Call for Papers (June Edition, Volume 1, No. 2, 2025)

The maiden edition (published in December, 2024) of this journal was centred on the theme: Philosophy, Culture and Development in the Era of Fourth Industrial Revolution: Rethinking African Identity, Rationality and Human Values for Developmental Social Order. This edition requires innovative writings that seek to connect the human sciences to the scientific and technological subjects so as to make the complexities and convolutions we are currently noticing among human beings living in the contemporary world to become more humanised, humanistic, humane and humanitarian as well as human-centred.

Put simply, the human desire to build up humanity for purposive ends is valuable because it impacts positively on the lives of human beings by allowing diverse fields of knowledge to pursue their interests and more importantly realises that one way of knowing is not complete without the others both at the theoretical, cultural and practical levels, despite some of the cynicism, discrimination, hypocrisy and domination the notice. Accordingly, all disciplines, including science and technology, if they are to be relevant, need to or ought to have that focus on the humanisation of knowledge for the sake of improving the human condition and creating more avenues for learning and broadening our choices for security. If this is the case, then the success of even the scientific fields depends irrevocably on the appreciation of the meaning and value of a supplementary or complementary view of the world as known by all the sciences. Accordingly, all disciplines, including technology, if they are to be relevant to the human beings as individuals and as a society, need to or ought to have that focus on the humanization of knowledge for the sake of improving the human condition in the areas of conceptual frameworks, methodological concerns, social relations and the creation of more avenues for learning and broadening our choices for security.

Security is about the totality of the strategies and efforts to place a value on human life and to make human life worth living. Man’s creativity and the different disciplines are directed towards ensuring security. The Greeks taught that security is beauty. Beauty is when every part of something is working together in harmony. Therefore security is beauty seen in harmony. The American pragmatists taught that security is an experience. There is a more serious issue of: why is security a contested category? If security is understood only in its classical sense of tranquility or its elemental sense of the survival of the state or a group itself in order to carry forward its autonomy and mandate, then what happens when we are faced with the unknown and the fear of the unknown, as well as real and perceived threats or disruptions? What do we stand to gain by construing security in a wider sense of a collective effort or everybody’s business or prioritisation, such that its agenda embrace development and progress for government and citizens? What is the human factor or agency in security? The human factor or agency is the ‘organic’ element, which is central to all efforts to solve our human social problems arising from the complexity and uncertainty around human beings. This is to be addressed in a way that throws light upon key identity and security concerns. The goal of security comes from the affirmation of life itself, especially the value of human life. The work of the preservation of human and institutional values remains a major aim of security in any society.

Understanding the issues of identity and security implies that we need to be first of all ‘human’ before being categorised through racial, tribal, ethnic and religious perspectives. Identities define, animate and ‘complete’ human beings; Georg Hegel, among other theorists, held this view. So barring controversy, the point at stake is that the identity one assumes or is imposed on one, determines the level of security or insecurity one is exposed to. If this idea is tenable, then one way to understand these difficult questions is to say that eventually, after all said and done, human beings have the primal task of struggling to design and implement the basic principles of living a truly human life so as to add value to human existence. By so doing the human being can through the ‘scientific’ vocation he has chosen for himself live a fulfilled life within the society and create an avenue whereby the technological innovation he has brought into reality will work for peace and progress among human beings rather than be an object of disorder and discord in the local and global arena.

The central concern of the humanities, therefore, is to build a society in which people can live according to higher (human and humane) principles, guided by critical outlook to life, dialogue, humanism, imaginative and logical reasoning, fair play and social justice in relation to the application of politics, science and technology. One of the main concerns of the humanistic view of knowledge is to focus on the cultural life of the people. Thus the concern of the humanities is to guarantee the indispensable and proper character formation of human beings. The emphasis on character and institutional practices for virtuous conduct, inevitably under-scores the need for humane attitudes that define a secure environment. Hence, a humanistic view of the world seeks to build a conception of personal and social responsibility, which makes all concerned groups to act in ways that are conducive to the common good, human relations and conduct.

One important way that scholars can contribute to the humanistic, cultural, linguistic and philosophical development of the peoples of Africa, and the world at large, in this generation, is to identify, clarify and promote a system of values, ethical orientation, rationality, science and technology as well as social and political behaviour among governments, agencies and civil populace in ways that could be more constructive, critical and capable of establishing a pattern of scientific reasoning and attitude to life that challenges and mitigates the following endemic threats to human dignity and survival: domination, coloniality, anachronism, apartheid, disobedience to the rule of law, extremism, fear of the unknown or something better than us, hate speech, ignorance, impunity, inequity in resource distribution, insecurity and instability, jungle justice of the citizens and (non)state actors, sectarianism, segregation, siege mentality of the ruler, terrorism, xenophobia, among others.

Therefore, an appeal is made for distinguished contributions to the quest for human security and development in Africa in distinctive chosen areas of specialised theory and knowledge aligning with the general theme. It seems highly assuring that your inputs to the journal will be worthy of acute, insightful and incisive global and national intellectual attention and will open the horizons of human knowledge by highlighting the state-of-the-art in knowledge production and dissemination.

Authors (using footnotes) should forward their manuscript(s) to the Guest Editor, Professor Philip Ujomu (WhatsApp Numbers: +234-810-644-772 & +234-701-071-3053) through: iyunadejpc@uniosun.edu.ng, iyunadejpc@gmail.com and pujomu@yahoo.com in Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition).