Philosophy of Violence: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

This volume explores the role of violence generally but with specific reference to African concepts and themes, and the significance they have for social redress. The contributors interpret African concepts and themes to include accounts of violence, explicitly or implicitly construed from indigenous axiological resources like Ubuntu or personhood and from those works that are not African in origin but have become central in African moral, political and legal thought, such as Hannah Arendt’s On Violence and Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence. The volume contributes to moral philosophy, social philosophy, African philosophy, and political philosophy/theory. It situates itself within the Global South, specifically the African perspective, to explore, articulate, and defend (or even critique) African conceptions of violence. This volume also takes seriously the need to tap into the intellectual resource of the African and diasporic African episteme thruthinkers such as Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon and Reiland Rabaka. It appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy and related disciplines on violence in Africa and the postcolonial context. 

John Sodiq Sanni currently works as Lecturer at the University of Pretoria. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the NRF/British Bilateral Research Academy Chair in Political Theory (Political Studies Department) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research interests include social and political philosophy, continental philosophy (phenomenology), political theory, African philosophy and migration studies.

Charles Mathurin Villet is a scholar based in Düsseldorf (Germany) and a research fellow at the University of the Free State (South Africa). He was a lecturer (and also discipline head) in philosophy at Monash South Africa (Johannesburg) for almost a decade. He holds a PhD from Monash University (Melbourne). His research interest broadly falls within the fields of postcolonial, whiteness and heterotopian studies.