Contemporary Western Research Articles

Feminist criticism of contemporary Western political thought

النسوية توجه فكري و منظومة فكرية، تسعى إلى تحقيق حقوق المرأة و اهتماماتها. تنادي بمساواة الجنسين سياسياً، اقتصادياً و اجتماعياً. تعزيز دور المرأة في المشاركة السياسية. تعمل على تغيير الأوضاع لتحقيق تلك المساواة. يقصد به إعادة التوازن الفكري والفعلي لعلاقات القوى بين الرجل والمرأة. والصراع مع النظام الأبوي. تشير الذكورة إلى الخصائص المبنية اجتماعياً التي يتوقعها المجتمع للجنس الذكري. ومع تزايد الهيمنة الذكورية على مقدرات النساء حرمن من الربوبية والكهنوتية و الثروة و تم تنحيتهن عن السلطة و العلم و العمل و الإنتاج و صارت هذه المناشط جميعاً حكراً على الكهنوت الذكوري. وتسيطر الأيديولوجية الذكورية الناتجة عن وسائل الإعلام والفنانين والمعلمين والمؤرخين والآباء والكهنة والشخصيات العامة على كيفية تفكير الرجال في أنفسهم. النسوية تقوم أساسا على رفض الخطاب الذكوري و مركزيته في الحضارة الغربية. وتحاول توجيه ضربة للمرتكزات المنطقية التي تحملها الأيديولوجية الذكورية. والنسوية تمثل وعيا معرفيا وفكريا ضد الهيمنة الذكورية. وتطلب النسوية امعان النظر في التاريخ، لأنه يجسد مصالح الذكور. إذاً النسوية الرافضة الفكر السياسي الغربي، رفضت نظريات الفكر السياسي الذكوري الغربي وطالبت بحقلاً جديداً. واتهمت الفلاسفة التقليديين بأنهم قد صاغوا نظرياتهم وتعاليمهم و معاييرهم المتعلقة بالنساء انطلاقاً من خبراتهم الذاتية الذكورية. وتقدم الوعي الفكري النسوي على الخطاب الذكوري. يمكن هدفها هو تحديد أهم الانتقادات الحركة النسوية للفكر السياسي الغربي ، وتحليل مدى تأثيرها، فضلاً عن إبراز أهم مفكريها وبيان أفكارها النقدية. انطلاقا من أهمية الدراسة فرضيتها و من أجل الوقوف على النسوية في الفكر السياسي الغربي و دور النسوية فيها تم الاعتماد على اكثر من مناهج البحث العلمي منها المنهج الوصفي، التحليلي والنقدي.

(The dialectics of the relationship between ideology and utopia in contemporary Western political thought)

يعد مفهوم الايديولوجيا من المفاهيم الجدلية التي اختلف المفكرين في تفسيرها و توضيحها اذ يمكن ان تتضمن أبعاداً او تفسيرات مختلفة فضلاً عن تفرعات الايديولوجيا لتضم الايديولوجيات السياسية و الاجتماعية و غيرها ، كذلك الحال بالنسبة لمفهوم اليوتوبيا و الذي مر بتفسيرات متغيرة عبر التاريخ إذا لم يشهد هذا المفهوم اتفاقاً على تعريف او مفهوم واحد ثابت كسابقه ، و على هذا الأساس فإن هذا البحث يطرح هذين المفهومين و جدلية العلاقة بينهما .

Equality of Educational Opportunities from the Perspective of Islamic Education and Contemporary Western Education: A Comparative Study

هدف البحث إلى: التعرف على مفهوم تكافؤ الفرص التعليمية بين التربية الإسلامية , والتربية الغربية المعاصرة ,بغرض الخروج بصورة توفيقية لمفهوم تكافؤ الفرص التعليمية تجمع ما في الفكرين .وقد اشتمل البحث على المحاور التالية : المقدمة – أهمية الدراسة ومبرراتها- أهداف الدراسة – مصطلحات الدراسة – منهجية الدراسة – مناقشة نتائج الدراسة – الخاتمة .وقد توصل البحث إلى مجموعة من النتائج أهمها : إن للفكر التربوي الإسلامي قصب السبق في تطبيق مضمون مفهوم تكافؤ الفرص التعليمية عنه في الفكر التربوي الغربي .

