Pedro Tabensky
Biographic Data
| ID | 83078 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pedro Tabensky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pedro |
| FAMILY NAME | Tabensky |
| SIGNATURE | TABENSKY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rhodes University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4015-4293 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Confronting the dark matter of Higher Education
This paper explores the structural and ideological constraints that militate against the trust required between teachers and students for effective teaching and learning in contemporary South African universities and beyond. The first part of the paper addresses how widespread commercialisation and precarity born of scarcity, in addition to other widely explored issues relating to the legacy of apartheid and colonisation in South Africa, foster d…
Rising from the Ashes of Cultural Devastation
Fanon on Recognition and Solidarity
Frantz Fanon's revolutionary psychiatry aimed to help constitute a postcolonial Algeria that recognised the humanity of all its members and, more widely, a Third World liberated of the shackles of colonial misrecognition. Fanon offers us an account of how a politics of misrecognition can give way to a politics of recognition. However, the violent means by which he thought a society guided by the ideal of mutual recognition could be achieved from …
Feminism and women in African philosophy
In this preamble, we highlight some of the more recent work on gender and sexuality in African philosophy. We do this as a way of introducing the special issue on “African Philosophy, Women, and Feminism”. In particular, we outline and highlight the trajectory and intellectual landscape of several discussions on women and feminism in African philosophy in the issue, and in this way, build on some previous work on gender, women, sexuality and Afri…
Ethics and education as practices of freedom
On the one hand, according to Richard Rorty, Paulo Freire and others, education is the practice of freedom. On the other hand, according to Michael Foucault, Mary Midgley and others, ethics is the practice of freedom. How, then, are education and ethics related to one another and what do these authors mean by ‘the practice of freedom’? In this piece, I argue that education and ethics are two mutually constitutive aspects of the practice of freedo…
Rebellion and Revolution
In this piece I will focus on what I think is a central aspect of Albert Camus’s thinking, embodied in the distinction he makes in The Rebel between rebel and revolutionary. His is a philosophy of rebellion and he thinks that revolutions are a distorted expression of our need to rebel against that which we cannot accept. His views should serve as a counterpoint to those who think that an all-or-nothing approach to social change is desirable (thos…
Pitfalls of Negritude
Leopold Senghor’s Negritude is a failed attempt to resurrect African pride from the ashes of humiliation. It fails because it simply provides a façade of pride that covers up the humiliation. It offers consolation rather than genuine cure. Franz Fanon shows us why this is so, and so does Wole Soyinka. I make use of their critiques, particularly Fanon’s, to show the extent to which some prominent streaks in the current South African Africanisation…
The Ethical Function of Research and Teaching
It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and …
What’s Wrong with Walden Two
Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F. Skinner’s novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly neglected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable reversal…
The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy
This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in Ragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of co…
Objectivity and Difference in Moral Discourse
Personhood and community
Davidson develops an argument that establishes the most basic set-up for rationality. The minimal set-up is a triangle formed by two subjects and an object. Each of the two subjects occupies one of the three angles and the third angle is occupied by a subject matter – that about which the two subjects are in communication with one another. I extend Davidson’s argument somewhat and show how an entire pluralistic community is required for individua…
Replies to Commentators
Précis of Happiness
Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose (Happiness from now on) is, among other things, a book about the holistic interrelationship that exists between the concepts of happiness, rationality and ethics. The conception of happiness at issue is, in broad outline, Aristotle's, which is to say that it is about the meaning of life. He referred to this conception as eudaimonia. Perhaps the fundamental guiding question that has motivated me to write H…
Parallels Between Living and Painting
The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy
This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in Ragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of co…
Pitfalls of Negritude
Leopold Senghor’s Negritude is a failed attempt to resurrect African pride from the ashes of humiliation. It fails because it simply provides a façade of pride that covers up the humiliation. It offers consolation rather than genuine cure. Franz Fanon shows us why this is so, and so does Wole Soyinka. I make use of their critiques, particularly Fanon’s, to show the extent to which some prominent streaks in the current South African Africanisation…
The Ethical Function of Research and Teaching
