The now widespread notion of environmental racism, coined around 1990 and still important in its place, was never intended to do justice to the full range of issues raised by the Anthropocene. To meet this challenge I propose the introduction of a new concept, that of “anthropocentric racism.” This concept is an extension of what some have referred to as systemic racism, but because the Anthropocene challenges the distinction between nature and culture championed by the Boasian school of anthropology as a way to attack racism, the Anthropocene obliges us to look at racism differently. I propose an extension of the dialectical approach to racism championed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon and will illustrate that approach by examining climate change as a form of antipraxis.

It is the aim of this paper to develop the phenomenology of phronesis through a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis by employing different kinds of phenomenological reductions. In section 1, I will show that phenomenological reduction is identical with a change of attitude and that we have to employ different kinds of phenomenological reductions in order to interpret Aristotle’s theory of phronesis phenomenologically. In section 2, employing different kinds of phenomenological reductions, I will attempt to develop the phenomenological psychology of phronesis through a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis. In section 3, employing different kinds of intersubjective reductions, I will clarify intersubjective aspects of phronesis. In section 4, adopting these insights, I will try to resolve two of the many difficulties of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis. In section 5, I will conclude with two remarks concerning the future tasks of the phenomenology of phronesis.

The social and political problem of immigration forces us to reflect on ethical issues such as the relation of responding and bonding across sharp differences, the role that moral values play in relating to the other, and the possibility of solidarity as a way of being responsible for the others with whom we do not have any ready-made social bond. I take Levinas's notion of the ethical relation with the other as a primal society from which the third is not excluded, as a starting point for thinking of social bond as solidarity. I argue that it allows for ethical social bond making in situations determined by bio-power; even in situations in which people are depersonalized and deprived of their right to rights, and of their ethical agency. I propose that the bond of solidarity with the immigrant can be a model for the ethical social bond.

This text is dedicated to the memory of Peter Kemp (1937–2018) and his later philosophical project cultivating citizens of the world as a response to globalization. Inspired by Grundtvig, he developed world-citizenship from a post-post-national perspective, combining the aim for the equality of the people with equality of all mankind. In this presentation, Kemp is recognized as a “struggling” philosopher according to Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics. As a horizon of understanding, the author brings in a discussion on the anthropological deficit of the new competition state (Ove Kaj Pedersen), generated by the shift from a moral determination of the self to an opportunistic economic man wholly motivated by self-interest and utility maximization. Conclusively, it is being argued that Kemp’s way of introducing Ricoeur into the field of education, by transforming his hermeneutics of the self into a hermeneutics of the cosmopolitan self, has simultaneously revealed how much Ricoeur is a profound universalistic thinker.

In the evolving relationship between the European Union and its member states, the evolution of a democratic deficit at the European level has become increasingly manifest and problematic. EU remains a polity in which the nation-state remains the repository of democratic legitimacy, while EU-wide rule-making and decision-making are vested with institutions lacking democratic accountability. At the core of the problem are the persistent peculiarities of European nation-states, in this case, the reluctance of successful nation-states like Sweden and Denmark to concede democratic power and legitimacy to a common European polity. Remembering a conversation with Peter Kemp.

Some scholars have responded to the increasingly widespread concerns about Immanuel Kant’s racism by promoting his cosmopolitanism as if the two were self-evidently incompatible, but his particular form of cosmopolitanism has its own history of difficulties when it comes to both racism and anti-Judaism. These concerns can be grounded historically if one links his 1784 essay on history with his account of cosmopolitanism in his 1793 lectures on the metaphysics of morals, where he criticized Jews for failing to embrace cosmopolitanism. Kant’s attack on the Jews was in line with Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s attack on them that had provoked Saul Ascher, a young Jewish Kantian, to accuse Fichte of inventing a new form of anti-Judaism. In this essay I reaffirm my rejection of the widespread claim that Kant toward the end of his life abandoned his belief in a racial hierarchy. I also demonstrate that he used the idea of cosmopolitanism as a tool not only against non-whites, but also against Jews. Kant’s cosmopolitanism should not be presented as the corrective to his racism, but as a new and dangerous addition to his earlier focus on inferiority.

In my reflections on Peter Kemp’s Citizen of the World I first consider the link between cosmopolitanism and globalization. Second, I examine the historical analysis of the phenomenon of cosmopolitanism following it from its origins in ancient Greece to its manifestation in our contemporary world. Third, I reflect on the way in which cosmopolitanism can become the hermeneutic basis for a philosophy of education, the principal claim of the book.

The intent of this article is not to compare the philosophies of education of Confucius and Peter Kemp but to draw out what is perennial in Confucius’s philosophy of education and bring it to the contemporary context in Peter Kemp’s philosophy of education. The first part deals with Confucius’s teachings on education. The second part highlights Peter Kemp’s philosophy of education, the context of which is globalization and its dangers. The synthesis of both philosophies would mean that education is a right that everyone is entitled to, that education is basically cultivation of character more than instruction, that the virtues of ren, righteousness, wisdom, and propriety can be adapted and applied to the demands of global citizenship. The method of teaching can be both dialogical (Confucius) and democratic (Kemp) when the teacher is passionate, engaged, knowledgeable of issues, caring for students, and an exemplar of what she teachers.

In this article, I propose to question under what conditions an act of engagement can take place for causes that escape our immediate perception (in a phenomenological way), even though our hypermodern lifestyles are ambivalent: they allow us to open up to the world through information technology, but they also close us to our own subjective spheres. In the digital age, access to information is indeed becoming more and more personalized and dependent on algorithmic recommendation logics. The more we create cognitive bubbles, the more we make it difficult to access a common world, as well as to get morally involved in distant causes.

