Should African thinkers engage in the global justice debate?

Flikschuh, Katrin ORCID: 0000-0002-4585-6844 (2017) Should African thinkers engage in the global justice debate? Philosophical Papers, 46 (1). pp. 33-58. ISSN 0556-8641

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Abstract

This article asks under what conditions and on what terms current African thinkers can and should engage in the global justice debate. Following summary overviews of the Western-led global justice debate and post-independence African philosophy as two essentially separate, non-intersecting philosophical discourses, I go on to argue that the current generation of African thinkers can fruitfully intervene in the global justice debate if it succeeds in building on philosophical insights of the first-generation of African thinkers. In particular, current African thinkers might fruitfully engage the notion of ‘false universals’ developed by first generation African thinkers to challenge Western philosophical conceptions in general in order to re-invigorate recently neglected critical inquiry into the status of many of this more particular debate’s unreflective universality claims. Re-invigorating these more distinctively philosophical aspects of the global justice debate is particularly important, albeit also challenging, against the background of an international research climate that increasingly favours ‘impact-oriented’ approaches to philosophy and to the humanities more generally.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rppa20/current
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Editorial Board, Philosophical Papers
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DT Africa J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) K Law > K Law (General)
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2017 15:19
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 01:26
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/69507

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