GloPhi - Philosophizing in a Globalized World

LIVE TODAY | MOGOBE BERNARD RAMOSE AT UCT
Reposted from University of Cape Town

We are pleased to draw attention to the University of Cape Town’s 60th TB Davie Memorial Lecture. Professor Mogobe Bernard Ramose will speak on “Spes bona through ‘the Cape of Storms’.”

Wednesday, 26 August 2026
18:00 SAST / CEST
New Lecture Theatre, UCT upper campus
Livestream via UCT’s official channels

Taking up the changing names and meanings attached to the Cape, together with UCT’s motto Spes Bona, Ramose will consider how colonial histories continue to shape knowledge, justice, memory and freedom. Drawing on African philosophy and ubuntu, the lecture also asks what responsibilities universities bear in sustaining dialogue, critical thought and academic freedom.

We warmly invite our community to follow the lecture and join the conversation.

Event details and livestream updates:
https://uct.ac.za/rsvp-60th-tb-davie-memorial-lecture

“No one colonizes innocently.”A short text by Martinican poet and political thinker Aimé Césaire appears in a new standalone edition from ERIS. Decadent, Stricken, Dying returns to one of Césaire’s central claims: that fascism was not an inexplicable rupture within European civilization, but violence returning to Europe after having been normalized through colonialism.

Césaire’s critique asks how Europe’s history changes when colonialism is understood not as a peripheral episode, but as constitutive of modernity itself. His writing also resists familiar disciplinary boundaries, moving between poetry, political thought, history, and anticolonial philosophy.

For global histories of philosophy, this raises further questions: What forms can philosophical critique take when it emerges through literature and political struggle? And how does thought change as it moves between the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe; between languages?

The booklet republishes an established text in Joan Pinkham’s English translation; it is not a newly discovered work or a new translation.

More information:
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/decadent-stricken-dying/9781971559209/

What do reparations require if colonial harm is understood as extending beyond land and wealth to the very conditions under which knowledge is produced, valued, and transmitted?

In her newly published lecture, “Decolonizing the Mind and Epistemic Justice: Reparation Beyond the Economic Frame,” Prof. Dorothy Oluwagbemi-Jacob (University of Calabar, Nigeria) argues that meaningful repair must confront epistemic injustice alongside material dispossession.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, she examines epistemicide, epistemic pluralism, pluriversality, and cognitive sovereignty. The lecture also outlines concrete paths toward institutional transformation, from curriculum reform and support for African languages to African-led research, publishing, and knowledge infrastructures.

The presentation formed part of the international conference “African Philosophy, Reparations, and Epistemic Justice.”

Watch the lecture and read more:
https://glophi.com/2026/08/24/reparation-beyond-economics/

New Publication: “A Relational Theory of Justice: African Economic, Political, and Legal Philosophy in and Beyond the Continent,”by Thaddeus Metz, Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria, published by Oxford University Press.

At its heart is the proposal that justice should be grounded in the dignity of our relational nature—particularly our capacity to commune with others and to be included in communal relationships—rather than derived solely from individual well-being, autonomy, or self-ownership. Drawing centrally on African philosophical thought and bringing it into conversation with feminist and care ethics, Marxian thought, and Confucian philosophy, Metz develops a systematic alternative to influential Western theories of justice.

The book explores the implications of relational justice for civil liberties, economic distribution, political power, international relations, criminal and transitional justice, and just war. In doing so, it demonstrates the potential of African philosophy not merely to broaden established debates, but to generate comprehensive conceptual frameworks with global reach.

Warm congratulations to Thaddeus Metz on this important publication!

Learn more: https://academic.oup.com/book/63132

What role can Indigenous values play in shaping more just and sustainable futures?

From 7–9 September 2026, GloPhi Director Prof. Dr. Anke Graneß will participate in the Institute of Global Value Inquiry’s second annual conference, "Indigenous Values and Social Change," in Wa, Ghana.

More than forty scholars from fifteen countries will examine how Indigenous values and philosophies can remain transformative forces amid globalization and the continuing legacies of colonialism. The conference will address technological, environmental and political change, as well as the potential of Indigenous practices to advance positive social development. Particular attention will be given to African feminist thought and activism as resources for contesting patriarchal domination.

Keynote speakers include Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí, Sylvia Bawa and David Millar.

Online participation via Microsoft Teams is free and open to all.

