Conversations in Philosophy : Crossing the Boundaries [1 ed.] 9781443814867, 9781847186300

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Conversations in Philosophy

Conversations in Philosophy: Crossing the Boundaries

Edited by

F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, Roxanne Burton, and Ed Brandon

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Conversations in Philosophy: Crossing the Boundaries, Edited by F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, Roxanne Burton, and Ed Brandon This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, Roxanne Burton, and Ed Brandon and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-630-0, ISBN (13): 9781847186300

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Part I: Starting the Conversation............................................................. 1 Chapter One................................................................................................. 4 On What Philosophy Is Stephen J. Boulter Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Looking Backwards and Forwards: Arendt and Plato on Philosophy in Human Traditions James Stillwaggon Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 28 Philosophy or Theory? Rorty on the Analytic-Continental Divide Richard L. W. Clarke Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 43 The Philosophy and Literature Debate: Assessing its Salience in the Caribbean Roxanne Burton Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 56 The Philosophy of the Martial Arts: Myth and Reality Mark K. Setton Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 63 Eastern Principles within Western Metaphysics: Krause and Schopenhauer’s Reception of Indian Philosophy Claus Dierksmeier

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Part II: African Philosophy .................................................................... 73 Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 77 Discourse and Object: Appraising the Comparative Approach in Philosophy D. A. Masolo Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 104 Philosophy, Culture and Values: Can there be a Dialogue between African and non-African Philosophy? Sirkku K. Hellsten Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 120 An Open-ended Conversation: Western and African Philosophy Michael Thompson Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 133 Origin of Philosophic Sagacity in the Discourse on African Philosophy and its Relevance in Modern Africa F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 146 African Philosophy and Negritude Literature Kahiudi Claver Mabana Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 160 Kagame and Mbiti on the Traditional Bantu View of Time Kibujjo M. Kalumba Part III: Caribbean Philosophy............................................................ 171 Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 175 Can there be a Regional (Caribbean) Philosophy? Ben Mulvey Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 186 Am I “in the Caribbean” and (Philosophically) Does it Matter Anyway!? Eddy Bermingham SJ

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Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 198 Philosophy, Cultures and Errors of Ontogenesis–Challenges and Dangers John Ayotunde Bewaji Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 213 Conceptualizing Philosophy and its Implications for Curriculum Development in Philosophy for a Caribbean University Stephen Geofroy Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 225 Tukontology: An Approach for Describing European and African Orchestrations of Reality in the Caribbean Deryck Murray Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 241 A Study in Comparative Ontologies: Root Metaphors of Existence Clevis Headley Part IV: Meta-Ethics and Ethical Issues ............................................. 257 Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 260 The Anthropocentricity of Ethical Norms as an Argument for Subjectivism Ed Brandon Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 268 The Concept of Right(s) in Western (Anglo-American) and African (Yoruba) Philosophies: An Exercise in Comparative Ethics Lawrence O. Bamikole Chapter Twenty-One ............................................................................... 281 The Split Subject: The Infinitely Demanding Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas Simon Critchley Chapter Twenty-Two............................................................................... 290 Towards a Phenomenology of Development Michael Fitzgerald Chapter Twenty-Three............................................................................. 303 Is Phenomenology a Philosophy of Peace? Joshua Schuster

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Chapter Twenty-Four .............................................................................. 317 Zest Xavier Vanmechelen Contributors............................................................................................. 329 Index........................................................................................................ 336

PREFACE

The papers in this volume represent the deliberations of the first two of a series of annual “conversations in philosophy”, promoted by the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Barbados. Philosophy came late to the UWI, and to a context in which its content is by no means self-evident. Given its internal divisions and changing traditions, the contentions about the roles it might play in the Caribbean, and the widespread perception of an ivory-tower irrelevance, it was felt that it would be helpful to organize international philosophical conferences on an annual basis that would demonstrate philosophy’s engagement with real issues and the contribution its many varied traditions can make to better understanding and to informed action both inside academia and in the wider world.. Thus was born the Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium (CHiPS). The inaugural symposium took place from March 31 to April 1, 2005, and others have been held each year thereafter. Called “conversations”, these symposia encourage interaction across traditions, specialisations, and disciplines, and emphasise the importance of genuine dialogue rather than the presentation of settled positions. While it is difficult to capture the flow of face to face dialogue and discussion in a written text, we also decided to entitle this volume “Conversations in Philosophy”, with the hope that you the reader will experience a sense of the different perspectives brought together in conversation with each other. With varied standpoints and philosophical traditions being embraced, it is also appropriate that this collection is subtitled “Crossing the Boundaries”, reflecting the unbounded nature of philosophy in itself, untrammelled by geographical and cultural differences or the bureaucratic conveniences of educational institutions, and also a reflection of the meta-philosophical focus of our first two symposia. The contributors who responded positively to our invitation to be included in this collection have extensively revised their presentations, in the light of the discussions at the symposia and our editorial comments. While there are many cross-cutting themes, we have imposed upon the essays a division into four parts. Despite the diversity of papers in Part I, they offer, or assume, particular answers to the question of the nature of philosophy. They range from addressing the specific question of what

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philosophy is to a reflection on aspects of Asian philosophical thought. In his discussion of philosophy in Consciencism, Kwame Nkrumah stated that philosophy and its social milieu are inseparable in that the social milieu affects the content of philosophy and the content of philosophy seeks to affect the social milieu. Given the peculiar historical and cultural landscape of Africa and the Caribbean due to the expansionist designs and interests of Europe, African and Caribbean people have had to address some issues specific, though not unique, to their regions. The papers in Parts II and III focus on these regional philosophies, African and Caribbean, respectively. Taken together, Parts I, II, and III offer many different visions of what philosophy might be and might aspire to be, as well as illustrating in various different ways how particular approaches can shed light on issues of more general concern. We however hope that you will recognise, as we have, that a consistent theme in these papers is the important role that philosophy has had and must continue to have in all communities globally. Arguably one of the most important tasks that philosophers have attempted is to delineate a synoptic understanding of reality and our place in it. One major element in this broad aim is an understanding of how we ought to live. Part IV brings together another heterogeneous collection of approaches, but whose main focus is on these ethical questions. It is our hope that the papers in this volume will serve to demonstrate the significance and relevance of philosophy in addressing fundamental human problems and issues. Philosophising, we believe, is often a response to society and to social problems, and cannot live in a vacuum. Aristotle observed that philosophical wisdom is the key to a profound kind of freedom. It helps by promoting an ideal of self-creation: people who think, understand, evaluate, and decide for themselves. Within academia it also has an indispensable role to play. This responsibility of philosophy in tertiary education was underscored by the Principal of the Cave Hill Campus, Professor Hilary Beckles, in his opening address to the inaugural CHiPS in 2005, when he asserted that a university without a philosophy department was like a bus without a driver. Many hands and heads have contributed, in one way or another, to the production of this volume, for which we owe much gratitude. In particular we should single out the School of Graduate Studies and Research (Cave Hill Campus) and the Committee responsible for the Campus Lecture Series for the funding that made it possible for the two symposia here represented to take place. We are also deeply and personally indebted to the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Professor Hazel Simmons-McDonald and the Head of the Department of History and

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Philosophy, Dr Richard Goodridge, both of whom supported the symposia and this extension of it. We wish to recognize the organizational assistance we received from the former Administrative Assistant in the Dean’s office, Mrs Frances Hinds-Griffith, and Mrs Sardis Chandler, the former secretary of the Department of History and Philosophy, and from our then colleague Fr Stephen Geofroy. We would also thank the contributors to this collection for their timely and conscientious work in revising their original papers for this publication. In moving beyond the symposia to this embodiment of it, we must also express our gratitude for the helpfulness and patience of the staff of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, in particular Amanda Millar, in conjuring a coherent manuscript out of our wordprocessors. Lastly but by no means least, we must give thanks to our colleague, Dr Richard Clarke, “the onlie begetter” of these conversations, who conceived the first symposium and was deeply involved in its organization. To all others whom we cannot thank by name, we extend our most sincere gratitude.

PART I STARTING THE CONVERSATION

The first of our Cave Hill conversations was advertised to the world with a quotation from Richard Rorty in which he observed that, while the nature of philosophy was itself a philosophical problem, the subject was so fragmented that different sets of practitioners did not even recognise themselves as falling under the same umbrella. Our hope was that through encouraging dialogue across such yawning chasms we might discover shared issues or concerns and explore them to each side’s enlightenment. To the extent that Rorty got it right, one might despair of finding anything in common among self-styled philosophers besides the name. But we suspect that things are not quite so desperate. The Western tradition, as started by the Greek predecessors and contemporaries of Socrates, could be said to involve a generally naturalistic approach to understanding the cosmos, however bizarre their speculations may now seem to us, and similarly this-worldly reflections on how we ought to live in it. As this tradition of reflection, argument, inquiry, and experimentation developed, it prompted second-order inquiries—about the nature and structure of reasoning and of explanatory knowledge—and encouraged the proliferation of new disciplines when progress in answering particular questions seemed possible. The core of unsolved and apparently unsolvable problems is what the Western tradition has picked out now as the specifically philosophical concerns of an Aristotle or a Leibniz, as distinct from their contributions to biology or mathematics or other disciplines. Such a picture, or one not far removed from it, is expounded in Boulter’s paper in this section. Boulter starts from the ambitious aim to present a general account of the world and our place in it, recognizes the scepticism with which such a lofty view of philosophy is now usually greeted, especially by academic philosophers, and goes on to argue that philosophy’s aim is really not so ambitious since it is a matter of co-ordination, of solving the problems or puzzles (Aristotle’s aporia) that are thrown up at the intersection of different types of inquiries. Living disciplines or fields of inquiry are characterized by disagreements and unsolved problems. But these are

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Part I: Starting the Conversation

usually internal to the domain and only those initiated into the area are taken seriously in trying to solve or resolve them. However, our various traditions of thought and inquiry do not all sit happily together, and it is in their cross-disciplinary puzzles that Boulter finds philosophy to reside, a minimalist version, perhaps, of a desire for a unified synoptic grasp of the world However reflection on how we should live is to be incorporated into such a view as Boulter’s, it is undeniable that Western, and most other traditions of philosophy have given ethical issues a central place. Ethical issues crop up throughout the discussions in this volume. Stillwaggon’s meditation on Socrates, especially in the Phaedo, is an example of such a contribution. His paper (along with those of Bamikole in chapter twenty and Ochieng’-Odhiambo in chapter ten) discusses how philosophy can use tradition and reflection on the future to arrive at some answers concerning how we ought to live in this world. The figure of Socrates could, we suspect, prove “good to think with” also in tracing the analogies and disanalogies between Greek moral philosophy and the sage tradition in African philosophy which is taken up in several papers in Part II. There is, perhaps, support for this idea in Clarke’s concluding appeal to Rorty’s notion of philosophy as a “Socratic intermediary” between different disciplinary traditions. Clarke’s paper echoes, from a rather different perspective, many of the issues Boulter canvassed. Both are suspicious of the high ambitions of many in the Western tradition, but where Boulter discerns scarcely hidden pretensions in talk of “how things hang together”, Clarke, or Rorty as Clarke portrays him, sees this as a feasible approach, a conversation among others, that we can aspire to. But again, where Boulter sees a need to rationally resolve the aporia that arise at the intersection of traditions of reflection, Clarke/Rorty seem content to let a hundred flowers bloom, without choosing among them, or at least any more rationally than publicists and PR people can underwrite. Stillwaggon’s use of the Phaedo provides another link, this time to Burton’s discussion of the philosophical and literary traditions. Western philosophy can claim a considerable range of styles, several of which partake of the qualities of great literature. The Phaedo is an obvious example. Philosophy can boast the informal musings of Descartes’ Meditations, the geometrical modes of Spinoza’s Ethics or Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, the playfulness of Hume or the power of Hobbes’ Leviathan, prose as bad as Kant’s or Dewey’s, or as forceful as Nietzsche’s. An implication of Burton’s paper is that, while literature and philosophy should not be conflated, items of philosophical value can be gleaned from

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a variety of sources. This vision of philosophy is seen in other papers (including Murray’s, chapter seventeen, and Headley’s, chapter eighteen) and is also found in Setton’s contribution in this Part. Continuing the ethical theme, Setton gives an account of the martial arts as a means of self-discipline and moral self-cultivation in earlier Chinese and Japanese tradition, and their transmogrification in the world-wide entertainment industry. In the final paper in this section, which also has its roots in Asia, Dierksmeier offers an exploration of the Indian influences on a littleknown but still influential German thinker, Krause, and his much more famous neighbour, Schopenhauer. One of Burton’s targets, the unhelpful equation of any use of language with literature, brings us back to the question of what distinguishes discourse in philosophy from that in history or physics or lyric poetry or advertising. Boulter’s suggestion that it is constrained to solve his sort of puzzle, respecting as far as possible what is known elsewhere, provides, we think, a plausible answer. But this answer may not take us very far in the case of some other traditions that are different at least in so far as they do not share exactly the same historical relationships with other disciplines. An issue that recurs through this collection is the extent to which, if at all, philosophising can be anything more than “ethnophilosophy”, the delineation of the worldview of a particular group of people. As is suggested in several discussions in Parts II and III, philosophising that explicates a culture or society’s worldview is to be found in Western and African philosophy as well as other regional philosophies. On some views of our evaluative thought (as Brandon suggests in chapter nineteen), there is little more to do than ethnophilosophy, since there may not be much to appeal to independently in order to justify a claim that some person or society has got things right, or got them wrong. Some disciplines, empirical or rational, have found ways to provide independent adjudication of conflicting views, but others, including philosophy, because of their nature or subject matter, have not been able to achieve this. In such fields, perhaps the most we can hope for is the illumination provided by sympathetic comparisons of different traditions and the exploration of new possibilities. So at least we hope in continuing our conversations.

CHAPTER ONE ON WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS STEPHEN J. BOULTER

In the absence of this critical reflection on the nature of the philosophical enterprise, one is at best but a potential philosopher. —W. Sellars1

Introduction The nature of the philosophical enterprise is a notoriously vexed and somewhat tedious question. Most academic philosophers would prefer to avoid it altogether. Most do. But at a time when the discipline is so fractured (and fractious), with little agreement on what questions or projects ought to be pursued and how,2 and with the wider intellectual community, not to mention Pro-Vice-Chancellors, beginning to wonder what philosophers and philosophy departments in general are for, it is time to face the question squarely, however uncomfortable this may be. But there are reasons over and above these purely pragmatic considerations which ought to spur us on to tackle this most vexed of questions. If we assume, with Sellars, that engaging in philosophical activity at a reasonably sophisticated level presupposes some conception or other of the nature of philosophy itself, then, if we wish to flatter ourselves with the belief that we are at least “potential” philosophers, we 1

“Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Martinich and Sosa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 474. 2 Graham Priest rightly characterises 20th century philosophy as ending in “diversity and fragmentation”. After listing the philosophers he thinks to have been the most influential in the last 20 years (Dummett, Kripke, Rawls, Armstrong, Derrida, Levinas and Habermas) he notes that “without exception, everyone had a different philosophical agenda and a different pursuit” (“Where is Philosophy at the Start of the 21st Century?”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, CII (2003) 94-95).

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ought to be able to say something sensible on the nature of philosophy and the philosophical enterprise. Now if these considerations are not too wide of the mark, then philosophers must accept that it is simply not good enough, when pressed on this matter, to frown significantly and say, as we so often do: “Well, the nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question, for ‘philosophy’ is an ‘essentially contested concept’”, and then hope that no one is so impolite as to press us further. Nor will it do, I think, to suggest that philosophy is just whatever academic philosophers get up to in their working hours, a suggestion which implies that the current fragmentation of the discipline is entirely in order.3 Such responses are likely to cut little ice with a sceptical Pro-Vice-Chancellor; but they ought not to impress us either. For despite the fact that we philosophers have been taught not to look for the essences of things, should we accept that there is nothing that our various and disparate activities have in common that makes them distinctly philosophical? Is there not at least a family resemblance to be uncovered here? If not, what have we achieved by calling a work philosophical or a thinker a philosopher in addition to clearing our throats? The time has come (again) for philosophers to bite the bullet, to stick our necks out, and to say something sensible about what philosophy is all about and how one goes about doing it. But before one can begin to speak reasonably about the nature of philosophy and philosophical activity, it seems sensible to pause for a moment to consider what constraints should be placed on any such account. Surely we cannot say just anything we like about the nature of philosophy. Presumably some accounts will be better than others, and the criteria by which such judgements are made ought to be identified and brought out explicitly. So I will begin by stating in a cursory fashion the criteria I think any plausible account of the nature of philosophy must satisfy, and then proceed to the account itself.

Suggested Constraints on Accounts of Philosophy First, any plausible account of the nature of western philosophy ought to be able to accommodate the metaphilosophical insights of the great philosophers in the western tradition.4 Clearly it is unlikely that all such 3

It might be, but this needs to be shown. There will always be some debate about which philosophers ought to be included on this list. But I think the matter is made less contentious if we agree not to include anyone whose work has not stood the test of time. This means that no one within the last 50 years or so should be included in our considerations. To those 4

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On What Philosophy Is

views can be accommodated; but an account of the nature of the discipline that is able to accommodate a good number of the views of its greatest practitioners is to be preferred to one that does not. The intuition here is that philosophy ought not to be characterised in such a way that one is forced to maintain that its greatest practitioners did not know the nature of their own enterprise. This is not to say that they cannot be corrected on these matters, but merely that the default position ought to be that the great practitioners were not hopelessly confused about the nature of their discipline. Nor does this mean that the nature of the discipline cannot change. But the range of activities into which philosophy can plausibly be thought to mutate is limited by the discipline’s past. If it changes too much, it seems reasonable to say that is no longer philosophy but something else. Second, a plausible account of the nature of philosophy will square with the actual practice of the great philosophers. The intuition here is that philosophy ought not to be characterised in such a way as to force one to maintain that the great practitioners of the discipline were not actually engaged in philosophy at all. A corollary to this is that a plausible account of the nature of the discipline ought to be able to call on historical who would maintain that accounts consistent with this constraint will only tell us what philosophy has been like in the past, not what it is like at the moment, and so is excessively conservative, I would say that these are virtues rather than defects. We ought to ignore recent and contemporary work in this matter because we are poor judges of its philosophical worth. This rather banal point is graphically illustrated by Modern Classical Philosophers: Selections Illustrating Modern Philosophy from Bruno to Bergson. This edited collection was compiled by Benjamin Rand (of Harvard University), and published by Houghton Mifflin Company, originally in 1908. It reveals what an informed professional considered to be the list of philosophical greats of the modern period. What the list reveals is that agreement on who counts as great is always easier to secure the more historically distant the time period under consideration. His list is as follows: Bruno (1548-1600), Bacon (1561-1626), Hobbes (1588-1679), Descartes (15961650), Spinoza (1632-1677), Leibnitz (1646-1716), Locke (1632-1704), Berkeley (1685-1753), Hume (1711-1776), Condillac (1715-1870), Kant (1724-1804), Fichte (1762-1814), Schelling (1775-1854), Hegel (1770-1831), Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Comte (1798-1857), Mill (1806-1873), Spencer (1820-1903), Herman Lotze (1817-1881), Charles Renouvier (1815-1903), Bradley (1846-1924), Josiah Royce (1855-1916), James (1842-1910), Bergson (1859-1941). What this list reveals is that between Bruno and Kant there is much agreement (the status of the other German Idealists is less certain), but between Comte and Bergson there are names many professional philosophers will never have heard of, let alone read. Apart from Mill, who would be routinely included in an undergraduate programme of study?

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examples from a variety of thinkers of different complexions as illustrations of certain key points contained in the account. Third, ideally the account of the nature of philosophy will not depart too widely from the expectations of the educated non-philosopher. If the account provided bears no relation whatsoever to what academics in other disciplines associate with the term “philosophy”, then a question mark ought to be placed next to that account. This is not to say that the philosophical layman ought to be able to understand the work of professional philosophers without a great deal of effort and help (if at all), anymore than the lay person understands advanced theories in physics, mathematics or engineering. But the layperson can recognise a theory in physics or a theorem in mathematics as belonging to physics or mathematics, even if they do not understand the theory or the theorem. In an ideal world, the same would hold for philosophy. But perhaps the most important criterion I wish to insist upon is the following: It seems plausible and highly desirable that accounts of philosophy identify a role for the discipline within the general intellectual economy. There must be such a role if philosophy is to avoid the fate of all hermetically sealed endeavours, namely, irrelevance to the wider context. I maintain that any account of philosophy which renders it trivial, or a mere intellectual amusement for a group of specialists (perhaps like chess) will have missed something essential. At least this is my hope. Philosophy might not be as important as some previously thought; it might not solve the problems of the world; it might not provide clear cut answers to all its questions; it might be rather dry and difficult at times; but when done properly it is not trivial, despite the fact that the relevance of the work of some philosophers may not be immediately obvious. It is with this last point particularly in mind that I begin my substantive account of what I take philosophy to be. It is by looking at the distinctive contribution of philosophy within the general intellectual economy that we begin to formulate a clearer idea of its nature.

On What Philosophy Is The account of philosophy provided here is based primarily on Aristotle’s remarks in the Topics, Posterior Analytics, Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, and Metaphysics. It also draws heavily on the views of Ryle and Sellars, and generally seeks to accommodate a wide variety of metaphilosophical insights by identifying different stages of the philosophical enterprise, with different metaphilosophical views accurately

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On What Philosophy Is

describing different stages of this enterprise.5 And while it is no part of my claim here that all philosophers consciously go through all the processes I set out, I would claim that the philosophical community as a whole does (over many years, if not centuries, of grappling with a problem) while the careers of individual philosophers may be entirely devoted to only certain stages or aspects of the discussion. I begin with the general aim of philosophical activity in its broadest sense. Trying always to avoid the grandiose (which is difficult) it is not implausible to suggest that the point of the discipline of philosophy throughout most of its history has been to provide a general description and account of the nature of human beings and our place in the natural world. It is this aspect of philosophy which forever ties it to the so-called “Big Questions” (much to the embarrassment of most professional philosophers and the delight of undergraduates). Of course professional philosophers rarely, if ever, have this task in mind on a Monday morning on the way to work; but the core sub-disciplines of philosophy do, when taken together, go some way to completing what one might call “The Big Picture”. These departments of philosophy are devoted to developing accounts concerning (a) the most general features of the natural world (ontology and metaphysics), (b) the most general features of the mind and its relation to the body (philosophical anthropology and philosophy of mind), (c) how human beings come to know and understand something of themselves, the natural world, and whatever else the universe may contain (epistemology), and finally (d) how human beings ought to comport themselves, both privately and collectively (theories of action, ethics and politics).6 The “Holy Grail” has a set of accounts covering areas (a)-(d) 5

That this account shares features with those offered by Ryle in his Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), Sellars in his “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” and Lowe in his A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), i.e., thinkers of a variety of different stripes, suggests that the account offered here has some staying power. 6 Some might reasonably wonder where Logic fits into this general scheme. Without wanting to commit myself to any detailed account of the nature of Logic and its relation to philosophy, I would suggest that Logic is a part of, or at least presupposed by, both metaphysics and epistemology. It is a part of epistemology insofar as much of what we claim to know we know on the basis of inferences from premises accepted as basic. If logic is the study of valid inference and the cataloguing of valid inference patterns, then logic is an essential branch of epistemology. But Logic also has a claim to being a part of metaphysics inasmuch as each system of Logic presupposes basic intuitions about the nature of reality. For instance, Classical Logic, with its commitment to the principle of bivalence, assumes that the external world is in a definite configuration which is independent

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which are not just satisfactory when taken in isolation, but which are consistent with each other and mutually reinforcing. Moreover, it is arguable that many of the great philosophers have hoped that accounts (a)(c) will provide some guidance in the area of human action.7 It is commonly assumed, at least implicitly, that knowing something about the nature of the world we live in and something of our own human nature is bound to shed some light on what kind of life we should lead and what kinds of actions we ought to perform or avoid. Implicit in this view of philosophy then is the claim that philosophy is not just a theoretical exercise, but is ultimately connected, if at times somewhat distantly and indirectly, with the practical and existential concerns of ordinary life.8 This is one way in which philosophy can claim to be more than a trivial pursuit. I suspect that this account of the ultimate aim of philosophy will be familiar to most. I also suspect that it will strike many as hopelessly grandiose and perhaps even laughably old-fashioned, maybe even dangerous. And of course there is a very respectable and long-standing tradition within philosophy which maintains that such a project is an impossible undertaking. But despite the fact that many a philosopher has made it her business to attack something like this vision of philosophy (either directly or indirectly), her work as a philosopher would be unintelligible without it. Because, as Aristotle noted, one cannot overthrow philosophy, intelligently at least, without actually doing some philosophy, and those who reject this picture as hopeless must themselves defend a set of philosophical theses which inevitably fall into recognised compartments of the discipline as I have just sketched it. Consequently one should say that philosophy has included an ongoing discussion about whether this grand project is in fact achievable, and if so, how. of our being able to know what that configuration is (setting aside, of course, clearcut cases of socially constructed items). By contrast, Intuitionistic Logic, as championed by Michael Dummett and others, rejects the principle of bivalence precisely because it rejects this metaphysically realist view. 7 Note the recommended order of dependence here. It is the reverse of the current fashion for letting one’s political views constrain, rather than be constrained by, the rest of one’s philosophy. 8 Not all great philosophers fall into this camp, but it is clear that Plato, Aristotle, the late Hellenistic thinkers, Aquinas and the Scholastics, Descartes, Hume and Kant, not insignificant figures, would. All these figures made contributions to all the core sub-disciplines of philosophy, and all were concerned not just with the theoretical aspects of the discipline, but with its practical consequences as well. Of course such a task is seldom taken on by any one individual today given the need to specialise to a greater degree in one area if one hopes to make any significant contribution at all to the discipline.

