This book explores the concepts of evil in the world-views of Plotinus and the Nso' people of Cameroon. The author analyzes the theories of the natural structure and social organization of these views of the world. He stresses the importance of comparing Plotinus and African philosophy. The book offers a proper appreciation of fundamental differences, parallels and similarities and seeks to build on shared values and common existential concerns in the world-views of Plotinus and the Nso'. This book highlights the assumption that the world understood in terms of its wider dimensions is not a purposeless conglomerate of phenomena and events that bear no relation to each other, but is rather a structured whole, defined by hierarchy and order.

This early treatise is placed by Plotinus’ editor at the very end of the Enneads, as the culmination of his thought, matching Plotinus’ own last recorded instruction, “to bring the god in you back to the god in the all.” It is a cosmological sketch, arguing that the being of anything depends on its being unified by its orientation to its own good, and so also the being of Everything, the All. The One, or the Good, is at once the goal of all things both individually and collectively, and also the transcendent source of all that we experience, mediated through an intelligible order. But it is also, and perhaps more importantly, intended as a guide to the proper education and discipline of our own motives and experience. We are encouraged to put aside immediate sensory data, egoistic prejudice and sensual impulse, first to grasp at least a little of the intelligible order within which we all live, and at last to purge even those last intellectual attachments and experience what cannot be adequately described: the unity of being.

This book offers fresh academic insights, reflections, questions, issues, and approaches to development ethics, taking into account, African values and ethics. Development ethics is an area of applied ethics that examines the moral issues involved in global, social, and economic transformation. While it is a relatively new discipline, there have been numerous scholarly publications on it from Western perspectives. However, only a few studies that focused on development ethics from the African perspective. To address this gap, the book seeks to answer critical questions such as "What does development mean to Africans?", "How can we measure development?", "Who gets to decide?", and "What constitutes just development in Africa?" With contributions from African scholars from diverse backgrounds, the book covers various development themes such as Theories and approaches to development ethics in Africa, Environmental Ethics and African Development, Ethics, Politics and African Development, Migration and African development, Gender, Ethics and Socio-economic Development in Africa, Education, Ethics and African development. It is an essential resource for researchers, lecturers, and students interested in political philosophy and African culture studies.

The focus of this book is the normativity of global ethic. Over the years, different cultures and civilizations have been brought closer than never before by globalization. This trend has both its negative and positive dimensions. Overall, the main problem of this present trend of societal organization and human interaction called globalization is a moral issue, namely, the question: how should we treat one another? Okeja's global ethic seeks to answer this question. It underscores that we should treat one another in our current age of globalization in accordance with the Golden Rule principle. The suggestion of this ethic is therefore that we should not treat others the way we would not want to be treated. This sounds simple enough. The problem, however, is that it is not exactly clear what this principle of moral conduct would suggest in both simple and complex moral situations. Most importantly, it is not clear why it is reasonable to treat people the way we would not want to be treated. Why, in other words, should we act in accordance with the Golden Rule principle? What is the justification of the demand the Golden Rule makes on us? This book answers these and other questions about the normative plausibility of the Golden Rule, and thus global ethic, from the comparative perspective of ethics in African philosophy. It analyzes three stages of the possible normative justification of the moral imperative of global ethic and proposes a deliberative form of justification.

This book gives a concise history of Christian theology based on a mysteriously discovered set of seventy-four limericks. Readers who already know the history of theology will read about it from an unfamiliar perspective ? and beginners will learn the basics in an accessible form. The limericks range from Gnostic theology through to the Reformation, and on to Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. If all of this seems unfamiliar, the accompanying text should help sort it all out.

Die einzelnen Beiträge dieses Bandes sind unterschiedlichen Formen der Wiederbelebung des Platonismus innerhalb der antiken Philosophie gewidmet. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit ist den Themen der Einheit und der Schönheit, des Geistes und der Erkenntnis, der Seele und des Leibes, der Tugend und des Glücks sowie der politischen und der religiösen Dimension des platonischen Denkens gewidmet. Ausgehend von Platon und Aristoteles werden die Verwandlungsformen von Platonismus, insbesondere bei den Neuplatonikern Plotin, Porphyrios, Jamblich, Themistios, Proklos und Marinos sowie bei den christlichen Autoren Augustin, Boethius und Dionysios Areopagites untersucht. Die Autoren des Bandes knüpfen dabei in vielfältiger Weise an die Arbeiten von Dominic J. O’Meara an. Die Weiterführung seiner Ansätze rückt insbesondere die spätplatonische Ethik in ein neues Licht. Die jeweiligen Studien tragen darüber hinaus zur Erforschung der vielfältigen Bezüge der Platoniker aufeinander sowie auf andere Denker bei. Das Buch macht in seiner ganzen Breite das Erneuerungs- und Verwandlungspotenzial des antiken Platonismus deutlich.

The Christian faith knows and worships one God, who is revealed in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian thought. Although Christian orthodoxy defines the doctrine of the Trinity, the intellectual tools used to capture it significantly vary. At different times and in different places, Western Christianity has, for instance, used neo-Platonism, German Idealism, and the conceptual tools of the second-century Greeks. Taking elements from the known African intellectual framework, this book argues that for African Christians, the respective pre-Christian African understanding of God and the Ntu-metaphysics, in particular, function as conceptual gates for an attempt towards articulating the Trinity for African Christian audiences.

In Augustine and Plotinus: the Human Mind as Image of the Divine Laela Zwollo provides an inside view of two of the most influential thinkers of late antiquity: the Christian Augustine and the Neo-Platonist Plotinus. By exploring the finer points and paradoxes of their doctrines of the image of God (the human soul/intellect), the illustrious church father’s complex interaction with his most important non-biblical source comes into focus. In order to fathom Augustine, we should first grasp the beauty in Plotinus’ philosophy and its attractiveness to Christians. This monograph will contribute to a better understanding of the formative years of Christianity as well as later ancient philosophy. It can serve as a handbook for becoming acquainted with the two thinkers, as well as for delving into the profundity of their thought.

The present work focuses on the major inquiries in philosophy of religion. This work is unique in its own way, in the sense that it introduces something new to the corpus of literature that is often referred to as philosophy of religion. It introduces themes in African philosophy of religion, which is an area not often referred to in African philosophy, let alone in textbooks in philosophy of religion. As this work opens a new aperture in the study of the philosophy of religion, it is hoped that it would generate further interest in the study of African philosophy of religion.

Introducing Religion examines the different ways of looking at religion in the twenty-first century. Providing a broad overview to the discipline of religious studies, this new edition continues to introduce students to engaging and contemporary topics such as: sociology of religion psychology of religion history of religion religion and art religious ethics popular religion religion and violence Thoroughly updated throughout, this sixth edition includes new coverage of current debates and hot topics in the field, such as concerns about "essentialism" in religion, the importance of categorization, and the role of psychology in religious experience. This textbook is fundamental reading for students approaching this subject area for the first time.