the imagining consciousness of its spectator play a part in the objectification of the nude as image. This paper argues that through Sartre’s account of the nature of images, the male gaze misconstrues the represented nude through her image in most works of art. I will show that (1) as an act of the imagination, the male gaze elicits the sexually objectified representations of the nude and that (2) the reality of the nude is conflated with its image (analogon) thereby producing irreal, objectified and prejudiced representations of women.

Philosophy is not all about parroting Western ideas and categorizations. There are esoteric philosophies, normally labelled as grassroot or indigenous, that are gaining recognition within formal academic circles. The Ilokano philosophy is alive at the margin, nonetheless implicit because its philosophical underpinnings are embedded in the way of life or cultural life (kannawidan) of the Ilokanos. But through Maiyannatup a Panagripirip, the tacit Ilokano philosophy becomes outspoken and proves itself to be a rich source of humanistic principles. Dynamically translated as “Appropriate Philosophizing” or “Philosophizing Cultural Life with Prudence”, Maiyannatup A Panagripirip is a methodological paradigm that employs suitable approaches and analyses to generate the Ilokano ontology, epistemology and ethics. It is this paradigm that ushers the Ilokanos to become wisdom-bearers and creators of value rather than mere passive consumers of culture. It unwraps as well the character of the Ilokano language and the discursive potentials of Ilokano philosophy at the arena of cultural pluralism.