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On What Philosophy Is

But I now want to insist that the project as outlined above is not as grandiose as appears at first blush.9 And the reason for this, not always obvious even to philosophers themselves, is that the basic materials out of which the Big Picture is developed are not provided by philosophers qua philosophers. It seems to me that if we are to understand the distinctive nature of philosophy we must recognise a division of intellectual labour between philosophy and the sciences. It is the role of the special sciences to conduct investigations into that aspect of reality peculiar to them, and to discover new facts and develop theories within and about that particular realm. But if this paper has a fundamental assumption it is that there is no particular aspect of reality that philosophers study, as there is, say, for the biologist, chemist or economist. The contribution of the philosopher qua philosopher to the grand project is to draw on pre-existing materials derived from the special sciences, as well as our store of pre-theoretical common sense beliefs, and co-ordinate this material into a coherent picture of human beings and our place in the natural world. It is this task of coordination, lying outside the remit of any special science, which is specifically philosophical, and the problems encountered in the pursuance of this task are specifically philosophical problems.10 This is not to say that philosophers have not often tried, sometimes successfully, to provide theories concerning matters which strictly speaking belong to the special sciences. This has occurred repeatedly, particularly when the relevant science had yet to emerge. It is this historical fact which prompts some to say that philosophy is what one does with a problem until one can hand it over to the sciences. But on the account of philosophy offered here such efforts are not strictly philosophical, although they are often prompted by philosophical investigations, and put to philosophical use.11 But it is also 9

And many will be blushing. One could try to mask the grandiose nature of philosophy by describing it in more homely language. Sellars talks of philosophy helping us “find our way around” by showing us how things “hang together”. But once these phrases are fleshed out one finds philosophy’s grandiose nature returning to view. 10 This is the view of philosophical questions presented by Ryle in his Dilemmas. Philosophy on this account is still very difficult. It is like attempting to complete a very complex puzzle when one does not know in any specific detail what the final picture looks like, whether one has all the necessary pieces, whether the pieces one does have all fit into the completed picture, and, of course, whether there is a final picture to be constructed at all. It is not surprising therefore that many philosophers, the sceptics, have maintained that philosophy so construed is still little more than a fantasy. 11 It is because philosophers historically have worn many hats (philosopher, scientist, theologian, historian, to name just a few) that philosophical activity has

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for this reason that we can expect that (a) philosophy will never be replaced by the sciences, for philosophy is not proto-science, or science carried out by philosophers, and (b) there will always be a call for philosophy, since it is likely that there will always be co-ordination problems. So what does a strictly philosophical or co-ordination problem look like? A co-ordination problem arises when one notices a tension between beliefs or lines of thought that one is otherwise inclined to accept. As Aristotle says, an aporia (problem or puzzle) arises “when we reason on both sides [of a question] and it appears to us that everything can come about either way.” This produces “a state of aporia about which of the two ways to take up” (Topics, VI, 145b16-20). Such problems can emerge within a single science or domain. For example, within anthropology there are currently several respectable yet incompatible theories concerning the origins of bipedalism in hominids, with no clear winners likely to emerge anytime soon. And evolutionary biology saw a furious debate concerning the relative merits of Lamarckian and Darwinian theories of evolution. Both theories had something to commend them, and, at least at first, it was not obvious “which of the two ways to take up”. But I would suggest that such internal disputes are best left to specialists within the field, and that they are not the business of the philosopher qua philosopher (would they listen to us anyway?). Rather, a strictly philosophical aporia arises when the attractive lines of thought have their origins in different domains. Consider the problem of induction. At its simplest, this notorious problem is the problem of co-ordinating beliefs emanating from logic on the one hand with another set of common sense beliefs on the other.12 The problem often been mistaken for activities of a different sort. While we all recognise clearly enough that Aristotle is wearing his philosopher’s hat in the Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics and his biologist’s hat in Parts of Animals, things are not always so clear-cut. Is Searle’s Speech Acts a work of philosophy or a branch of linguistics? While it was motivated by philosophical concerns, and can be put to philosophical use, I would suggest that its ultimate home is within linguistics. But it is no less valuable for that. Similar considerations apply to Berkeley’s A New Theory of Vision, which today would be housed within the cognitive sciences, and much of the work of Descartes. Descartes’ early work The World, for example, is an attempt to develop and justify an entirely new system of mechanics, a theory in competition with the likes of Aristotle’s physics and Newton’s mechanics, neither of which are now seen as parts of philosophy per se (a fact demonstrated by the absence of these works from the standard undergraduate philosophical curriculum). 12 The same sort of problem emerges if one takes on board the view that the main purpose of the sciences is to explain natural phenomena, and that this is achieved primarily by appeal to universal laws of nature. In this case there is a clash

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emerges when one acknowledges (a) the common sense view that experience is generally a good guide to action, and that it is reasonable to defer to those of greater experience since they are likely to be better judges of how events are likely to unfold, and (b) the logical point that a finite set of observations provides no logical guarantee that the future will resemble the past, a point which suggests to some that relying on experience as a guide to action is in fact unreasonable. Both lines of thought seem to be well supported, and yet they appear to be inconsistent with each other. If this is what a strictly philosophical problem or question looks like, the following can then be said about philosophical activity in general. The task of the philosopher is to give an account of the initial set of beliefs that removes the initial puzzlement, and so solves the philosophical problem. Removing the puzzle constitutes success in philosophy. Indeed, on this view, solving co-ordination problems of this sort is the raison d’être of the philosopher, and is the philosopher’s specific contribution to the overarching project.13 For once the puzzlement is removed pieces of the puzzle that previously would not fit obligingly into the Big Picture find their respective places. On this view, all our conceptual analyses, (second order) theory construction, and argument development, analysis and critique, that is, all the day-to-day activities of the working philosopher, are best construed as means to this end.14 between one special science, logic (which says one cannot arrive at a universal generalisation from a finite set of observations) and the other natural sciences (which strive to do just this, think that on occasion this has been achieved, and by means consistent with a commitment to empiricism). 13 This paragraph draws on the following extended passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “We must, with a view to the science [metaphysics] which we are seeking, first recount the subjects that should be first discussed. [The “subjects” being a set of aporia.] .... For those who wish to get clear of difficulties [i.e. aporia] it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie a knot of which one does not know. But the difficulty of our thinking points to a ‘knot’ in the object: for in so far as our thought is in difficulties, it is in like case with those who are bound; for in either case it is impossible to move forward. Hence one should have surveyed all the difficulties beforehand, both for the purposes we have stated and because people who inquire without first stating the difficulties are like those who do not know where they have to go; besides, a man does not otherwise know even whether he has at any given time found what he is looking for or not; for the end in not clear to such a man, while to him who has first discussed the difficulties it is clear” (995a23995b4). 14 If we are entirely honest I think most would agree that in fact academic philosophers spend most of their time discussing the views of other philosophers

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Now if this is what a strictly philosophical problem looks like, and what success in philosophy consists in, we still need to recognise that how a philosopher goes about achieving this goal is often as philosophically interesting as the solution produced. And it is tempting to launch into a study of the various methodologies employed to this end. But it is well worth noting that in one sense there is a limited number of ways in which a philosophical puzzle can be solved. After due consideration the philosopher must maintain either that (a) The alleged tensions in the initial set of beliefs are merely apparent and not real (perhaps stemming from certain misunderstandings either of the facts of the case or of our own conceptual system), or, (b) The perceived tensions in the initial set of beliefs are indeed real, and are best removed by modifying, qualifying or perhaps abandoning altogether one or more of the initial set of beliefs. Other options are available to the philosopher, but these options are signs of philosophical failure. For instance, a philosopher might effectively declare that the puzzle cannot be solved, and that theorising in this domain is futile (either in principle or at least for the present). In practice this amounts to saying either (c) No coherent account of the initial data can be given (either in principle or at least at present) but that nonetheless none of the initial beliefs should be abandoned. Or, (d) No coherent account of the data can be provided, and for this reason all of the initial beliefs fall under suspicion. (d) is the position taken by those willing to suggest that in a particular domain or domains human beings are subject to comprehensive and systematic error, not simply at the level of theory, but at the level of the initial beliefs themselves. These patterns can be illustrated with a quick glance at two old philosophical chestnuts, the free will vs. determinism debate, and the mind-body problem. In both cases the initial data pull in two seemingly incompatible directions. On the one hand we feel free, talk and act as if we are free, and yet we recognise that the freedom of the will is hard to reconcile with the natural sciences. Are there not necessary and sufficient causes for every natural event? Does this not preclude the possibility of who themselves took a crack at solving a co-ordination problem, and the conflicts their work engenders with the work of other philosophers. This then engenders a second layer of discussion, and then a third, and then an entire cottage industry, by which time the original problem is often lost sight of entirely. While this work can be immensely interesting for those involved, its usefulness is often questionable.

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freedom? In the mind-body problem, we all accept initially that we have mental states with particular properties (consciousness and intentionality, etc.); but again we recognise that it is difficult to reconcile these claims with the physicalism of the natural sciences. We find ourselves asking questions like, “How is it that brute matter can become conscious?” And on both issues we find philosophers who claim the noticed tensions are merely apparent (e.g., the compatibilists in the free will debate, and John Searle in the philosophy of mind) and those who claim that the tensions are real, and that more or less drastic revisions of the initial data are required (e.g., the determinists in the free will debate, and the eliminativists and substance dualists in the philosophy of mind). And on both we can find philosophers who despair of ever reaching any coherent account of the data while refusing to give them up (this appears to be Descartes’ view on the freedom of the will,15 and Thomas Nagel in the philosophy of mind). And while I am not aware of any major philosopher occupying the last logical position (d) on either of these topics,16 Kant’s treatment of the antinomies is the best historical example of a philosopher maintaining that there are domains in which we are systematically confused and cognitively incompetent, and that all beliefs in these domains ought to be viewed with suspicion.

Historical Examples Our confidence in the account of the philosophical enterprise offered here would be increased if one could point to a number of recognised philosophers whose work appears to have taken its point of departure from an aporia of the sort described above. A few words on these matters will have to suffice. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is, unsurprisingly, an obvious example of a major philosophical work taking its start from a set of aporia. The first chapter of Book III sets out explicitly thirteen aporia Aristotle intends to tackle, and this he proceeds to do. For example, he asks whether only sensible substances exist, or whether there are others in addition to these, and whether metaphysics studies only the principles of substance or 15 I infer this from Descartes’ putting free will on a par with the incarnation and creation ex nihilo. In a journal begun on the 1st of January 1619, he wrote: “The Lord has made three marvels: things out of nothingness; free will; and the Man who is God.” Descartes: Philosophical Writings, edited and translated by P.T. Geach and G.E.M. Anscombe (Hong Kong: Nelson’s University Paperbacks, 1976), 4. 16 Although a modern day Pyrrhonian sceptic might be envisaged here.

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whether it also includes what we would refer to as logic. In each of the thirteen cases there are reasons pulling one in contradictory directions, and the task of the metaphysician is to resolve these tensions. His Nicomachean Ethics is also replete with such aporia, perhaps the most famous of which is the tension felt between Socrates’ views on incontinence and those of the ordinary person. But it is also clear, at least on a traditional reading, that Plato’s metaphysical theories stem from his reflections on the tensions between two influential lines of thought, namely Heraclitus’ famous claim that all is in flux, and Parmenides’ equally striking but opposing assertion that change is impossible. What is more, each of these pre-Socratic positions presented challenges to another plausible line of thought, namely that human beings are able to understand something of the world around them. Making sense of these three conflicting lines of thought lies at the heart of Plato’s metaphysical and epistemological work. If we move beyond the Classical Greeks we find that the Medieval Scholastics, often denigrated as mere theologians, were in fact engaged in genuine philosophical activity. Aquinas’ philosophical challenge was to accommodate two great authorities from different domains, Augustine and Aristotle, whose views were clearly not obviously compatible on all key points. In fact every scholastic question begins with the stating of a question to which contradictory answers have been given by recognised authorities from the domains of theology and philosophy. Descartes can also be read as involved in a similar project, at least in the Meditations. In the dedication to this work Descartes acknowledges the need to reconcile his rationalism in epistemology with the Church’s teachings on the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. One final historical example. Reconciling the philosophical positions of rationalism and empiricism was a significant element of the Kantian project. But Kant can also be read as having been spurred into philosophical action at a more profound level by the apparent tension between the Newtonian mechanics he so admired and his belief in the autonomy of the will. Reconciling these two commitments is clearly central to his metaphysical and epistemological project. I hope these brief and necessarily incomplete historical observations go some way to showing that my account of philosophy does indeed square with the actual practice of some great philosophers. It is also hoped that this account is not too far removed from the expectations of the educated non-philosopher, at least at some stages, although this remains to be seen. But perhaps most importantly, it is hoped that this account does identify, if

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not the role, then at least a legitimate role for philosophy as a discipline within the general intellectual economy.

A Final Comment: Common Sense vs. Revisionism I conclude these reflections on the nature of philosophy with a methodological moral. Philosophers are often characterised by their adopted positions on particularly seminal topics. One is a nominalist or a realist, an empiricist or a rationalist, a materialist or an idealist, a dualist or a monist, ... and the list continues. And most of these designations are useful as a crude beginning to the characterisation of a particular philosopher. But it seems to me that there is one vital characterisation of a philosopher or philosophical school that is often overlooked, and that characterisation stems from what one is willing to modify when tensions between lines of thought are taken to be genuine. It is here that a fundamental but often overlooked division in philosophical schools comes into focus, a division between what for want of better terms we can call “common sense philosophers” and “revisionists.” Most of the major philosophers in the history of the discipline have treated a sub-set of the initial data leading to aporia, namely the views of the common man, as little more than Wittgenstein’s proverbial ladder, which once used can be kicked away. That is, while philosophers generally recognise that they must begin their reflections by including beliefs that are widely shared and accepted by the common run of mankind (if only because these beliefs play a role in the emergence of the initial puzzlement) they feel no need to include these beliefs in their final account of the domain in question. In short, if a philosophical problem can be solved by the rejection of a widely held and intuitively plausible belief, then philosophers have generally shown themselves quite prepared to take this revisionist course.17 But if the account of philosophy sketched here is on the right track, then this commonest of manoeuvres needs to be looked at with suspicion. For if the task of the philosopher is to remove tensions between reputable lines of thought, then the philosopher has no business rejecting any of the initial data except as a last resort. Rather, with Aristotle, the philosopher ought to strive to preserve as many of the initial “common opinions” as possible, for these views come stamped with the authority of their 17

I am reminded of Moore’s observation that “what is most amazing and most interesting about the views of many philosophers is the way in which they go beyond or positively contradict the views of Common Sense” Some Main Problems of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2002), 2.

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respective domains, an authority which neither waits for nor fears the approval or disapproval of philosophers. Aristotle writes: We must, as in all cases, set the observed facts before us and, after first discussing the difficulties [i.e. aporia] go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions about [the topic at hand], or, failing this, of the greater number and the most authoritative; for if we both refute the objections and leave the common opinions undisturbed, we shall prove the case sufficiently (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Ch. 1, 1145b0-7).

It is worth noting that even Quine, who was no defender of common sense, and certainly not shy of philosophical paradoxes, argues that while everything in principle is up for revision, one ought not to go in for revision for revision’s sake, but only to solve a problem (e.g., to square a recalcitrant experience with one’s overall belief system), and when opting for revision, to operate on the assumption that a “minimum of mutilation” is to be sought.18 On the view of philosophy presented here, while what is saved and what is dropped will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, in all cases we ought to strive to save as much of the initial data as possible. Since the philosopher’s job is to solve philosophical puzzles, and not revision for revision’s sake, if solution A saves more of the initial data than solution B, then A is to be preferred. But this entails saving as much of common sense as possible because revisions here are not minimal by any means, demanding extensive and widespread revisions to the entire Big Picture under construction. In particular, dropping a common sense belief will always be more revisionary than dropping a philosophical thesis. Note that it is not claimed that common sense views should never be given up. If one common opinion genuinely clashes with another, then clearly something has to give. Moreover, if a common opinion genuinely clashes with newly discovered and reliable empirical information, then again the common opinion will have to give way. The important point is that there is nothing sacrosanct about common opinions which means that they can never be rejected. All I have claimed is that we should think far more carefully about rejecting a common opinion than we usually do, particularly if the only motivation to do so is pressure from a philosophical argument or theory. Indeed, if this account of philosophy has a moral it is 18 When considering how and when to make revisions in one’s set of beliefs, Quine mentions favourably our “natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible”, and espouses what one might call a “pragmatic conservatism”. (See “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 44, 46.)

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we should not give up on common sense on the strength of “mere” philosophical arguments, since these arguments only have an authority derived from their ability to accommodate and co-ordinate reputable opinions.19

19

For extended treatment of this particular point, see my The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

CHAPTER TWO LOOKING BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS: ARENDT AND PLATO ON PHILOSOPHY IN HUMAN TRADITIONS JAMES STILLWAGGON

In the preface to Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt speaks of the role of thought in relation to human history and human possibility. She illustrates her claim that thought is conditioned by its relation to the past and future with the following parable from Franz Kafka: He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment—and this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet—he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.1

Human presence itself seems problematic in the parable—if it were not for humanity it seems the universe would somehow be at peace with itself. As Arendt points out, “the fact that there is a fight at all seems due exclusively to the presence of the man, without whom the forces of the past and the future, one suspects, would have neutralized or destroyed 1

Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 7. Thanks to the Fall 2001 Philosophy and Education Doctoral Proseminar where some of these ideas first took shape, especially in conversations with Rodino Anderson, Seth Halvorson, and David Hansen. Thanks also to Terri Wilson and John Knapp for helpful criticism on early versions of this paper.

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each other long ago.”2 At the same time, the man does not choose the difficult position in which he finds himself. Instead, he wishes for a place outside of the forces that cause him to fight, a metaphysical wish that would allow past and future to crash together into a simple continuum. But “time is not a continuum ... it is broken in the middle,” and it is humanity that rends time and creates the ongoing battle that Kafka represents.3 The question that Arendt derives from Kafka’s story is what role thought— represented in the parable by the metaphysical wish to leap outside of time—might play in the mediation between a past which does not drag behind us as a dead weight but forces us forwards, and a future that does not beckon us forward but forces us to turn back and consider history as providing the conditions for our existence.4 The answer Arendt suggests in her preface is that the relationship of thought to those transcendent truths that stand outside of time and space is not one of simple verticality. Constituted by its own historical moment, the vector of thought is not the shortest distance imagined between the horizontal line of history and a transcendent principle that lies outside of time. The vertical is the prerogative of the divine, the historical moment that results from the revelation of transcendence itself. Verticality is only very rarely a part of the human project.5 As a moment of revelation cuts across human history in a singular, perpendicular intersection, the uniquely human initiative of thought is instead a diagonal line that cuts across both the transcendent and the historical as it runs parallel to neither. Structured in its origin by the forces of past and future, human thought is nonetheless a product of these infinite forces that deliver limitless possibility to the human mind’s capacity for self-understanding.6 Arendt’s discussion of the place of thought in history brings more to the question of our relation to the historical and transcendent conditions of our existence than Kafka’s story of transcendent verticality and imminent historicity can provide. Specifically, it points to a productive relationship between the metaphysical wish and the historical conditions that are shaped in relation to the metaphysical transcendent, in that it provides human initiative through the diagonal vector of thought. If thought is 2

Ibid., 10. Ibid., 11. 4 Ibid., 10. 5 Even those few moments in history where, according to Arendt, the transcendent reveals itself through human action, such as the American and French Revolutions, are instances of human actors being moved by the transcendent principles of liberty, equality, etc. that remain beyond their grasp (Arendt, 1980), 152. 6 Ibid., 12. 3

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neither a mere sharing in the movement of history that defines us, nor a sharing in the work of the transcendent, the uniqueness of human thought seems to save human freedom from the forces that define it. Still, Arendt’s discussion of the diagonal is more suggestive than final in any sense, and as readers we are driven to seek examples of diagonalization in thinking as it has been realized in the traditions of philosophy that inform our discipline. For her part, Arendt provides examples of the latter in the eight exercises in political thought that follow her introduction. But is the diagonal vector of thought a heralding of Arendt’s particular project, or does it help us to theorize a more fundamental position of philosophical thought, a more basic relationship between transcendent truths and the historical lives they inform? I will look at two passages from Plato as places where Arendt’s sense of the diagonal of thought might take place. Using the closing moments of the Meno, I discuss the relationship of philosophy with the past— conceived here as a negative hermeneutics through Socrates’ discussion of tethering—as the move by which thought connects with the revelation of transcendence received through historical tradition. In the Phaedo, I try to show the future’s influence on thought as providing the pedagogical ideals that sustain tradition through Socrates’ stance as a poetical thinker. Through the two I hope to show that Arendt’s sense of the opposing forces of history and the future, and their relation to transcendence through humanity as a break in the continuum, are fundamental to these expressions of philosophy’s place within human traditions.

Tethering Transcendence in True Opinion Toward the end of the Meno, after Anytus has made his appearance and angrily departed, Socrates makes a distinction between two ways the mind relates to its object. Although strict definitions are not given, knowledge, the first and rarer of the two, seems to mean a rational relationship of corresponding representation between mind and object. The second, “true opinion” is a term we recognize as relating to folk-belief, or ways of knowing passed on by tradition rather than established by rational thought. The significance of true opinion is introduced when Socrates questions whether his teacher, Prodicus, had not been mistaken in his insistence on knowledge as the “sine qua non for right leadership” (97a).7 This questioning he explains to Meno through the metaphor of the guide, in which he argues “if a man judges correctly which is the road, though he 7

Plato, Protagoras and Meno, trans. W.K.C. Guthrie (Baltimore: Penguin, 1956).

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has never been there and doesn’t know it,” he will still be judged as a useful guide, as the practical problem of achieving the intended destination will be solved (97b). With this pragmatic shift, that “right opinion is something no less useful than knowledge” (97c), Socrates affirms part of the status of the traditional understanding of aretê at issue at the opening of the dialogue, albeit in a highly qualified manner: traditional answers to important questions may be valuable, but only insofar as they are correct. The qualification that Socrates places on the practice of traditional values is couched in a further metaphor—that of the statues of Daedalus, known for their tendency to “run away and escape” “if no one ties them down” (97d). Like the Daedalan statues, Socrates argues, true opinion that is not somehow tied down “is not worth much ... But a tethered specimen is very valuable” (97e). The tethering of true opinions, Socrates explains, is achieved in the practice of reason, through which true opinions may become knowledge (98a). The precise meaning of what it might mean for true opinions to “run away” when they are not so tethered, however, is left unstated, and is crucial to the relationship between traditional practices and reason. It is necessary, therefore, to attempt some approximation of Socrates’ meaning here. There are two reasons why someone might tether an object: one, as in the case of a helium balloon or a bicycle, so that it will not be lost or stolen; the second, as in the case of a dog, so that it will not go where it does not belong—in the neighbour’s garden, for example. The first of these two cases can be easily dismissed from Socrates’ possible meanings, however, as it cannot possibly be the loss of traditional forms of thinking that worries him. The rationale for this dismissal comes earlier in the Meno, which suggests an overbearing and confused presence of traditional views rather than their absence. We are left, then, with the second option, which the reasoning behind the dismissal of the first helps to explain. Socrates’ habit of questioning is often intended to bring his interlocutor to a sense of aporia or undecidability with regard to their own sense of values, exposing the internal contradiction of traditional views. It seems from the metaphor of tethering that we have come upon Socrates’ understanding of the source of these contradictions. The traditional values of Athens, we learn later in the dialogue, are generally understood to have been revealed by poets, “prophets and tellers of oracles, who under divine inspiration utter many truths” (99c). As these messages are of divine origin, they may be believed and practised without further investigation; their truth is vouchsafed by the gods, and can only be altered or challenged by another revelation. The role of questioning is to emphasize a cutting back against the force of history as that which uncritically applies revealed

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truth to places where it might do harm rather than good. In other words, Socrates does not want to accept transcendence as it is currently present in the opinions that have been handed down by tradition, but at the same time recognizes that the historical moment in which the transcendent was revealed is not available. The role of thought is to work against the muddling force of history to regain the significance of transcendence as it might be realized in the present. This position, defined negatively as neither the horizontal force of the tradition we cannot trust, nor the vertical, transcendent moment to which we have no access, can be understood as the diagonal, that which cuts through both. But if the past conditions our thinking, if human traditions provide the frames of mind with which we approach the world, how is it that we are ever able to look at the past with anything but a reverence for its power? Where are we to look for the source of those questions that might allow us to read the past in a practice of critical tethering? Returning to Arendt’s idea of the future as that which pushes us back against the past, we might also look to the future—that which is not yet inscribed in tradition—as precisely this source.8 The force of the future, as Arendt argues, is the imposition of the new, in the form of new people coming into the world, providing it with the possibility of change, including the possibility of complete destruction.9 The good that we project into the future is the historical possibility that we seek to create in our own interpretation of transcendent goods, the possibility of human happiness. In the next section I look to the Phaedo through its creative, poetic force in Socrates’ role as a poet who writes the possibility of his students’ futures in his interpretation of the transcendent.

Writing an Afterlife and a Future Life When we meet Socrates in the Phaedo, he has taken to adapting Aesop’s fables to lyrical music, his way of obeying the divine instructions given to him in a dream: “Socrates, practice and cultivate the arts” (60e61b).10 While he believes his practice of philosophy has fulfilled his obligation to the dream, he is in a sense hedging his bets now that he 8

“I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act: that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don’t know we can never discover” (86B). 9 Arendt, 1980, 174-175. 10 Hamilton, Edith and Huntington Cairns, ed. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, (New York: Pantheon, 1961).

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prepares for his death. As Hans-Georg Gadamer interprets this move, Socrates has taken on a poetical stance that places him in opposition to his interlocutors, the natural philosophers Simmias and Cebes, who are looking for scientific reasoning about death.11 But why prepare oneself willingly for death? Why prepare at all? If suicide is unlawful and immoral, why should the philosopher accept death willingly? These are the questions that Simmias and Cebes put to him (61d). Socrates’ initial response involves three parts. The first, admittedly based on “hearsay” (61d), claims that as property of God humans ought not to take the question of their lives into their own hands, but at the same time ought not to hold on to life too dearly, as God might take them at any time “to enter the company, first, of other wise and good gods, and secondly of men now dead who are better than those who are in this world now” (63b-c). As Socrates admits that his belief amounts to no more than “a firm hope,” in the rewards for the good after death, “as we have been told for many years” (63c), Simmias and Cebes are justifiably sceptical—they want to hear a philosophical argument that will provide them with proof, but what they receive is a meditation on the traditional views expressed in poetry. Encouraged by their challenge, Socrates makes a second argument that employs the beliefs of his fellow philosophers toward another cause for hope. Calling upon the belief that the body places distractions and obstructions in the philosopher’s path to truth (64c-65d), Socrates concludes that “either it is totally impossible to acquire knowledge, or it is only possible after death, because it is only then that the soul will be separate and independent of the body” (66e)—another reason to hope that the philosopher might have something to look forward to in death. This hope for something good after death is based on a more basic, unstated hope that there is something rather than nothing after death, and this will become the basis for Simmias and Cebes’ further argument. The weakness of these arguments in proving the immortality of the soul is clear, but the weakness of the arguments is only properly read in relation to the poetic-mystical role that Socrates has taken on. As Gadamer argues, “the Phaedo’s poetic power to convince is stronger than its arguments’ logical power to prove”.12 In the midst of this weak argument, 11 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). 12 Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, 22. Gadamer’s idea is that Plato’s plan is to “unite” and show the importance of scientific knowledge for self-knowledge, but nothing of the sort takes place. Instead we are offered an alternative between the two. The two might fit together only to the extent that poetic understanding might underlie scientific insight.

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Socrates introduces an element that we might call the argument’s poetic task. Once he has gained Simmias and Cebes’ assent on the question of the body’s place as an obstacle in the acquisition of knowledge, Socrates pushes forward to connect the disembodied philosopher’s life to an idea of the moral life, the life of happiness. He begins with the assertion that “so long as we keep to the body and our soul is contaminated with this imperfection, there is no chance of our ever attaining satisfactorily to our object” (66b) and proceeds to associate the body with “distractions,” “diseases,” “attack[s],” “fears,” “fancies,” “nonsense,” “wars,” “battles,” and “slave[ry],” (66b-d). While each of these dangers is presented in relation to the quest for truth, it is clear here—if only from the fact that these dangers go beyond those which threaten our epistemological foundations—that Socrates has introduced the importance of the philosophical way of life as justified from the perspective of happiness rather than from the perspective of truth. Further, Socrates gains assent from Simmias that the life of philosophy, as a life that rejects the pleasures of the body, is more likely to be one of courage and temperance (68a-69a). If philosophy can protect us from anxiety, war and disease, and help us maintain courage and self-control, it will make our lives better even if death does not hold good things for the good, or anything at all. Socrates may not have proof of life after death, but he is convinced that the life of the philosopher, his life, is a happy one. Socrates’ reflection upon the ethical effects that a life of philosophy may produce contributes nothing to the proof of the afterlife that his interlocutors want. At the same time, it is compelling insofar as it demonstrates the good of the philosophical life from the quality of life it brings into being. But if the end is happiness, why don’t we seek after it directly? Socrates maintains that his own happiness has not been gained by searching for happiness, but by searching for wisdom. “[I]t is not the right method to exchange one degree of pleasure or pain or fear for another, like coins of different values” (69a-b). In other words, if we spend our lives chasing after happiness, we will lose ourselves in this chase in the same manner that the intemperate or the coward spends his life running after or away from the things that bring him pleasure or pain. The only goal we Gadamer moves in this direction himself “an adequate understanding of what mathematical purity is, is first made possible by Plato’s doctrine of ideas” (25). Gadamer states the point of the discussion is not the proof but “that which constitutes the actual being of the soul—not in regard to its possible mortality or immortality but to its ever vigilant understanding of itself and reality” but this could be pressed further—the point is the disposition, the way of life, the vigilance itself (29).

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Arendt and Plato on Philosophy in Human Traditions

may set for ourselves that will bring about this life of happiness is wisdom (69b). The indirection of Socrates’ life of happiness through the seeking of wisdom mirrors the indirection of the argument that Socrates has been attempting. In contrast to the logical argument demanded by Simmias and Cebes, which would proceed step by step toward the goal of a valid conclusion with each step grounded by that which precedes it, Socrates’ argument posits the conclusion at the start. As if introducing a distant, impossible object, the force of Socrates’ argument comes from our ability to imagine ourselves in relation to that object, and how life might be lived in that relation. Like the closing line in Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo”, the presence of the object makes our lives objects of contemplation and tells us, “you must change your life.”13 The reversal of the argument’s structure recalls the fundamentally ethical purpose of philosophical thought. By postulating the transcendent, Socrates emphasizes the question of how we live, and the effects of our beliefs on our lives, over the question of certainty. This concern manifests itself later in the dialogue in Anaxagoras’ idea, quoted by Socrates, that “it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything.” With this, Socrates’ focus shifts finally from the truth of the natural world to the truth of human life: “On this view there was only one thing for man to consider, with regard both to himself and to anything else, namely the best and highest good” (97c-d). As human lives are lived always in relation to what is believed to be the highest good, whether consciously or unconsciously, they are shaped relative to the goods they seek. For Socrates in his last dialogue, his concern is not the “natural” reality of the afterlife, but the force that such a concept has in framing the happiness of his students’ lives. Both in the content and the form of his argument he emphasizes the importance of the relationship between our beliefs and the lives they bring into being as products of those beliefs.

Human Possibility in the Heart of Time Through Socrates’ last dialogue we can begin to understand the force of the future in our relation to the past: a demand placed upon us to order the world so as to make a home for a human future. The significant content of traditional views on the afterlife and goodness for the Socrates of the Phaedo is their poetic force in shaping the future in the form of the 13

Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Marie Rilke, translated and edited by Stephen Mitchell (New York: The Modern Library, 1995) 67.

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new—his students. The possibility of goodness and happiness in the future serves as the principle by which he cuts across the force of history, tethering traditional beliefs to the meaning that they have in shaping human lives. Certainly, our views of what we want for the future are shaped by the force of the past, and so the relationship of principles by which we consider the past and the future is necessarily circular, with no final founding of our judgment in an absolute certainty. Like the man in the parable who fights backwards and forwards, we make meaning of the past and future through our mediation of the space we create between the two. The central task, Arendt seems to suggest, is to preserve the space of this thought as the basis of human freedom from one generation to the next. Like the life of happiness that Socrates seeks to call forth in his own students, the preservation of the space of thought for Arendt lies along a similar path of indirection: This small non-time space in the very heart of time, unlike the world and the culture into which we are born, can only be indicated, but cannot be inherited and handed down from the past; each new generation, indeed every new human being as he inserts himself between an infinite past and an infinite future, must discover and ploddingly pave it anew.14

While this non-time space must be preserved if humanity itself is to be maintained, Arendt makes clear that it is not something we can dictate or hand down. The tradition of thought has its being in practice—the rift that cuts the continuum of time into past and future is the presence of the human mind that struggles with each. As our possibilities are conditioned by a historical moment of transcendent revelation to which we have no access and by the demands of a future that has yet to take shape, the role of thought is to engage with the past to find a place in the future for the transcendent within which human history has meaning. In practice, these two moments might exist intertwined in the same action, that critical dialogue by which we make sense of the past by considering its ultimate claims with regard to the force of the future. The separation of this action into its two vectors here has allowed us to consider it in terms of the powerful forces of past and future in the midst of which, according to Arendt, thought has its being.

