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Philosophy and Imperialism

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The present entry offers a very brief introduction into just a few of the numerous, complex relations between imperialism and philosophy. The piece does not seek to resolve the issues presented. Much less does it pretend to comprehensiveness. Two interrelated questions motivate the expositions to follow: In what ways has imperialism impacted or influenced philosophy? And, conversely, how has philosophy influenced, addressed, and/or confronted imperialism? To begin, some central concepts will be fleshed out. The second section then presents a number of episodes in which accordant relations have been obtained between imperialism and philosophy. The next section then explores a number of overtly anti-imperialist philosophies.

Definition

The definitions to follow do not aspire to grasp the essences of things in themselves. They are rather delineations meant to be broad enough not to be unnecessarily exclusionary and narrow enough to pinpoint real areas of convergence between imperialism...

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Wood, D. (2021). Philosophy and Imperialism. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29901-9_36

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