Further information:
https://glophi.com/2026/08/21/indigenous-values/

How can philosophy help replace violence with dialogue and open paths toward a shared future? In our newly published interview, GloPhi Fellow Prof. José P. Castiano speaks with Professor Anke Graness about philosophizing in Mozambique—from sage philosophy and African languages to democracy, reconciliation, and “realizable utopias.”

Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saR0WaE5Uj0

In this interview with Professor Anke Graness, GloPhi fellow Prof. José P. Castiano discusses the institutional presence, social function, and future of philosophy in Mozambique.

He identifies three principal settings in which philosophy is practiced: secondary schools, where it is taught in grades 11 and 12; universities, whose philosophy programs are largely oriented toward teacher education, including at the doctoral level; and the wider public sphere, where philosophers contribute to critical reflection on Mozambique’s present and possible futures.

The question of language presents a significant challenge. Portuguese remains the official language of Mozambique and the dominant language of its academic institutions, while the philosophical resources of the country’s African languages have yet to be explored systematically. Castiano points to literature, poetry, and other writings in these languages as important potential sources of philosophical thought. Developing appropriate methods for engaging such materials and for philosophizing in African languages is, in his view, an important task for future research.

Castiano understands philosophy primarily as reflection on the human condition. In African contexts, that condition has been profoundly shaped by slavery and colonialism. Philosophy, however, must not limit itself to diagnosing inherited structures of suffering and domination. Its second task is to formulate alternatives for a better future. Castiano describes this orientation in terms of a “realizable utopia”: a vision grounded not in abstract dreams but in the actual circumstances of individuals and communities. Critical thinking and dialogue connect the analysis of present conditions with the collective effort to transform them.

He practices this conception of philosophy in three complementary roles. As a university teacher, he seeks to make philosophy meaningful within Mozambican and African contexts. As a researcher, he introduces students to philosophical debates from other parts of the world, enabling them to relate local questions to global discussions. As a public intellectual, he intervenes in Mozambican society, particularly in defense of democracy and in support of reconciliation. In a society marked by persistent violence, he regards the cultivation of dialogue as an urgent philosophical and civic responsibility.

Castiano’s engagement with Henry Odera Oruka’s Sage Philosophy Project arose partly from his students’ expectation that philosophy taught in Mozambique should also address national thinkers and locally rooted forms of wisdom. Drawing on Oruka’s methods, Castiano conducted interviews with sages in Mozambican communities. His findings challenge the assumption that sages merely preserve or defend inherited traditions. The interlocutors he encountered were well informed about contemporary developments and critically examined both tradition and the present social order. They reflected on democracy, education, morality, and politics; criticized practices such as the oppression of women; and expressed concern about the erosion of dialogue. In adapting Oruka’s approach, Castiano places particular emphasis on the sages’ critical engagement with contemporary society and the wider world.

This emphasis on dialogue also shapes Castiano’s account of philosophy’s public function. Communities remain united, he argues, by speaking with one another and addressing conflict through arguments rather than weapons. Philosophy must therefore create and expand spaces of debate, distinguish mere opinion from reasoned argument, and connect dialogue at the national and local levels. Disagreements concerning historical memory, political heroes, and competing visions of society can be addressed constructively only when different perspectives are brought into conversation.

The institutional future of philosophy in Mozambique is nevertheless not assured. Castiano identifies several persistent misconceptions: philosophy is sometimes conflated with theology or religion; because of Mozambique’s socialist past, it may be reduced to Marxism and associated with support for the ruling party; or it is dismissed as inconsequential talk. He therefore advocates preserving philosophy in grades 11 and 12 while introducing younger students to philosophical reflection through civic education. Unlike narrowly conceived moral instruction, such civic education would enable children to engage critically with political and social questions.

Despite these challenges, Castiano remains hopeful. For him, philosophy has a promising future insofar as it sustains democratic dialogue, resists violence, and helps communities imagine realizable alternatives for their shared society.

Can an island be the addressee of a letter? Do “walls, rocks, and plants” — perhaps even robots — take part in a practice of philosophical awakening? What may sound paradoxical or even absurd has long been a matter of serious reflection in the Buddhist traditions from India to Japan, and it might help us find new answers to the current polycrisis in the Anthropocene.