14

Arendt 1980, 13.

CHAPTER THREE PHILOSOPHY OR THEORY? RORTY ON THE ANALYTIC-CONTINENTAL DIVIDE RICHARD L. W. CLARKE

The academic discipline called ‘philosophy’ encompasses not only different answers to philosophical questions but total disagreement on what questions are philosophical. —Richard Rorty 1985 Whenever a view is held to be absolute anathema by one’s contemporaries, that is the time to look at it seriously. —Colin McGinn

Perhaps the most important commentator on metaphilosophical issues in recent years has been the controversial Richard Rorty. Rorty is, for reasons that I hope to make clear, less controversial among his fellow Pragmatists or among Continentalists than among Analysts. For the latter, many of his pronouncements are akin to the proverbial red rag to a bull because many of his claims go quite against the grain of accepted philosophical wisdom. Rorty’s importance, it seems to me, lies in the many trenchant critiques of the dominance of what he calls the “scientistic” paradigm in philosophy and in his vision of an alternative future for the field construed along more literary- and socio-historically oriented lines. I am particularly intrigued by his claim that philosophy is “best seen as a kind of writing” (Rorty 1978-1979, 92) which is accordingly “delimited, as is any literary genre, not by form or matter, but by tradition” (92). I find Rorty’s perspective not only appealing and refreshingly honest but also one with important implications for the study of philosophy in the Caribbean. Since at least the turn of the twentieth century, many would argue, contemporary philosophy has been split into two main camps, the

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“Analytic” and the “Continental.” The very notion of the existence of such a division is one normally either attributed to J. L. Austin’s attempts to differentiate Oxford-style philosophising from the, to his mind, more bewildering variety espoused by Sartre and other such thinkers across the Channel, or traced to Carnap’s rebuke of Heidegger’s alleged “mumbojumbo” in the wake of their famous meeting at Davos. It may even, according to Critchley, stem from the efforts of John Stuart Mill much earlier to distinguish his own work, situated in the tradition of the British Empiricism of Locke and Hume, from that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, indebted as the latter was to the tradition of German Idealism. Whatever its source, the conception of a split between the Analytic and Continental approaches to philosophy is one predicated, as many have noted, on a problematic distinction that seems to unfairly pit apples against oranges. To be precise, it sets up an untenable opposition between a methodological approach to philosophising (that of analysis), on the one hand, and a group of philosophers united by their cultural origin, on the other. Analysts often unfairly accuse their Continental counterparts of being fuzzy thinkers who merely need a good dose of logic to come to their senses (this has become an inane and ultimately self-serving mantra à la the famous “four legs good, two legs bad”), while it ought to be obvious that Continentalists are not limited to the Francophone or Germanophone world just as Analysts are not restricted to the Anglophone. Rorty acknowledges the existence of a full-blown “split” (Rorty 1989, 3) in the discipline but argues that it is one that, cutting across conventional and ultimately unhelpful demarcations of the discipline into “Analytic,” “Continental,” and the like, has its origins in the well-known disputes which occurred between Plato and the Sophists in fifth-century BC Athens. Rorty is not the first, of course, to note that philosophy (etymologically, the “love” of “wisdom”) has had an uneasy, if not downright hostile, relationship with rhetoric and its “handmaiden” literature since at least Plato’s attempt to expel poetry from his ideal state. Plato, you might recall, was distrustful not only of literature’s dubious moral impact (its capacity to reduce grown men to tears or to make them laugh hysterically was thought to do their equanimity no good), but also of its epistemological insufficiency, that is, its failure ultimately to reflect those Ideal Forms which he thought material objects mirrored. It is perhaps the latter inadequacy, the incapacity of poetry to represent the truth, which has more than any other demarcated the figurative “messiness” and socio-historical specificity of literature from the putative “purity” and ahistoricism of that rational quest for absolute truth with which philosophy has mesmerised itself since its inception and with

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Rorty on the Analytic-Continental Divide

which, in the eyes of many, it is synonymous. This fundamental disagreement as to the aims and methods of philosophy is not one limited to the classical period but can be glimpsed in all subsequent periods of intellectual history: for example, the Descartes-Vico dispute of the socalled “early modern” period (one more important, I would argue, than the more familiar one which pitted Rationalists against Empiricists) or the Kant-Herder battle which marked the end of the Enlightenment and the emergence of Romanticism and German Idealism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There are many other possible examples but these most often fall outside the pale of conventional histories of philosophy. Since 1900 or thereabouts, Rorty contends, one finds grouped on one side of the philosophical divide an assortment of mostly Analytic philosophers (such as Russell or Carnap), a handful of Continentalists (such as the Phenomenologist Husserl or Structuralists like Saussure) and Pragmatists like Peirce. These are all positivists, he argues, united by a fierce commitment to a scientific and apolitical conception of the discipline and for whom physics most often serves as the paradigm of the discipline. On the other side of the divide stand various Continentalists and so-called “Neo-Pragmatists” (a label often used to designate those who, in subscribing to Rorty’s and, before him, Dewey’s version of Pragmatism, ought to be distinguished from the “true” Pragmatists who follow Peirce’s lead principally). Philosophers in this camp tend to advocate a “poetic” (Rorty 1988, 9) and/or a political conception of the field, Heidegger and Derrida being obvious examples of the former and Gramsci of the latter. The fundamental distinction between these two camps of thinkers has less to do with either methodology or cultural origin than with differing responses to a single crucial question: to be precise, “whether philosophy has a pre-linguistic subject-matter, and thus … whether there is an ahistorical reality to which a given philosophical vocabulary may or may not be adequate” (Rorty 1988; 23). The important question which arises in this context is the following: can the philosopher ever, by simply stepping outside the constraints of her place and time and discarding those linguistic and rhetorical trappings that are seemingly an indelible feature of human consciousness, apprehend the things-in-themselves? It is from such a putatively transcendental, omniscient vantage-point, importantly, that one would accordingly be able to discern the absolute truth of all things and, thus, adjudicate between competing truth-claims. Distinguishing between philosophy and Philosophy, that is, between what Rorty, pace Wilfrid Sellars, often defines broadly as the general attempt to “see how things hang together,” on the one hand, and the

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dominant ahistorical, apolitical, scientistic conception of this activity, on the other, Rorty advocates by contrast a historicist, politicised and poetical approach to philosophising. He urges the development of a “postPhilosophical culture” (Rorty 1982, xl) in which philosophy, precisely because it cannot adjudicate the “relation of the thought of our time … to something which is not just some alternative vocabulary” (xl), comes more to resemble a kind of “culture criticism” (1982, xl). From this perspective, philosophy would specialise in “seeing similarities and differences … between attempts to see how things hang together” (xl) and, to this end, would strive to “compare and contrast cultural traditions” (xxxvii), conceptual frameworks and vocabularies. Rorty accepts that the label “philosopher” might no longer be appropriate for thinkers who engage in this sort of activity and who might accordingly be better served by a designation such as “theorists” (Rorty 1989, 96) or even “ironists” (73). This is because such “philosophers” “do not think that there is something called ‘wisdom’ in any sense of the term which Plato would have recognised” (96). “Theoria,” Rorty suggests, with its connotations of standing back and appraising things from a distance, may be a much more suitable epithet for the pursuit of those, like Rorty, who doubt that they have some privileged access to the absolute truth, some meta-perspective on perspective, and who consequently must content themselves with comparing the various discursive strategies by which humans seek to make sense of things. Rorty’s views have, needless to say, been controversial amongst mainstream (i.e. mostly Analytic) philosophers who continue to see him as a turncoat of the most dangerous kind: a traitor who, lurking within the very heart of the field itself, merely pretended to subscribe to its most cherished tenets. The furious reception which met his now classic Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature led ultimately to his move from Princeton’s prestigious philosophy department, one of the pre-eminent bastions of Analytic philosophy where he had to this point led a distinguished career publishing on topics dear to the hearts of Analytic philosophers in key Analytic fora, to a specially created Chair in the Humanities at the less renowned University of Virginia and, in the years immediately prior to his death, to a distinguished Professorship in the department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. By his own account, he felt compelled to make this difficult transition, to leave behind what was by any measure a hugely successful career, because he had undergone something analogous to a loss of faith in the central precepts of the Analytic church as a result of which he now felt he could no longer be

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Rorty on the Analytic-Continental Divide

true to himself by holding on to beliefs for which he now felt there was no basis. Some concur with Rorty’s diagnosis of the state of contemporary philosophy. For example, alluding to C. P. Snow’s famous notion of the “two cultures,” artistic and scientific, at loggerheads in modern academia, Critchley describes the gulf between these two camps as the “expression of a deep cultural divide between differing and opposed habits of thought” (48): “Benthamite and Coleridgean, or empirical-scientific and hermeneuticromantic” (48), respectively. Others, though, have vigorously condemned the object of Rorty’s sympathies. It was, for example, J. G. Merquior who first coined the disparaging term “litero-philosophy” to denote “Gallic philosophy” (12), distinguishing what he sees as the philosophical “rigour” (12) of Anglo-American Analytic philosophy from the philosophical “glamour” (12) of thinkers like Bergson, Sartre, Derrida, and Foucault. In a similar vein, Christopher Norris, though certainly not hostile to Continental philosophers like Derrida, has attacked the relativism of socalled “Postmodernism” in general and Rorty in particular, who has become his particular bête noire. (The validity of Norris’ controversial attempt to turn Derrida into a creature of Enlightenment positivism, to a critique of which the latter devoted so much of his career, is a topic of discussion for another time, however.) It is perhaps not insignificant, in this regard, that Norris’ career has taken precisely the inverse direction to Rorty’s. The former has moved away from literary theory and criticism towards an ever increasing engagement with some of the central voices and issues of Analytic philosophy (he is now Distinguished Research Professor in the department of philosophy at Cardiff University). The latter, as noted above, largely abandoned the Analytic philosophy which dominated his early career at Princeton in favour of a mixture of Pragmatist- and Continental-inflected “culture criticism.” Rorty has, it seems to me, put his finger on a rift not limited to philosophy per se but fundamental to academe as a whole, in which science continues to be placed on a pedestal and not just in Faculties of Natural Science: in Social Science Faculties, the interpretive, humanistic or even postmodern approach to the understanding of the social formation—the labels are many—remain in the minority. In the remainder of this essay, I will attempt to offer an at best cursory and simplified overview of some of the main bones of contention separating the scientistic and poetic/political paradigms, Philosophy from Theory. Given their centrality to the philosophical endeavour as a whole, it is perhaps perfectly understandable that inter-related metaphysical, epistemological, linguistic and logical issues (the broad terrain often

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termed, and confusingly so for my purposes here, “theoretical philosophy” in Scandinavian countries) are located at the very heart of the conflict between Philosophers and Theorists, respectively. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty offers an overview of the history of modern philosophy that traces how a preoccupation with epistemological matters, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, came to be supplemented, from the late nineteenth century onwards, by a concern with the fundamental role played by language in the acquisition of knowledge (the so-called “Linguistic turn”). This concern was as true of philosophy on the Continent (and manifested in the work of thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger) as it was of philosophical developments in the UK and, later, the USA. A number of basic assumptions undergirding the work of the scientistic camp need to be unpacked in this regard, not least the view that the truth concerning any aspect of the physical universe can in principle be empirically ascertained (though not necessarily in any straightforward or simple manner); the view that objectivity is possible (so long as scrupulous care is taken with the method which one applies); the view that, since our thoughts are inextricably bound up with language, words are an adequate vehicle for representing the world as it really is (in this tradition, a referential model of signification—the view, basically, that the sign means by virtue of reflecting or mirroring the referent—has come to be supplemented by a neo-Kantian structuralist account of language that has aspired to complicate any notion of a simple correspondence of word to thing with reference to the systematic differences constitutive of language); and the view that logic is the key vehicle by means of which convincing arguments can be advanced on the basis of extrapolating valid conclusions from prior premises, whatever may be their source. Language, once pruned (along the paradigmatic axis) of rhetorical superfluousness and predicated (along the syntagmatic axis) on syntactical correctness and logical precision, can mirror the world as it really is. This is how Rorty puts it: devoted to comprehending the nature, origin and limits of human knowledge, philosophy views itself as a “foundational discipline” (Rorty 1979, 132) with respect to the natural sciences especially, a “tribunal of pure reason” (139) responsible for adjudicating the “objectivity of the knowledge-claims made in the various empirical disciplines” (135). Committed to what Rorty (pace Sellars and Quine) calls the “Empiricist myth of the given,” it revolves around an ideal of “knowledge as the assemblage of accurate representations” (163) that refer to the existence of an unchanging reality impervious to human desire, a “permanent neutral framework whose ‘structure’ philosophy can display” (315). Correspondence to this reality serves as the ineluctable foundation

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for all truth-claims: in this schema, the “object which the proposition is about imposes the proposition’s truth” (157). Scientific objectivity is achieved by “sorting out the ‘given’ from the ‘subjective additions’ made by the mind” (133-134), that is, by eliminating those Baconian “idols of the mind,” political and otherwise, which threaten to interpose themselves between knower and known. Theorists, by contrast, most often question whether the truth can be known and cast doubt on the very possibility of a scientific objectivity. The main reason for this, many Theorists contend, is that all our truthclaims are relative to, because expressive of, the (asymmetrical) sociohistorical context in which they are elaborated. Underlying this view is a particular paradigm of language, the so-called expressivist, according to which meaning emanates—not unlike one’s breath—from within the individual whose particular outlook and, by extension, that of the wider culture of which she is part it is thought to express. From this point of view, language is a far from impersonal, neutral medium through which the world is ideally reflected. The expressivist model of signification, which became the dominant mode of thinking about language (and, by extension, culture) in Germany from about the late eighteenth century and thereby replaced the dominant, centuries-old assumption that words function primarily in a mimetic fashion, has informed, explicitly or implicitly, the outlook of those schools of thought most commonly associated with Continental philosophy: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and the overlapping schools of Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Hermeneutics. Our truth-claims are also undermined, other Theorists argue, by the very medium in which they are articulated. They founder in particular on the shoals of figurative language not solely because figures of speech are more often than not culturally-specific, but because the tropes we apply are arguably more than “merely wit to advantage dressed” (Pope): according to so-called “Post-Structuralists” like Derrida and De Man, metaphor marks the very limits of conscious thought beyond which consciousness cannot pass in order to come face to face ultimately with the things themselves. Derrida’s main goal in this regard has been to show that there is an unsettling, rhetorical dimension to language that, by unravelling the neat complex of systematic differences thought to form the basis of meaning along the paradigmatic axis and thereby problematising conventional notions of syntax, narration and logical development along the syntagmatic axis, undermines simplistic notions of reflection and disseminates facile conceptions of intention. In the final analysis, so the argument goes, all our claims to veracity accordingly deconstruct themselves. By seeking to interrogate in gadfly-like fashion many of our

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most cherished philosophical assumptions, Derrida has, much like his admirer Rorty, earned the ire of many mainstream (again, read “Analytic”) philosophers. Derrida’s observation, at the time of the odious Cambridge affair (I refer here to the concerted, though ultimately unsuccessful, effort by philosophers like Quine to discourage Cambridge from granting him an honorary doctorate in 1992), that the Sophists continue to haunt our philosophical conversations in the present, is one not without merit. This is how Rorty, once more, puts the foregoing: Theorists, viewing their discipline as necessarily imbricated in, rather than “underlying” (Rorty 1979, 132), a wide variety of disciplines, and not exclusively the sciences, are doubtful that reason can ever function in some pure and impartial way to distinguish the true from the untrue. Suspicious of the existence of “ahistorical formal ‘structures’” (Rorty 1988, 21) inherent in the physical universe that merely wait to be discovered, Theorists reject the “ideal of objective cognition” (Rorty 1979, 13), arguing that knowledge is not derived from but imposed on an inherently malleable “Real” capable of bearing as many interpretations as human ingenuity allows. In this schema, “truths” (rather than the Truth) are “made rather than found” (1989, 3), a function less of the “object known” (Rorty 1979, 159) than the “arguments given for them” (1979, 157) by the knower. Accepted knowledge on any issue amounts, he suggests, to little more than the “current consensus on that topic” (Rorty 1985, 66). Accordingly, scientific objectivity is rarely, if ever, possible in part because knowledge is a function of the social and political context in which it is elaborated and in part because of the very tropes we necessarily apply. Where philosophy regards “metaphor as a distraction from … reality” (Rorty 1985, 23), Theory regards metaphor “as the way of escaping from the illusion that there is such a reality” (Rorty 1985, 23), or at least that some direct access to it is possible. From this perspective, one’s “choice of vocabulary matters at least as much as one’s answers to the questions posed within a given vocabulary” (Rorty 1985, 60). Doubtful as a result that philosophy can find “natural starting-points which are distinct from cultural traditions” (Rorty 1982, xxxvii), Theorists view their role as akin to that of the cultural critic and historian. For this reason, “historicometaphilosophical reflections on their own activity” (Rorty 1988, 21) is deemed far more important than methodological scrutiny. Another important disagreement, one linked to the first adumbrated above, revolves around a constellation of questions concerning the nature of human beings—and of the mind (or consciousness) in particular—as well as how we live, and ought to live, with one another (in other words, the realm of “social” and “political” philosophy or what Scandinavians

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might term “practical philosophy”). There are a number of intersecting, though distinct, concepts which I am grouping under the general rubric “human being”: identity, human nature, the self, the personality, subjectivity, and so on. The view is widely shared by Philosophers that objective knowledge is made possible by the existence of a core of rationality, that is, a capacity for rational thought and reasoned discourse, common to all human beings. The precise source of this rationality has been variously conceived in the course of the history of philosophy—for example, by rationalists (whose assumption is that our thoughts transcend a priori the natural environment which we encounter) and by empiricists (who assume that our thoughts necessarily bear a posteriori the imprint of this environment)—but the dominant view today in Analytic-dominated philosophy departments is that the mechanisms of consciousness have their origin in and are thus best explained by reference to the complexities of the brain. Therefore, to understand the nature (and the limits) of knowledge as well as the role played therein by language, an understanding of the physiological basis of consciousness is absolutely indispensable. This is why, in recent times, philosophy of mind (in conjunction with related disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology) has emerged as the single most important branch of Philosophy in terms of both the sheer volume of research and teaching emphases. Any philosophy programme today that does not share such emphases seems more than a little dated or out of synch with international emphases, somehow. Moreover, the feeling seems to be prevalent that once a scientific inventory of the physiological structures responsible for consciousness has been completed (this is the philosophical or psychological equivalent, I suppose, of the human genome project in which biologists are currently engaged), there will be little need to engage in social and political discussion, or at least not of the sort which currently obtains, because questions as to how we ought to live with each other will be resolved by a more complete, scientific understanding of human nature. This is why though social and political philosophy has made something of a comeback in Analytic circles in recent times, due to the efforts of Rawls and company, it still remains, it seems to me, for the most part on the periphery of what is taken to “serious” philosophical discussion. Rorty argues that, from this perspective, the role of the Philosopher is that of “cultural overseer who knows everyone’s common ground” (Rorty 1979, 317): to be precise, that “common rationality” (318) which is the foundation of all scientific inquiry. An epistemologically-centred Philosophy, Rorty argues, is predicated on the view not only that there are “two ontological realms—the mental and the physical” (125) but that

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“knowledge of general truths is made possible by some special, metaphysically distinctive ingredient in human beings” (125). This special factor, whether denoting something transcendental, empirical or physiological in nature, has more often than not been connoted by a particular metaphor, he observes: that of the “Glassy Essence” (126) of consciousness in which the things of this world find themselves, ideally speaking, mirrored. The image which has held “traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as great mirror, containing various representations—some accurate, some not—and capable of being studied by pure, nonempirical methods” (12). This metaphor of the mind is the inevitable corollary of a certain paradigm of knowledge-as-correspondence: “[w]ithout the notion of the mind as mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would never have suggested itself” (12). Moreover, mind and world exist in an arguably symbiotic relationship: it is thought that the former, ever intent upon further discoveries, has significantly expanded over the years to the degree that it has been able to ferret out those ever more deeply concealed truths of the latter, even as its essential nature remains basically unchanged. If Philosophers have tended to emphasise the bodily basis of the structures of our consciousness and, by extension, the fixity and universality of human nature, Theorists have tended to be suspicious of some aspects of these claims. While not denying the importance of our physiology in the constitution of our minds and identity, Theorists argue that not only do Philosophers most often ignore the crucial role played by both the specificities of social and historical circumstance and language in the formation of our consciousness, but they also ignore the metaphoricity which inevitably informs their claims to veracity about the nature of the mind, the self, and so on. It is precisely for these reasons that Theorists tend to stress the unpredictable nature of human identity and to shed cold water on the idea of a timeless or universal human nature embraced as much by Enlightenment thinkers as their progeny in the contemporary world. This is why social and political theory remains at the top of the Theoretical agenda and continues to be perhaps the central area of research for most Theorists. The differences between Philosophers and Theorists on this score are perhaps best underlined by a celebrated exchange on Dutch TV in the early seventies between Chomsky (the representative in this instance, I would suggest, of the Philosophical tradition) and Foucault (the spokesperson for Theory). Where, for Chomsky, linguistic and scientific investigation has served to deepen our understanding of the way in which our brains, our minds and language work in a way applicable to humans everywhere, for Foucault, there is no fixed human nature which scientific

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investigation of the mind and language merely reveals. All our conceptions of who we are, he argued, are the malleable products of various, not least psychological and psychiatric, discourses about the mind and the self (including, importantly, the philosophy of mind itself) through which have come to view ourselves in certain ways and to behave accordingly. Philosophers and Theorists are also separated, finally, by very different perspectives on the nature of philosophy itself and its historical development. Rorty is of the view that Philosophers tend to focus on the analysis of “ahistorical formal ‘structures’” (Rorty 1988, 21) by attempting to solve eternally recurrent problems that transcend the particularities of time and place. Philosophy possesses what Rorty characterises as a “cream-skimming picture” (66) of itself and its past: it conceives of itself as a field of knowledge differentiated by the specificity of both its subjectmatter (the “quest for knowledge about permanent and enduring topics” [66]) and its practitioners (“people who specialised in that sort of thing” [66]) from the wider “history of ‘thought’ or ‘culture’” (56) in which the “mere opinions” of non-philosophers (such as lowly historians and literary types) occupy centre stage. Because Philosophers believe that they perform a task akin to that of the scientist, they entertain few doubts about the predominantly scientific nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged, and thus see little need to engage in metaphilosophical reflection, apart from a scrupulous attention to questions of method. According to Rorty, Philosophy thinks of itself as developing in ways analogous to the “history-of-science-as-the-story-of-progress” (Rorty 1985, 58), that is, in the direction of an ever greater rapprochement with the Real. This is why, as with the natural sciences, the study of contemporary solutions to certain recurrent problems is privileged over what, from the vantage-point of the present, must appear to be merely a prior history of muddled anticipations, half-truths, and downright errors. The formation of the philosophical canon accordingly holds little mystery—and few horrors—for philosophers: only the select few who have functioned as basically valid, albeit imperfect, signposts on the path towards the apprehension of the Truth, a goal towards which we are over time growing ever closer, deserve to be studied. The historiography of philosophy accordingly tends to take two main forms in this tradition. Firstly, what Rorty calls “doxography” (61), undertaken by philosophers who are convinced that Philosophy has “in all ages and places … managed to dig down to the same, deep, fundamental questions” (63), is devoted to merely “ticking off what various figures traditionally called ‘philosophers’ have to say about problems traditionally called ‘philosophical’” (62). This

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is the corollary, secondly, of “rational reconstruction” (49) in which “we anachronistically impose … our problems and vocabulary on the dead to make them conversational partners” (49) in the “hope of getting them to admit that we have gotten those ideas clearer, or in the hope of getting them clearer still in the course of the conversation” (52). The ultimate goal of both “such enterprises in commensuration” (53) is to “assure ourselves that there has been rational progress” (51) and that, by avoiding past errors, we are drawing ever nearer to the final solution of urgent universal problems. By contrast, Theorists doubt that philosophy can ever find “natural starting-points which are distinct from cultural traditions” (Rorty 1982, xxxvii) as a result of which philosophy can never amount to anything more, as Hegel argues, than our “own time apprehended in thoughts” (quoted in Rorty 1982, xl). Rorty argues that “‘our time’” (Rorty 1982, xl), from this perspective, really means “‘our view of previous times,’ so that, in Hegelian fashion, each age of the world recapitulates all the earlier ones” (Rorty 1982, xl). Conceiving of philosophy as little more than a Bloomian “family romance” (Rorty 1978-1979, 96) and the role of the philosopher as similar to that of a literary critic or literary historian, Theorists engage in the dialectical “reinterpretation of our predecessors’ reinterpretation of their predecessors’ reinterpretation” (Rorty 1978-1979, 92), and so on ad infinitum, that is, in the “inconclusive comparison and contrast of vocabularies (with everybody trying to aufheben everybody else’s way of putting everything)” (Rorty 1982, xli). The gap between Philosophers, on the one hand, and Theorists, on the other, Rorty writes, coincides pretty closely with the division between philosophers who are not interested in historico-metaphilosophical reflections on their own activity and philosophers who are… . This difference in interests parallels a difference in reading habits, a difference in philosophical canons. If the preeminent figures in one canon include Berkeley, Hume, Mill, and Frege, one will probably be not much interested in metaphilosophy. It they include Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, one probably will … in the form of an historical narrative which places the works of the philosophers within the historical development of the culture. (Rorty 1988, 21)

Moreover, Theory views its history as analogous to that of the arts: “nonteleological” (1989, 16) in nature, it takes the form of “successive metaphors” (1989, 20) or vocabularies all at best asymptotic with respect to the Real. Because no vocabulary can be privileged on the grounds of correspondence, Theorists emphasise that a historical consciousness that seeks to “‘place’ each vocabulary in a series of vocabularies” (1985, 61) in

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order to “trace changes” (1985, 61) in vocabularies is indispensable. Viewing cultural history as the inescapable “ground out of which histories of philosophy grow” (1985, 70), Theorists stress the historical and cultural specificity of all philosophising, the contingent rather than necessary nature of the solutions proposed, and the blurred boundary between philosophy and other forms of intellectual activity, not least literature and the arts. Canon-formation is, in this schema, a much more arbitrary and ephemeral affair as a result of which Theorists attempt to specify the precise processes by which particular vocabularies and their proponents emerge, attain and later, in most cases, lose their hegemonic status. Two historiographical genres tend, therefore, to predominate in this tradition: “contextualist historical reconstruction” (1985, 63) which, by “bracketing one’s own better knowledge” (1985, 50) in order to describe thinkers from the past “in … their own terms” (1985, 50), reminds us of the historical and cultural specificity of all problems deemed “philosophical”; and “Geistesgeschichte” (1985, 56) which, working “at the level of problematics rather than of solutions to problems” (1985, 57), constructs narratives designed to show “how we have come to ask the questions which we now think inescapable and profound” (1985, 61). The foregoing survey of the gulf which separates Philosophy from Theory is not, and cannot be, exhaustive. I think, though, that there are important implications to it for any incipient philosophy programme, including in the Caribbean: such programmes, in my view, would do well to implement what Rorty, following Gadamer, terms a “hermeneutical” or “conversational” approach to philosophising. Hermeneutics (an earlier synonym for what he would later term “Theory”), he warns, should not be viewed as a “‘successor subject’” (Rorty 1979, 315) to an epistemology and philosophy of language that has outlived its usefulness, that is, as merely another way of thinking about the nature of knowledge and language. Hermeneutics should be conceived, rather, as something akin to a “Socratic intermediary” (Rorty 1979, 316) whose main function it is to oversee a never-ending dialogue between differing voices and points of views, to weave its way between competing vocabularies and conceptual frameworks, and to grasp the “relations between various discourses as those of strands in a possible conversation” (Rorty 1979, 318). Such a conversation presupposes neither a single “disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers” (Rorty 1979, 318) nor any access in the final analysis to the things-in-themselves, in the absence of which, of course, there is no way ultimately to determine the veracity of particular truth-claims and, thus, of particular conceptions of philosophy.

