StFX philosophy professor, Dr. William Sweet, has recently returned from a lecture tour and research visit in eastern and southern Africa, where he presented papers on the ethics of peace building and carried out research on the anti-apartheid movement and decolonization.
A major part of Dr. Sweet’s lecture tour was spent in Ethiopia, where he was invited to give the inaugural keynote address at an international conference on peace and sustainable development held at the University of Addis Ababa. There, colleagues and graduate students, primarily from universities in Ethiopia but also from east and southern Africa, met to discuss issues of environmental justice, technology and sustainable development, identity and decolonization, and the role of intercultural philosophy in promoting peace and intergenerational justice.
Professor Sweet noted the increase of interest in philosophy in Ethiopian universities, particularly relevant as Ethiopia ranks as the highest and fastest growing economy in Africa. Yet it is also a country where there continues to be regional and interstate tensions and conflict, and so the conference theme of peacebuilding was especially important, he says.
Among the participants who attended were Professor Mogobe Ramose, a prominent South African philosopher who lived as a political refugee and exile during the apartheid regime. Prof. Ramose is widely recognized for his role and internationalizing African philosophy, and is the author of the 1999 volume, African philosophy through Ubuntu, which seeks to apply Ubuntu to modern legal and political ethics.
Professor Sweet also met with faculty at the Institut dominicain d’études orientales in Cairo, where he discussed the role of interculturality and intercultural philosophy in the Middle East. He subsequently met with faculty in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and delivered a keynote address at the University of South Africa on ‘Truth, reconciliation, and peacebuilding.’
In South Africa, Professor Sweet continued archival research in Cape Town on the late 20th century philosopher Martin Versfeld. Versfeld, who was a vocal critic of the South African apartheid regime, was the first academic to introduce East Asian philosophy and philosophy of ecology into South African universities. Versfeld also directly inspired a generation of highly influential activists such as Adam Small and Rick Turner, Dr. Sweet says. While in South Africa, Professor Sweet was able to locate a major text, long missing, from Versfeld's early writings on philosophical idealism. Dr. Sweet plans to use this material in a book on the influence of philosophical idealism on South African politics and culture.