Find out more in the newly published article of our colleague Leon Krings: “Buddhist Images of the Human and the Anthropocene”

Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene: Planetary and Pluriversal Perspectives, Nathanaël Wallenhorst & Christoph Wulf (Eds.), Springer Nature

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51703-7_312-1

The Anthropocene, the entry argues, is not only a geological and political epoch but also a profound challenge to prevailing images of the human. Dominant modern paradigms tend to cast human beings as separate from, or superior to, nature, a framing that has contributed to exploitation, environmental destruction, and a pervasive loss of meaning.

Against this background, the entry reconstructs an alternative image of the human developed in Buddhist philosophy, one that is profoundly non-essentialist and relational, grounded in interdependence, co-emergence, resonance, and compassion, and oriented toward a psychosomatic and ecological praxis rather than toward the ideal of an autonomous, self-subsisting subject.

Tracing Buddhist conceptions of the human from early Theravāda teachings to Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna developments, the entry balances perspectives from Indian and East Asian traditions and asks how they may inform an ecological alternative to anthropocentric self-understandings.

The opening sections examine the therapeutic anthropology of early Buddhism as recorded in the Pāli Canon: the diagnosis of the human condition articulated in the Four Noble Truths, the doctrine of no-self (anatta, Skt. anātman) and the analysis of the person into five impermanent aggregates, the decentering of the human within the cycle of rebirth, the moral egalitarianism with which the Buddha’s teaching confronted the caste hierarchies and, more ambivalently, the gender norms of ancient India.

The entry then traces how Mahāyāna thought expands this relational anthropology into a vision of universal interconnection, discussing the doctrine of Buddha-nature (tathāgata-garbha), the bodhisattva ideal with its universal circulation of merit, and the thoroughgoing interdependence elaborated in Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka and condensed in the Huayan image of Indra’s Net.

Particular attention is devoted to the ecological dimensions of East Asian Buddhist philosophies, in which the very boundary between the sentient and the insentient is called into question: the Tiantai master Jingxi Zhanran’s extension of Buddha-nature to “walls, rocks, and flora” as well as sounds and smells; Kūkai’s auditory and embodied ontology, in which reality unfolds as the resonant vibrations of the cosmic Dharma-body; Dōgen’s conception of a continuous, multi-agential praxis in which even “a blade of grass and a tree” participate; and Myōe’s remarkable Letter to an Island, a premodern testimony to Buddhist more-than-human sensibility.

The concluding sections bring these classical resources into conversation with the present. Reading the “three poisons” of greed, aversion, and delusion as psychological engines of the contemporary polycrisis, externalized and institutionalized as a kind of “objective spirit” on a planetary scale, the entry surveys developments in Engaged Buddhism and Buddhist environmentalism, from the ordination of trees in Thailand to Joanna Macy’s “ecological self” and Thích Nhất Hạnh’s notion of “interbeing,” and extends the discussion to today’s hybrid socio-technical environments encompassing robots, algorithms, and networks, including the roboticist Masahiro Mori’s provocative claim that even “robots have buddha-nature within them.”

The entry thus develops a non-anthropocentric, praxis-oriented conception of humanity that integrates ethics, ontology, and psychosomatic attunement, inviting dialogue with environmental ethics, systems theory, indigenous cosmologies, and critical posthumanist approaches. In bringing classical Buddhist sources to bear on a planetary predicament, it exemplifies the Center’s commitment to philosophizing in a globalized world. As a living reference work entry, the text remains open to revision and expansion as scholarship develops. We warmly congratulate Leon on this publication.

Read the article on Springer Nature: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51703-7_312-1

More information and alternative modes of access on our website: https://glophi.com/2026/08/18/9261/

How AfroLatinx artists transform the body into an archive of resistance through a decolonial ciguapa aesthetic

In Ciguapa Unbound, Omaris Z. Zamora reimagines the Dominican myth of La Cigüapa to explore the untold stories of Black Dominican women. Traditionally depicted as an elusive spirit with backward-facing feet who haunts rural landscapes as a cautionary tale, La Cigüapa is brilliantly repositioned here. Zamora transforms her unbounded mobility, fugitivity, and embodied illegibility into a powerful critical analytic for understanding transnational AfroLatinx feminist thought.

