The aim of this article is to demonstrate that globalization, as it proceeds today, will only lead to a clash of civilizations and to the destruction of the fragile cultural identities. This leads to folds of the cultural minorities and the seeking of their recognition that can be expressed through violence. For globalization to succeed in integrating its noble objective of all cultures, it must proceed by inclusion instead of being exclusive. Intercultural dialogue has a central role in such a globalization to achieve peace between cultures. In this dialogue, the community paradigm of African cultures can be used as a model for approaching any culture.

The well-known label of “theater of the absurd” is based on the Aristotelian logic of the nonincluded middle, the common interpretation being that of the chaotic and irrational character of the universe, human destiny, and language. However, we propose another view on the subject, relying on the discoveries of quantum physics, the main principles of transdisciplinarity, and the literary theory of the possible worlds. We applied these ideas to some of Eugene Ionesco’s fa-mousplays, concluding that absurd becomes an irrelevant notion if analyzed in this perspective.

The phenomenon of widespread stigmatization of victims of deadly, or previously incurable, diseases in African traditional societies would appear to pragmatically contradict the humanistic values of communalism associated with those societies. However, the implied contradiction of the phenomenon, which borders on irrationality and injustice, seems amenable to a rational explanation when one considers the thick ontological underpinnings of African traditional communalism along with their epistemic significance. The justification of the proffered explanation, the paper avers, is made clearer when it is taken as a paradigm of Jurgen Habermas’ theory of (communicative) rationality and action. Against this background, the paper argues that such global social problemsas terrorism and internet scams may well be justifiable if Habermas’ strategic and contextual models of rationality and action are communicatively valid.

The article aims to delve into the ethical dimension of Ubuntu philosophy, which is an African philosophy that reverberates in other cultures and in various forms, thus exemplifying its universality and universalizability. In this dimension, it tries to re-examine the notion of ethics in relation to morals/morality, including “is” and “ought”, with reference to the human person. Moreover, Ubuntu philosophy is articulated and communicated in the maxim that is an essential component inthe lived experiences of the Bantu-speaking African community: “A person is a person through other persons.” With this, the article integrates some related European and Asian philosophies, considering the fact that Ubuntu philosophy endures as it is tenaciously upheld and edified alongside its implications.

Based on the fact that military establishments have historically played a major role in the transformation of societies, this paper argues that the Nigerian Armed Forces need to be credible and modernized in order to be able to fulfil their constitutional responsibilities. They can do this by providing the necessary support, in terms of professional expertise and administrative efficiency, for the successful implementation of Nigeria’s Vision 2020 and its strategic Seven-Point Agenda. By supporting the democratic institutions in the successful implementation of Vision 2020, the armed forces would have quickened the transformation of Nigeria intoan industrialized democratic nation that could compete favourably with its counterparts in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

This paper focuses on the problem of conflicts that are sociopolitical in nature. It thus agrees that conflict is a product of human interaction, but its degeneration into violence is avoidable and consequently detestable. The repressive, depressive and destructive functions of socio-political conflict are seen as products of the tension that exists between personal values and social values among the different individuals and groups that make up the nation of Nigeria, especially in the veryattempt at defining national security, social peace and political stability. This contretemps undermines the success of democracy in Nigeria; it is more problematic when democracy as a form of government is discovered to harbour conflict in its very attempts at ensuring an enduring social order. The paper thus advocates for a fundamental socio-political reconstruction based on the cherished values of African traditional thought that promotes social cohesion, respect for the dignity of the human person, social justice and economic growth. The philosophical methods of analysis and conceptual clarification, in addition to empirical methods, are employed.

In order to properly understand the period which begins at the end of the '60s last century, this must not be described anymore using the traditional categories of culture and politics. Facing events like those in May '68 in France, the Italian revolution in 1979, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the attack against the Twin Towers from New York in September 2001, we are all tempted to say “impossible, yet real”. These events had immense consequences upon the individual and collective life, provoking radical upturns of traditional values and of the way people relate to these values. Thus, a new form of historicity was born, having as characteristics the perception of some phenomena both as miracles and traumas, because they seem impossible to explain rationally. In this text both the axiological mutations that occurred in the history of the last decades and the meanings of these mutations are presented in a personal way.

