This article repudiates the dichotomy that African ethics is communitarian (relational) and Western ethics is individualistic. „Communitarianism‟ is the view that morality is ultimately grounded on some relational properties like love or friendship; and, „individualism‟ is the view that morality is ultimately a function of some individual property like a soul or welfare. Generally, this article departs from the intuition that all morality including African ethics, philosophically interpreted, is best understood in terms of individualism. But, in this article, I limit myself to the literature in the African moral tradition; and, I argue that it is best construed in terms of individualism contrary to the popular stance of communitarianism. I defend my view by invoking two sorts of evidences. (1) I invoke prima facie evidence, which shows how both secular and religious moral thinkers in the tradition tend to understand it in individualistic terms. And, (2) I invoke concrete evidence, I show that the two terms that can be said to be definitive features of African ethical framework, namely: personhood and dignity, are individualistic. I conclude by considering possible objections against my defense of individualism as a central feature of African ethics.

This paper is an attempt to offer a concrete contribution to the study of indigenous African religions and in particular to the support of creating a set of traditions from whose perspective one could engage in the study of indigenous African religions as well as of African spirituality in general through the unifying theme of ecodomy. Defined in terms of a constructive process, ecodomy seeks to provide families and communities with a common element, that of ancestors, which is not only specific to African spirituality but also potentially capable of strengthening and improving the life of African people. Thus, this methodology based on working with ancestry as economy is applied to four distinct scholars and their specific approaches to indigenous African religions: John S. Mbiti, who believes that ancestors have mainly social, not religious roles; Issiaka P. Laleye, for whom ancestors make a connection between the social and religious aspects of life; Jacob K. Olupona, who restricts ancestors to religion, and Israel Kamudzandu, in whose philosophy ancestors can provide African societies with the possibility of moving beyond their indigenous religions into accepting other religious beliefs, such as those provided by Christianity.

This article discusses the response which Hegel gives in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy to a problem which is first posed in his early writings. The problem is that of the possibility to comprehend the Absolute, the Infinity („Life” is the term Hegel uses in his Early Writings) using the reflexion as instrument. The later response is to see the concept (Begriff) in his speculative sense (in fact the form of absolute reflexion) as a spiritual, historical entity and so, as tradition of representation (Vorstellung). The tradition of a thought is what marks the passage from dominative, intelectual thinking to integrative, reasonable thinking.

The principal object of this study is constituted by two epistemologically distinct models of Ferdinand de Saussure’s depictions of the linguistic sign. The first model pertains to a bilateral conception of the sign as an inseparable unity of two sides that evoke each other in the mind of individuals during their speaking and understanding activities. The second model, termed here as ‘unilateral conception’, has been deduced from Saussure’s understanding of parole, where an idea establishes itself in a sound and a sound becomes the sign for an idea. A survey of related terminological distinctions derived from logic and philosophy as well as linguistic semiotics seems indispensable for presenting the positions of these bilateral and unilateral sign concepts in a typological matrix which could embrace all sign models originating in the sciences of language. The additional purpose of this study is to put forward the idea of epistemological equivalence to be achieved in translational practice. This supplementary focus of interest in particular concentrates around the question of how the translations of sign-related terms, selected from Cours de linguistique generale, reflect the epistemological awareness of their English-speaking translators.

In this paper, I focus on the representation of motherhood from a two-fold perspective by choosing the bestselling Turkish baby diapers advertisements as a case study of broadcasting in Turkish media. The first perspective analyzes the representation of motherhood by applying the concept of “Male Gaze” by Laura Mulvey, according to whom a woman is objectified by the male gaze and becomes a bearer of meaning rather than a maker of meaning. Further, the themes emerging from a careful reading of representations of women in advertisements of baby diapers are discussed. The second perspective consists of looking at discursive strategies of the term “motherhood” by problematizing the fact that baby diapers are always identified with women, thereby also reducing them to commodities in the market. The second perspective applies Julia Kristeva’s “The Semiotic Chora” to reveal the myths about motherhood created by the ruling ideology of the males, and to seek possible alternatives through that perspective.

Any attempt to develop biosemiotics either towards a new biological ground theory or towards a metaphysics of living nature necessitates some kind of naturalization of its semiotic concepts. Instead of standard physicalistic naturalism, a certain kind of semiotic naturalism is pursued here. The naturalized concepts are defined as referring only to the objects of our external experience. When the semiotic concepts are applied to natural phenomena in biosemiotics, there is a risk of falling into anthropomorphic errors if the semiotic concepts remain mentalistic. It is suggested that there really is an anthropomorphic error or “hidden prototype fallacy” arising from Peirce’s prototype for semiosis: the research process of an experimental scientist. The fallacy lies in the concept of the object of representation — it is questionable whether there are any objects of representation for bacteria and whether the DNA-signs have any objects. The conclusion is that Peircean semiotic concepts are naturalizable but only if they are based on some more primitive concept of representation. The causal origins of representations are not relevant, only their anticipative consequences (i.e. meaning).

