A Celebration of Philosophy and Classics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://197.255.125.131:4000/handle/123456789/4566

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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    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.
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    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.