Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGender violenceGeneralHealthMediaTech

Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’

The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]

Posted inGeneralHealthMedia

Season 2 of True Detective — A ‘noir’ reflection of our broken society?

When the first season of True Detective was broadcast — with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as two detectives out to solve a case that seemed intractable in the extreme, with a gritty cinematic style and refusal to compromise itself for the sake of satisfying the usual Hollywood saccharine, sentimentalist demands regarding plot structure — […]

Posted inEqualityHealth

An open critique of the Nieuwoudt et al (2019) study on coloured women

By the Division for Research & Methodology (DRM) The Psychological Society of South Africa’s (PsySSA) Division for Research and Methodology (DRM) is committed to the teaching, practice and promotion of relevant, appropriate and ethical scientific research in South Africa. We are disturbed by and strongly opposed to the practice of misusing racial classification in scientific […]

Posted inGender violenceGeneralMediaNews/PoliticsTech

‘Dark technology’ and human ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’?

In the later 19th century there was a protracted debate among thinkers of various stripes about the question, what ultimately determines human actions — ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ — a debate that is still going on today. But while it was then influenced by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, on the one hand, and empiricist […]

Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGeneral

Educational disparities at an international level

For some time now, it has been the case that internationalisation of education cannot be separated from globalisation as a multifaceted phenomenon. This inevitably raises the question of whether such globalisation, especially given its inseparability from advanced (electronic) communicational developments (partly as a means to the sharing of knowledge and, unavoidably, economic prosperity), is judged […]

Posted inGeneral

Ethics always comes too late for power

If there is one lesson I have learned from Foucault, it is this: Ethics always comes too late for power. What I mean by this is that human beings – even philosophers – have a tendency to rationalise, in ethical or moral terms, about the actual decisions and choices one makes in the world, and […]

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The network: Towards a new way of life

In his insightful study of ancient philosophy, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell, 1995), Pierre Hadot disabuses one of the notion that philosophy was for the ancients what it has become in modernity (and postmodernity) since Kant, namely a specialised theoretical practice. Rather, he argues — citing many passages from ancient philosophers during the […]