Апокалиптическое сознание Ларса фон Триера в антропологии Дома, который построил не Джек

The subject of the study is the concept of the historical hero as a victor of the gods and his role in contemporary Western cultural heritage, with a focus on the reinterpretation of Scandinavian culture in the works of Lars von Trier. The research methodology is based on the analysis of Hollywood’s reception of neo-European rationalism and the ideas of individualism and free will in European culture. The author examines the influence of the implementation of freedom without morality on the exploration of the idea of the Übermensch (superman) and discusses unresolved questions in this context. The research findings highlight the importance of the themes of personal responsibility and freedom in Western culture, as well as the legacy of Scandinavian culture as a source of the manifestation of truths. The conclusions of the study emphasize the relevance and significance of the discussed issues in the contemporary cultural context. The main goal of the research is to identify the consistent stages of Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic consciousness, particularly in the context of resistance to the colonization of art by ontological philosophy and the dominance of Hollywood clichés and political sentiments in the film market. This work conducts a methodological investigation into how Lars von Trier applies the philosophy of images through cinematography as a tool to separate false and immaculate representations of the world, with a focus on the problem of sin in his composition. This work methodologically explores this process and analyzes how it interacts with contemporary culture and cinema. In the context of the scientific novelty of the research, a question arises about Lars von Trier describing himself as a ‘sadistic doctor’ who saves lives but remains, in the eyes of those saved, an antichrist and a criminal in the humanistic world and humanity’s defense of a world different from the existing one. The results of this research can be used to study philosophical anthropology in the field of film studies and visual arts, as well as in related social and humanitarian disciplines, to analyze how this theme interacts with culture and society.

Affair Caught between Two Worlds: A Transcultural Exploration of the “Asian Lover” in Western Literature and Film

Based on L'amant, this paper offers a critical discussion of the representations of the “Asian lover” in contemporary Western film and television works. By focusing on a transcultural exploration of the “Asian lover” that combines close-reading of literary and filmic texts with original archival research in contemporary news reports and government files, this paper examines the ongoing debates surrounding the underlying Western cultural stereotype with the East from a global standpoint.

Not Relational Enough? Towards an Eco-Relational Approach in Robot Ethics

With robots increasingly integrated into various areas of life, the question of relationships with them is gaining prominence. Are friendship and partnership with robots possible? While there is already extensive research on relationships with robots, this article critically examines whether the relationship with non-human entities is sufficiently explored on a deeper level, especially in terms of ethical concepts such as autonomy, agency, and responsibility. In robot ethics, ethical concepts and considerations often presuppose properties such as consciousness, sentience, and intelligence, which are exclusively aligned with humans. I will challenge the understanding of these properties by anchoring them in contexts, bodies, and actions. This approach allows to consider the specific ways of being of various human and non-human entities and to identify these properties in non-human entities as well. My “eco-relational” approach posits that it is crucial to consider the relationality with non-human entities such as animals and technology in central ethical concepts from the beginning. This approach reflects the “eco”, the entire house in which we live including animals and robots. To support this, I examine two dominant approaches in robot ethics within the contemporary Western tradition: the “properties approach” and modestly relational approaches. I will develop an eco-relational approach as an alternative. Employing a phenomenological method, I will demonstrate through various examples that our properties and actions are inherently connected with non-human entities. I will show that robots play a central role in our properties and actions, leading to concepts such as hybrid actions and non-human agency. It becomes clear that technology and our relationships with it disrupt traditional ethical concepts.

The Problems of Free Will and Moral Responsibility in Buddhist Ethics

At the end of the 20th century, a discipline of Buddhist ethics was formed in English-speaking countries, within the framework of which a community of closely interacting researchers is engaged in the comprehension and systematization of ethical positions within Buddhism, often resorting to the use of analytical philosophy tools. One of the directions within the discipline of Buddhist ethics is an attempt to embed the ethical content of Buddhism in a contemporary Western European philosophical context and to put before it questions characteristic of Western philosophy, for example, the questions of moral responsibility, free will and determinism. While some researchers believe that Buddhist texts reflect a compatibilist position, others see Buddhist ethical position as resembling incompatibilism. The first problem faced by Buddhist researchers interested in this topic is that Buddhism does not have a concept of “free will” similar to the one that exists in Western philosophy. Nevertheless, contemporary theorists believe that classical Buddhism contains enough material to allow for a conversation about causality and responsibility. The purpose of this research is to substantiate the possibility of discussing free will in the context of the ethics of Buddhism. In order to do this the research examines the key provisions of Buddhist teaching relevant in the context of free will: dependent arising, absence of self and karma. It is noted that one of the reasons for the difference in the conclusions of researchers of Buddhist ethics regarding the issue of free will and moral responsibility in Buddhism are the peculiarities of Theravada and Mahayana and their particular texts different theorists mainly refer to.