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References Austin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things With Words, ed. J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Carnap, Rudolph. 1959. The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language. In Logical Positivism, ed. Alfred J. Ayer. Glencoe, NY: Free Press. Coleridge. Samuel Taylor. 1983. Biographia Literaria, or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinion. Vol. 7 of Collected Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Critchley, Simon. 2001. Continental Philosophy: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Continuum. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Merquior, J. G. 1987. Foucault. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1971. Coleridge. In Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, ed. F. R. Leavis, 99-168. London: Chatto and Windus. Norris, Christopher. 1989. Philosophy as Not Just Another “Kind of Writing”: Derrida and the Claim of Reason. In Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction and Literary Theory, ed. Reed Way Dasenbrock, 189-203. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. 1982. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Methuen. —. 1987. Derrida. London: Fontana; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plato. 1941. The Republic, trans. Francis Macdonald Cornford. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rorty Richard. 1978-1979. Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: an Essay on Derrida. New Literary History 10: 141-160. Rpt. in Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980, 90-109. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. —. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 1982. Introduction: Pragmatism and Philosophy. In Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980, xiii-xlvii.. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. 1985. The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres. In Philosophy in History, ed. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, 49-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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—. 1988. Philosophy as Science, as Metaphor, and as Politics. In The Institution of Philosophy, ed. Avner Cohen and Rudolph Burger, 138149. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Staatsdruckerei. Rpt. in Essays on Heidegger and Others. Vol. 2 of Philosophical Papers, 926. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. —. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1958. Being and Nothingness: an Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, intro. Mary Warnock. London: Methuen. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1997. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, intro. Richard Rorty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Snow, C. P. 1963. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER FOUR THE PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE DEBATE: ASSESSING ITS SALIENCE IN THE CARIBBEAN ROXANNE BURTON

In metaphilosophy and generally in western metaphysics, there has been a debate about the relationship between philosophy and literature (Cascardi 1987, x). Are they basically the same, but masquerading in different forms? Are they sisters or are they purely distant relatives à la the relationship between philosophy and history? These questions arise against the background of the writings of persons such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Sartre, etc. whose works have a clear philosophical underpinning, and conversely the writings of philosophers that are thought to be literary. Another issue is the problems that are associated with offering an easily agreed upon definition of either literature or philosophy, as well as their respective roles. The attempt to clarify the relationship between the two disciplines has become even more intense in recent years with the exponential growth of the field of literary theory, which seems to encroach on what has generally been deemed to be the realm of philosophy, specifically philosophy of literature (Rickman 1996, 42). While the debate continues in western thought, the question that can arise is: in non-western thought, does such a tension between philosophy and literature arise, or are the ties seen, accepted and embraced? The concern of this paper is to survey the ongoing debate with a view to identifying the most defensible position and to examine the issue within the Caribbean context.

Examining the Contesting Positions The debate in western thought tends to centre on some specific issues about the relationship between literature and philosophy, with theorists tending to support one of the following positions: some literature is

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essentially philosophy; philosophy is literature; philosophy and literature are distinct entities. The last position is the one that tends to be most vigorously supported, with views at different ends of the spectrum from the idea that philosophy should extensively utilise literary devices and literary works and similarly literature should extensively use philosophical devices and works to the view that philosophy should do as it does for other disciplines and only explore the formal issues of literature, that is, that the main concern of philosophy with literature should be in the context of philosophy of literature.

Literature as philosophy The position that literature is philosophy could be supported by examining the works of specific authors whose writings clearly explicate and expound philosophical ideas and whose intention would clearly have been an examination of some specific philosophical issues. This is a view that is generally not supported wholesale by either philosophers or literary theorists, given that it does not tend to coincide with the view that most theorists have of philosophy as a rigorous discipline for seeking to arrive at truths. While literature may cover some of the same themes covered in philosophy, the approach taken is quite different, with the aim not being to develop explicit arguments or to arrive at truth claims, but to present these ideas through the specific use of literary techniques, without any need for rigorous analysis as is seen in philosophy. Those who may seem initially to support this view, when examined more closely, show that there are distinctions to be drawn. Nussbaum is one such theorist who argues that literary works show moral truths and that “certain novels are, irreplaceably, works of moral philosophy” (Nussbaum 1990, 148). She is careful however to limit her analysis to specific works that bear out her claim and also only with respect to moral philosophy. She argues that the distinction between literature and philosophy is an artificial one, especially in the realm of ethics, as literary works are able to explore the same themes explored in philosophy and in fact often provide greater insight into the philosophical issue than a philosophical treatise might. As noted by Holland, the problem with the approach taken by Nussbaum, is that while she has selected specific works of literature, which highlight moral fortitude, she has not included works that have questionable moral insights or that are not exemplary. Additionally, by using criteria from Aristotle (whom she describes as her favourite nonliterary philosopher) to determine her ethical principles, she is in fact

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suggesting that there is a distinction between literature and philosophy (Holland 1998). Another view is that what Nussbaum is actually doing is exploring philosophy through literature, where literature is seen as being subsidiary to philosophy and literature is used to represent the philosophical issue.

Philosophy as literature This view is that the distinction that exists between philosophy and literature is a result of a false dichotomy. As opposed to the modernist view of art, which characterises a work of art as not being purely rational, while philosophy is purely rational, the postmodernist and poststructuralist turn has resulted in questions being raised about many, if not all, of the dichotomies and distinctions between entities and concepts, including that between philosophy and literature. The term “text” has been exponentially widened as a result of postmodern criticism. As Danto condescendingly argues, the term now refers to bus tickets, comic strips, graffiti, weather reports and so on (Danto 1987, 3). Also open for inclusion in this list is any work of philosophy, which Deleuze defines as the “art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts” (Deleuze 1991, 471). Another point, as Selden and Widdowson (1993, 151) observe, is that Derrida argued that philosophy is treated as superior to literature because it is deemed to be pure and rational, given that it is not involved in the use of rhetoric and figures of speech, as literature is. However, he thought that philosophy is also ruled by rhetoric, and so in the same way that a piece of literature can be used in philosophy, philosophy can be read as literature. As would be anticipated, this conception has been frowned upon, especially by persons who label themselves philosophers. One such is Danto, who argues that conflating the philosophy and literature does not simply involve judging that the writings of philosophers have literary merit. It in fact means saying that the primary concern is the style and form of the work, not the intellectual content (Danto 1987, 4). He argues that such an approach is similar to viewing the Bible as literature, which would ignore the other merits of the Bible. While the Bible may actually have literary value, judging it purely on that basis limits the ways in which we can discuss that book.

Philosophy and literature are distinct By far the greatest level of support in the literature has been for the view that the two are distinct subject areas. One theorist has argued that

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this distinction is drawn by philosophers to ensure that literature is seen as the other (Benjamin 1998), a distinction that is exemplified in Plato’s writings, where he clearly argued that poems (literary works) are “representations at the third remove from reality and easy to produce without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances and not realities” (Plato 1987, 365, Part 10, §1, 598e-599a).1 Various arguments have been offered for the two being viewed as distinct, based on the following: characteristics; intention; institutional practices; translatability; role; focus and interpretation. Regarding dissimilar characteristics, the following are usually offered: literature is generally seen to be particular, in that there is a focus on individual cases/events, whereas philosophy focuses on the universal; literature is emotional, whereas philosophy is rational; literature focuses on feelings while philosophy places emphasis on truth. Additionally, they both have quite distinct stylistic approaches, with literature routinely using metaphor, irony, rhymes, specific sentence structures and rhetorical devices which mark the “literariness” of the writing, but philosophy, while it may sometimes utilise these devices, is not defined by them (Korsmeyer 2002). Persons who highlight these differences then go on to argue about the different ways that the two may interact. The two dominant approaches are philosophy of literature and philosophy in literature. There are others, however, who do not believe that these distinctions are feasible, as they collapse at some point. Philosophers sometimes utilise stylistic tools which would generally be regarded as being literary, such as the use of dialogues by Plato and characters by Kierkegaard. Some theorists argue that literature is not mainly emotional, neither is it mainly cognitive (Olsen 1978, 24-45, 58). There are philosophers who reject the idea of system building, as can be seen in the work of some existentialists, poststructuralists and postmodernists. Furthermore, philosophers and literary writers quite often explore similar topics and issues, though the approach to the discussion itself may vary. Also, literature can be quite serious, with the main intention being to derive truth claims. Therefore, any attempt to draw a clear line of divide between the two based solely on style or content will fail. Possibly one of the most potent arguments for the distinction between philosophy and literature is intention; whether the author was aiming to write a philosophical or a literary work. While this criterion may be useful, 1

Plato identified three levels of reality: the Forms, which is the source of objective knowledge; the realm of belief or opinion, which are our everyday experiences and the third is the representation made by artists (Plato 1987, translator’s note, p. 369).

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it cannot be sufficient as such, since one may argue that the reader is crucial in the process of interpreting what the writer has presented, regardless of what the author may have intended. However, building on Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances as elaborated by Irwin (2002), one could argue that for a literary or philosophical work to be so labelled, one means of identification may be the intention of the author, whether consciously or unconsciously, to produce a work that is to be labelled as either literature or philosophy.2 In another attempt at differentiation, the view is also posited that there are no set distinctions between what would be classified as a literary work and what would be classified as a philosophical work, but that there are institutions which determine whether a text is philosophy or literature. What this means is that the distinction here would be a relative one, based on the particular institution doing the ruling, and the location and time period of that assessment. Gracia, recognising the difficulties with the previous attempts, developed his own technique to draw the distinction between literature and philosophy by examining the translatability of the text. He argues that if a work can be translated, then its focus is on the ideas rather than on the way in which they are expressed; these types of works would be philosophical. If on the other hand, the translation in effect becomes an interpretation because the translation possibly changes the essence/meaning of the text, then it is a literary work. Therefore, a literary work can never be translated, only interpreted, while a philosophical work can be translated without it becoming an interpretation. His argument is that a literary work depends on its rhetorical devices to present its ideas and gain a particular audience reaction. In the absence of the author’s words (in her language), the work must become another work, namely that of the translator who decides which interpretations will be put on a particular sentence or phrase. Further, Gracia agues that the author’s intentions are important in the development of the text and the choice of words to be used; and the translator will necessarily have different intentions, therefore a different text and a different work (Gracia 2002, 94). He does allow that there is the possibility that a work may be literary, but have a philosophical component or vice versa. The question arises, however, about the plausibility of the claim that philosophy is translatable, when one examines the work of someone such 2

When I say unconsciously, I mean that a work may not be intended to be labelled as, say, philosophical by the author, but is treated as such by readers and if the author should look back on the work, and look on other works labelled as philosophy, then she would belatedly label hers as such also.

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as Heidegger, where there are such different interpretations of his ideas. Gracia tried to respond to challenges of this sort by arguing that there is a possibility of having a work which could be either literary or philosophical, the latter would be translatable and the former not. However, since he also stressed the importance of the intention of the author in the development of the text, if someone is writing a philosophical text, then it would be somewhat unreasonable to argue that because there are problems with the translation of the text, in terms of breaking it down to its barest ideas, that it should be viewed as literary. Additionally, the translatability criterion for differentiation ignores the fact that two languages will not have the same range of words to express a similar idea, that language develops through the culture and so the same idea may not be directly translatable, even in a philosophical text (Hallen 1995). Another (and related) distinction is that there are often clear differences in how a literary work is or can be interpreted, as opposed to a philosophical: a literary work is generally replete with ambiguities, allowing for a variety of interpretations, while philosophy does not allow for such ambiguities. However, while it may be true that literary works are ambiguous, the claim being made about philosophy is not necessarily so, as can be seen from debates that arise over the interpretation of the works of various philosophical writers. The final argument centres on the role of philosophy as opposed to that of literature. While literature is generally seen as a subject area that seeks primarily to entertain but philosophy is often considered to be a serious endeavour. This, it is argued, is because philosophy focuses on ideas while literature focuses on life. But this position is untenable as it raises the question as to whether philosophy does not often focus on life in its branches such as social philosophy and existentialism, and whether there aren’t literary works which stress ideas over or alongside the experiences of specific characters.

A Reasonable Stance In the light of this review, it is quite clear that a part of the debate about the distinction between philosophy and literature is the attempt to define both what philosophy and literature are, and what each should do. The first position excludes all literary works that do not have significant moral insight, or do not fit the criterion of being able to clearly teach their readers some important lessons; it therefore shifts the role of literature from one of entertainment to an area that is primarily of interest because of its pedagogical merit. The second position is one that stretches the

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meaning of literature interminably, to allow for all works to be treated as literature, including scientific discourse, on the basis that there are conventions for writing in these types of discourse. The result is that the essence of the meaning of “literature” as generally understood is lost, and the further consequence is that there would essentially be no other subject area but literary theory. Based on the foregoing, it is not feasible to support the view that philosophy is literature or that literature is philosophy, as neither coincides with my understanding of literature or philosophy, or what each should do. Philosophy involves the exploration of issues that are of fundamental human concern through systematic and critical reflection. Literature, on the other hand, is a piece of work that is defined by the creation of a text that explores a topic/subject that is of human concern, through the use of specific techniques. I believe the definition provided by Rickman captures the essence of what I and most others understand by literature and its purpose: [it] aims to give pleasure or satisfaction, independent of any outside interest it might satisfy ... through its use or structure ... use of language such as the choice of assonance, rhymes, metaphors, and sentence structures, but also the construction of plots, design of contrasts in characters, and control of perspective (Rickman 1996, 14).

My conclusion then is that one should see philosophy and literature as being distinct. However, none of the distinctions examined above, by itself, offers a necessary or sufficient condition for differentiation. Rather, a combination of these factors must be used to explain the fact that one can generally, almost instinctively, recognise the difference between the two. Certainly each of the criteria for differentiation discussed above has some value but some are more crucial than others. A very important component of the distinction is the intention of the author. The author of a philosophical work approaches that work with very different objectives from a literary writer. The style of the writing also tends to be supportive of the intention of the writer, where rhetorical devices tend to be avoided in philosophical writing, but are heavily utilised in literary works. This does not of course negate the possibility that someone may intend to produce philosophy, but does not succeed in doing so, because the criterion of critical reflection has not been met (Gbadegesin 1991, 21). The interpretation of the reader will therefore also be important in the process of identification of the text as being either literary or philosophical. There is an acute awareness that both literature and philosophy generally overlap with respect to the large themes that they explore, and this is a major reason for what could essentially be considered to be a “turf

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war” about who should cover the particular topic and the optimal medium for discussion of that issue to achieve insight and foster change. Olsen refers in his writings to the notion of perennial thematic concepts, which he defines as the subjects of concern for a particular culture, themes generally discussed in literature, philosophy and religion (Lamarque and Olsen 2002, Olsen 1984). So literature and philosophy will often find themselves discussing the same theme, but how this is executed is what helps to define their differences. What I am suggesting is that the philosopher and literary writer may start from perspectives that may reflect the same philosophical stance on an issue, but depending on the intention of the author, the orientation and methodology will vary. Certainly, for the typical literary writer, having an understanding of philosophical issues may make the process of the explication of the perennial thematic concept(s) in question easier. But this knowledge does not change the essence of what the person is aiming to do, which is to tell a story (or write a poem, etc.). One may use the writings of Sartre as an example. Sartre, in writing his philosophy, took the approach of clearly and systematically laying out arguments and critically and rigorously analysing them, providing evidence to support his primary and secondary theses. When writing his plays and novels, his concern would certainly be to highlight his philosophical ideas, but to do so in such a manner that the philosophical idea becomes interweaved into the development of the plot, characters and other elements that are part of what defines a literary work. So both Being and Nothingness and Nausea have as their foundation Sartre’s existentialist philosophy, but the former is philosophy in its “pure form” while the latter is literature with a clear philosophical foundation. The fact that someone such as Sartre used both media suggests also that there are different roles that are played by each. Literature can be used to show a philosophical idea in a concrete setting, but it should also be there to entertain, whereas while philosophy might be entertaining, that is generally not one of its author’s main aims. Arising out of the discussion also is the patent recognition that one text can be classified as literature yet have philosophical merit, or be philosophy yet have literary merit. In other words, philosophical issues can be expounded in a work of literature and a philosophical work may quite effectively utilise some literary devices in putting forward a philosophical argument. Furthermore, there are some literary works that may be more explicitly philosophical, in that philosophical themes are more clearly seen and/or have a greater role in the development of the plot of the work.

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The Caribbean Situation Are the tensions discussed above likely to be manifested in Caribbean literature and philosophy? This tension has not been explicitly stated, but it may be one that can arise as Caribbean philosophy develops as a professional discipline. To explore whether this is probable, one can draw a parallel with another non-western philosophy, which should provide valuable insight for the Caribbean: African philosophy. With the development of academic African philosophy, one noticed the disagreements that arose between the approach taken by those of the ethnophilosophy and sagacity schools and those of the professional bent, with respect to what should be deemed African philosophy. Generally, those in ethnophilosophy (see for example, Griaule 1965) and philosophic sagacity (Odera Oruka 1983, 1990) utilise the proverbs, myths, stories and views of sages to reveal the worldviews of the various communities and ethnic groups. There are others in the professional school, like Paulin Hountondji (1993) and Peter Bodunrin (1981), who reject this understanding of African philosophy and argue that African philosophy is work that is written by Africans who are professional philosophers. This debate is like that between literature and philosophy, a debate that can be situated in metaphilosophy, as to what should be defined as philosophy, what are the appropriate methods to be used in philosophy and what materials should be used as the starting point for philosophical analysis. The debate to some extent still continues, but as Serequeberhan (1991) highlights, embracing a position advocated by V. Y. Mudimbe and Kwame Gyekye, these trends in African philosophy “can be seen as constituting a continuum differentiated by various ways of articulating the same fundamental concern” (21), namely “engaging the contemporary problems and questions pertinent to the African situation” (12-13).3 A major part of the problem in the attempt to define African philosophy was that, unlike in western society, there tended to be less documentation of ideas, or these documents were destroyed. The question that arose was the merit associated with using essentially folk literature and philosophy in attempting to concretise African philosophy. This was based on the assumption that the written should be seen as of higher esteem than the oral (judging here from the standards of course of the 3

This view may appear to be somewhat restrictive, but it is actually quite open and even optimistic. It is grounded in the broader role that I believe that philosophy and its practitioners have; ultimately being concerned with our actions, our lives. In this collection, Boulter gives a convincing account of this view of philosophy in chapter one.

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West) and the oral was not available for rigorous analysis and critical reflection (Ochieng’-Odhiambo 2005). The aim seemed in some way to attempt to remove what was unique about the African situation from African philosophy by imposing these standards on African philosophy. The recognition was there in the discussions that it was indeed appropriate and in fact necessary to include all sources of knowledge when developing a body of African philosophy. Furthermore, there is the recognition that some aspects of philosophy must be contextualised (Kresse 2002), as philosophy is not done in a vacuum, but often represents the examination of issues that are of specific concern within a particular culture (Bewaji 2002). So though not explicitly stated, the debate about the relationship between literature and philosophy has also been a part of the debate that has taken place in defining African philosophy, where literature (especially in its oral forms) has been deemed by some not to be worthy of philosophical significance and appreciation. The Caribbean finds itself in a similar situation where theorists in and of the region are seeking to define Caribbean philosophy. Up until approximately ten years ago, if someone had mentioned the idea of a Caribbean philosophy, the response would more than likely be that there is no such thing. I would like to argue, as others (see, for example, Henry 2000) have done, that there is indeed Caribbean philosophical thought, but it has not been explicitly labelled in this region as it has been in other parts of the world, especially because of this region’s historical foundation. The Caribbean region is populated largely by persons who were transferred by the slave trade, without being able to continue wholesale the material, spiritual and intellectual lives that they had led in their homeland. Some aspects of these were retained, but they had to be exhibited in forms that were “legal”. Hence their Christian religious practices, storytelling, and so on, carried remnants of their culture, syncretised with the European cultural practices into which they had been forced. The views of the population therefore manifested themselves in their cultural and religious practices: drumming, dancing, singing, storytelling, proverbs, religious worship, Johnkunno, carnival. Storytelling and religious worship were especially important as they both clearly expressed the particular system of beliefs of the people and highlight the perennial themes of concern to persons from this particular historical situation. These stories have been passed on through the oral tradition and many of them are reflected in some manner in literary works from the region. It means that these works would therefore offer scope for a serious analysis of the pervasive philosophical ideas of the region.

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To illustrate this point, one can take the case of the writings of the Antiguan literary author, Jamaica Kincaid. She normally uses the medium of the novel, but she also writes short stories and essays. From my readings of her work, one can clearly see the discussion of philosophical themes, generally presented with the slant that is similar to that seen in other writers, as well as what is commonly reflected in the concerns expressed in stories and proverbs passed down from earlier generations. Even an examination of the main themes that she explores provides one with the fingerprints of the Caribbean culture: death; racial, sexual, gender and social relations, especially practices of discrimination in these realms; freedom and autonomy; identity at the personal and the collective levels; meaning in life and several aspects of political philosophy, including colonialism and democracy as systems of governance. In the pioneering field of Caribbean philosophy, the work that has been done so far has embraced the idea that the region’s worldview is embedded in a variety of sources and should be exposed and made available for philosophical analysis. A recent piece that highlights this approach is seen in McKenzie’s successful attempt to show how several Jamaican proverbs give indications of the metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and aesthetic beliefs of the Jamaican people (McKenzie 2005). As yet, there has not been, as in the case of African philosophy, strong disagreements as to how literature should be used, and I hope that this will not arise, because philosophers or those documenting Caribbean philosophy will undoubtedly accept that the explication of a Caribbean philosophy, just as was seen for African philosophy, necessarily involves the use of all available sources that will lend insight to the exploration and analysis of the conceptual structure underlying Caribbean thought and the attendant approaches that should be taken to analyse issues and problems facing the people of the Caribbean.

References Benjamin, A.E. 1998. Philosophy’s other: The plural event as “literature”. Paragraph 21 (2): 227- 260. Bewaji, J.A.I. 2002. African languages and critical discourse. In The Third Way in African Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Kwasi Wiredu, ed. Olusegun Olapido, 271-295. Ibadan: Hope Publications. Bodunrin, Peter O. 1981. The question of African philosophy. Philosophy 56: 167-79.

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Cascardi, Anthony J. 1987. Introduction. In Literature and the Question of Philosophy. ed. Anthony J. Cascardi. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Danto, Arthur C. 1987. Philosophy as/and/of literature. In Literature and the Question of Philosophy, ed. Anthony J. Cascardi, 3-23. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1991. The conditions of the question: What is philosophy? Critical Inquiry, 17 (3): 471-478. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities. New York: Peter Lang. Gracia, Jorge J. E. 2002. Borge’s “Pierre Menard”: Philosophy or literature? In Literary Philosophers: Borges, Calvino, Eco, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Carolyn Korsmeyer and Rudolph Gasche, 85-107. New York: Routledge. Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmêli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. London: Oxford University Press. Hallen, Barry. 1995. Indeterminacy, ethnophilosophy, linguistic philosophy, African philosophy. Philosophy 70: 377-393. Henry, Paget. 2000. Caliban’s Reason. New York: Routledge. Holland, Margaret G. 1998. Can fiction be philosophy? Paper presented at Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, August 10-15, in Boston, Massachusetts U.S.A. Accessed August 31, 2005 (at http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteHoll.htm). Hountondji, Paulin. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa. Irwin, William. 2002. Philosophy and the philosophical, literature and the literary, Borges and the labyrinthine. In Literary Philosophers: Borges, Calvino, Eco, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Carolyn Korsmeyer and Rudolph Gasche, 27-45. New York: Routledge. Jones, Peter. 1975. Philosophy and the Novel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. 2002. Literary philosophers: Introductory remarks. In Literary Philosophers: Borges, Calvino, Eco, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, Carolyn Korsmeyer and Rudolph Gasche, 1-14. New York: Routledge. Kresse, Kai. 2002. Towards a postcolonial synthesis in African philosophy—conceptual liberation and reconstructive self-evaluation in the work of Okot P’biket. In The Third Way in African Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Kwasi Wiredu, ed. Olusegun Olapido, 215-232. Ibadan: Hope Publications. Lamarque, Peter and Stein Haugom Olsen. 2002. Truth, Fiction and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

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McKenzie, Earl. 2005. Philosophy in Jamaican proverbs. Jamaica Journal 29 (1-2): 50-53. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, Frederick. 2005. Review of Oral Traditions as Philosophy: Okot P’Bitek’s Legacy for African Philosophy, by Samuel Oluoch Imbo. African Studies Quarterly 8 (2): 112-113. Odera Oruka, Henry. 1983. Sagacity in African philosophy. International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (4): 383-393. —. 1990. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Leiden: Brill. Olsen, Stein Haugom. 1978. The Structure of Literary Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1984. Thematic concepts: Where philosophy meets literature. In Philosophy and Literature, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 16, ed. A. Phillips Griffiths, 75-93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1987. The Republic. Trans. Desmond Lee. 2nd (Revised) Ed. London: Penguin Books. Rickman, H.P. 1996. Philosophy in Literature. Madison: Associated University Presses. Sartre, Jean Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library. —. 1964. Nausea. Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson. 1993. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 3rd. Ed. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. Serequeberhan, Tsenay. 1991. African philosophy: The point in question. In African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan, 3-28. St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House.

CHAPTER FIVE THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARTIAL ARTS: MYTH AND REALITY MARK K. SETTON

What I try to do in this paper is to trace the history of the martial arts, from their origins in ancient Chinese military training to their assimilation of Daoist and Ch’an (Zen) Buddhist values, resulting in their transformation from mere techniques of self-defense to a wide variety of practices aimed at self-cultivation and personal well-being as well as combat training. As a result many forms and schools of martial arts today are focused on self-cultivation as much as, or more than, self-defense. Yet, as we shall see, the “martial” element in the “martial arts” is still going strong, and not least in the media, which have tended to de-emphasize the philosophical and spiritual elements assimilated in the course of history. The origins of the martial arts are quite murky. They can be traced back at least 3,500 years, to scattered references in the Classic of History written during or prior to the legendary Xia dynasty. The graph “Wu”, which is translated as “martial,” symbolizes a shield stopping a spear. There is no evidence that the early concept of Wu involved much more than self-defense, possibly of foot soldiers and peasants alike, against well-equipped enemies. The earliest reference to the martial arts involving a philosophical dimension is found in a conversation between the King of Yue and a female warrior, recorded during the Late Han around the second century: The art of swordsmanship is extremely subtle and elusive; its principles are most secret and profound. The Dao has its gate and door, its yin and yang. Open the gate and close the door; yin declines and yang rises. When practicing the art of hand-to-hand combat, concentrate your spirit internally and give the impression of relaxation externally. You should

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look like a modest woman and strike like a ferocious tiger. As you assume various postures, regulate your qi, moving with the spirit.1

What is intriguing about the above exchange is not only that a female warrior is lecturing the King (few men would have had the opportunity to do so, let alone women) but that she refers to key terms from the Book of Changes such as yin and yang as well as qi (vital force), which became an integral part of Daoist philosophy. Qi in this context refers to a vital force which not only revives and strengthens both the body and mind, but which can potentially generate sufficient power to defeat a challenger. What is equally intriguing about the female warrior’s speech is that Daoist terminology is hard to find in martial arts discourse until the Qing dynasty and the emergence of the Taiji classics, which feature Daoist ideas very prominently. Under the influence of Daoist thought many martial arts, and especially the so-called “internal” martial arts such as Taiji, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan, turned into a means of personal growth, including the cultivation of harmony between mind and body, heightened concentration and self-control. This is evident in the writings of the eighteenth century martial artist Chang Nai-chou, who frequently refers to the cultivation of qi.2 One sees a parallel phenomenon taking place between Buddhism and kung fu, a relationship which according to legend emerged in the Shaolin temple. The widely accepted story is that Bodhidarma, the founder of Ch’an Buddhism, stayed at the Shaolin and taught kung fu to the community of monks as a method of keeping them invigorated during periods of meditation. Yet recent scholarship, which has involved a detailed study of documents at the Shaolin, has not turned up any evidence that Bodhidarma stayed at the temple, or that he taught kung fu. Neither does one find any reliable record indicating that the Shaolin monks used kung fu as a means of self-cultivation or simply as a method of keeping awake during their lengthy meditation sessions.3 Nonetheless it is clear that the temple was highly reputed for the martial art skills of its residents, who cultivated kung fu assiduously to defend themselves from marauding armies and bandits, in an area devastated by poverty and unrest. It is perhaps a little more troubling to

1 Douglas Wile, T’ai Chi’s Ancestors: The Making of an Internal Martial Art (New City, NY: Sweet Ch’I Press, 1999), 5-6. 2 Ibid., 82-187. 3 Meir Shahar, “Ming-period Evidence of Shaolin Martial Practice,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, LXI (2) December 2001.

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learn that these Buddhists went as far as assisting the government in putting down local rebellions and enemies of the throne.4 Curiously enough it is not in China, but in Japan, and especially during the Tokugawa period that the impact of Buddhist thought on the martial arts appears profound and well documented. The Samurai class had of course invented a wide array of martial arts practices, including the use of weapons as well as “open hand” combat, which they polished and handed down through a still greater number of schools or ryu. These skills were in great demand prior to the Tokugawa and especially the Sengoku or Warring States period (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries), which was steeped in conflict among warring Daimyo, the regional military leaders who had spun out of the central control of the military government in Kyoto. From 1600 a new era of stability reigned following the unification of Japan by the victorious Tokugawa clan after the epic battle of Sekigahara. The Samurai became virtually unemployed, yet they were too politically powerful to be disbanded. As a result they were transformed into a harmless aristocracy and encouraged to use more peaceful means of maintaining order (including the class system, which worked nicely for them), such as the promotion of religious values and Confucian ethics. It is at this point that the impact of Buddhist thought on the Samurai, and on the martial arts that they practised, grew especially strong. Zen Buddhism, including the concepts of “concentration” and “mindfulness,” two paths of the celebrated Eightfold Path taught by Buddha, exerted a strong influence over the growth of the martial arts. Concentration, which involved “quiet sitting” or meditation, became an integral part of martial arts curricula. Mindfulness, another branch of the Eightfold Path, which involves awareness of one’s surroundings as well as one’s own physical and mental processes, was absorbed into martial arts practice. Having imported a variety of influences from Daoism, Buddhism, and to some extent Confucianism, contemporary East Asian martial arts emphasize self-control, mind-body coordination, concentration, and various codes of ethics. According to Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate, the highest goal of Karate practice is “to seek perfection of personality rather than to prevail over others.”5 The International Taekwondo Alliance argues that the “purpose of Taekwondo education is to prepare students for the responsibilities of citizenship. Taekwondo is about real and powerful experiences, resulting in the discovery of innate capabilities and a heightened sense of responsibility. Taekwondo students 4

Meir Shahar, “Ming-period Evidence of Shaolin Martial Practice,” 205. Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-Do: My Way of Life (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981).

