Lexington Books
Pages: 140
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-7936-0594-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $104.00 • (£80.00)
978-1-7936-0596-2 • Paperback • April 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
Teodros Kiros is professor of philosophy and literature at Berklee College of Music, a Non Resident Dubois Fellow at Harvard University, host and producer of African Ascent, and author of thirteen books, including Self-Construction and The Formation of Human Values.
Part One
Chapter 1 The Self in Ancient Egypt
Chapter 2 The Self in Classical Indian Thought
Chapter 3 Sri-Aurobindo
Chapter 4 The Self in Chinese Thought
Chapter 5 Buddhist Innovations
Chapter 6 The Self in Greek Thought
Chapter 7 Race, Sex, and Gender in the Quran
Chapter 8 The Self in the Enlightenment thinkers
Part Two
Chapter 9 Modernity and the Sexed and Gendered bodies
Chapter 10 The Idea of Existential Seriousness/Revolutionary Theory and Race
Chapter 11 Self-Definition
Conclusion Self-Definition
Self-Definition is erudite and enchanting! It lures the readers to dive into the philosophical depth of the East and the West, finding out ontologically the definition of Self. In this monograph, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian philosophies are given as much attention as Western philosophers like Descartes, Foucault, and Sartre. Finally, the author's original interpretation of the philosopher Paget Henry's philosophical reasoning to equate Brahman with African notion of Ego sets the foundation stone for the Global South in self-definition.
— Ashmita Khasnabish, Lasell College
Against commentators asserting that attention to identity corrupts politics and individuals’ lives, Teodros Kiros brilliantly argues that identity and processes of self-definition are essential to the political realm and to our understandings of self. Self-Definition rejects the Eurocentrism underlying numerous volumes on the subject. It examines figures, movements, and scholarship from the Global South and Global North. It also explains the who, what, where, when, why, and how of human self-definition across a range of eras. Upon finishing Kiros’s book, all readers will have to reevaluate their prior conceptions of universality, particularity, and notions of race, gender, sex, and sexuality, especially as a result of the often silenced and disavowed philosophical heritages forged by Global South actors. Human beings are protean. So too, as Kiros demonstrates, are the ways humans define the self and perform identity.
— Neil Roberts, Williams College