The concept of successful ageing in wartime: A review of Western scientific sources

Preserving the full life of an elderly person as the most vulnerable category of the population in times of armed conflict raises many methodological, theoretical, and practical issues for scholars. The article is an attempt at a problematic and reflective analysis of the heuristic nature of the concept of successful ageing for the study of ageing of elderly Ukrainians in the context of the war with Russia. The paper presents a problem-oriented review of contemporary Western literature on successful ageing. In addition to the basic empirical and theoretical works, a significant part of the theoretical analysis is based on the results of the most significant meta-analytical studies on this topic. The methodology of problem-oriented and integrative analysis was used to determine which problem areas of the concept of successful ageing can contribute to its study in wartime. The potential and limitations of the modern concept of successful ageing are considered. Eight problem areas of this concept are presented, which reveal certain contradictions, debatable issues, and gaps, which are simultaneously directions for the development of both the concept itself and its research in the context of war. Among them: vagueness of the criteria for successful ageing and its dilution with similar concepts; interaction of biomedical and psychosocial contexts of successful ageing; limits of responsibility for the success of ageing in the context of the “person – society” dichotomy; socio-structural inequalities between older people and the inability to age equally “successfully”; discrepancies between subjective and objective indicators of successful ageing; dominance of the Western model of successful ageing and levelling of its cultural specificity; integration of individual, social and scientific conceptualization of successful ageing. The author analyses the most promising theoretical and methodological concepts and theories of successful ageing that are most relevant to the problem of ageing in war. The literature review presented in the article will help to draw attention to the problem of improving and preserving the full life of an elderly person in the context of armed conflict. The results of the research will be useful to scholars and practitioners for the further development of programmes to protect the mental and physical health of older people in war

From Orientalism to neo-Orientalism: medial representations of Islam and the Muslim world

ABSTRACT The debate on Orientalist representations of Islam and/or Muslims has been rampant in academic literature since Edward Said’s publication of his seminal work Orientalism (1978). The articulation of this discourse however has transformed in due course. It has manifested into its new variant ‘neo-Orientalism’, which has gained prominence in the post-9/11 era. In this paper, I discuss the transition from Orientalism to neo-Orientalism, and argue that this new mode of representation does not exclusively result from the 9/11 events and the subsequent War on Terror, but also from the portrayals of Muslims in the last quarter of the twentieth century. These portrayals, disseminated with great intensity by people in the media, journalists, politicians, and Orientalist academics, as well as in literary and cultural productions, continue to reify narratives about Islam and Muslim societies. This paper concludes with the dynamics Orientalism holds and reveals the role authors of the Middle East and South Asia play in disseminating neo-Orientalist discourses with the often-detrimental effect of catering to and promoting modern-day Islamophobia in contemporary Western societies. This is briefly illustrated on the examples of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Qaisra Shahraz’s The Holy Woman (2001), and Uzma Aslam Khan’s Trespassing (2003).

Immigrational Exclusion in the West and Exile Culture in Africa: Exploring Parallels and Biopower Dynamics

This study shows how political and ethnic elites employ their power to impose societal standards through exclusion practices like deportation and exile culture. The research also serves as a further illustration of Foucault's concept of bio-power being manifested. In this study, social exclusion from indigenous African societies and contemporary Western nations is investigated from a historical, social, and cultural standpoint. The study is built around Michael Foucault’s concept of biopower, and it employs discourse analysis as a methodology with an emphasis on Foucauldian discourse analysis. More so, the study incorporates the examination of African exile traditions and contemporary deportation from the Nollywood perspective. Hence, two Nollywood films, Anchor Baby ‘2010’ and Arodan ‘2023’, whose themes resonate with the study’s objectives, were selected. The study found out that whether it is the State exercising its power to regulate immigration or traditional leaders demonstrating their authority over their communities to maintain social order, deportation and exile are tools through which biopower is exerted. It recommends that effective policy communication is essential for addressing the utilization of this biopower and reducing racial or national prejudice, especially in deportation operations. The study contends that the inaccurate depiction and improper use of biopower strategies can result in profound psychological effects for the impacted individuals. It further recommends that it is imperative for authorities to give high importance to effective policy communication and actively take measures to reduce possible adverse outcomes. Ensuring that immigrants are given the confidence that deportation decisions are based on legitimate justifications, such as public or national security, is of utmost importance.