The act of discrimination against the female sex is an undeniable phenomenon in virtually all human societies, though the severity varies from one society to another. It is against this backdrop that this paper is aimed at exposing the inadequate nature of the primogeniture rule of inheritance towards the female, as practised by the Esan people. The paper tests the validity of the logic on which the disinheritance of females rests, and discovers that it is invalid as it violates such moral principles as the categorical imperative and utilitarianism, among others. It therefore advocates for possessive right for females for the sake of justice and equity.

I attempt to rebut the following standard objections against cultural relativism: 1. It is self-defeating for a cultural relativist to take the principle of tolerance as absolute; 2. There are universal moral rules, contrary to what cultural relativism claims; 3. If cultural relativism were true, Hitler’s genocidal actions would be right, social reformers would be wrong to go against their own culture, moral progress would be impossible, and an atrocious crime could be made moral by forming aculture which approves of it; 4. Cultural relativism is silent about how large a group must be in order to be a culture, and which culture we should follow when we belong to two cultures with conflicting moralities.

Following the distinctions made by Susan Pearce between souvenir collections, fetishism collections and systematic collections, the present study will underline the idea that, for Walter Benjamin, collection was a way to reconnect with the past and to reconstruct an image of what was destroyed. Every object collected by Benjamin was for him a souvenir of the European cultural identity.

Do we have a “duty to recognize culture”? The aim of this paper is to examine the following question: assuming we have reasons to respect or valuerecognition per se, do we on that background also have reasons to recognize culture? More specifically, does “culture” furnish a particular morally relevant fact with pro tanto force, providing the basis for a duty to recognize culture? The paper first examines the concept of recognition and then proceeds to analyze “the recognition thesis”, a general argument for why or how culture can be a salient part of what should be recognized. On that basis, the more specific theories of recognition proposed by Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor are examined, and it is argued that neither of these theories support a general duty to recognize culture.

Being part of a culture seems, on the face of it, empirically describable, and verifiable. But in fact that kind of participation is not so easy to characterize. Our existence as members of a culture is given to us fleetingly, and in awarenesses tightly locked to the awareness of the other, who is not our culture. Being part of aculture therefore is part of knowing yourself as limited. But to what are you limited? You are limited to being a presence other than that of the other that you are defined off against. It is thus worth noting that being of a culture is a fleetingly given awareness of a condition in which your not being something else is what defines you. The logical consequence of this structural situation is that you, or I, exist foremost as a site, rather than as a substance, in our occupying a post within culture.

Considering the basic assumption that the modern Law and State theory does not only bear similarities, but also draws true epistemological parallels to theconstructions of Theology, Hans Kelsen intends to lay bare the ideological meaning that lies at the very core of the traditional dualism which constitutes Law and State into autonomous entities. Taking into account Kelsen´s original perceptions – which are seconded by more recent contributions from Claude Lefort and Hans Lindahl’s political and symbolic concepts and from Carl Schmitt’s notions on political theology – our intention is now to demonstrate the highly conservative role played by the duality of the Law/State structure, whose aim is to remove, from under the sway of legal control, a considerable part of the State’s actions.Herebelow, therefore, we will analyse the very legitimacy of the so-called “Public Law,” which seems to point to a trend towards shunning the legal power regulation. Finally, based on the functional method pioneered by Ernst Cassirer, legal institutions such as “collective will” and “public interest” will be problematised, in order to ascertain whether they contain theological, conservative and authoritarian traits incompatible with the conceptual and substantial unity intrinsic to the Rule of Law.

This article investigates the original meaning of a passage of Plotinus’ Enneads, the treatise On Fate (Enneads, III, 1, 5). The thesis of the article envisagesthe understanding of the passage in the light of a Plotinian critic of astrology and argues that the understanding and the modern translations of the passage did not exactly detect neither the Plotinian doctrine nor how Plotinus represents his polemical opponents. We argued in this article that, for criticizing the contemporary astrology of his time, Plotinus elusively calls Anaxagoras’ astronomy, claiming exclusive minerality of the heaven in perfect circular movement. In addition, I correlated this observation with a broader conclusion on the grounding of the heaven as a significant space in the horizon of a hermeneutic conversion of the Plotinian philosophy.