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are challenged to do what is right and ethical, despite scepticism, and despite the pull of the outside world.”6 Such concepts as “citizenship” and a “sense of responsibility” might well stem from Confucian ethics, which, for better or worse, have exerted a strong impact on East Asian institutions in the form of the celebrated “five relations” of Mencius.7 According to Shi Yong Xin, master of the China Shaolin temple, which claims to be the origin of Chinese kung fu, “Kung fu is actually a comprehensive cultural and spiritual system rather than mere boxing.”8 This is merely a selection of quotes from a large pool of sources indicating that the contemporary practice of the martial arts in East Asia places a strong emphasis on personal strengths and virtues as well as physical skills. Up to this point, we have traced the transformation of the martial arts under the influence of East Asian philosophical and religious traditions, from their originally narrow focus on self-defense to a wide variety of sophisticated practices aimed at mental as well as physical well-being, including the cultivation of personal virtues.

The Emergence of Martial Arts as Entertainment Parallel to the growth of Martial Arts as a means of self-defense and self-cultivation, an entirely new dimension of the martial arts emerged with the Beijing opera in the mid-19th century: the world of Martial Arts entertainment. In this world, which has had an enormous impact on public perceptions, the martial arts are mostly depicted as martial, in the etymological sense of the term, i.e. warlike. The protagonists of early Chinese Martial Arts films, inspired by the Beijing Opera, were endowed with magical and superhuman skills which they used in battles with evil enemies. With a few notable exceptions, the internal, introspective dimension was gone, or at least heavily diluted, presumably as viewers were deemed to have no patience for serene and meditative protagonists who were trained to avoid combat if possible. Furthermore, because the majority of performers were actors who acquired or feigned martial arts expertise, these skills were often distorted or lost in a whirl of acrobatic and aerobatic displays. Until the 1960s Chinese Martial Arts films were thus filled with feats of superhuman 6

http://www.tkd.org/visitors/history. The five relations of Mencius govern the relationships between father and son, ruler and minister, husband and wife, senior and junior, and friends (Mencius 3A:4). 8 http://www.chinashaolintemple.com. 7

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strength accomplished by flailing limbs and whirling torsos that, on more than a few occasions, barely resembled martial arts practice. Thus the mildly derogative term “chop socky movies” was coined for some of the more action-based films produced in Hong Kong. In the 1950s, a new series filmed at the Shaw brothers’ studios in Hong Kong, based on the exploits of a highly accomplished kung fu master called Huang Fei Hong, introduced a novel sense of realism. The main actor, Kwan Tak Hing, was as accomplished in various styles of kung fu as he was in acting, and is reputed to have acquired as much expertise as the master whose role he was playing.9 Another effort aimed at greater realism, inspired by the gritty masterpieces of Kurosawa, was the series depicting the “One-armed Swordsman,” produced by the Shaw brothers, and directed by Chang Cheh. An enormous success financially, the “Onearmed Swordsman” involved less gravity-defying leaps and other feats of superhuman strength, and more gory realism, including suitable volumes of blood and chopped limbs that one would expect from sword-fighting. But it was the Chinese-American Bruce Lee who, having acted and practised kung fu in early childhood, and devoted himself to intensive training in a whole range of Martial Arts, stunned the world with his resourceful fighting skills, exhibiting enormous power and versatility. The Bruce Lee genre was still highly action-oriented, and the story line seemed tailored to showcase the impressive skills of the protagonist rather than to convey a psychological or philosophical message. Lee later became tired of “chop socky movies” and his various writings on the martial arts reflect his growing appetite for literature on Chinese philosophy. His well-known statement, “Be formless ... shapeless like water. If you put water into a cup it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle” was clearly inspired by Laozi’s references to the flexible, Dao-like nature of water in the Daodeching.10 Thus it comes as no surprise that Lee was one of the inspirations behind the philosophically inclined U.S. television series “Kung Fu,” which portrayed the experiences of a half-Chinese half-Caucasian kung fu master in the wild West of the 1800s. Cowboys and Chinese kung fu masters would appear to be a rather explosive and violent combination, but paradoxically this series was imbued with allusions to fair play and interpersonal harmony based on Daoist and Buddhist philosophy. The protagonist, played by David Carradine, regularly recalls his training at the Shaolin temple, and tries to apply the teachings of his Ch’an (Zen) master 9

Richard Meyers et al., From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas: Martial Arts Movies (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press 1991), 56-57. 10 Davis Miller, The Tao of Bruce Lee (New York: Vintage Books, 2000).

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in the tricky situations that he encounters. Some of the episodes include less than five minutes of martial arts combat, focusing much more on exchanges between “grasshopper,” the name given to him at the Shaolin, and his sage master. Some critics of martial arts in the media distinguish between the “Beijing Opera genre,” which emphasizes dramatic, action-packed displays, and the more realistic “Shaolin genre,” which tends to reflect the philosophy of the martial arts more closely. In practice many productions contain a mix of both, and such modern examples might include “Karate Kid” and the nostalgic, romanticized “Last Samurai”. “Karate Kid” tells the story of a young man called Daniel who is viciously bullied by the students of a misguided Karate instructor, and consequently taken under the wing of Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita), a gentle Japanese-American who teaches him the philosophy behind Karate as the key to victory over his opponents. Their relationship is strongly reminiscent of that between Zen master and novice monk. Daniel has no idea why his sensei is asking him to polish cars from morning till night (“wax on, wax off,” is the guiding mantra). This repetitive practice reflects the message behind a well-known exchange between the Ch’an (Zen) master Zhaozhou and an impatient young monk. On asking the Master to teach him Zhaozhou asks, “Have you eaten your meal?” The monk replies, “Yes, I have.” “Then go wash your bowl,” says Zhaozhou. Why didn’t the master give the monk a koan (the secret instruction from master to student that is meant to guide the student in meditation and lead to a grand awakening)? It is only after months of repeatedly having to wash his bowl that the young monk realizes what is going on. The command “go wash your bowl” is itself the koan. In other words, Buddhist awakening is found in mundane activity rather than in abstract speculation and self-absorption that is divorced from concrete affairs. Miyagi is trying to teach the impatient Daniel that his basic attitude, including the exertion of self-control and deep concentration, is the key to the mastery of Karate. A parallel example of the influence of Zen culture on big screen martial arts is the relationship between Luke Skywalker and the Jedi Master Yoda in the “Empire Strikes Back”, where Yoda provides cryptic, koan-like guidance. On the other hand, the cultivation of the “force” seems intriguingly parallel to the cultivation of qi or vital force in Taiji. One might draw the conclusion that Zen Buddhist and Daoist philosophies are slowly occupying a greater role in the depiction of martial arts on the big screen. Yet it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that “Beijing Opera” style modern martial arts productions such as “Rush Hour” and “Matrix” are still going strong. And if one includes certain

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types of computer software in the category of martial arts entertainment, then the philosophical landscape appears pretty barren indeed. Yet the paradox of the modern era is that, whereas legions of children in the strip mall dojos of the West are intent on emulating the combat skills of Bruce Lee, their parents are equally intent on their offspring coming out of the process with razor sharp concentration and enhanced self-control. They are at least vaguely aware that many modern martial arts are imbued with a philosophy of self-cultivation that includes mind-body coordination, mental focus, qi or vital energy, and a code of ethics governing combat and non-combat situations. In this sense the martial arts could be described as “philosophy in action.” Along with big-screen Beijing Opera style entertainment this is perhaps one more reason why the East Asian martial arts have become enormously popular in the West. Consequently one could say that whereas traditional Chinese philosophy has nearly disappeared from mainland China, it is still flourishing in highly modified forms around the world.

CHAPTER SIX EASTERN PRINCIPLES WITHIN WESTERN METAPHYSICS: KRAUSE AND SCHOPENHAUER’S RECEPTION OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY CLAUS DIERKSMEIER

Introduction This paper addresses how elements of Indian philosophy resurface in the metaphysics of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832). After a brief prologue on Schopenhauer and Krause, I sketch how the latter incorporated some elements of Upanishadic and Vedantic speculation into his system. In particular, I emphasize Krause’s “panentheistic” conception of the absolute being (hereafter “the Absolute”) and how it facilitates an “open” dialectics that compares favourably with the dialectics of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. When one ponders the reception of Eastern thinking in Western metaphysics, Arthur Schopenhauer comes immediately to mind. He was introduced to Indian thought first in 1813 by the orientalist Friedrich Majer (1771-1818) in his mother’s salon in Weimar.1 Schopenhauer’s appreciation for Vedantic texts then became deeper through the influence of one Karl Friedrich Christian Krause (1781-1832). Krause was a philosopher in his own right, although to his contemporaries he was known mostly as a master disciple of Fichte and Schelling. Between 1815 and 1817 Schopenhauer lived in Dresden in the Große Meißensche Gasse with Krause next door. Through Krause’s private library Schopenhauer 1

Cf. Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer und die wilden Jahre der Philosophie (Frankfurt: Fischer Tb., 1990), 303. See also Arthur Hübscher, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in its intellectual context—Thinker against the tide (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990).

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became acquainted with Sanskrit originals and their recent translations.2 Krause was an independent follower of Kant, who, like Schopenhauer, developed his own position in altercation with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.3 Although opposed to their carefree speculative idealism, Krause was not against metaphysical thinking altogether. He developed a philosophy of the Absolute for which he coined the term “panentheism” (All-in-God-theory).4 And it was Krause’s panentheistic system, Schopenhauer scholars believe, that accounts for important changes in Schopenhauer’s thinking, namely in regard to the conception of the epistemic and ontological quality of the “Ding-an-sich” (thing-in-itself).5 We will hear more of this later.

The Reception of Krause’s Philosophy Between 1798 and 1804 Krause lived in Jena and worked in close communication and competition with the Romantic Movement there. Although initially he was very popular with the Jena audience and received favourable reviews for his works, he did not manage to make an academic career. Partly for political reasons, as his social philosophy was far too modern for his contemporaries, yet mostly since he made some unfortunate career decisions, he slowly but surely manoeuvred himself out of the focus of academic attention. A few years after his early death, in 1832, just a handful of German scholars knew him, and at the close of the 2 Cf. Kurt Riedel, “Schopenhauer bei Karl Christian Friedrich Krause,” Schopenhauer Jahrbuch 37 (1956): 15. In 1804 the Oupnekhat, a Persian version of the Upanishads, translated into Latin by Abraham Hyacinthe AnquetilDuperron, was the first such text to be broadly read in German intellectual circles. In his Vorlesungen über die Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschaft, zugleich in ihrer Beziehung zu dem Leben. Nebst einer kurzen Darstellung und Würdigung der bisherigen Systeme der Philosophie, vornehmlich der neuesten von Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel, und der Lehre Jacobi’s. Für Gebildete aus allen Ständen, Göttingen 1829, a work that gives a major synopsis of his system, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause lists the primary and secondary literature that informed his research into Indian philosophy. 3 For a systematic location of Krause in his historical context, cf. Claus Dierksmeier, Der absolute Grund des Rechts. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause in Auseinandersetzung mit Fichte und Schelling (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: FrommannHolzboog, 2003). 4 Cf. U. Dierse and W. Schroder, “Panentheismus,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 7, 48 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989). 5 Cf. Robert Wicks, “Arthur Schopenhauer,” Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/.

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19th century he was all but forgotten. In the last thirty years, though, his philosophy has been experiencing a renaissance in research literature, driven by studies from Spanish and Latin American scholars.6 This revival of interest is due to the enormous impact Krause’s philosophy had on Spain and Latin America. In Spain, one Julián Sanz del Río (1814-1869) was a towering figure. He became Krause’s main promoter: Sanz del Río compiled a book from translations of several of Krause’s works. Introducing it into Spain, he then proclaimed, falsely, that it contained a liberal philosophy of his own making, albeit influenced by Krause. Under this guise, Krause’s teachings enjoyed a major triumph, first in Spain and then all over Latin America, being received as the long-awaited Spanish contribution to 19th century liberalism. Being “idealistic” in its quest for peaceful social reform, yet much more oriented towards experience (both scientific and historic) than German Idealism, “krausismo” answered to a broadly felt need for a modern philosophy with a social agenda.7

Krause’s Methodology Before we turn to Krause’s metaphysics and its incorporation of Indian thought, let us take a brief look at his methodology and epistemology. Krause sets himself apart from his contemporaries in that he advocates an “open” dialectical process. He wants to provide a system of ratiocination that offers, but does not prescribe, speculative patterns for conceiving the world. Krause did not believe that one could generate knowledge about factuality by conceptual effort alone. Knowledge needs experience of both natural and social phenomena. The basic epistemic function of metaphysics for Krause is therefore quite Kantian: to conceptually process our experience by the help of dialectical patterns. That however is not the only function of dialectics, as they also operate heuristically. Conceptual speculation leads to the formulation of expectations about reality that can be submitted to empirical observation for the purposes of falsification or verification. Speculations about unobservable, or merely notional, entities obviously have a different epistemic status than systematized matters of fact. However, such speculations are not pointless. Indeed they fulfil an inevitable function in human self-orientation, since, in many realms of life, 6

Here especially the excellent studies of Enrique Menendez Ureña, director of the Instituto Investigación sobre Liberalismo, Krausismo y Masonería of the Universidad Pontifia Comillas in Madrid deserve to be mentioned. For further information see http://www.upco.es/centros/cent_inst_ilkm.aspx. 7 Cf. Carlos Otto Stoetzer, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and his influences in the Hispanic worlds (Vienna-Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1998).

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we cannot but speculate. In regard to classical philosophical topics such as freedom, individuality, etc., there is an inexorable need for orientation through ideas. We cannot abstain from forming opinions about how to live well, about the significance of death, and so forth. Hence, whenever we cannot obtain orientation other than through ideas, it is better to employ philosophically guided speculation, carefully laying down its premises for public critique, than simply to follow our emotional predilections, cultural prejudices, or religious preferences. For this purpose, and far ahead of his time, Krause developed a twopronged methodology that interweaves analytical and synthetic philosophy. Therein synthetic thinking employs speculative methods of intuition, introspection, and conceptual construction in order to divine the nature of things beyond our empirical ken, whereas analytical thinking is employed in the constant critique of such notions. Analytical philosophy investigates whether the proceeds from synthetic thinking hold up to logical scrutiny, separating out those that do not. The same process also works inversely: Analytical thinking stirs up antinomies that cannot be solved by analytical tools alone, calling synthetic speculation to the fore. Synthetic philosophy responds by developing ideas under which antinomies that otherwise would paralyse reason can be reconciled, or by designing concepts that integrate otherwise fragmented knowledge into meaningful units. The ideas thus found are in turn subjected to analytical scrutiny, and the process starts all over again. In the end, only such synthetically generated ideas that are found to be analytically without reproach stay in place. They continue to be employed precisely as long as, and insofar as, they remain unchallenged. As soon as there is well-argued doubt as to their validity, the process of analytical-synthetic investigation is taken up anew; the philosophical endeavour is hence perennial. Accordingly—and in striking difference to Hegel and others—Krause did assume, and even intend, that his philosophical works would be superseded by those of future philosophers.

Freedom as Theoretical and Practical Principle Krause specifically wants to promote only such ideas that anyone who is willing and able to join the conceptual endeavour of philosophy without prefabricated standpoints could endorse. Unlike most of his colleagues, who unabashedly deduced ex cathedra what was true (theoretically) and what had to be done (practically), Krause felt that one must make freedom not only the prime content of philosophy but also its methodological principle. Hence, Krause employs a host of participation-oriented

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procedures (dialogical approaches, phenomenological analyses, etc.), and takes the worldviews and arguments of ordinary citizens seriously. He does not follow the then popular trend to use the notion of a “transcendental consciousness” to override the inconvenient objections our everyday consciousness raises against certain dialectical speculations. And it was exactly this liberal methodology that brought about the highly uncommon results that set Krause’s metaphysics of freedom so distinctly apart from any other liberalism of his days, and that render it interesting in the present.8 Just as in his theoretical philosophy Krause stands for the procedural participation of everyone, in his practical philosophy a notion of “harmonic” freedom prevails that emphasizes the need for integrating any and all subjects, not forgetting the marginalized ones: disabled, senile, and poverty-stricken persons, for instance. Accordingly, Krause was (as early as 1803) one of the first to advocate the protection of the rights of children and women, global social justice, ecological sustainability, and the rights of future generations.9

The Roots of Krause’s Metaphysics According to the aforementioned methodology, the task of the professional philosopher is to provide his audience with what he deems the best available metaphysical models, suggesting how these can be employed so as to solve the philosophical problems that concern everyone. Krause felt, for instance, that certain nuances of the idea of absolute unity as presented in Indian philosophy provided such conceptions worthy of universal attention. However, since he drew on a broad variety of Indian texts, it is not easy to pinpoint which particular text gave him what kind of inspiration.10 Moreover, I myself am not an expert in Vedantic materials, 8

Cf. Claus Dierksmeier, “Deduktion/Konstruktion versus Mechanismus/Organismus. Zu Methodologie und Inhalt der Sozialphilosophie im Deutschen Idealismus,” in System and Context: Early Romantic and Early Idealistic Constellations/System und Kontext: Frühromantische und frühidealistische Konstellationen, ed. Rolf Ahlers, (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 229-262. 9 Cf. Claus Dierksmeier, “Recht und Freiheit. Karl Christian Friedrich Krauses ‘Grundlage des Naturrechts’ im Kontext des Jenaer Idealismus,” in International Yearbook of German Idealism/Internationales Jahrbuch für Deutschen Idealismus, Vol. 2 (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Inc, 2004), 309-334. 10 Cf. however his Vorlesungen über die Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschaft […], 278-284, where he gives an overview of the main teachings of the major Vedantic and Buddhist schools and points out which of their respective tenets are in accordance with his own philosophy. Most importantly, Krause acknowledges there that the “Vedam” (sic!) did already contain the main elements of “die reine

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so I cannot assess whether his understanding of his sources was adequate.11 Consequently, I will confine myself to reconstructing his position. Yet even to give an account of Krause’s metaphysical core concepts in ordinary language is not without difficulty because, over time, Krause developed his very own, and hardly intelligible, technical language. The reasons behind this decision, which had a major negative impact on his career, were these: Krause had witnessed the careers of Fichte and Schelling being severely hampered by attacks charging them with atheism and pantheism.12 Furthermore, Krause himself had been a victim of a smear-campaign by freemasons who felt he had unduly criticized them.13 A highly technical and artificial language, he hoped, might reduce the risk of conceptual ambivalences that then could be exploited through wilful misapprehension. It is from the resulting, highly intricate idiom that one must translate Krause’s thinking back into ordinary language.

Krause’s Critique of Traditional Theories of the Absolute Krause’s reading of Sanskrit texts was a central factor in his decision, displayed in his works from 1810 on, to depart in method and content from his idealistic contemporaries, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. He criticised what he saw as an overly simplistic dialectic of “unity versus diversity” in their conceptions of the Absolute. The main lines of his argument are as follows: If one conceptualises the Absolute only as unity in respect of, and in regard to, diversity then one either has to designate the Absolute as the principio a quo of diversity, or as its principio ad quem. Let us have a closer look at both alternatives: Taking the Absolute as the principio a quo, the philosopher has to face the problem of how to generate diversity from something that is not diverse but simple. In order to generate Wesenschauung” (the pure notion of the Absolute) and, based upon it, a correct understanding of the relation between the realms of nature and freedom (279). 11 For introductory purposes see Eliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1985); Karl H. Potter, Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies, (Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991); Patrick Olivelle, Upanisads, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Sue Hamilton, Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). For a selection of original texts see John and Patricia Joyce Koller, A Sourcebook in Asian Philosophy, (New York: Prentice Hall, 1991). 12 Cf. K.-M. Kodalle et al., ed., “Fichtes Entlassung—Der Jenaer Atheismusstreit vor 200 Jahren,” Kritisches Jahrbuch der Philosophie 4 (1999). 13 Cf. Claus Dierksmeier, “Der Freimaurer K.C.F. Krause (1781-1832) und die Rezeption seiner Philosophie,” Jahrbuch Quatuor Coronati 40 (2003): 175-192.

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something other than itself the Absolute must thence be conceived as in internal conflict with itself, so to speak. Assuming the Absolute to be in need of reconciliation with itself, however, contradicts the basic notion of it being absolute. To avoid this, there remains only the unattractive Manichean solution of treating diversity as a self-standing opposite to the Absolute. Then, however, all forms of diversity—and with them finitude as their marker—become, as it were, “the dark side” that besmirches the purity, goodness, and beauty of the Absolute. Mundane life, in its manifold and diverse forms, consequently, is conceived of as having no inherent worth, as something that exists only in order to be overcome; a negative teleology of being results, with manifestly misanthropic consequences. Taking the other alternative and construing the Absolute as principio ad quem does not look promising either. In this case, the Absolute is seen as ultimate unity, synthesizing any and all forms of diversity. The comprehensiveness thereof compels the philosopher to demonstrate how even entities and events repugnant to reason can be integrated into, and reconciled with, a notion of absolute unity within which, as a matter of course, reason forms a formidable part. In practical philosophy this leads right into the troubled waters of theodicy. In theoretical philosophy, as the phenomena that surround us do not visibly display this unity, one ends up having to postulate a “hidden”, or “invisible”, unity of everything that is. Naturally, such speculation is starkly at odds with our everyday consciousness, since for the ordinary mind there remain puzzles, unresolved conflicts, and meaningless facts in droves. The postulated absolute unity between everything escapes all but the speculative philosopher, it seems. Immunising themselves from such objections, unfazed by the indemonstrability of their speculative insights into the “true” nature of things, idealistic philosophers easily turn into speculative dogmatists and parade aloof from the troubles of mundane life. Krause was strongly opposed to both the content and the corresponding attitudes brought forth by such conceptualisations of the Absolute. Before employing the Absolute for purposes of synthesis and integration, he argues, one has to thematize the idea of unity as simple one-ness, that is, other than as non-duality, which is still defined by its correlate (duality, diversity), as something defined solely through itself. And there is, furthermore, an important understanding of absolute unity not to be overlooked, namely absolute unity as something that incorporates, yet does not arise from, the many syntheses within the empirical world.

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Krause’s Own Theory of the Absolute Krause employs these notions of a self-standing and comprehensive Absolute, articulated as Brahman in the Upanishads, to redesign the speculative idea of the Absolute as follows: First, there is the unity of being (“Wesen”), pure and simple, conceived of by nothing other than itself; Krause assigns to it the prefix “Or”, so that “Orwesen” results as signifier of this particular aspect, i.e. of the Absolute a se.14 Then, for the manifold entities given, we need the notion of unity-as-origin; Krause’s prefix for it is “Ur”. While he accepts a fundamental ontological connection of every single entity with “Urwesen”, ontic syntheses between existing things are not worked by “Urwesen” but self-standing. Consequently, whereas “Urwesen” is involved in life, as its source, that does not mean the absoluteness of the Absolute dominates the finite world. In other words, Krause’s model distinguishes between the Absolute proper, as the wholly-structural “God of the philosophers” (“Orwesen”) on the one hand, and the personal “God of religion” (“Urwesen”) on the other, and equates neither with the universe.15 Many more such prefix-generated specifications could be enumerated; that is however immaterial for our concern here. More important for Krause’s adaptation of Indian notions to the Western metaphysics is this: Through emancipating the Absolute on the one hand from mundane syntheses between finite entities, the Absolute and historical life become independent from one another. For, in Krause’s conception, the “God of religion” (“Urwesen”), represents the very aspect of the Absolute that it retains for itself, functioning as the inexhaustible source of an eternal flow of life that emanates from it. Therefore, neither the Absolute proper, i.e. 14

Krause holds that his prefixes aim at restoring an original but mostly lost IndoGerman vocabulary, once common both to the German and the Indian culture. Besides an attempt at reuniting these traditions linguistically, his prefix-system is meant to contribute to a universal philosophical speech-logic that intends to bring the clarity of mathematical notation to philosophical thinking. It is likely that with this idea, which Krause himself found in Leibniz, influenced Gottlob Frege (through C. Fortlage, a Krause disciple), cf. Lother Kreisler, Gottlob Frege: Leben–Werk–Wirkung, (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag 2001), 155-169. 15 On speculations on the Sanskrit tradition regarding Brahman, Atman, etc. that have much in common with Krause’s terms Orwesen, Urwesen, and Omwesen, cf. David Loy, Nonduality: a study in comparative philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Sengaku Mayeda, A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of Sankara, (New York City: State University of New York Press, 1992); Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarika, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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the “God of the philosophers”, nor the “God of religion” is taking an active part in mundane life. “Urwesen” instead establishes the radical freedom of life to follow its very own laws, and “Orwesen” simply denotes the metaphysical realm where this life takes place. Thereby, Krause forges theistic and pantheistic notions into what he termed panentheism. He is neither taking the theistic position that God is supreme and apart from the world, acting within it upon discretion, nor the pantheistic one that God is all and all is God, consigning life to a predetermined scheme of events. Krause holds instead that everything exists within the Absolute (“Orwesen”) that (as “Urwesen”) is however not exhausted by the phenomenal world. This panentheistic model holds, as it were, the door open for life to develop itself in autonomy and to supersede itself endlessly.16 And since things are seen as determined by their very nature instead of displaying absolute karma, any fatalistic aspect, as inherent in most pantheistic systems, is evaded. Moreover, the Absolute no longer “suffers” (as in Hegel) from each unresolved disunity on earth. The need for an all-encompassing reconciliation at the end of days evaporates. Life might just be going on and on—imperfect, and with partial solutions only—through the making and breaking of ever new, and always limited, syntheses. Consequently, dialectical processes need no longer run through predetermined stages, as the world is not in progress towards a pre-conceived telos that only a speculative history can unveil.

Krause and Schopenhauer Coming back to Schopenhauer, we can see more clearly now how Krause’s system influenced him: The first volume of the World as Will and Representation ends in a notorious paradox. The “thing-in-itself” at the bottom of everything, says Schopenhauer, is but a blind will to life. A cruel master, it drives us with brutish force into ever-new circles of life, longing, and suffering. Severed from our fellow beings through painful individuation, and in sore isolation from the original sources of life, 16

A dogmatic Christian theologian might nevertheless not be too happy with this solution. Since Krause locates “Urwesen,” the God of religion, as but a moment within the Absolute proper, God’s mode of existence is nothing but his function. This is not a lowly one, to be sure. “Urwesen” serves as the eternal spring of life, and freedom, after all. Yet, neither does this “God” have powers of his own, as distinct from the powers that be, nor can he interfere with mundane events. He is, consequently, for Krause less an addressee of prayers and more a figure of metaphysical reflection—whence Krause declares that the best “holy service” is philosophising.

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subject to the stern rule of impersonal and deterministic laws of nature, the only way to healing, it seems, is to renounce the very will to life. We must not chafe against the fetters that bind us, but from insight into their necessity renounce any contrary desires: in short, resignation becomes the philosophically recommended state of mind. However, what is the ontological status of the purged consciousness that recommends this? Is it depleted of any selfish will, already elevated to higher truth? If truly everything is but brute and blind will, why is it we aim for and sometimes achieve, something else, to wit, a consciousness as to why and how to supersede such a will? In the second volume of the World as Will and Representation, written after his years in Krause’s proximity, Schopenhauer acknowledges this problem and responds to it with a modification of his system along decidedly panentheistic lines. The thing-in-itself is brute will only “to us”, Schopenhauer now declares.17 The world itself can, and likely will, have other—and higher—dimensions. The principle of being is not fully disclosed to our understanding. Thus, if ever, per impossibile, the “veil of Maya” were taken from our eyes, we would not, as the early Schopenhauer foretold, look into abominable nothingness. Rather, we would behold the very force that enables us to strive for, and arrive at, something over and above a blind will to life. Then, and this is a consequence overlooked by Schopenhauer but energetically emphasized by Krause, a brighter light shines forth upon our path. Given that, and considering that the will to life can enlighten and reflectively modify itself, elevating life to ever-higher forms, resignation seems indeed not the only reasonable response to life.

17 Cf. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Section 28, Vol. II (New York, Dover Publications, 1966).

PART II AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

Almost every intellectual movement, especially when it is young, is most likely to have some controversy over its origins as well as its ties with other known schools of thought. As an academic discipline and intellectual movement, African philosophy is relatively young and as a result has had its share of such controversy. The question of its origins and the role it has played (or not played) in world civilization and intellectualism has been a subject of debate and at times fierce exchange among scholars. While some scholars perceive and portray Africa as a continent whose defining feature is lack of rationality and hence as having done nothing meaningful, developed nothing, or created nothing historical; others have contested that position. And because of this difference of opinion, the status of African philosophy within and its relation to mainstream philosophy has also been a subject of interest to both African and Western scholars, and has generated much discussion. In some quarters, even within academia, the Western world was seen as the epitome of civilization and values while non-Western societies—of which the African continent is a part—were denied these attributes. Those who made this distinction based their claims on the concept of reason. They saw reason as the line of divide. In line with this dichotomization, indigenous African cultures were characterized by cultural anthropologists, historians, and even philosophers as primitive. Such scholars can however be clustered into two categories, given that the term “primitive” can be understood and employed in two different ways. There were those who used the term to mean “of or at an early stage of social development,” and those who used it with attendant derogatory connotations, and hence synonymous with “naively simple,” “old-fashioned,” “inconvenient,” or “deluded.” While the former group conceived African cultures as primordial, the latter thought of them disparagingly and in purely derogative terms. However, despite the different possible uses of the term, its application in scholarship to African cultures has largely been negative; it has preserved its usual ideological connotations.