Freud’s late works established the schema of a more or less inexorable civilizational course built around one drive—the death drive—despite his emphatic insistence on a dual structure of two drives. This schema became influential for Critical Theory and in a more subterranean way, also for decolonial thought, and has been widely invoked during the pandemic. It indicates the extent to which drive, destruction, and mastery have consolidated into a , which not only fails to be dislodged by but even informs Derrida’s readings of Freud. Instead, we have to be attentive to the play of homology in Freud as of life, psyche, and civilization, as archaic inheritance. Freudian homology distinguishes itself from what Derrida called “genealogical drive.” The Freudian assumptions in this regard need to be addressed in a step beyond which works with a concept of origin—as its own interruption—that can neither comprehend nor deconstruct the concept of origin as a single and perpetually active homological power as is to be found in Freud.

This article is based on an exchange between Peter Kemp and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff on the occasion of Peter Kemp’s seventieth birthday in 2007. It presents the development of Kemp’s ethical philosophy from his philosophy of technology and technology ethics to his philosophy of bioethics and biolaw. It also discusses Kemp’s relation to Existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Marxism with the development of a critical hermeneutic philosophy of engagement. This is related to Kemp’s work on humanistic ethics of technology in his book on the ethics of the irreplaceable. The article presents Kemp’s long discussion with Paul Ricœur about the ethics of the good life and about narrative ethics. Finally, it elaborates on the bioethical turn towards an ethics for the living world and discusses the role of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability in relation to cosmopolitan and global responsibility for sustainability and humanity.

This contribution presents the idea that the functioning of modern democracy implies a reciprocal education of the governed and those who govern, of public opinion and the political class, within the framework of the rule of law. Such reciprocal interaction is a prerequisite for the development of a collective intelligence (phronesis) that make the achievement of sound political decisions possible. However, the democratic process develops in such a way that it also generates counter-educational effects. This is due to the fact that the same process includes a contest for power that arouses antisocial feelings and achieves a kind of counter-education. One of the reasons for this ambivalence lies in the way in which political parties operate: they are both laboratories for the development and implementation of collective projects and instruments for the conquest and exercise of power. A similar ambivalence characterizes the role of states at the level of international relations concerning the handling of global problems. What is at stake is the possibility of dealing in a sensible way with problems that, at both the national and international levels, can only be solved through concerted and cooperative action.

Inspired by the contemporary Danish philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen, this article engages in a re-reading of Peter Kemp’s 1973 dissertation Théorie de l’engagement with a view to exploring its persisting theological value. After briefly revisiting its main argument, I turn in the following section to a discussion of its way of relating phenomenology and theology in terms of shortcomings as well as possibilities. In the concluding section, I bring together Kemp and Jørgensen and offer a reflection on what theology could and should be and why I believe that it still has a significant role to play in academia as well as in the wider culture. In particular, I argue that phenomenological theology—with its long tradition of reflecting on mythopoetic language—is particularly well-suited to provide a cultural hermeneutics of relevance not only for practicing religious people but also for a broader audience in a culture that is still to a high degree immersed in biblical imagery.

A number of devastating disasters have occurred in Japan since 2017, including heavy rains, wide ranging floods, a large typhoon, earthquakes, and landslides. Such disasters are beyond our imagination and our scientific assumptions. All of these come from global warming, which comes from human economic activities with CO2 emissions. There are interdependencies around the globe, between sea and land, ocean and air currents, and so on. In the twentieth century, we pushed technological innovation to conquer nature, but it only partly succeeded—and was actually almost in vain. We must recognize that human beings are a part of nature and must rethink our attitude towards nature. As citizens of the world, human beings must have a keen sensibility to find new virtue, “living together on the same globe.” It is the new ideal beyond boundaries and beyond differences between the rich and the poor, looking for the possibility of democracy.

This article focuses on the extremely poor, on those who, if they are to live decent lives, are most in need of assistance. Like those suffering today from extremely severe famine in Yemen and elsewhere, very many of those suffering from extreme poverty will die not only prematurely; probably they will die before the end of the year. They will die if, among many others, thoughtful and resourceful persons including some philosophers continue to fail to engage themselves to assist them. My aim is to underline several of the philosophical elements in some recent discussions of both monetary and non-monetary extreme poverty. With these elements freshly in view, I would then like to examine critically yet constructively the most salient ones from the perspective of a certain understanding of the cardinal notion of ethical engagement. I will conclude with a summary of the main argument and a formulation of several key questions which still need further reflective discussion today.

This article takes up Derrida’s discussion of secularism as a development in Western Christian tradition and history and in his deconstruction of the opposition between secular and religious in “Faith and Knowledge: Two Sources of “Religion”at the Limits of Reason Alone.” What are the implications of Derrida’s discussion of originary faith in Turkey that has a majority of Muslim population, and a history of modernization and secularization? Should Turkey renounce secularism in education because it is not “really” part of its own tradition? Is a secular school system an oppressive institution for people born in a Muslim family because it alienates children from their own cultural traditions? I refer to Derrida’s deconstruction of identity, his discussion of tele-technology, return of the religious, auto-immunity, and sovereignty to find answers to such questions. I think they give us valuable insights to construe a Derridean response to the present problems, even though I am also critical about Derrida’s failure to acknowledge the need for universal secular norms in school education.