A Celebration of Philosophy and Classics
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Editors : M. Carleton Simpson, Kofi Emmanual Ackah, Emmanual Ifeanyi Ani, H.M. Majeed
Publisher : Ayebia Clarke Publishing
Date of Publication : 2013
Place of Publication : Oxford
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Item Moral Education: A Philosophical Analysis(2013-12-09) Assamoah, J.One fundamental challenge confronting human society is how to equip individuals to act morally. Equipping individuals to do morally right actions is the function of moral education. However, there appears to be a lack of clarity about what constitutes moral education. Notwithstanding, the fact that the question of what constitutes moral education has been explored extensively by philosophers and educational theorists, there are endless disagreements about what constitutes moral education and how moral education is to be carried out. Thus, what constitutes moral education continues to be a problem requiring further attention. This paper looks at moral education as a philosophical subject with the view of exploring the issue of what constitutes an adequate conception of moral education. The investigation begins with the analysis of the concept of education and what makes moral education distinct from other kinds of education. The paper argues for the position that a conception of moral education that is adequate is one that includes as its component parts facets that nurture, in the individual, moral qualities essential for acting morally.Item Emotion & Reason in Euripides’ Medea(2013-12-09) Ackah, K.; Owusu-Boateng, V.Having or experiencing emotions is one of the defining elements in human nature. But it is also one area in which formal education, which is supposed to reduce our emotionalism and advance our rationality, is weakest; and this is clearly seen in expressions of anger. There is little, if any, difference in outbursts of anger between the formally educated and others. In public administration, the military, police, and prisons are examples of institutionalised responses to potential acts of violence generating from anger or other emotions. Generally, the emotions are central to our personal, social and national life. Using Euripides’ tragic play Medea as a context, we shall indicate that the emotions are indeed weak forms of reason, as others have observed, but, in addition, we shall argue that we can use the concept of “objectivity”, a core element of rationality, to assess Medea’s reactions to Jason’s infidelity. We shall end with some tentative and general remarks about how to deal with the emotions.Item Multiculturalism and the Notion of Cultural Identity(2013-12-09) Myles, N.O.This paper focuses on ‘cultural identity’. I ask what constitutes the notion, what conditions, if any, prevail in the determination of ‘cultural identity’ or what does the term refer to. I make this enquiry as a means of analyzing what is meant when people worry that their cultural identity will be affected, diluted or even contaminated from its ‘pure state’ when it is not preserved in a multicultural context where they are exposed to other ways of life. So-called “cultural preservationists” have advanced arguments in defense of preservation of “the authentic cultural identity of a people.” They stress that identifying with a group is crucial to the life options available to an individual, but such group identity is threatened by the presence of a medley of ethno-cultural groups, a feature characteristic of contemporary nation-states such as Ghana and Nigeria. I analyze the notion also as an attempt to respond to a concern raised about which culture the individual will identify with, the constituent culture or the larger multicultural society. I ask why the individual cannot identify with both. I will devote the final pages to ’cultural change’ and the basis of its legitimacy. I ask which change would be legitimate, and which would constitute a ‘contamination’ of one’s cultural identity given the dynamic nature of culture. My examination of the notion ‘cultural identity’ will ultimately seek to show that perhaps the concerns raised by so-called cultural preservationists are not intractable after all, if not illusory.Item Rationality, Supernaturalism, and Humanism: Traditional Akan Thought Questions Some Western Claims(2013-12-09) Majeed, H.M.This article takes a critical look at rationality and supernaturalism within the context of humanism. The prevalent philosophical view of a person (especially in the West, since Aristotle) is that he is a rational being. On the basis of this attribute, humans are deemed to understand, know and explain their experiences through the activity of reason—and reason alone. So, anything that cannot be given a “rational” explanation, such as supernaturalism, becomes suspect for the Western thinker. For this reason, also, supernaturalism is often considered as non-humanistic. However, this article reveals how differently traditional Akan thought approaches the question of humanism. It shows the important contribution supernaturalism (prevalent in traditional African thought—and regarded as rational) can make toward a more comprehensive knowledge and understanding of a person, the world he lives in and of his well-being. It argues, consequently, that humanism can accommodate supernaturalism.Item The Theological Origins of Western Philosophy & Science(2013-12-09) Ackah, K.In the 19th century Auguste Comte formulated a doctrine which, under the title of Positive Philosophy, explicitly declared that only the so-called positive sciences—the study of natural, social, and mental phenomena by empirical methods—deserve to be called sciences. In contrast, religion is mere superstition (believing irrationally), and philosophy is mere speculation (represents a futile attempt by reason to go beyond the phenomena in order to discover ultimate causes). Since then there has been a firm distinction between theology, philosophy and science, giving the impression that science and philosophy evolved independently of theology and that, somehow, science is essentially incompatible with theology. Against the position of many scholars in Ancient Philosophy, I argue that Western science and philosophy indeed evolved from theological reasoning.Item JB Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah’s Conceptual Congruences and Divergences(2013-12-09) Ajei, M.O.In Ghana it is axiomatic that the lives and thought of J. B. Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah have influenced the historical political narrative of the country and the contemporary cleavage of its political-ideological space into two broad fields—the Nkrumaist/socialist and the Danquah—Busia tradition that espouses liberal economic and political viewpoints, respectively. Debate in the public sphere between these two sides habitually suggest deep, almost diametrically opposed, conceptual divisions which are held as deriving ultimately from the ideas of Danquah and Nkrumah. This paper contests this conveyed strict divergence between their thinking, by emphasizing the substantial philosophical positions that they shared and suggesting that what separates them is essentially divergent political interpretations of these basic philosophical positions occasioned by the demands of political strategy rather than by fundamental conceptual differences.