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The conception and characterization of African cultures as primitive, whether in the primordial or derogative sense, has had serious implications and consequences for discourses regarding the existence and nature of African philosophy. Besides being the basis that has informed the denial of the existence of African philosophy or rational thought in Africa, it has had profound implications on the philosophical status of African philosophy within mainstream philosophy, as well as raising questions regarding the historical connection between African societies and cultures on the one hand and world civilization on the other. The responses to Western discourse on Africa have been varied. However, one can delineate two broad categories or wings. Though both are concerned with deconstructing, decentering, and dehegemonizing Western produced knowledge/power, one wing does so in a combative modus operandi by empowering Africa as the point of reference for alternative discourses. The second wing focuses on what it considers the basic premises that should inform African discursive formations by drawing from African conceptual and perceptual realities. This second wing is not essentially and intrinsically anti-Eurocentric in its projection. Five chapters in this section of the book belong in the second category. In Masolo’s essay, which is an appraisal of the comparative approach in philosophy, the starting point is that human beings are not finished products and neither is an individual “a mental replica of any one group or community whose resources and values come to permanently shape his/her thinking” (emphasis ours). Human experience is therefore not fixed and as a result thought and philosophy are (or should) always be comparative. Masolo advances and defends the position that humans have always been culturally hybridic and, in a manner of speaking, therefore stationless individuals. He thus cautions that it would not be appropriate to privilege one tradition of philosophical thinking or culture over the others. A strong message in the essay is that embedded in comparative thinking is a cultural pluralism which places an obligation on us to appreciate and respect other peoples’ ways and views as the only avenue to productive dialogue, comparative investigation and growth of knowledge. Hellsten’s essay continues with the theme of comparative thinking in Masolo’s essay. In her essay, she is perturbed by the universalism that is usually attributed to Western thought. According to her, this attribution is an illusion and has falsely led to Western hegemony and biases from which she advises that Western philosophy must strive to liberate itself. On the other hand, the essay notes that African philosophers in their attempts to counter the alleged universalism in Western thought have themselves also made a mistake; they have overly emphasized the cultural

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distinctiveness of Africa at the expense of philosophy. Her essay is an attempt to show the (proper) use of philosophy in cross- and trans-cultural dialogue and human development. The same spirit found in the papers by Masolo and Hellsten runs through that of Thompson whose essay grapples with the fundamental question of the nature and purpose of philosophy. With particular reference to African philosophical trends, he discusses the universalist/anti-revivalist/modernist approach and the particularist/revivalist/traditional approach, exploring the similarities and differences between them. Thompson’s conclusion is that both approaches have positive elements and should, perhaps, not be seen as contradictory. However, with regard to questions such as: “What is justice?” or “What is being?” Thompson believes that “there will be a certain range of possible answers, limited to the particular milieu… The overriding concern of the universalist is to create an arena in which different cultural traditions can begin to correspond with one another, to create the grounds upon which a communicative exchange is possible” (emphasis ours). Ochieng’-Odhiambo’s essay has two objectives: (1) to explain the origin of philosophic sagacity as an approach to African philosophy and, (2) to elucidate its practical relevance in modern Africa. The essay identifies two research projects initiated by Odera Oruka in 1974 and 1976 which were exercises in philosophic sagacity. A careful reading of the aims of the 1974 project reveals that its concern was to bridge the gap that divided the particularist position of ethnophilosophy and the universalist thesis of the professional school. The essay then goes on to show how philosophic sagacity as portrayed in Odera Oruka’s 1976 project—which explicitly accommodates both universalism and particularism—could act as check to undesirable foreign ideas in a culture. Mabana’s essay examines the relationship between Negritude and African philosophy. He begins by discussing Negritude, looking at its claims and role in the struggle for political independence in Africa. In discussing the history and development of African philosophy, his essay, in a way, limits itself to a critique of ethnophilosophy. This, however, is not surprising given the epistemological affinity between Negritude and ethnophilosophy and the fact that the latter emerged when Negritude was consolidating itself to tackle colonialism. Ethnophilosophy was therefore considered as supplemental contribution to the fight against colonialism. And in Mabana’s own words: “they have without a doubt the same ideological goal: the valorization of Black People”. Despite the commonality between Negritude and African philosophy, Mabana alludes to some differences between them.

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While the other essays in this section are metaphilosophical in that they address the question of the nature and role of philosophy (in relation to Africa), Kalumba’s essay is an exercise in African philosophy: it picks up a topic in African philosophy and discusses it, or, as others may put it, the essay constitutes doing African philosophy. The essay is a critique of Kagame’s account of the traditional Bantu concept of time. The gist of the essay is that though Kagame’s conception of traditional Bantu time is three-dimensional (with a past, present, and future), he paradoxically endorses Mbiti’s notorious view that traditional African concept of time is two-dimensional consisting of a past (zamani) and a present (sasa), and virtually no future. Since its publication in 1969, Mbiti’s view has been the subject of heated debate. However, the novelty found in Kalumba’s essay is its comparative approach (hence showing an affinity with Masolo and Hellsten) and also his use of Luganda in criticizing Mbiti. Common to the five papers is their anchorage on pertinent issues in African philosophy and more importantly their location in comparative philosophy, also known as cross-cultural philosophy. Comparative philosophy is a relatively new and rapidly growing sub-discipline of philosophy in which philosophers address problems by intentionally and objectively engaging in dialogue and drawing from sources across cultural, linguistic, and philosophical streams. It constitutes a significant part of the raison d’être for our continuing conversations at Cave Hill.

CHAPTER SEVEN DISCOURSE AND OBJECT: APPRAISING THE COMPARATIVE APPROACH IN PHILOSOPHY D. A. MASOLO

Introduction: Everything in Flux The terms It is pretty safe, and commonsensical, to proclaim that we have always been culturally hybridic! Two things need explanation here at the outset. First, for purposes of reference, terminologies depicting cultural groupings, such as “Western”, or “non-Western”, or “African”, and so on, as they will inform our discussion, are only broadly used. In those senses, I hope that I can take some liberty to assume that talking as a nonWestern—understood here broadly as being of non-European and nonEuro-American cultural orientation in how I have shaped and accustomed my mind in thinking about the world—allows me to represent not only an African standpoint but also the broader cultural realm across the globe where people, like myself, do or can identify principles and values of life significantly associated with their own cultural histories. The fact, therefore, that people in this broad cultural world have been in encounters with the cultures of Europe, or with others of such derivation, would not appear to disqualify them from making distinctions between their own cultures from others, especially from those of European extraction. Hence, although when I say “we” I may often be referring more specifically to African peoples whose encounters with the hegemonic cultural ideologies of post-eighteenth century Europe I am most familiar with, the general appeal to other non-Western peoples in the broad senses indicated above is to be assumed. Second, it is appropriate to state, also at the outset, that my use of the

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idea of cultural hybridity is not without awareness of its primary botanical reference and some of the problems associated with botanical hybridization, like lack of genetic unity required for self-reproduction, nor are we unaware of the disputations that the idea of cultural hybridity has generated since Homi Bhabha (1994) gave it currency in post-colonial theory. There, it was used to refer primarily to the intermittent cultural zone that results from colonization, assumedly under the impression that as human beings, every experience has an impact and leaves its mark on us. Thus even colonial experience has left us with marks we cannot simply wash away. Some of these marks may have grown into scars, others have “blended” into whatever cultural “pigmentation” or appearance we had then. That cultures change in this manner, or that all aspects of culture do not change at the same time or at the same pace are pretty much selfevident. That is why even my mother’s Nyamula (hybridized) maize seeds do not reproduce themselves in exactly the same pattern as the cob from which they came, and the blame is neither on the sterility of the pattern as such, nor of the bees that propel the continuous if uneven mixing. In fact, if the pattern of any Nyamula maize cob were reproduceable in that exact form, a stagnation will have occurred, and that is unlikely, without an evil hand of control, either in the botanical world, or in the cultural sphere of humans. I therefore use the term to argue that transitory and temporary zones of cultural change are not a unique function of colonization but rather of much older events of social mobility like migrations. Thus the Luo language already included such cross-pollination terms like “Nyamula” long before crop hybridization became a deliberate practice of recent agriculture aimed at countering limitations in productivity imposed by natural environmental conditions, and they regarded some aspects of selected variation as desirable. For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, they had seen, selected, and mix-matched sub-species of millet from other communities with their own, just like their very social composition constantly varied through the history and geography of their migrations. The point, then, is that the socio-ethnic and cultural arrangements of Africa as we know them today—to be complexly heterogeneous in their make-up—pre-date colonialism and defy any ideology, new or old, local or European-derived, that tries to fix African identities in accordance with any set of politically driven interests. Therefore, if all people, and not just Africans or non-Westerners generally, are not describable as homogeneously constituted and distinct communities with incompatible socio-cultural systems of belief and organization, then the practice of comparing how they interact with each other and with their respective environments is one that should strive to overcome boundaries

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and systems by thinking of people whose ideas, beliefs and practices are believed to be indicators of the world’s cultural map in its multiple landscapes as constantly interacting and therefore constantly changing or modifying those indicators. I argue that on account of the non-fixity of human experience, thought in general, and philosophy in particular, is, or should, as a critical practice, always be comparative.

Cultures and histories Let me therefore repeat, that it is pretty safe, and commonsensical, to proclaim that we have always been culturally hybridic! Any consideration of our history suggests that this is not by any means a recent phenomenon. Through our migrations we all have acquired from places and peoples we have passed through as much as we also have lent out to them. Our contemporary kin have only extended and given this hybridity new perspectives. Her portrait is incessantly and far more widely diversified. She is global and, like her ancestors, defies any attempts to essentialize her. In today’s grammar, she is helplessly post-postmodern. Old approaches to comparative thought were built on the assumption that thought systems, like many other things we designate as “cultural”, the kind of things once thought to deeply characterize and define us, belong to systems or traditions that bear or are characterized by strong homogeneity, and that every individual was born into one by virtue of her dominant and metaphysical strings of descent. This view of cultures as “hard” or “natural” systems was rooted in modern European thought, and was imposed upon our perception of society through colonial inducement. Contemporary social theory aims partly to correct the anthropological view of tribes or ethnicities as closed cultural communities by requiring that we adjust not only how we view the constitution of the social circumstances of thought production but also what constitutes comparative thinking and how it is propagated in the socialization of the person as both actor and cognitive agent. In this new picture of things, every moment in the life of the Self is transitory, and therefore contingent. The pitfalls of modern European thought—that which ushered in the objective view of the world—need to be reconsidered in the light of Heraclitus’ view of the world as constantly in flux. Specifically, he would have wondered how, after him, and where, in the path of history, modern Europeans fell into the traps of the objectivist idea of reality which we all inherited from the modern mind, namely that everywhere there are hard realities to be known in their lasting natures, and that for those realities that change, such as societies or communities, there is a natural order, and

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one ideal end that accomplished human life ought historically to attain. Yet before science there was Christianity’s view that there was only one way, one light, and one truth. It is in Christianity that the belief to the effect that there can be only one good and true thing was given centrality, and also one correct way of arriving at that truth. In its general significance and impact, this view foregrounded science, and later stood at the centre of the confluence of science, religion, and anthropology. For a long time it formed the basis of the ideologies of historical differences between peoples determined by the relative proximity to the ideal end. In the specific African case, Placide Tempels used it to distinguish those who were adapting (the Évolués) from those, the primitive, who were stricken with damnation and left in darkness, the absolute “pagans” like me (Tempels 1965, 17). This attitude was meant to teach us that the purpose of human life was or could be only in one sense. In other words, there also must be only some specific social and political arrangements that render the attainment of that purpose possible. In the minimum, they must be in the right direction, those arrangements that aim but have yet to attain that political and moral perfection that alone is commensurate with the objectified human ideal. This was Hegel’s idea of history that saw the underlying unity of all institutionalised human endeavours to be the historical incarnation of the Absolute (seen through the prism of dialectical human reason). Like him, Heidegger thought that there was something essentially European about the relationship between the Absolute and ideal human—meaning rational or philosophical—endeavour (Heidegger 1958, 31). Those cultures and systems whose ways are distant from, and out of sync with this progressive European path ought to be aided in all available and possible ways to discover it, which, in nineteenth century European thought, justified the global projections of European colonial, missionary, and anthropological enterprises. Hegel thought that European incursions into Africa had historicized portions of it while the spread of Islam had transformed other parts. In his now classic opus, The Invention of Africa (1988), V. Y. Mudimbe amasses minute important details of how, over a period spanning many centuries, this complex discourse became the driving force of the missionary and anthropological programs in their service to colonization. Not only did the grounding ideology in Hegel’s and Heidegger’s philosophies invent the ideas of being German or European as unifying forms of identity, but over time, usurped into a social and Christian view of “Europeanism” in contrast to Others, this ideology became the basis for the image of Africa as a dark continent from which, says Mudimbe, “no respectable consciousness could arise and function outside of a cadre that

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has conjugated, in a totalising manner, Greek rationality, Judeo-Christian ethics, and scientific procedures and practices” (1997, 147-8). Many of us, then and now, are products of this programmatic triangle that links Christianity and colonialism, anthropology and Christianity, and colonialism and anthropology. The question, then, is how a dominated culture, a dominated consciousness, emerges from this negation to reclaim itself, even to the point that earns the respect of a comparative study. There are three possible ways, one more than Césaire told Maurice Thoréz many years ago. In a letter to Thoréz in 1956, the great Martinican poet and philosopher said there were two ways of losing oneself: either by rejecting oneself totally to become the Other, or by shutting oneself within the isolating walls of difference.1 But there is a third way of reacting to conquest, by taking charge and giving a new beginning to a historical synthesis. According to Mudimbe, this synthesis situates the self in the espace métissé, by taming and acculturating the Other to the fundamentals of the self, thus creating a new order that integrates appropriation with difference, submission with creative defiance. Several African philosophers (for example Mudimbe 1988 and 1997; Appiah 1992, 2005, and 2006; Wiredu 1980 and 1996; Hountondji 1996 and 2002; Gyekye 1997) address this fundamental historicity of human life with different styles of approval. The lives of historical humans take place in these espaces métissés; they are lived in spaces in-between, somewhere midway between Césaire’s two poles. No condition is permanent. Even Hegel’s own invention of Germanism and Europeanism takes account of the rise of the spirit from the ashes of history. The temporal vicinity of our colonial history makes the in-between spaces of our lives relatively more visible, and more debated or contested due in part, as Chinua Achebe tells us in Things Fall Apart, to the suddenness and depth of the initial variation. One of the many lessons of Achebe’s classic novel is that if there are or have been any social orders, then these can be understood only in terms of the discourses by which they are constantly constituted, because there are no social orders as permanent and lasting arrangements. Okonkwo’s tragedy arises from his own lack of cognizance of this historicity; precisely from his encounter with the sudden falling apart of 1

This statement probably expresses Césaire’s own admission of, and disappointment with lessons of postcolonial politics learned from some controversial decisions, which he considered practically viable, while balancing them with an ideology of equal difference for his pays natal and for all black people. The alternatives, while articulating his disappointment with the polarized politics of the time, have been the cause of much political controversy either by interpretation or by application.

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what he erroneously had thought to be his permanent and indelible station in society and the virtues that defined it. But alas, as the colonial and Christian authorities extended their reign, Okonkwo is rudely awakened to the realization that if there had been earlier times when a clear understanding of his social position allowed him to make inferences about what to do, those times were sadly gone. Africa’s postcoloniality has been marked by disagreements about how to reconstitute either our epistemological or our socio-political systems in the aftermath of the colonial episode. The colonial invention of Africa as a place where individual consciousness had no place has been at the centre of these disagreements. Originating in the British social anthropologist Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Azande (Evans-Pritchard 1937), the idea became the beacon of Tempels’ idea of African philosophy as collective thought, and Senghor’s idea of the African mind as participative. In response, Hountondji’s rationalist critique of ethnophilosophy aims at presenting the universal phenomenological characteristics of consciousness by challenging the assumption, underlying Senghor’s racialized psychology, that modes of “intending” the world are racially distributed. In developing his counter-position, Hountondji universalizes both Husserl and Senghor. In other words, he appeals to, or draws from a mix of methodological influences from Gaston Bachelard and Edmund Husserl and ideas of science from Husserl, Bachelard, and George Canguilhem as descriptions of mind in general, all minds, any mind. By the same stroke, he elevates what Senghor postulates as a racially distinct African mind to the universal but passive or unreflective feature of mind in general, of all minds, of any mind. Husserl teaches of two levels of intending or consciousness, one natural and, for that reason, passive. In today’s psychological parlance, many would concede that it is almost physical by virtue of being acted upon by external reality and by its own autosensitivity. Husserl calls it “natural intending”. The other one is active or critical, and is the seat of deliberate reflection. Husserl contrasts these two domains as “life-world” and “objective-scientific world” and says that “The knowledge of the objective-scientific world is ‘grounded’ in the self-evidence of the lifeworld” but they must not be conflated. Utilizing this distinction, Hountondji argued that ethnophilosophers, following both Tempels and Senghor, were privileging “natural intending” as a peculiarity of Africans, thus implying that Africans did not need critical and deliberate intending which is the seat of theory in general, and of science (and philosophy) more specifically (Hountondji 2002, 26ff). Theoretical practice requires this shift from the natural intending as a passive state of mind to a

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conscious and deliberate intending, one in which the subject posits the object of his/her intention—what Husserl calls “the life-world”—as outside itself. When two cultures interact, the points of their adjustments and accommodations to each other will be most visible where these are brought into sharpest resolutions, magnifying the points of separations and differences. The debate on ethnophilosophy identifies the collectiveindividual opposition as one of those areas about which African thinkers are not unanimous there was opposition between African and Western cultures. But assuming there was such opposition, it does not help merely to state and celebrate the difference. The problem, to paraphrase the old adage, is to show how the collective fares in the system of acquiring new forms of knowledge. Critics of the old (Tempelsian) ethnophilosophy argue that what is imperative is to reckon what kind of knowledge benefits society today, and how this knowledge is acquired or is stipulated through the use of the resources available to persons pursuing it. Whether and how much organized knowledge benefits society is a question that probably has obvious answers. But two matters may not be as obvious: one is where, in the stream of consciousness, this kind of knowledge falls, and the other is whether, based on how the first matter is resolved, we can indeed keep the collective-individual separations irreconcilably apart. In attempts to resolve these issues, African philosophers have, at least in part, had recourse to some existing traditions of thought. For example, Hountondji has tried to resolve the issue of the location in the stream of consciousness of organized knowledge by appealing to the phenomenological analyses of Husserl. Also, he has tried to justify his call for the appreciation and embrace of science by appealing to Gaston Bachelard’s philosophy of science, and to Louis Althusser for its application to the dialectical understanding of historical change. Viewed against the backdrop of Léopold S. Senghor’s psychology, Hountondji’s views (of consciousness, of science, and of historical change) make a claim to a universalism that he thought was stifled by Senghor’s racialized view of mind. Another African philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, takes a slightly different path: philosophical anthropology. In his project too, the drive is to describe the universal bio-social processes through which the functional human capacity is enabled and enhanced by the economy of exchange and mutual dependency and regulation between the collective and the individual.

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The stationless individual It emerges from these projects that the individual is never a finished product, nor is he/she a mental replica of any one group or community whose resources and values come to permanently shape his/her thinking. Furnished only with a structured consciousness that gets to organizational work—to make sense of his/her world—there is nothing permanent about his/her identity. So there is little that is unconsciously shared with others in the form of organized knowledge which goes on to make part of a collective pool of finished propositions about reality. Shared beliefs are, to borrow from Wiredu, coincidental concurrences of opinion only. Although not directly historical, Wiredu’s philosophical anthropology situates the realization of functional human capacity in a historically open-ended context. From a cultural viewpoint, nothing is fixed about what the individual is or can become. There are no permanent social stations from which we can make enduring claims. Even those social identities that we claim as individuals and as members of larger groups are no longer fixed and obvious. So how does such an individual navigate through his/her everyday choices and experiences? And what, about his/her life, if any, would still constitute a ground for comparison with the experiences and thoughts of other people? Sometimes I muse, but also seriously realize, and with some sadness, that, for example, as I sit in my office in a midSouthern city of the United States, I wonder which world, or which culture, I can claim to “truly belong to”, since the idea of belonging shifts, without ceasing, between different value systems and my behavioural responses to them as I shift my mental focus and, because of this, as I do different things in sequence, or as I initiate different activities to run concurrently. For example, while I am busy typing a paper on my computer for an up-coming conference or lecture, I am also listening to a musical CD, playing on the same computer, by a Kenyan artist singing a sweet piece in my native language in praise of a former student of mine. This scene brings to life several elements of identity, none of which is primary or more basic than another. Anything that I consider myself to be is based entirely on my accepting to apply the prescriptive ideas associated with it to the guidance of my conduct. My being Luo, Kenyan, philosopher, lover of a certain musical genre, a friend, teacher, colleague, employee, parent, spouse, and so on—and the list can go on and on, including other roles that I have not mentioned, but also real—are not descriptions so obvious or objective that anyone can see or identify them in me from a far. Rather, they are behavioural vestitures that I appropriate and responsively become part of by choice (at least once we are capable of

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doing so). And when I choose to join the “game”—of being, say, Luo—it is assumed of me to recognize, accept, and practice certain values which spell or define my “belonging” or commitment to the membership of that particular aspect of my life. But it is not the only membership that I carry with me at any given time, nor is it in competition with the others that I also concurrently commit to. All of them are social identities, meaning that they are acquired and maintained by choosing to practice (not just imitate) those behaviours that prescribe my membership in each.2 The matter can get complex because of different levels. For example, when our neighbour died several years ago, his wife had him cremated the next day, even before all their children had arrived, leave alone the fact that neighbours, at least we in my family next door, came to know of the death nearly one week later. My shock with the handling of the matter was not only because I am African, or Kenyan, but basically because I am an Alego Luo. My shock was based on my appreciation and preference for the manner the Alego Luo handle matters of death, especially among kin and neighbours who will come to say pole, meaning to express their sympathies and condolences. Relatives will stay a long time, ranging from several days to weeks, and the bereaved family may continue to receive mourners for many months. The difference between the ways of my American neighbours and those of the Alego Luo is that to the latter, death, like many other aspects of a person’s life, is a public event that affects many more people than merely the spouse and one or two children of the dead. Hence in death, as it was in life, everyone gets the chance to demonstrate expectations of the specific social relationship they had with the dead and, by extension, with everyone in the multi-faceted web of relations as defined by the dead person’s social life. Humans always stand in different relations to different people. 2

There is need for caution here because very often this kind of identity invests its sustenance in the emotions of its members, and thereby thrives almost as if it was an entity by virtue of a member’s defense of its reality. When one merges his or her social awareness with the assumed reality of such identity, they are often likely to invent a value hierarchy by which they justify their discrimination of the Other. The victimizing hate of Others, something we have seen so much expression of in recent years, starts when our erroneous thinking of identities as hard realities is either accorded political protection or made the basis of political claims (explained by reference to some historical event) in exclusion of those Others consequently viewed as undeserving of the goods over which we claim rights by virtue of the political value of our identity. Across the globe, episodes of mass genocides, ethnic termination or cleansing, have their origins in or can be traced to such false views and politicization of identity.

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To be sure, just because we live in a deeply de facto pluralist world, we are also constantly facing conflicts in our relations just because, as people move to live and work in places far from home, or in places that are fast becoming new homes, they bring with them conflicting commitments and conflicting courses of action in virtue of their embrace of the values that regulate those commitments and courses of action. So when, upon my return from a long Summer vacation with my Alego Luo people, I heard that our neighbour across the street from us had died while we were away, we thought it was the most basic human act to go express sympathy to the spouse of the departed good neighbour although we had known him only very briefly before his passing. To our dismay, our surviving neighbour told us she was surprised we had gone to her house at all, let alone to bring up an issue that was private and long gone. With only her head peeping through a slightly cracked door, she tolerated us just long enough to let us know we were intruding. As in the first case I mentioned earlier, in this one too death was considered a private affair, and no-one participates in the events surrounding it without a clear invitation. It is the case that pluralism has exposed the incompatibility of systems of value in ways previously known predominantly to scholars and travellers, folks who represented a small and privileged section of their societies. To them the reality of the diversity of others painted an exotic picture they could talk about with some distance that hid disdain behind scholarly analyses. The circumstances of recent mass migrations and increased media coverage of foreign events have brought pluralism closer to home and to a vast number of everyday folk. It is these everyday folks, the likes of my neighbours, who are showing signs of disenchantment with pluralism at their doorsteps. Dealing with a heavily accented manager at the neighbourhood grocery store, knowing that her child is being taught by a new grade school teacher who arrived from some country whose name she cannot pronounce, or having to deal with the new foreign nurse at her doctor’s office, have all swept from under her arm the familiarity and confidence of home. Elsewhere, religious fundamentalism has erupted as a way of keeping out or putting under check the infiltration of new or foreign beliefs and courses of action. What, then, is the value of comparative thinking in our contemporary world that is so heavily punctuated by pluralism and disenchantment? The driving force of pluralism for the contemporary individual is not the attainment of her freedom, for the meaning of this value, however important it may be for directing moral discourse, is never clearly provided. Disenchantment with others, as well, perhaps, as their embrace, is driven by assumptions of the social stations from which we make our

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judgements about others’ ways. At the same time, as Isaiah Berlin says, [t]he central assumption of common thought and speech seems to ... be that freedom is the principal characteristic that distinguishes man from all that is non-human; that there are degrees of freedom, degrees constituted by the absence of obstacles to the exercise of choice; the choice of being regarded as not itself determined by antecedent conditions, at least not as being wholly so determined (Berlin 1998, 109).