Book Review: “Sikh Philosophy: Exploring gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World”

Though there has been significant study of Sikhism in contemporary Western academia, the prospects for engaging with Sikhism from a philosophical perspective have largely been ignored. The limited literature that is explicitly about Sikh philosophy has almost exclusively been written by scholars in Punjab, whose writing has largely been ignored by Western audiences even when written in English. Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair’s “Sikh Philosophy: Exploring gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World” seeks to intervene by providing, as the book’s description says, “the first rigorous engagement in the West with Sikh philosophy.” In writing about Sikh philosophy for a Western audience, Mandair has undertaken an important and valuable project.

The shadow of the family: Historical roots of social trust in Europe.

This study provides new evidence on how historical patterns of household formation shape the present-day level of trust. We test two distinct features of historical family arrangements that might be harmful to trust towards out-groups: (a) family extendedness in terms of the number of household members, and (b) generational hierarchy and gender relations within the household. To conduct our study, we compiled a historical database that reflects family structure and socio-economic development, mostly in the 19th century. The analysis was performed on a sample of 94 historical subnational units within eight contemporary Western and Eastern European countries that participated in the Life in Transition Survey in 2010. We find that cohabitation of several generations within the historical family and power of older generations over the younger are detrimental for out-group trust today. By contrast, family extendedness per se was revealed to have no impact on trust.

Foucault and Clinical Photography: An Analysis and Mitigation of the Clinical Gaze in Pediatric Craniofacial Plastic Surgery

While objectification in medicine has been extensively critiqued as a philosophical concept dating back to the Ancient Greeks and contemporarily popularized by Michel Foucault, the impact of objectification through clinical photography in plastic surgery is often overlooked. Plastic surgery patients are by necessity subjected to the clinical gaze through clinical photography, which may lead to experiences of dehumanization and alienation from their physicians and surgeons. In this essay, we explore the concept of the clinical gaze in clinical photography from a structured philosophical lens, and offer one potential answer to this problem. First, we draw upon Foucault’s well-known and monumental critique of contemporary Western medical practice from Birth of the Clinic alongside a brief history of clinical photography to illustrate the problem of the “clinical gaze.” Then, we argue that mitigating the clinical gaze is critical for the flourishing of patients in general and plastic surgery patients in particular. Finally, we offer our attempt to mitigate the clinical gaze that was conducted by the Craniofacial Anomalies Program at the University of Michigan in 2014 as a demonstration of an upending of the power dynamic usually at play.

Editorial Introduction to Challenges of Teaching in Today’s Society: Factors Involved in Educational Quality

Contemporary Western societies coexist with diverse factors that continually redefine and transform them in response to the myriad social demands they face [...]

Indigenous Knowledge and Ontological Difference? Ontological Pluralism, Secular Public Reason, and Knowledge between Indigenous Amazonia and the West

AbstractReal knowledge emerges from “impossible” worldviews. Or, put differently, it is possible to accept knowledge that is produced by people whose ontological presuppositions–their baseline assumptions about the nature of reality–one entirely rejects. How can this fact be accommodated, not by advancing a wishful post-dualism, dangerous post-secularism, or implausible ontological relativism, but by working within the tradition of secular political philosophy so that indigenous knowledge, too, can be a basis for public policy and collective action in secular societies? Via a reframing Amazonian multinaturalist perspectivism–which has so inspired post-dualist civilizational critiques–as a social theory of health and illness that informs contemporary Western epidemiology’s struggles to theorize the distribution of health and illness in mass society, this article advances a general approach to recognizing knowledge that has been developed on the other side of boundaries of ontological difference. It argues that the accuracy or efficacy of any particular indigenous knowledge-practice implies the generative potential as theory of the ontological presuppositions that facilitated the knowledge-practice’s evolution. Combining the ontological turn’s interest in the innovativeness of indigenous concepts with a proposal for superseding its incommensurable worlds and abandonment of the aspiration to more-than-local knowledge, the article shows that indigenous ideas and their underlying ontologies are more than generic alternatives to inspire Western civilizational renewal, and opens a path to their legitimization as actionable knowledge in the terms of secular public reason.