This paper aims to describe the importance of bridges – from the semiotic point of view, stressing their capacity in connecting nature and culture. It is arguing forthe importance of establishing technosemiotics as a separated chapter in sign system studies. The author mentions some famous bridges, such as the bridge over the river Kwai, Brooklyn Bridge, Puente de Alcantara (in Spain), bridges over the sea by the order of Xerxes and Caligula, other Oriental and European bridges, the Mostar Bridge (in Bosnia) and the Peruvian suspension bridges, as in the novel by Th. Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The illustrations are from Machinae Novae by Faustus Verantius (published 1616 in Venice).

My paper is a reply to Mr. Seungbae Park’s article, “Defence of Cultural Relativism” (Park, 2011), which holds that no culture is better than another. In response,my paper challenges the author’s method, fairly popular amongst some postmodern thinkers, that tends to equate cultural relativism and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Firstly, I question the general rationale of establishing an analogy between relativity and relativism. In my opinion, the analogy fails to take into accountthe very large generic distance between physics and ethics. Secondly, I try to demonstrate that the analogy can be construed in two opposite ways, so that, on theone hand, it might support relativism, while on the other, it might reinforce cultural absolutism. Therefore, one would rather dispense with so equivocal an analogy. Finally, I suggest that besides cultural absolutism and cultural relativism there is also another way of assessing different cultures – I used to call it intrinsic comparison – which is based on the second options of groups and individuals rather than on their first options. The issue of how to successfully compare cultures by avoiding both absolutism and relativism was extensively dealt with by me elsewhere.

For some years now, amongst contemporary Western societies (where capitalism and globalization have a great influence), the presence and developmentof a well-defined and peculiar emotional culture has become clear. The appropriate use and management of emotions, support a system of relations and codes that draw new limits between public and private life and between people and their actions. Arlie Russell Hochschild has studied the dynamics of emotions, aiming to define their distinctive languages. Interactions between the public and the individual realm and the social sphere gives shape a code which imposes certain meanings and uses that are beyond the intention and perception of emotional subjects. Studies on the recent transformations of feminine roles and the social readjustments, which go along with those changes, are specifically motivated by the insertion of women in the business world, taking a central place in Hochschild’s investigations. This paper shows how new emotional codes, as Hochschild defines them, have great influence on modern lifestyles and how the role of women (and here lies the central friction between the family and career consolidation) is at the center of the characteristically modern lifestyle revolution.

It is proposed to examine the need for redefining self deception in an Indian socio-cultural context and also on the basis of different social roles that one plays in his/her life time. Self-deception can be defined as the process of acting or behaving against one’s true inner feelings to maintain one’s social status. The conceptconsists of two aspects: maintaining a belief and the behavioral expression of it. Most of the time, deception occurs in the latter part, because it helps the deceiver to achieve a moral protection from the society and thereby, to get a mental pacification. In fact, in some situations, self deception helps to raise our self importance in the society. That is to say, if we express our inner truth, that which is unpleasant for the society, then it can lead to humiliation from the society. An individual adopts self deception as a method to evade dejection from the external world. Whenever I act against my inner feelings, it happens consciously or intentionally so I cannot feel both aspects, as a deceiver and the deceived, at the same time. Besides, I do respect the feelings of myself and in this sense one’s own self can never be deceived! Thus, self deception can be explained with relation to the expression of true beliefs in yourself.

Though centuries old, Islamophobia has increased in intensity as it is extensively documented by surveys and reports published by various governmentaland non-governmental organizations. This dislike towards Islam and Muslims is, due, amongst other factors, to an increasing number of Muslim citizens and asylum seekers in the West bent upon preserving their own identity giving rise to the perception of “us” versus “them.” Such negative evaluations by the in-group may be due to the conflicting values, beliefs and the actual or perceived threat posed by Muslims. This is also attributed to the negative messages transmitted by the national media and the powerful elite. The strategy for countering Islamophobia must concentrate on “unlearning intolerance” by focusing on removing negative perceptions through education, reforming the media and reshaping the foreign policy of Western powers.

The concept of truth is one of the pivotal elements in Mary Wollstonecraft’s works. In line with her philosophical treatise, Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman(published posthumously in 1798) it becomes a paradigmatic expression of her thought. The author textualizes the obfuscation of the truth and the repression ofthe heorine’s self because of her unconventional conduct not judged in consonance with the social rules that govern patriarchal institutions. The novel might be read as a profound reflection on any form of prejudice and intellectual confinement of its time in which woman strives to regain her role as individual.