The contemporary individual’s major problem is therefore one of committing, and knowing how, to negotiate between different perspectives, and knowing how to utilize these negotiated circumstances to enhance the possibilities of freedom for himself and for others. To be free is to be able to make an unforced choice, based in turn on one’s ability to understand and compare competing possibilities. From a moral standpoint, this individual lives perennially in comparative circumstances, as he/she is always located in “sympathetic impartiality” (Wiredu 1996, 29-31), also called “practical morality based on mutuality” (Beidelman 1993, 164) in relation to others. Contrary to the belief, widespread but questionable, that we share fixed genealogical identity with other people who, like us, claim belonging to one of the many communities that populate the world—like Ganda, Yoruba, Zulu, or Zande—according to whose more or less “official” principles we also conduct our moral lives, it is clearer now than ever before, from our “stationless” view of the individual, that these communities should be viewed as complex groups held together by constant negotiations rather than as homogeneous groups defined both by blood and by adherence to their “official” routines. A closer look at cultural practice suggests that cultural ways are not normative charters for social action. Rather, as Jackson notes, “[t]hey are explorations into the problems of right conduct” (1982, 31). No one truly wishes that all people lived in exactly the same way. That kind of life would, among other things, be boring, uncreative and, worst of all, unfree. Instead, they are likely to say that the problem is not to create a one-size-fits-all world— such as was once identified with the idea of a Communist universe—but one in which reason reigns supreme, a world in which we should be left to our best rational choices. In addition, it is likely to be suggested, such a world should have little or no interference in anyone’s choices by anyone, or by any institution, other than to protect citizens from such interference, and to reduce or eliminate suffering. This line of reasoning speaks almost directly to at least one line of the liberal world view according to which it seems that we must construct our

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own individual values. But liberalism is not blind to the human attachment to cultural roots, however transitory they may be. Our ability to think of different sources of values is enabled in part by the fact that we observe that such variations dot the world we live in and drive us toward critical discernment and choices between them without exhausting our individual freedoms. Some people face this old problem, namely of reconciling individual and collective values, subjective and objective experiences, with a greater sense of urgency than others do. There is not a place more radically confronted by this contrast than contemporary Africa where the resistance of our old cultures is routinely challenged by the needs of today’s liberally-oriented individuals as the demand for those rights and freedoms—of choice in self-definition and self-direction—deemed to be crucial for effective and individually fulfilling participation in the world’s contemporary contexts increases. Despite its variety, conservatism feeds off the fear of pluralism and difference, and fends off freedom by closing doors to possibilities and change. In our de facto plural contemporary world, those metaphors depict a social reality as close to home as mine and my neighbours described above. But let us not be mistaken; as Africans, and I believe this would apply well and equally to many other people, we have been wrong about this just like European thinkers and ordinary folks have been. The difference for us is that although we have brought pluralism to the doorsteps of the West, both literally and figuratively, thus reversing the direction of cultural importation, sometimes it is still evident that our awareness of involvement in this globally-transforming episode continues to be encumbered by the weight of the colonial burden. Fearful of the possibility of rejection, an attitude that stems from the frightening power of memory, sections of migrant African intellectuals and other professionals in Western institutions and societies generally continue to predicate their acceptance there on self-negation, a responsive strategy described long ago by Fanon (1967) as a pathological—mortifying, yet enacted as if it were the path to save and humanize oneself—effort to demonstrate adaptability and immersion into Western culture and standards. In some serious cases, “Africa-centeredness” has been attacked as a burden on account of what is claimed to be Africa’s moral deprivation—see, for example, Otabil (1994). Admittedly, “Africacenteredness” is often a complex concept that, depending on who one reads, occasionally mixes inflated and mythical views of Africa for a variety of reasons. A more serious view of Africa-centeredness, the variety evoked by, say, Kwasi Wiredu, or Valentin Mudimbe, Anthony Appiah, Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, and Paulin Hountondji, neither carries nor even

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remotely implies a romanticized idea of Africa as a place populated only by kings and queens with no commoners as subjects. The real Africans, those whose thoughts and beliefs, and their practical cultures and traditions are studied by the mentioned philosophers—and certainly not exclusively by them—are people with burdens as well as celebrations. They are the real people once imagined by Langston Hughes in his 1926 New Negro “Manifesto” of racial pride. This idea of Africans, like it was for Hughes and his comrades in laying down the tenets of the “realness” of the new Negro, demythologizes Africans and re-presents them as real people who have both burdens and failures just like they do positive achievements. The view of a “real” Africa attempts to break away from two models of misrepresentation, both of which are driven by a colonial hangover. The first one paints Africa as a damned place that is caught up in a steep and insurmountable contrast with Europe. The second model, driven by the desire to counter the Eurocentric discourse of hegemonic arrogance, romanticizes Africa into a place of fairytales, almost a primordial locus where only the good prevails because it descends effortlessly from a superhuman reservoir of ideal values. In opposition to both of these misrepresentations, critical African philosophers and other thinkers, like Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart, evoke the idea of Africans as people who are aware of the high and low points within their own cultural systems. In real life situations, they determine the goals of their best efforts, and sometimes, through reflection on actual experience, realize that such goals remain unattainable without the appropriate discipline of the mind and sustained labour. By moral imaginations derived partly from the present and from the memory of past experiences of practical reason, they become aware of the circumstances of an improved moral regime and a state of better social circumstances of well-being that may result from adherence to a life directed by principles of virtue. But they are also constantly reminded of how hard it is to be and to do good with the consistency and moderation that ground a virtuous character, for they are constantly hounded by both real (as known in the present or from memory) and possible failures of people in their midst; and they are also reminded, by such social knowledge, that virtue is the result of self-discipline and constant personal moral probity. By focusing on the idea of culture as the result of responsible (critically measured) thinking and conduct, expressible generally as including participation in the identification of rationally and socially approvable goals and the means for attaining them, critical African philosophers challenge African societies at large to determine and pick up

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their own burdens rather than be human mules and surrogates who only carry the burdens of other people. The idea is that there is neither a humanly significant gain nor fun in leaving one’s own burden unattended and picking up the baggage of another person. Hence the attempts—by African philosophers—to expose the ontological character of inherited philosophy as a disguise of its Westernism have not been merely fanciful exercises. Rather, such exposé restores to philosophy what Habermas refers to as “the connection of its knowledge with the human interest in autonomy and responsibility” (1971, 310-11). If we recall the historical episode from which we have long been yearning for freedom, we will see not only the promise but also the therapeutic power of the proclamation that the efforts expended toward the attainment of this freedom—by which I mean the freedom of which NgNJgƭ wa Thiong’o, Valentin Mudimbe, or Kwasi Wiredu speak—cannot be in vain. As evoked by them, like many others do, the return to indigenous epistemic orders de-ontologizes thought generally, and philosophy particularly, by redirecting it to the sources in which thinking is grounded, namely to self-reflection. But the freedom of which they speak must be the freedom that allows a critical engagement of the Other while remaining autonomous by reserving the discretion to engage. It is, also, the kind of freedom of which Gayatri Spivak speaks when she writes about the historico-cultural subversive reversal that reinstates the “native informant” in her role of sovereign and principal investigator regarding the creation of knowledge about herself (Spivak 1999, 1ff). In this reversal, all knowledge becomes perspectival, or, to borrow the epistemological expression from Wiredu, all from their respective points of view, subject only to the scrutiny of the moral responsibility and methodological rigors by which they are produced. The now-classic saying by Wittgenstein that “the world is all that is the case” (1961, 5)3 speaks to the pluralist view of experience, which, by virtue of its subject-based diversity, cannot be the same for everyone, much less for every culture. Captured in the primitive formal structure of consciousness and the rudimentary language—Wittgenstein’s facts—that accompanies it at the beginnings, this world remains undeveloped on the margins of thought. Only with time, as our own reason becomes critical and takes a stand vis-à-vis the proposed stands of others does it become part of a rationalized or cultural world. In other words, the latter is born 3

My emphasis. At the time, Wittgenstein thought, mistakenly, that the structural order of reality imposed its character on our thought and language, the structures of reality, on the one hand, and of consciousness and language, on the other, were picture-reflection of each other. His world, like that of Hegel to Marx’s eyes, stood upside-down.

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out of the unity and sustenance of the comparative dialogues which develop between these perspectives on both narrow and far broader historical scales. For example, my discussion of the meaning of juok (Luo for supernatural spiritual power or force) connects me narrowly to other speakers of the language to which the concept of juok is linguistically located while, at the same time, it resonates with, and brings into dialogue a broader global community of people who share in the abstract language of morals, far beyond the original linguistic locus of the term. It should turn out, then, that thought generally, and philosophy in particular, is always comparative: private versus public cognition, local versus global discourse. The discourses we share with others in the process of making assertions (rationalizing) or making sense about “the world” of Wittgenstein are both local and global, and this dual character of discourse liberates meaning from the circumstantial cognitive experiences and specific languages from which it originates. We may not always be aware of this global ramification of the conceptual terms we encounter daily in our attempts first to understand, and then to apply and comply with both informative and regulatory ideas and concepts of everyday order—whether these are moral, scientific, religious, or political. Let us call the universal character of reason its form, and the specific contents it works with its matter. If this is so, then what changes between traditions is not their form but the matter—the historical and circumstantial specifics that are formally translated into discourse. In the human condition, the matter of traditions is not a body of untamed behaviour. As we encounter it at the very initial stage of our inculturation, we receive it as a body or system of rationalized or preferred circumstances, presented, when the right time comes, for our con-forming choices. Sometimes we succeed and at others we fail to find a satisfactory merging of our formal reason with the matter of traditions we inherit at home or encounter in distant places. This is how and why cultures change, namely that as individuals we are not fenced in by any culture or condition. In other words, we have many roots, and we carry them with us through time and space for as long as they continue to find accommodation within our formal translations.

Cultural pluralism and recognition: comparative thinking in a liberal world How does all the above relate to the question of comparative philosophising? I am aware that it may be an unachievable task trying to define exactly what is philosophical questioning as distinct from, say, a

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very intelligent and insistent demand for a justification by someone who has been implored by his or her pastor at a Sunday service to be good to their neighbour. But I am also aware that philosophical questioning is not removed from our everyday concerns to the kind of distance we often assume it is. Let us pretend that our hypothetical parishioner insists in asking her pastor to explain exactly what doing a good consists of, and which acts would fit such a definition, and why only they, and not others, should be performed in the first place. These are indeed very good and intelligent questions. But this person’s insistence is driven by the need to be clear about the practical consequences of the pastor’s teaching. She wants to practice what has been preached but clearly wants unambiguous directions. Now, we encounter not exactly this sequence of questions as asked by our imaginary concerned Church-goer, but certainly similar or comparable ones when we demand justification for many teachings and “ways” of doing things in the societies we live in. Philosophy emerges when we demand to see whether, and how, the rational form and matter of everyday experience hold together. But this hypothetical case also shows that philosophical questioning can and usually is practiced anywhere, and almost everywhere people raise issues and demand proper explanations and justifications of various claims and principles upon which the guidance of their everyday lives is built. Our hypothetical parishioner’s insistence on getting only satisfactory answers from her pastor could easily transform into a philosophical quest if she sustained such a demand by at least partly pointing out, clearly for purposes of paving the way toward an answer, why some of the pastor’s answers and explanations would be good and others not. By doing this, the novelty she brings to the discourse would be the formalization of the discourse, and if she did it well she could as well push some of us out of our positions in the Academy. Furnished with the power of insistent questioning, the matter of philosophical thought resides right inside our everyday languages, inside the assumptions of the public policies of our governments, and in the assumed righteousness of our private moral paths and goals wherever and whenever we encounter them. Hence, if the idea that experience is all transient at both individual and collective levels, is to be cathartic to all those who have been diverted away from themselves by false theories of belonging to groups in a nature-like manner, then it should culminate in putting back the idea of performance—defining one’s claim of belonging to any specific group by practicing what the group considers crucial to its membership—as the only basis of what counts as real. And because there is neither a natural (human-independent) world from which to infer meanings and purposes other than those defined by humans across the

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globe, nor conclusions about values based on stations in any permanent social order, our thoughts are always comparative, and can be sustained only by a constant critical comparison with those of everyone else. Comparative thinking is the spine of a liberal and pluralist world that is both anti-foundationalist and anti-essentialist. Built on the view that knowledge claims, at least most of them, are derived from points of view, which is another way of saying that knowledge in general, and surely philosophy in particular is comparative by virtue of the multiple bases of experience, it defines knowledge as a relational enterprise. Both as inquiry and as a body or system of claims, knowledge thrives in dialogical cooperation evidenced in the acts of examining, contrasting, and understanding of any competing knowledge claims.4 The view that knowledge is almost always comparative arises precisely out of the realization that knowledge, as is intimated by Wittgenstein, arises out of our encounter with “the world” delivered to us in the opinions or points of view of others. This delivery, also called inculturation, allows us to surpass the “objectness” of the world as a non-rationalized stance of nature of which we are only a passive part prior to human discourse. To be sure, until the laws of thought kick in and enable us to function as cognitive subjects, “the world” as object and “the world” as thought (the one constituted of propositions) remain merged until we start to pull them apart in stages: first, together with our primary language, we learn basic meanings required for communication; at another level, often later as we acquire and sharpen critical skills, we learn some given relations between these meanings, and how to confirm or dispute them. At the same time, however, this rise of Subjectivity exposes its own limitation as the kind of disputes just mentioned blow wide open the possibility of error of most propositions that issue from every Subject’s point of view. Needless to say, such fallibilism calls for comparativity of most sectors of knowledge. Thus, rooted in the critique of the aforementioned presuppositions of modernity, comparative thinking embraces the historic, ethnocentric, and gendered modifications of knowledge, and insists that knowledge cannot be accounted for without periodization and the plural diversity of the contents of consciousness, a view that Wittgenstein clearly hinted at when he said in the Tractatus that “The world is all that is the case. The world is 4

Note what is implied here, namely that a priori knowledge, a crucial category in the Western system, is not knowledge in the sense developed here. Elements of thought that do not derive from experience, and therefore a priori, are the laws of thought or formal principles—like induction, deduction, abstraction, inference, and non-contradiction, all of which are part of the biological constitution specific to humans—on whose strength experience is organized into knowledge.

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the totality of facts, not of things” (1, 1.1). Although he used it to develop a false view of language-world relationship, it was obvious that this world as a totality of facts was open to propositional pluralism. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that although opposition to the presuppositions of the project of modernity continues to be strong across the disciplines, the confluence of the maturity of the project of modernity with the upsurge of the colonial project makes opposition to it more visible in the disciplinary trajectories that address those presuppositions from the socio-political angle, such as in postcolonial literature and social theory more broadly understood. In other words, contemporary comparative thinking insists on an understanding of modernity as an encapsulation of “the cultural logic of a period of history”, and not as a transcendental event whose contents defy historical and other kinds of social contextualization. Because the said social conditions or factors of knowledge production and acquisition do not occur homogeneously anywhere across the globe, the perceptions they engender cannot be assumed to be either similar across regions, or to be constant over time. Yet, in emphasizing the impact of writing in sustaining the historical nature of philosophical dialogue, some philosophers have privileged one tradition of philosophical discourse over others, even to the extent of exposing a narcissistic attitude elevated to the frightening level of racial exclusivity. It is this racist undertone that allows Heidegger to declare unflinchingly, as I mentioned earlier, that philosophy is so much European that the phrase “‘Western-European philosophy’ is, in truth, a tautology” (1958, 31). The idea of comparing modes of thought strips the Hegelian and Heideggerian ideas of history of their absolutist pretensions, and restores subjectivity to all humans by instructing that it is the aspirations and motives of humans, all humans, that form the basis of change. It thus recognizes that there are varieties of historical conditions and expressions, all stemming from and in turn directing the different subsequent expressions of the human Subjectivity. In this sense, comparative philosophy aims, at least in part, at interrogating the equation of thought as such with particular histories, and thus aims at examining the tripartite relation between thinking, history, and culture. Everywhere, philosophy asserts itself firmly as cultural inquiry—see, for example, Karp and Masolo (2000),5 an idea that expresses what has always existed, yet never put more clearly or evoked more strongly than in the practice of 5

Although this text is directed at articulating the development of African philosophy as an intellectual history that seeks to re-connect contemporary postcolonial African philosophical thought to its pre-colonial and colonial pasts, that search is built on the belief that all critical thinking is a form of cultural inquiry.

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postcolonial critique. In very broad terms, this critique allows the reemergence of indigenous systems wherever they may be as manifesting content that is independent of any frameworks that may provide the categories through which indigenous systems are recorded and described. While decrying the lack of proper autonomy in African thought, Mudimbe’s contention that contemporary African intellectual practice is “an ‘espace métissé’” captures the idea of historical hybridity in all thought (1997, 155-204). Among the themes of this turnabout is the critique, for example, of such ideas as, in relation to the metaphysics of persons, transcendental subjectivity, the nature of consciousness and orders of knowledge; and in relation to the nature and quality of claims, the picture of knowledge as accurate mental representation, truth as correspondence of that representation to reality and; in relation to the nature of public conduct, the different freedoms and rights of the individual, and whether these are hampered or enhanced by our various customary or political beliefs and practices. In their pursuits, as well as in their articulations, some endeavours in these areas of inquiry have made the important point that there is no such thing as a neutral and sovereign reason that is divorced from how real people experience life in real and historically determinate conditions where they produce and acquire knowledge. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor once said that the politics of multiculturalism was, at least in part, the politics of recognition (1994, 2573). But even more importantly, multiculturalism is a quest, or a demand, more precisely, for inclusion in the multi-faceted or pluralistic discourse, or plural narratives in the schemes and motivations of different people— because it seeks to subvert the passivity and denigrating dismissal that once came with colonial recognition of non-Western systems. Thus to call “multiculturalism” the “politics of recognition” is not to designate it as a neologism, as a new time-word, one that younger generations of students (who are so historically removed from the conditions that this (postcolonial) demand for recognition addresses) might fail to appreciate and therefore wish to dismiss as only a sort of unnecessary whining.6 From 6

Those of us who teach courses that incorporate introduction to postcolonial theory frequently encounter this resistance by young, unsophisticated and historically naïve Euro-American students, and sometimes graduate students are not exempted. To be sure, thinking of postcolonial discourse as whining is occasioned by complex senses of distance or removal from the historical moment that gives birth to it. To a Caucasian mind it could be the result of both sociopolitical privilege and temporal blur, while to a descendant of the once-dominated cultures it could be a no less abstract idea by virtue of temporal distancing that

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a closer look, however, a response to Hegel’s view of the Absolute incarnated in the historical Caucasian flesh and mind is not quite what one would want to call whining. Rather, it is a critical suggestion that either there are plural Absolutes or there is none at all other than the many expressions of the inexorable human experience. Hence the dismissal of multiculturalism as a sort of whining lacks precisely the appreciation of the significance of the idea as a stage in the evolution of historical consciousness made possible by the drama of domination. Let us give the young students some credit, because historically significant terms hardly ever mean the same thing or bear same historical weight for everyone. Hence, while multiculturalism might mean a sort of whining in their view (because they may well lack knowledge and appreciation of the historical exclusionary practices that occasioned the calls for recognition), it might well mean a reclamation of cultural autonomy by those who were robbed of their own by cultural imperialism. As educators, the accusation of “whining” challenges us to rearrange and re-strategize the teaching of our multiculturally intensive courses. One, and because we teach classroom audiences that are increasingly culturally diverse, we are challenged to design courses that present such subjects as epistemology, or metaphysics, or ethics, or the medically significant ideas of mind and mental health—and who knows what there is that does not fit this list—by putting side-by-side the different culturally-informed theoretical articulations on these issues as a matter of course rather than running separate courses that only satisfy tokenism of political correctness. The idea here is that multicultural teaching and learning is not just a matter of mere recognition—which can take place without active engagement with what is different, thus leaving in place the hierarchical order that it is meant to dismantle—but a judicious, responsible, and full-blown practice of critical comparison of any number of views seen to differ in their claims about the same, similar, or relevantly related issues. It is this sense of multiculturalism that should transform into an ethical stand for a more just world, for a world of fair cultural systems, for a world of greater political democracy, of equality, and of respect and protection for human rights across the globe within and amongst nations. Like “identity”, multiculturalism is one of the pivotal ideas and quests in contemporary philosophies of culture that have been aligned to the surge and increase in the quest for liberal ethics in its individual and collective implications. With these connections, multiculturalism too postures as a moral demand for distributive parity as well and for respect camouflages the imbalance of international cultural, economic, and political relations.

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and tolerance for other people’s reasonable beliefs and practices, not just a call for passive recognition. Indeed, these relational values—distributive parity, respect, and tolerance—would not have much significance unless they are applied, and are seen to be applied, in the management of the affairs of human relations. The contemporary focus on liberties, and on various kinds and aspects of democratic principles, local and global, are prompted by a feeling of urgency in the restitution of different kinds of rights to those to whom they have been systematically denied. In some cases, regaining and winning these rights has required some struggle, on occasion even violent struggle. Colonialism generally, and its worst face in the form of the now-defunct apartheid system in South Africa, probably would still be around in some form or other if it were not for that kind of struggle. This is what made Fanon’s work and thought so much more relevant and a catalyst to contemporary postcolonial and other reclamations of freedom. To be sure, the demand for recognition, autonomy, and equal participation in the making of a liveable world does not always come without its own problems or dangers. Among these, false assumptions about collective identities and their concomitant conservative and exclusionary embrace of the associated cultures clearly stand out in our recent memories. Together, when exercised without restraint, they tend to perpetuate the very non-dialogical conflicts that the idea of multiculturalism aims at eliminating. The submission that unrestrained multiculturalism bears contradictions and dangers has been usurped by sections of the globalist theory to buttress their argument that if a cultural politics of modernity caused the fragmented and conflicted world that no longer serves our liberal interests, then the real solution lies in eliminating conclaves of cultural identities altogether from how we think of common human values, especially human rights. Both these stands are flawed, precisely because they fail to see the fundamental claim in the critique of power, namely that, as human beings, we are defined in our practical behaviour partly by our various cultures, and that what is crucial is to recognize the practice of these in the most rational and caring manner possible that enables a non-hierarchical dialogue across the various boundaries that our choices and practices draw while disclaiming any form of essentialism for them. Pluralism, then, comes with its own moral obligation: responsible appreciation of, and respect for other people’s ways and views as the only avenue to productive dialogue and comprehensive investigation and growth of knowledge.

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Communitarianism as Basis for Comparative Thought and Values: Lessons from African Philosophy Such strategies signal the search for a different world order, one that is, or can be, backed by the claim—itself certainly open to debate—that neither the formal object of knowledge, nor its expressions are objective in the old correspondence sense. In other words, and again as once viewed by Wittgenstein too, there probably always will be multiple expressions of the world around us. Like my own savvy and sharply analytic father would say, everyone both sees and does not see, at the same time—which makes me think of my father as our village version of Wittgenstein—the world, the one not yet constituted of propositions, is all that there is—a sterile, passive, and meaningless occurrence waiting to be “known”,7 or interpreted, as we narrate our encounters with it. The world that springs from the encounter, which is somehow also similar to what Edmund Husserl referred to as contained in pre-reflective consciousness, is pluralistic and is, in my father’s sense, rooted in the uniqueness of the subject’s point of view. In other words, while this realization, itself an interpretation (of what it means to be in an encounter with the world), does not deter us from being curious about, and seeking to “know” what lies behind our experiences, the content, or object of such a search can only be a matter of comparative discourse among different subjects, a dialogue between diverse narratives. Readers of African philosophy are probably suspicious already, and possibly even totally confused, about where my alliances lie, for this happens also to be similar to the radical idea suggested by our eminent Ghanaian colleague Kwasi Wiredu—that all knowledge is, and can be, only from a point of view. Although this is not the occasion for a full-fledged discussion of Wiredu’s epistemological position, pointing out how his theory of truth is an a fortiori argument for comparative dialogue in the enterprise of knowledge production as an experience and as an understanding (theory) may be useful. To do this, a return to and integration of “the usable past”, to use Bogumil Jewsiewicki’s expression (1989)—meaning the excavation and application of what may be historically significant in the indigenous archives—will be inevitable. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1999) already told us why this is the path to the post-postcolonial stage. In the latter, the focus in intellectual practice shifts from substantive universalism to the idea of 7

The quotation marks on the word “know” are deliberately placed to highlight the problematicity of the assumptions that accompany it in the history of epistemology, especially when “knowing” is defined as correspondence of reason to its object, and so is sharply contrasted with “believing”.

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human subjectivity as constituted by the relationally conditioned practice of meaning-making. This shift accepts only a minimum metaphysical view of personhood, namely a specifically universal physical constitution and a non-substantive idea of mind that acquires its actual characteristics only through the act of producing meaning as an entailment of the specifically human physical constitution. Endowed in this manner, the individual is equipped to traverse any and all cultures, as she/he is capable of understanding across cultures either directly or through the aid of translation. The idea of comparative thinking, also developed by Wiredu, is built on the view that while knowledge is universal, variations among different traditions of thought—such as between Western and African, or AfroCaribbean, for example—in assumptions about the axiomatic value of individuals as either autonomous or inter-dependent agents of knowledge can lead to problematic conclusions about the possibility and nature of our knowledge of the world. If we all adopted the axiomatic position that individuals are inter-dependent, then may be our deliberations about the nature of comparative thinking would focus on the characteristics and merits or demerits of individual contributions to the enterprise of knowledge. But we don’t all think of the individual the same way, which is the ground of differences not only in regard to how we theorize truth and morals, but also in regard to broader political and socialorganizational values that inform how we differently organize, manage, and assess the performance of institutions of society and of individual actors in them. For example, as shown by Wiredu, the primary or axiomatic position that individuals owe to their inter-dependence with others as well as the development of their humanly defining capacities gathers ramifications beyond the discussion of the formal characteristics of epistemological and moral experience by extending scope to the realms of the ideals of political organizations, or of environmental responsibility, and so on. I find his articulation of the relational metaphysics of selfhood, namely that No human society or community is possible without communication, for a community is not just an aggregation of individuals existing as windowless monads but of individuals as interacting persons .... without communication there is not even a human person (Wiredu 1996, 13).

not only to have close affinity with a saying in my own mother-tongue, popularized by the public artist (performer) and social commentator Gabriel Omolo, that Jadak kende en ng’a m’oyuma miwuoro (the isolated

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or socially disconnected individual does not develop reason; she/he is like a proverb, for she/he develops no sense of either values or standards— nudity has no social or moral consequences for him/her) but also, and perhaps more importantly, to be an indication of the unrestricted human capacity and ability to engage with meanings across cultures. The unrestricted mind reaches out to other minds in search of shared grounds of understanding—that is, justifications for differences and similarities of opinions—and for practice without converting such shared opinions into realities that are independent of how they are known. Rather, in Wiredu’s view, they are only concomitants of points of view. Communicative interaction with others in our different roles, both primarily and on the grounds of our points of view, makes us into human persons and drives inquiry. The communitarian theory of personhood may be significant in possibly many other ways not explored here, but what stands out from it in respect to the idea of comparative philosophising is the view that as members of the human species we stand vis-à-vis each other in the fundamental relation of mutuality—which can also be referred to as active and respectful engagement or interaction—between and among humans. Such a view demands an egalitarian recognition of the basic human and civil rights of all, thus stripping privilege from any one or particular position and making comparative thinking the only ground upon which cognitive and moral values are to be founded, a position so radically different from the one envisioned by Immanuel Kant in his anthropology. In Kant’s system, the individual exhibits a (transcendental) unity and completeness that account for the principles of application and outcome or goals in all (pure, practical, and aesthetic) domains of his/her experiences. The world manifests itself in the modifying intervention of human reason. This reason was part of the structure of the universe and, like all things at the core, it was to be distinguished from our sensations and feelings. What, in contrast to the Kantian view of self, can we, then, infer from the communitarian view of the same? First, of course, would be a crucial difference in how reason itself is defined and understood, which would include the discernment of whether or not it is an entity, and hence whence its location. But these matters are not to concern us here. I will assume only that Kant’s theory of self will be remembered well by the reader to stand in the background as we briefly outline the implications of the opposing view. Now, contrary to a widespread exaggeration of the communitarian stand on the nature of self, namely that in it individuals don’t matter as much as community does, or that the former is absolutely subservient to the latter, it is indeed the case that by underscoring

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participative collaboration among all humans both as the process that is formative of personhood, and as the path to the sustenance of human civilization and advancement, communitarianism, understood in the sense above, demonstrates the pivotal and indelible status of individuality in both metaphysical and epistemological terms while also revealing its limitations. In this important sense, the individual is the product, as much as he/she is also the agent who is constantly modifying the very social contexts from which his/her consciousnesses or mind arises and takes shape. The two are inter-related and mutually dependent. The notion of personhood as dialectically constituted comes out of the self-evident reliance of one on the other and vice versa, thus informing the view that while individuality is undeniably crucial, humanity is greater; and that while the different cultural systems that regulate human activity are unavoidable, the intra- and-inter-cultural respect, recognition, appreciation, and embrace, are far much more beneficial to the human survival and improvement or progress of individuals and communities alike. Because philosophers work with and from imaginations of logically possible and plausible best worlds, let us frame our concluding question thus: what would be better, or worse, about our world if, in our pursuit of understanding and establishing a world that is tolerable to most, we started, not from the position that we are all rational individual agents each of whom works on his or her own—ognuno per sé stesso—but that we are a community of rational persons whose strengths, including the capacity for and use of the faculties of the mind, lie in our relational life and, based on it, the recognition of both our fallibility as individual agents, and in collaborating and dialoguing with each other across cultures, across nations, and inter-personally? Ironically, even Placide Tempels, the paradoxical figure at the apocalyptic point in the history of contemporary African philosophy, had a significant hint at what a pluralistic world should hang on. In his own words, for example, Behaviour can be neither universal nor permanent unless it is based upon a concatenation of ideas, a logical system of thought, a complete positive philosophy of the universe, of man, and of the things which surround him, of existence, life, death and of the life beyond (1965, 19).

Unfortunately, however, this statement was not backed up with an appropriate and honestly pluralistic interpretation of Bantu philosophy. Rather, as observed by Aimé Césaire (1972, 34ff.), its tone had the unfortunate Hegelian readings of only sorcery in African thought. Yet the passage above caused even his harshest known adversary, Paulin Hountondji, to say many years later that he wished Tempels had realized

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the weight of his (Tempels’) own statement to indicate that all philosophies are, in their matter, only ethnophilosophies. As proposed by others, such as Hallen and Sodipo (1997), we transition sensibly between them only by the means of careful translation.

References Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 2005. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company. Beidelman, Tom O. 1993. Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Berlin, Isaiah. 1998. The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Césaire, Aimé. 1972. Discourse on Colonialism (trans. Joan Pinkham). New York: Monthly Review Press. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. London: Oxford University Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks (trans. Charles Lamm Markmann). New York: Grove Press. Gyekye, Kwame. 1997. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests (trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro). Boston: Beacon Press. Hallen, Barry and J. O. Sodipo. 1997. Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (2nd edition). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1958. What is Philosophy? (trans. William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde). London: Vision Press, Ltd. Hountondji, Paulin. 1996. African Philosophy, Myth and Reality (2nd edition). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 2002. The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on Philosophy, Culture, and Democracy in Africa (trans. John Conteh-Morgan). Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies. Jackson, Michael. 1982. Allegories of the Wilderness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. 1989. African Historical Studies: Academic Studies as ‘Usable Past’ and Radical Scholarship. The African Studies Review, 32 (3): 1-76. Karp, Ivan, and D. A. Masolo, eds. 2000. African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 1997. Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa. London: Athlone Publishers. Otabil, Kwesi. 1994. The Agonistic Imperative: The Rational Burden of Africa-Centeredness. Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall Press. Spivak, Gayatri C. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (expanded version of the 1992 original). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tempels, Placide. 1965. Bantu Philosophy (2nd edition of Eng. trans. by Colin King). Paris: Présence Africaine. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. ed. 2004. A Companion to African Philosophy. New York and London: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

CHAPTER EIGHT PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND VALUES: CAN THERE BE A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AFRICAN AND NON-AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY? SIRKKU K. HELLSTEN

Questions about the relationship between culture, values, traditions and philosophy have been particularly central to the debates on the African philosophical tradition. The main issues have been, on the one hand, whether philosophical inquiry is and must be methodologically universal and on the other hand, what is the basis for admitting the existence of a particular philosophical tradition. Is it the cultural origin of the patterns of thought, the ethnic background of the philosophers themselves, or is it the substance, the topics and subjects of philosophical reflection (see for instance Bodunrin 1984, Eze 1997, Masolo 1994)? In this article I want to argue that the debate on cultural attachment vs. cultural detachment in philosophical inquiry concerning the identity and role of African philosophy has taken a path that is leading into false polarizations between universalism and cultural relativism, and unhelpful dichotomies between African and Western philosophy. By this claim I refer to the tendency to interpret cultural attachment as relativism and the aspiration for cultural detachment as a sign of universal reason. Instead the issues of the universality and/or relativity of human reason and ethical reflection should rather be looked at from the point of view of the validity of logic and soundness of argumentation. This means that we can accept the universal (or maybe more modestly, the general) applicability of the method of philosophical inquiry that adopts critical and self-critical questioning and analysis, but admit its fallibility in relation to our particular cultural presuppositions. Rather than looking for “global and/or local philosophies”, we should look for global and local philosophical reflection—and instead of debating the universality or cultural confinement of our theoretical frameworks, we should pay more attention

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to the universal nature of the mistakes made by human reason. Studying the errors of reasoning and common fallacies reflects well our cultural presumptions and makes us aware of our cultural embeddedness and local beliefs and social biases. If we want to build a bridge between different philosophical traditions, we need to know first what (if anything) divides us. The position argued for here is that cultural reflections—whether in Africa or in the West or anywhere else—as such do not have to try to provide alternatives to the methods or frameworks of philosophy. They are better used when employed to point out and correct fallacies in our reasoning and critical—and self-critical—social reflections in order to better understand our cultures and to have a reflective cultural dialogue with each other.

