Theoria

In the recent past, political philosophers have turned their attention to what Martha Nussbaum has correctly termed ‘political emotions’, or the role of ordinary virtues in politics. For example, in The Politics of Moral Capital (2001), John Kane discusses the moral significance of Nelson Mandela in the maturation of South African democracy. Nussbaum rates Mandela's embodiment of generosity of spirit as a virtue that contributed to his success as a politician. Besides Mandela, a few global political figures embody the Aristotelian virtue of friendship. Inspired by his successful shepherding of South Africa into one of the most dynamic democracies in the world, this article examines the concept of friendship as a political tool, especially in multiracial societies.

In this article, I will rebut Amartya Sen's arguments that John Rawls's political philosophy gives us a form of closed rather than open impartiality. I will argue that there is plenty of room within Rawls's own theory of justice to accommodate the requirements of open impartiality. I will appeal to the way the original position is used in public reason and the method of reflective equilibrium to defend Rawls. Given the way that it fits into Rawls's broader theory, the original position should not be construed as a form of closed impartiality, doomed to be infected unduly by parochial cultural values. Rawls's contractualism is more defensible and versatile than Sen envisions. Some elements of Sen's argument have been briefly addressed before, but this article provides the only sustained, systematic treatment of this important issue.

In his recent book, An African Ethics of Personhood and Bioethics: A Reflection on Abortion and Euthanasia (2020), South African philosopher Motsamai Molefe argues for the impermissibility of abortion on the grounds that a foetus possesses the potential for dignity, which he argues amounts to the potential to develop the African virtues. However, we argue, firstly, that his account of the supposed wrongfulness of abortion is inconsistent with his later account of the supposed permissibility of euthanasia; we argue that his account succumbs to the well-known objections to the potentiality principle from as long ago as the 1970s; and, finally, we argue that his account is indeterminate in so far as it does not conclusively entail the immorality of abortion in the first place. Altogether, this amounts to a decisive rejection of Molefe's anti-abortionism.

How silence relates to politics has traditionally been connected to the dismissal of silence from politics. However, there is a growing recognition that this representation of silence as absence is harmful to our ability to think through the integral and productive role that silences play in political life. This book exchange contributes to this shift in theorising that emerges from the field of ‘silence studies’. To this end, the following exchange between Michael Freeden and Mónica Brito Vieira regarding their recent books on the politics of silence looks at how each author specifically engages with how and in what ways silence relates to politics. In bringing these authors together not only is clarity given to why silence(s) should be a research concern, but also to the issues of how and to what end silence can or should be researched.

Matthew McManus, The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2025. ISBN: 9781032647241, 246pp.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously. London: Hurst, 2022. ISBN: 9781787386921, 270 pp.

Beatrice Okyere-Manu and Léocadie Lushombo (eds), African Women's Liberation Philosophies, Theologies, and Ethics. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. ISBN 9783031391330, xix +301pp. (e-book PDF).

Prakash Kashwan and Aseem Hasnain, Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices for Environmental Action. London: Bloomsbury, 2025. ISBN: 9781350335493, 216pp.