It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and …
Replies to Commentators
Parallels Between Living and Painting
Objectivity and Difference in Moral Discourse
Personhood and community
Davidson develops an argument that establishes the most basic set-up for rationality. The minimal set-up is a triangle formed by two subjects and an object. Each of the two subjects occupies one of the three angles and the third angle is occupied by a subject matter – that about which the two subjects are in communication with one another. I extend Davidson’s argument somewhat and show how an entire pluralistic community is required for individua…
Replies to Commentators
Précis of Happiness
Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose (Happiness from now on) is, among other things, a book about the holistic interrelationship that exists between the concepts of happiness, rationality and ethics. The conception of happiness at issue is, in broad outline, Aristotle's, which is to say that it is about the meaning of life. He referred to this conception as eudaimonia. Perhaps the fundamental guiding question that has motivated me to write H…
The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy
This piece is one of among a handful that seek in the first instance to reveal the origin of African philosophy as an academic discipline, the source of its unity and distinctiveness. The discipline of African philosophy originates in Ragedy, out of pain, confusion and rage stemming from colonial destruction; destruction that is responsible for what Fanon calls the ‘negro neurosis’ caused by what Biko would describe as the unbearable fusion of co…
What’s Wrong with Walden Two
Despite being eminently forgettable from the literary point of view, B. F. Skinner’s novel, Walden Two, provides us with an excellent opportunity, not so much to show what is wrong with mainstream accounts of free will, as Robert Kane thinks, but rather to explore another key and importantly neglected condition for genuine agency; namely, that properly lived human lives are those that are and must continue to be vulnerable to unforseable reversal…
The Ethical Function of Research and Teaching
It is the epistemic as well as the ethical responsibility of academics to aim to approach their research and teaching with a proper understanding of the ultimate ethical purpose or telos of their defining activities and products,which is the practical aim of promoting human flourishing. Minimally, academics should aim at understanding, and a key component of understanding is to understand the ideal ethical purpose of what is being researched and …
Pitfalls of Negritude
Leopold Senghor’s Negritude is a failed attempt to resurrect African pride from the ashes of humiliation. It fails because it simply provides a façade of pride that covers up the humiliation. It offers consolation rather than genuine cure. Franz Fanon shows us why this is so, and so does Wole Soyinka. I make use of their critiques, particularly Fanon’s, to show the extent to which some prominent streaks in the current South African Africanisation…
Rebellion and Revolution
In this piece I will focus on what I think is a central aspect of Albert Camus’s thinking, embodied in the distinction he makes in The Rebel between rebel and revolutionary. His is a philosophy of rebellion and he thinks that revolutions are a distorted expression of our need to rebel against that which we cannot accept. His views should serve as a counterpoint to those who think that an all-or-nothing approach to social change is desirable (thos…
Ethics and education as practices of freedom
On the one hand, according to Richard Rorty, Paulo Freire and others, education is the practice of freedom. On the other hand, according to Michael Foucault, Mary Midgley and others, ethics is the practice of freedom. How, then, are education and ethics related to one another and what do these authors mean by ‘the practice of freedom’? In this piece, I argue that education and ethics are two mutually constitutive aspects of the practice of freedo…
Feminism and women in African philosophy
In this preamble, we highlight some of the more recent work on gender and sexuality in African philosophy. We do this as a way of introducing the special issue on “African Philosophy, Women, and Feminism”. In particular, we outline and highlight the trajectory and intellectual landscape of several discussions on women and feminism in African philosophy in the issue, and in this way, build on some previous work on gender, women, sexuality and Afri…
Fanon on Recognition and Solidarity
Frantz Fanon's revolutionary psychiatry aimed to help constitute a postcolonial Algeria that recognised the humanity of all its members and, more widely, a Third World liberated of the shackles of colonial misrecognition. Fanon offers us an account of how a politics of misrecognition can give way to a politics of recognition. However, the violent means by which he thought a society guided by the ideal of mutual recognition could be achieved from …
Confronting the dark matter of Higher Education
This paper explores the structural and ideological constraints that militate against the trust required between teachers and students for effective teaching and learning in contemporary South African universities and beyond. The first part of the paper addresses how widespread commercialisation and precarity born of scarcity, in addition to other widely explored issues relating to the legacy of apartheid and colonisation in South Africa, foster d…
Rising from the Ashes of Cultural Devastation
Sociology (12 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · History (3 works)