The Dialectical Tradition in South Africa Contributor(s): Nash, Andrew (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415975301 ISBN-13: 9780415975308 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $161.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: June 2009 Annotation: This study highlights the most enduring and distinctive philosophical tradition in South African history - a tradition often obscured or patronized as Afrikaner liberalism. Exploring the defence and articulation of free speech in South Africa, Nash examines Dutch attempts to modernize the legacy of the Enlightenment, the existentialism of a generation of Afrikaners during the 1940s and the renewal of Afrikaans literature - the prison writings of Breyton Breytenbach and the work of Olive Schreiner, M. K. Gandhi, and Richard Turner. This study shows the Socratic commitment to following the argument where it leads, sustained and developed the storm and stress of a peculiar modernity. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Africa - South - Republic Of South Africa - Philosophy | History & Surveys - Modern |
Dewey: 320.096 |
LCCN: 2009008557 |
Series: Studies in Philosophy |
Physical Information: 0.63" H x 6" W x 9" (1.09 lbs) 250 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Southern Africa |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: This book brings into view the most enduring and distinctive philosophical current in South African history--one often obscured or patronized as Afrikaner liberalism. It traces this current of thought from nineteenth-century disputes over Dutch liberal theology through Stellenbosch existentialism to the prison writings of Breyten Breytenbach, and examines related themes in the work of Olive Schreiner, M. K. Gandhi, and Richard Turner. At the core of this tradition is a defence of free speech in its classical sense, as a virtue necessary for a good society, rather than in its modern liberal sense as an individual right. Out of this defence of free speech, conducted in the face of charges of heresy, treason, and immorality, a range of philosophical conceptions developed--of the self constituted in dialogue with others, of freedom as transcendence of the given, and of a dialectical movement of consciousness as it is educated through debate and action. This study shows the Socratic commitment to following the argument where it leads, sustained and developed in the storm and stress of a peculiar modernity. |