Judeo-Christian Western culture recognizes a legislating, judging and punishing God. The view that a judge separate from man indeed exists, constitutes, among other things, cultural motivation for the pursuit of success, on the one hand, and fear of failure, guilt, on the other. The human-being fears the consequences of judgement, especially those entailing punishment, and attempts with all his might to succeed in the eyes of the judge. This study‟s underlying assumption is that judge-ment constitutes a deep structure in Western culture and that its religious origins are in the culture‟s Jewish and Christian sources. Although religious judgement under-goes processes of secularization throughout the culture‟s history, it remains a deep cultural construct; while worldviews are deeply embedded in the religious expe-rience, as Jung (1987) contends, they have a latent capacity for preservation in the secular experience. A genealogical methodology will be applied to examine the con-cept of judgement. While genealogy deals with the past, its aim is to understand and critique the present reality. The genealogy will scrutinize the Jewish judgement (as portrayed in the biblical doctrine of rewards), the Catholic judgement and the Calvinist judgement, while calling attention to their similarities and differences.

In Ideen II Edmund Husserl delineates the three spheres which constitute the reality which human being is and this way introduces us to a different anthropologywhich is fruit of his phenomenological analysis. The tri-partite analysis of the human subjectivity, in Ideen II provides us with an anthropology which is a sound foundation for a new psychology (phenomenological psychology) where the analyses of the lived-experiences is an instrument to understand the psychic acts. Husserl after having known the psychology, a science of the subjectivity and which is interrelated with the corporeality, proposes a psychology which is in connection with the nature and only in this connection it can be realized fully. In this way the concept of purely phenomenological psychology serves also to clarify what the fundamentally transcendental science i.e. transcendental phenomenology is. The phenomenologicaly transcendental psychology developed by Husserl is completely a new science of consciousness in respect to all the other historical forms of psychology and other sciences which study consciousness. As phenomenological psychology moves in its natural attitude towards the world (Welteinstellung), it has access to all the positive sciences and in this way it can be called science of all sciences.

The trade-offs of “meaning-making” between East and West may be regarded as an aggiornamento (“updating”) for any culture in contact. But since aggiornamento entails a wide range of subjects, the essay situates the meaning-making within the scope of masterpieces in diverse formats, from the printed literary text to the painted image (e.g., Spoliarium). Specifically, the essay offers a rethinking of the cross-cultural semiotic dialogue, paving the way for recognizing the homo significans. However, the customary framing of the Spoliarium does not seem to warrant its conscious knowledge and understanding as a text and a visual art. For this reason, the essay endorses its reframing and its aggiornamento, which is induced by the rapid advancement of science and technology.

Regarded from a different perspective, the same values appear somewhat reversed. This phenomenon was explained by the authors who, following OswaldSpengler, associated culture with space more strongly by resorting to the terminology of optics and, also, by analogies with certain optical phenomena. This essay goes on the same path. The reversed image of the values regarded through a certain “Lebensgefühl” represents an iconostrophia of the spirit.

In contemporary Western and Arab cultural critique, secularism as a worldview is believed to have experienced inherent transformations from solid rationalmaterialism (the emphasis on reason, science, progress, emancipation, industrialization, and nation building) to liquid non-rational materialism (the celebrationof the body, sex, global markets and consumption). This paper explores the arguments of both Zygmunt Bauman and Abdelwahab Elmessiri who advocate this thesis in the light of the major manifestations of these transformations.

The so-called .Karlsschulrede. (1793) of the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer can be considered as a keystone to the understanding of"Naturphilosophie" both in German idealism (Schelling) and the romantic period.Kielmeyer's work considers life as the result of specific forces in the organic realm and thereby searches to explain the harmony of organic existence anddevelopment. Taking into account Kant.s outlines for a lifescience in the "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (1790), Kielmeyer's notion of teleological processes in nature is sketched. The historical and epistemological relevance of this "vital-materialistic" (Lenoir) theory of life can be characterized by three major transformations in the understanding of nature in the "Karlsschulrede": First, the development of a holistic, organological view on the world, second, the emphasis on phenomena of life as historical processes and third the analogy between organism and mind. These issues found the strong influence of Kielmeyer's text on philosophy and science in the early 19th-century.