درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This paper explores the nature of African religion and the role of the role of Western misconception in influencing it. Historically, African religion has served as a yardstick of the values, principles, and philosophies that shape the daily lives and ethical frameworks guiding the African societies. It embodies a unique belief system, a reverence for a Supreme Being, and a deep connection to community and nature, among many others. However, the advent of Western institutional religion significantly altered this dynamic. Western thought systems often dismissed African religious practices as fetishistic, primitive, and inhumane among many other negative attributes, thereby marginalizing their religious practices and replacing them with Western Christian practices. Hence, this influence has as a result alienated and marginalizing the African people from their indigenous religion, which as well alters their Identity. Ironically, these Western practices promoted values and principles similar to those inherent in African philosophy but classified superior, so as to strip the Africans of their identity for easy control. In it on this note that this seminar paper critically examines these narratives, highlighting the authenticity, richness, and sanctity of African religion. With the intension of exposing the original nature of African religion, employing the method of conceptual and critical analysis, this seminar paper argues that African religion, far from being fetishistic embodies the totality of the reality of the African people; it is a sophisticated embodiment of moral principles, belief systems, spirituality, and a deep connection to the world.

This article examines E. Sergio’s studies on the concept of sensus communis as developed by Giambattista Vico, highlighting its historical and philosophical significance. The analysis positions Vico as a pivotal figure bridging medieval and modern thought: he inherits the intellectual legacy of the past while reinterpreting its core elements through a distinctly modern sensibility. Within this framework, sensus communis emerges as a key concept for understanding human social action—a perspective that, drawing from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (whose approaches modernity often rejects), finds its fullest expression in Vico’s system. By privileging language as a primary mode of communication, Vico is shown to transcend the Hobbesian conception of human nature specifically through the lens of sensus communis.

In recent quantum mechanics, the notion of hologram plays an important role: the image of an object which catches not only its actual state but also its interference pattern with other options that were lost when the actual state imposed itself. It is very productive to apply this notion to human history, and, perhaps the supreme example of holographic history is provided none other than by Marx. Marx is not an evolutionist, he writes history “top-down,” i.e., his starting point is the contemporary global capitalist order, and from this point he reads the entire history as a gradual approximation to capitalism. This is not teleology: history is not guided by capitalism as its telos, but once capitalism emerges, it provides the key to the entire (pre)history – here enters Marx’s well-known story (in Grundrisse) of linear development from prehistorical societies through Asiatic despotism, Antique slavery, and feudalism to capitalism. There is no teleological necessity in this development, it results from a series of contingent collapses of superpositions