Through the innovative lens of a "ciguapa aesthetic," Zamora foregrounds movement, untrackability, and trance as vital modes of Black feminist knowledge production. The book meticulously analyzes a diverse array of cultural producers, including Nelly Rosario, Ana-Maurine Lara, Loida Maritza Pérez, Josefina Báez, Cardi B, La Bella Chanel, and Firelei Báez. By examining literature, performance, visual art, and digital media, Zamora interrogates how these women navigate intersecting systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and restrictive definitions of Latinidad across geographic borders.

Central to the book is the theorization of tranceformation, a process through which Black Dominican women navigate and reconstitute their subjectivities across geographic and cultural borders, centering the body, memory, and narrative as vital archives of knowledge production. Engaging with both theoretical analysis and personal narrative, Ciguapa Unbound calls for the reintegration of these feminist voices into a broader interdisciplinary discourse, enriching the study of Black diaspora feminisms with unique insights rooted in the lived experiences of Black Dominican women.

https://nyupress.org/9781479845392/ciguapa-unbound/

That's a wrap on "Practices of Epoché: A Phenomenological Retreat"!

Over five intensive days at the University of Hildesheim, we returned to one of the methodological beginnings of phenomenology: the Epoché. Rather than treating it only as a concept or a historical doctrine, we asked what it might mean to practice suspension, reduction, receptivity, altered modes of attention, individually and together.

A distinctive feature of the retreat was the constant movement between philosophical reflection and shared practice. Texts by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty provided important theoretical points of departure, with changing settings for practical explorations: chairs gave way to meditation cushions and yoga mats, discussion continued while walking through the surrounding landscape, and drawing, sensing, and attentive perception became ways of asking and discussing philosophical questions.

Among the workshops and practices of the week:

• Yoko Arisaka – “Phenomenological Meditation Method”: Through a meditation practice influenced by Chan and Dzogchen, we explored the movements of consciousness, the noesis–noema relation, and the possibility of progressively suspending habitual structures of experience toward immediate bodily presence.

• Rolf Elberfeld – “Back to the Happening (Geschehen) Itself: Phenomenology and Aesthetic Practice”: Aesthetic exercises invited us to think beyond the subject–object distinction and to explore a more radical epoché as phenopraxis: a transformation of the perceiving and experiencing subject.

• Abbed Kanoor – “The Phenomenologist and the Eye”: Beginning with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, this session investigated the role of vision in phenomenology before taking the inquiry outdoors. A shared walk became an exercise in receptive seeing, landscape experience, and loosening the instrumental gaze.

• Hayden Kee – “Suspension of the Senses: Reading Merleau-Ponty on Sensing and Practicing Yogic Pratyāhāra”: Reading Merleau-Ponty alongside the classical yogic practice of pratyāhāra opened a particularly fruitful space for comparing phenomenological suspension with the withdrawal, modulation, and transformation of sensory attention.

• Ambre Mannu – “The Epoché Enacted in the Physical Practice of Yoga”: Here phenomenology met modern postural yoga not only theoretically but bodily: movement and posture became a field for examining how the epoché might itself be enacted through lived experience.

• Mathias Obert – East Asian Art and Phenomenological Description: Through Chinese and Japanese painting, calligraphy, and aesthetic experience, we explored the possibilities and limits of an “aesthetic reduction” across different cultural and linguistic horizons.

• Albert Ferkl & Adam Lalak – “Mindfulness of the Lived Body: A Meditation Guided by Husserl”: A participant-led practice returned directly to Husserl’s descriptions of the lived body as the zero-point of orientation, turning phenomenological passages into prompts for bodily attention and shared reflection.

Unfortunately, Leon Krings’s planned session “Embodied Epoché: Exercises in Equipoise”, which was to explore no-mind in Japanese Zen and kamae and tai-sabaki from Aikido as bodily practices of suspension, had to be cancelled because health reasons. Get well soon, Leon!

One of the most important dynamics were the conversations that unfolded between the sessions: comparing experiences, questioning the limits of analogies between traditions, discussing moments when the epoché succeeds or fails, and repeatedly returning from theory to experience and from experience to philosophical articulation.

A heartfelt thank you to all participants and workshop leaders for the openness, curiosity, generosity, and seriousness with which you entered this experiment. The week became much more than a sequence of workshops through a shared inquiry into how phenomenology can still be practiced as a living method.

Thank you for a wonderful week of thinking, sensing, moving, discussing, and practicing phenomenology together.