Perception, Reason, and Intuition in the Development Of Expertise: Reflections on Zhuangzi and Contemporary Western Theory

AbstractIn this paper, Leonard Waks investigates connections between listening and expertise or mastery, contrasting approaches from Eastern and Western philosophy. The first section accounts for listening in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a work addressing themes in Chinese philosophy through metaphor and story narratives. In one story a character named “Confucius” advises a student to fast the mind and listen recklessly. The affinity between reckless and what has been called “apophatic” listening is demonstrated by the shared feature of mental emptiness — listening without the imposition of conceptual categories. The second section demonstrates close affinities between the account of listening and expertise or mastery in the Zhuangzi and in the account of expert perception in contemporary Western philosophy and psychology, as exemplified by phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus.

Virtue Ethicist of the Ideal Type

There has been an impressive revival of virtue ethics as a rival to deontology and consequentialism in contemporary Western normative ethics. Correspondingly, many comparative philosophers have shown a great interest in finding virtue ethics potentials in other philosophical traditions in the world, the most impressive of which is Confucianism. While the result of such comparative studies is equally impressive, in almost all these studies, scholars tend to use a historical example of virtue ethics in the Western philosophical tradition, particularly the Aristotelian one, as the ideal type of virtue ethics, to measure historical examples of virtue ethics in other philosophical traditions. The result is thus conceivably skewed: however great these non-Western examples of virtue ethics are, they are perceived to be deficient in one way or another in comparison with the Aristotelian one. In this paper, I first construct an ideal type of virtue ethics in its contrast with ideal types of consequentialism and deontology: a normative ethics in which virtue is primary. I then use this ideal type of virtue ethics to measure Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Zhu Xi’s virtue ethics, both regarded as historical types of virtue ethics, concluding that Zhu Xi’s is closer to the ideal type of virtue ethics than Aristotle’s.

Why Agamben Cannot Save Us: A Political Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s “Coming Politics”

Giorgio Agamben's critical stance on biopolitics and sovereignty is primarily concerned with the problem of the “state of exception” as the paradigm of contemporary Western politics. According to Agamben, human life has been reduced to a “bare life” by a state of exception founded on the relation between the law and sovereignty. In response, Agamben's redemptive politics is a counterargument to the contemporary nihilistic-exceptional politics and capitalism of spectacle. This “coming politics” is founded on some basic ideas such as “playing with the law,” “profanation,” “gesture,” “free use” and finally “form-of-life.” This essay will first explain the role of these ideas in Agamben's coming politics, then, it will demonstrate that all these ideas (or political strategies) are based on a deep belief in the power of thought. Therefore, it seems fair to assert that Agamben's coming politics is a kind of theoretical or philosophical politics and its hero or subject could be called “philosophers.” It will be argued that from a political standpoint, this philosophical politics not only cannot be redemptive but might also result in a form of political passivity and the maintenance of the current political order.

LGBTQ+ activism in Azerbaijan: shifting queer (in)visibility regime through power–knowledge technologies

ABSTRACT The queer (in)visibility regime in Azerbaijan has been historically structured through centralizing powers and the coloniality of knowledge(s) in their Russian/Soviet and contemporary Western manifestations. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this study shows how local queer activism arises through the appropriation of Western LGBTQ+ discourse and the use of the internet, with its novel spaces and digitally mediated discursive practices. In addition to its humanizing and normalizing effects, these organizations generate a new space for the realization of homosexual desire against the old Soviet subjectivity while preserving their didactic enlightener position towards Western/European pedagogy. Finally, this study argues that homosexuality has become a means of boundary-making practices both inside and outside the country, positioning on the borderline between symbolic Europe and national characteristics.

The Disintegration of “Power/Knowledge”. Post-Socialist Studies as Decolonial Studies? A Personal Point of View. Part 3: Soft and Hard Variants of Post-Colonial Studies

The relationship between post-colonial and post-socialist studies is extraordinarily complex. Post-colonialists might argue that it can be approached from different perspectives as well as different power positions of knowledge production. As a result, I have chosen a specific trajectory that intersects and challenges the static power positions and is able to trace the debates and the unfolding of the complex problem over time. As a long-time scholar in this area, and moreover one who has taken many different roads in both fields, I will describe this relationship from the perspective of my own scholarly biography. However, my professional career has spanned several decades and surpassed the transient trends and fashions within this scholarly field. As such, it can only be depicted as an extensive narrative comprising multiple episodes, published in sequence across the double issue of the journal Studia Litteraria, devoted to forms of engagement in contemporary Southern and Western Slavic literatures. Part 3 discusses soft and hard variants of the complex “powers/knowledge”.