The Promise and Jeopardy of Philosophy African philosophy has unfairly had to prove its place in the history of philosophy, particularly because of the imperialistic history of Western philosophy. Thus, in order to discuss the role of philosophy in Africa, we ought to focus not only on African philosophy, but also on Western philosophy. In fact, it is less useful to start with an attempt to defend the strength of critical, logical and systematic thinking in the African cultural heritage. Instead, it is much more constructive to bring out the faults of reasoning in the Western “analytical” philosophical tradition which claims superiority in the achievements of objective reason and infallible logic. When we begin our journey by pointing out how cultural embeddedness and influence undermines universal reason in the Western philosophical tradition, then this would lead to culturally open reflection that enhances cross- and trans-cultural dialogue and in the end, global wisdom. The problem with the Western philosophical tradition has been in its self-deception and in its blindness to its own cultural biases and prejudices. Western philosophy pretends to present the only right way of reasoning which produces universal truths and thus it remains arrogant enough to present claims that demean other cultures and their local wisdom. Excellent examples can be found throughout the Western philosophical history from the ancient Greeks until today. A particularly remarkable case is the Enlightenment’s philosophical tradition, which rhetorically preached universality of individual rights, and equality in human dignity, and yet remained uncritical of its own logical inconsistencies based on culturally bound prejudices, thus, directly undermining the very possibility of its own descriptive as well as

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normative universalism. Some of the greatest philosophical minds of the Western tradition—during the so called age of reason—from Locke to Kant and from Hume to Hegel—all presented, in the name of universal reason, social and political views that were strikingly communally biased and culturally bound in their racist as well as chauvinist presumptions. These culturally partial views denied the very existence of the African (or for that matter any other non-Western) philosophical tradition and often also the very humanity of non-Western people.1 Just to give few examples from the history of the Western philosophy: John Locke’s promotion of tolerance and individuals’ natural rights for life, liberty and property conveniently excluded non-whites from the scale of full humanity and denied them equal rights. David Hume who warned us about the dangers in deducing “ought” from “is”, saw no problems in classifying “the black people/negro race” as naturally less civilized than the white European one. And if this was not enough, he used this fabricated, supposedly empirical generalization, as factual evidence to draw a normative conclusion that the exploitation of Africans is justified. Immanuel Kant, for his part, who demanded, with his categorical imperative, that all human beings—as moral agents with moral duties— should be treated as ends in themselves and never as means, believed also that the “Negro” was inferior to the “white” and thus, not evidently deserving full human dignity (in Eze 1997, 6-10, see also Hegel 1967, 150-219; and Hegel 1975; Hume 1748, Kant 1960). They applied the same reasoning in the case of women whom they saw as the irrational, overly emotional gender incapable of autonomous agency and analytical thinking. Finally, Friedrich Hegel’s “Absolute Reason” did not even recognize the existence of a particular African cultural history. He saw the end of the realization of the Spirit as Absolute Reason in contemporary Europe, and left no place for intellectual development in Africa or elsewhere in the world, since, according to him, these were places without reason and thus without history. The greatest injustices are based on the assumptions in the minds of people, and at least as long as they seem to have any kind of intellectual justification for their rationalization, they also tend to remain “the practice”. With no hope for civilization and no capacity for rational thought, in Hegel’s eyes, slavery actually benefited Africans because it provided them with some type of moral education. In his Philosophy of History and more prominently in his Philosophy of Right, the logic of reason that unfolds the 1

In the bigger historical picture they boosted the unwarranted illusion of superiority among Westerners and enforced the idea of cultural inferiority in African minds. See Eze 1997, Masolo 1994, Oruka 1990.

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spirit is in capitalism, imperialism and colonialism—the expansion of these is needed to universalise European ideals, that is, to civilize the rest of the world (in Eze 1997, 6-10, see also Hegel 1967, 150-219). History is not, as Hegel reasoned, the unfolding of Absolute and universal reason. Instead, our histories are filled with the flaws of logic in the reasoning process of thinkers such as Hegel as well as many other great philosophical minds. Many of these flaws are the results of individuals’ personal cultural biases. From the point of view of philosophical reflection and logic, these views from Western, supposedly universalistic philosophy, betray radically, culturally situated assumptions. They are also loaded with the most elementary formal and informal fallacies, that is, the most common errors of reasoning that philosophy lecturers in argumentation warn their first year students about. In these views we can see the polarization between rational-irrational/emotional, modern-traditional, civilizedprimitive; we can point out the contradictions in the arguments for universalism which dismiss the particular; we can note how “naïve pragmatism” and rationalisations were used to justify imperialism and capitalism and to accept the practice of colonization and the slave trade; and there are also clearly false generalizations concerning humanity, gender and race. Similar views, no doubt, exist today in our current development discourses that set the Western view of development as an ideal all should aim for, or use the Western ideal of inviolable human rights as a universal set of values to be followed by all, except when there is benefit to the West in allowing exceptions to the rules and principles that were set by their greatest thinkers. It is no wonder non-western philosophers talk about the Western “lip-service” to the value of rights, equality and justice. The lesson to be learnt here is that even philosophers of great intellectual capacity and rigor are as apt to embrace culturally bound prejudices as any other people of their culture and time. They also quite shamelessly discriminate against all those they think are intellectual minors (in this case mostly people of the wrong colour or wrong sex/gender). The difference between the prejudices of philosophers and those of non-philosophers is that philosophers can still appear to argue skilfully and validly and can thus gain wider support for their cultural biases. Their skill in using rhetorical means can persuade others to accept their socially and traditionally embedded ideas, cultural biases, and false generalizations as universal truths. Thus philosophers have great influence

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in the intellectual and social development of their cultures as well as cultures of “the others”, for good and bad (or evil).2 However, if philosophy is about wisdom rather than truth, as I would like to believe, many great philosophers in Western intellectual history have wandered from the right track. In our search for wisdom, rather than truth, we should more openly admit that no matter what our cultural background and philosophical tradition is, we are all vulnerable to the errors of thought often related to cultural biases. If we want to believe in the power of human reason, we can use the universal rules of logic to recognize these inconsistencies and our cultural sensitivity and situatedness to point out their origins as well as their intended or unintended social consequences. From the point of view of African philosophy this type of bridge between universal reason and cultural connection is particularly relevant, since African philosophers have often been marginalized as cultural relativists due to their open interest in their own culture’s heritage, their strong cultural identity as well as their focus on culturally specific issues.3 Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, judging from the examples above, the universalism in Western thought is clearly a mere illusion, and philosophy in the West has so far not succeeded in liberating itself from its cultural and historical burdens.

Cultural Philosophy, Tradition and Authentic Personality Recognizing the cultural context of philosophical reflection is important in order to avoid fallacies of universalistic objectivity. If we try to bring out our cultural predispositions, we can actually look for more objective reasoning in the end. However, emphasis on the influence of culture can sometimes also go too far and end up supporting these very claims that separate culture and philosophy from each other; or it can turn into normative ideology that forgets critical self-reflection, demands unity

2

Even more ironic regarding Hegel’s comprehensive philosophy of history is the fact that he himself appears to have been influenced by the ancient Eastern philosophical tradition—the tradition that Hegel himself characterises as collective rather than individual reason and thus outside the historical development of absolute reason. The holistic view of the world and its spiritual formulation particularly appears to have Eastern origin and was quite unique among the often more mechanistic and atomistic Enlightenment philosophies. 3 Rather than claiming to universalise its views, it criticises the illusion of universalism in the Western thought.

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in thinking and disregards the actual meaning of philosophy as love of wisdom. Many African philosophers, in their attempts to challenge the plausibility of Western universalism, have taken a radically different, or rather the opposite approach toward the relationship between culture and philosophy—in fact they have seen the two to be so intertwined that sometimes no room is left for independently critical reflection. In defence of the existence of African philosophy, many earlier African philosophers such as Mbiti, for instance, focused so much on the cultural embeddedness of African thought as well as on the cultural identity of Africans as a particular group of people with particular and distinctive cultural characteristics, that they forgot the real role of philosophy. The same danger lurks in the works of other distinguished intellectuals in the tradition of African philosophy. Aimé Césaire, for instance, created the idea of black pride and the negritude movement, Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Marxist critique noted that Africans had been “alienated” from their authentic identities by the European view which stereotypes Africans and makes them susceptible to false consciousness about the inferiority of their culture and their place in the world. Kwame Nkrumah as well as Julius Nyerere promoted the idea of authentic African personality and preached traditional African values as a cure for the colonial and post-colonial fragmentation of African societies. The strong emphasis on the cultural distinctiveness of African development has not, therefore, been merely a positive alternative. It also has its own erroneous logic. While it enhanced African cultural identities and returned cultural pride, it simultaneously—unintentionally—gave support to the earlier Western philosophical arguments that there is a “natural” difference between people in Africa and in Europe. The emphasis on emotion that promotes communal solidarity and traditional egalitarianism in the African mind, made the local philosophies appear as examples of collective thought (folk philosophies) rather than as evidence of independent and reflective reasoning. Cultural embeddedness in relation to philosophical reflection in this context can be taken too far. Tradition was not only recognized; it was romanticized. In the end, tradition was turned into a normative ideal that sets standards for how all African people should be, feel and live their lives—how they should return to the precolonial values of tradition. Thus, interestingly there was a form of normative universalism inherent also in this cultural particularism. Despite the vast differences between ethnic and cultural backgrounds across Africa, there was a political striving for a unifying African identity in order to bring the continent and all its different people together. In

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political reality this attempt to identify African trends of thinking, and a set of authentic values turned into authoritarian rule that was realized in rather totalitarian policies. At the same time, from the Western perspective an attempt to define the cultural particularity of African thinking and ways of life was a sign of radical cultural relativism and collectivist thinking, not analytical philosophy as such.4

Post-structuralism, Neo-colonialism and Development The next move in the development of African philosophy came with philosophers of African origin taking a new turn with post-structuralism and post-colonial social criticism. This move shows a critical selfreflection that recognizes the problems of cultural particularism exhibited in some trends in African philosophy, including the negritude movement (Senghor 1962, 1995), nationalist-ideological political philosophy (Nyerere 1967, 1968, Nkrumah 1965, 1970) and sage-philosophy (Oruka 1990). Post-colonial African philosophy recognizes clearly that it is the method of critical analysis and self-critical evaluation and re-evaluation that makes philosophy philosophy—and that this applies anywhere in the world, at any time of history and in any phase of social and intellectual development. Post-colonial philosophy tries not only to save cultural traditions without being yet again marginalized and set aside in the world’s development, but to use them as a starting point for self-reflection. Franz Fanon (1967) talked about the cultural impoverishment of the Africans by European ideals and Amílcar Cabral (1974) endorsed the role of African popular culture in indigenous development. These and many other well-known African philosophers have emphasized how Eurocentrism in world politics and philosophy has contributed to the devaluation of African national culture, and how African intellectual, social and political traditions can only regain their cultural pride if they place more emphasis on pre-colonial African values and worldviews. Along with Edward Said (1978), the various post-colonial African philosophers note that the Western system of knowledge still filters any information about cultures through the Western consciousness, thus making it political knowledge rather than “pure” knowledge. This 4

Others, like Cheikh Anta Diop, went even further to claim that the roots of Western philosophy are in Africa since there are clear African influences in early Greek philosophy: see Asante 2000, Cheikh Anta Diop 1974, Olela 1984. This of course would merely prove that the structure and errors of reasoning are truly the same everywhere while their cultural context varies depending on various social and historical factors.

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knowledge, for its part, can be used—as premises—to justify “civilizing” non-Western cultures and no attention is paid to the naturalistic fallacy that such reasoning may entail (see also Césaire 1956, Eze 1997, Masolo 1994, Senghor 1962). Post-colonial and post-development critique takes a critical look also at the interaction between intellectual and politico-economic development. It presents a powerful social criticism, following Foucault’s analysis of knowledge-power relations, when it notes that the trends of globalization are merely signs of the continuation of Western imperialist tendencies. Thinking in the West has not been all that progressive in the sense of wisdom, despite the rapid increase in economico-technological knowledge (see Ahluwalia 2001, Eze 1997, Laomba 1998). Post-colonial African philosophy points out that while the contemporary Western philosophical tradition has learnt to doubt the possibilities of universal philosophical frameworks, and while the Western philosophical tradition itself has fragmented into various philosophical approaches—such as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, post-modernism—under the surface Western political ideologies have maintained universalistic elements which directly promote Western ideals of the right kind of development and civilization. While they may no longer be explicated in political philosophy, they are evident in contemporary political thought as well as in practical policy-making. The post-development critique also notes that after the end of the Second World War, and the breakdown of the European colonial powers, the United States took the opportunity to give worldwide dimensions to the mission of Western civilization and to continue the imperialist, neocolonizing project in the ideological name of “development” that was to be desired by all nations despite their cultural and historical backgrounds and natural resources. This was also the time the concept of “the Third World” was created. The superior-inferior power relationship was no longer between the former colonizers and colonies, but between the affluent and the poor. And this material impoverishment was and still often is directly related to cultural poverty. The “other” was re-created in the international political and economic order. And as Fanon and Cabral have noted, cultural inferiority is created when local customs are undermined and this suffocation and devaluation of cultural identity maintains and reproduces colonial control. This post-structuralist approach can be used to explain why African philosophy has to continuously defend its role in global and local development. After all, African philosophy revived its social influence with its various nationalist-ideological trends and introduced Marxist

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political ideas into African egalitarian communalist value systems, creating uniquely African political theoretical frameworks (Nkrumah 1965, 1970, Nyerere 1967, 1968, Senghor 1962). However, the global fall of communism and the decay of the local political socialist experiments made African intellectualism lose its sharp edge and the politics to lose its developmental direction. The cultural struggle was once again lost. And because there was no return to the pre-colonial egalitarian tradition, the ideals of modernity were now turned into Western developmental ideals which remained as the only clear and scientifically proper alternative. Thus, also philosophical reflection focused more on the African cultural understanding of such ideals/ideas as “human rights”, “democracy”, “human dignity” and others widely regarded as “Western values”. Philosophy, however, is not the only academic discipline that is clearly Westernised to a degree that it has almost unnoticed become normative. I am not referring to the method of the sciences as such, but rather to their content and subjects of study as well as to the standards they use to make empirical studies and comparative evaluations. Political scientists are evaluating local political development against Western standards of constitutionalism, the legal protection of human rights, the signing of international covenants, and programmes of good governance. Their analysis is technical and quantitative, not critical and qualitative. They appear to have accepted that African political theory has died with the fall of African socialism. Sociology studies the transition of African societies against the values of modernization. Local cultural traditions are studied in relation to the ideal of development, that is, what obstacles they might create to national development in the Western sense. Even the term “tribal” can be banned as politically incorrect in a university curriculum in Africa. Development studies, for their part, evaluate the achievement of the international millennium development goals or economic growth, political improvement in good governance and sustainable development. There is no need for external control of the ideal of development in African universities. As Foucault noted, the knowledge-power relation sets its own universalistic standards—and even self-criticism is observed through Western filters—not through local reflection and genuinely cultural self-evaluation. Following the ideas of Michael Foucault and Edward Said, scientific knowledge is for political aims. It maintains existing international and national power relations and sets standards for the ideals that African countries are to strive for. Unfortunately, these standards are self-reproducing, that is, they follow the direction of the actual development of Western societies rather than any truly universal consensus on the development ideal. Thus, the standards for development

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always remain “too high” to be fully met by “the others”, in this case, by the less developed—who are to remain as such (Foucault 1965, Said 1978). Colonialism of a material and social kind will never be conquered, as long as “development” provides the cognitive base, in the West for its interventionalism in the name of know-how and in Africa for self-pity that is replacing resistance and striving for self-reliance in order to promote national development with cultural pride (Sachs 2001, 1-4).5 This situation has created an urgent intellectual and social challenge for philosophers in Africa (as well as philosophers anywhere else). Their task is to reflect how to bring back cultural diversity in thought, how to originate alternative ideas about development and how to better benefit from local knowledge and wisdom. Philosophical reflection and genuine cultural self-evaluation—rather than evaluation of “self” as “the other” through the lenses of the dominant culture—is needed in the context of globalization. While colonial power relations have transformed into developmental cooperation, the issues of power and social relations have not radically changed. Where African philosophical thought has succeeded the best in relation to developmental issues is in the field of the feminist and gender theory. The “third world” feminists have succeeded in integrating the postcolonial and post-development critiques and use them to bring out the relations between culture and development as well as the role of local insight in global knowledge and local experience in issues of justice. The feminists and gender theorists in Africa and elsewhere in non-Western contexts pointed out long ago that there is no universal “gender solidarity” among all the women: Western white feminism is elitist and does not take into account the different cultural identities of women of different ethnic backgrounds. It is particularly ignorant of and slighting to the third world woman’s situation, it sees development as Western progress as much as 5

In Tanzania this attitude is exhibited even in academic circles where, students, and even professors, may barefacedly define themselves, their communities and their countries as developing, or even un(der)developed and tend to accept that this is the way things are in these parts of the world, how in these less developed areas of the world “nothing” works. Yet African culture can be rich and creative in a way that includes humanist values more clearly in development. In the Northern hemisphere, in Europe and in the North American continent, economic development and affluence has led to endorsing consumer society, and fomenting trade wars and political conflicts. Modernization has been transformed into scientific and technological determinism, and produced ecological crises. The over-emphasis on individualism has led to indifferent egoism and incapacity for moral agency. Given this, the Northern hemisphere could learn from a more socially caring approach.

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any other developmental ideology. Nevertheless, there is a need to see that differences do not mean separation between women or differences in the human values they seek but merely in the context of their realization. The cultural confinement is in the women’s experiences, local roles, and efforts. These differences should be respected and used in unison for the good of everyone, not as separating factors. Development should be seen in social empowerment and striving for justice, and every culture can find its own way to promote development as justice, instead of using the concept of development to suffocate the cultures of “the others” (Eboh 1997, hooks 1997, Nzegwu 1995, Spellman 1997).

Achievements and Failures of Post-colonial Criticism All in all, post-colonial African philosophy has succeeded in explaining the current situation in relation to diversity and plurality of cultural identities. This gives us a chance to do away with the dichotomies between colonizers and colonized, developers and those to be developed. When this understanding is taken into an honest cross-cultural and inter-cultural philosophical dialogue, it can pave the way for more equal international power relations. Revealing the injustices and recognizing the universal fallibility of human reason can help us to admit our own errors and prejudices. Culturally sensitive but not culturally confined reflection helps us understand cultural and national identities and differences without having to isolate one culture from another. The post-colonial philosophy does not reject all modernity’s values such as equality, freedom, and tolerance per se, but rather focuses on demonstrating that such values as freedom and individual rights, that were already promoted by modernity’s rationalist universalism, were never “seriously” considered to be delivered to Africa—and to the African (or anywhere else outside the West, for that matter). Post-colonial philosophy has tried to show that similar and other important values, such as solidarity, can be found in the pre-colonial traditions of the indigenous people—and are lacking in modernity’s individualist discourse. These values are not to be traded off with each other, but they should complement each other. Post-colonial criticism points out that the rhetoric of liberal individualism was—and still is—used as “a Trojan horse” that smuggles in the Western value system to non-Western traditions in the name of an equality and freedom that is never realized in international relations. These values neither respect other cultures nor guarantee equality, for instance between the former colonizers and former colonized; the affluent and the poor. While there may not be anything intrinsically

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wrong with these values, they remain one-sided political tools rather than seriously universal ideals. However, there is a dilemma for post-colonial criticism. It indisputably reveals the impact of “Westernism” in modern political theory, economic cultural theory and political practice. Nevertheless, post-colonialism as a theoretical construction remains as an internal criticism of modernity’s discourse, which uses Western tools to criticize the Western worldview, and as such is deeply indebted to the contemporary continental European philosophical existential analysis and post-structuralist and Foucauldian social criticism. It thus also faces the same problems these approaches face in the Western philosophical tradition. As with any other post-modernity theory, post-colonialism does not per se provide an alternative to deal with “the third world” problems. In a wider sense post-colonial theory must lean heavily on Western academic and intellectual trends and frameworks and it also appears to function most effectively within Western intellectual discourses. This connection to Western intellectualism limits its accessibility and makes it most attractive to an African elite that is already living in a “globalized” and pluralistic, post-modern world—with multiple identities. These are people and often also intellectuals who have personally experienced “otherness” and who can recognize this otherness in relation to their existentialist search for their true cultural identity. Inevitably these circumstances are socially and culturally very different from the environment that the post-colonial world and particularly those countries that have earlier been colonized provide for their people. As Pal Ahluwahlia (2001) has pointed out, the problem with post-colonial African philosophy is that it is mostly done and discussed in universities outside rather than within Africa. African philosophy in African universities tends to focus more on traditional philosophy as well as on African ethnophilosophy, which does not help to build up a future but rather pulls the intellectual development towards the past, and which was built on the dichotomy of African cultural philosophy and “real scientific philosophy”. All in all, the post-colonialist revelations on how the Westerners have re-constructed and maintained the feeling of “otherness” among those “from elsewhere” is best recognized by the African and other cultural “nomads” who have lived in different cultural settings and who themselves feel always a bit out of place, whether in the culture of their origin or elsewhere. However, it does not directly touch those who are embedded in their cultural traditions and have remained “cultural pastorals” who have not faced a crisis in their cultural identities and as part of “traditional, communal us” have never experienced the alienation of being “the other”. Thus post-colonial and post-reflective criticism has not yet been widely

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picked up by scholars or politicians working merely (or mostly) in the socalled “third world” countries, that is, by those who are—and have been— living and working mostly within their own countries’ “post-coloniality” (in the post-colonial era of Africa as well as Asia, Latin America, or elsewhere).

Conclusion As the post-structuralist, post-modern, post-colonial and wider communitarian critiques of universalism and Eurocentrism from within African philosophy have pointed out, all human development, intellectual, physical or material, is dependent on the social and cultural context it has originated in, and vice versa—all social, political, cultural development reflects some of the intellectual and philosophical trends of the given time and place. Philosophy, as an activity of human intelligence and reason, has an important role in the development of every civilization. On the one hand, philosophical analysis provides a theoretical basis for our ideas and ideals, worldviews and value systems. On the other hand, critical and ethical reflection can help us guide development towards more just societies which respect tolerance, equality and human dignity. Nevertheless, philosophy can also have a more sinister role in developmental issues if and when it is used merely as a rhetorical tool, if and when it is turned into rigid normative political categories, in order to justify our other ambitions, the interests of the elites and unequal power structures. Thus, as anywhere else, in African nations philosophical reflection should focus on finding a local, culturally sensitive basis for development that can benefit from the local knowledge and values without losing the understanding of the bigger picture. Philosophy can be most useful in development if it focuses on the problems and ethical issues that need reconsideration and re-evaluation; it can promote self-reliance based on tolerance and cultural co-operation. Otherwise, when not fully self-critical, philosophical argumentation can also be used merely to justify the political and social goals of small elites or political leaders. The relationship between culture and philosophy is many-sided—and the approaches to cultural universalism and relativism can be looked at from various points of view. What is common for all in philosophy is the love of “wisdom” and the method of critical reflection that questions what others may see as self-evident. What is culturally situated about philosophy are its trends, its topical interests as well as the social and political challenges philosophical reflection faces. However, maybe the

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biggest challenge for all philosophers in all cultures throughout time is the universal fallibility of our logic and the imperfection of our reason. Among the crucial fallacies is our tendency to confuse theory and practice, values and facts. Maybe that is the main part of our common humanity— our mistakes in logic and our unwillingness to admit them.

References Ahluwalia, P. 2001. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory: African Inflections. London: Routledge. Appiah, K.W. 1992. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Asante, M.K. 2000. The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten. Chicago: African American Images. Bodunrin, P.O. 1984. The Question of African Philosophy. In R.A. Wright (ed.) African Philosophy: An Introduction. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. —. (ed.) 1985. Philosophy in Africa: Trends and Perspectives. Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press. Cabral, Amílcar. 1974. National Liberation and Culture. Transition, 45: 12-17. Césaire, A. 1956. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (orig. 1939). Paris: Présence Africaine. Collins, P.H. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment. London: Routledge. Diop, C.A. 1974. The African Origin of Civilization (trans. Mercer Cook). Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill & Company, and Paris: Présence Africaine. Eboh, M.B. 1997. The Women Question: African and Western Perspectives. In E. Eze (ed.) African Philosophy: An Anthology. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Eze, E. 1997. Democracy or Consensus? Response to Wiredu. In E. Eze (ed.) African Post-Colonial Philosophy: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Fanon, F. 1967. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Foucault, M. 1965. Madness and Civilization. New York: Random House. Gyekye, K. 1984. Akan Concept of Person. In R. Wright (ed.) African Philosophy: An Introduction. Lanham: University Press of America. Hegel, G.W.F. 1967. Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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—. 1975. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. hooks, b. 1997. Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory. In: E. Eze (ed.) African Philosophy: An Anthology, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hume, D. 1748. Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations. In Essays Moral and Political. Edinburgh: A. Kincaid. Hountondji, P. 1996. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (2nd edition). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kant, I. 1960. Observation on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. and ed. John Goldthwait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Laomba, A. 1998. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge. Lévy-Bruhl, L. 1923. Primitive Mentality. Boston: Beacon Press (orig. La Mentalité Primitive 1922). Masolo, D.A. 1994. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Mbiti, J. S. 1969. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Nkrumah, K. 1965. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Heinemann. —. 1970. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution. London: Panaf Books. Nyerere, J. 1967. Freedom and Unity. Oxford: Oxford University Press —. 1968. Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 1973. Freedom and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nzegwu, N. 1995. Recovering Igbo Traditions: A Case for Indigenous Women’s Organizations in Development. In M. Nussbaum and J. Glover (ed.) Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Olela, H. 1984. The African Foundations of Greek Philosophy. In R.A. Wright (ed.) African Philosophy: An Introduction (3rd edition) Lanham: University Press of America. Oruka, H.O. 1990. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Leiden: Brill. —. 1990. Trends in Contemporary African Philosophy. Nairobi: Shirikon Publishers. Sachs, W. 2001. Development Dictionary. London: Zed Press. Said, E.W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Senghor, L.S. 1962. Nationhood and the Road to African Socialism. Paris: Présence Africaine.

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__. 1995. Negritude: A Humanisn of the Twentieth Century. In Fred Lee Hord (Mzee Lasana Okpara) and Jonathan Scott Lee (ed.) I am because We are: Readings in Black Philosophy. Amherst, MA: University of Massachussets Press. Spellman, E. 1997. The Erasure of Black Women. In E. Eze (ed.) African Philosophy: An Anthology. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Tempels, P. 1969. Bantu Philosophy (trans. C. King). Paris: Présence Africaine. Wiredu, K. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 1997. Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A Plea for a Non-party Polity. In E. Eze (ed.) African Post-Colonial Philosophy: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

CHAPTER NINE AN OPEN-ENDED CONVERSATION: WESTERN AND AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY MICHAEL THOMPSON

In 1911, Italian Catholic priests put before a group of Acholi elders the question ‘Who created you?’; and because the Luo language does not have an independent concept of create or creation, the question was rendered to mean ‘Who moulded you?’ But this was still meaningless, because human beings are born of their mothers. The elders told the visitors they did not know. But we are told that this reply was unsatisfactory, and the missionaries insisted that a satisfactory answer must be given. One of the elders remembered that, although a person may be born normally, when he is afflicted with tuberculosis of the spine, then he loses his normal figure, he gets ‘moulded.’ So he said, ‘Rubanga is the one who moulds people.’ This is the name of the hostile spirit which Acholi believe causes the hunch or hump on the back. And instead of exorcising these hostile spirits and sending them among pigs, the representatives of Jesus Christ began to preach that Rubanga was the Holy Father who created the Acholi (p’Bitek 1970, 62).

This charming, anthropological anecdote from the annals of Christian missionary work in Africa, while amusing, solicits serious questions concerning the possibility of translatability and applicability of concepts between cultures. Certainly, Italian priests, or any Christian missionaries for that matter, would not wish to equate their concept of a divine creator with the hostile spirit responsible for the onset of spinal tuberculosis. Throughout the comparative literature between European and African1 1

For the purposes of this paper, I shall treat African philosophy as a whole. This is not to deny or ignore the variability among different traditions in Africa, but is only meant to serve as a vehicle for possible comparison between Europe and Africa. Furthermore, I do not wish, with this division, to impart finality to the divisions of philosophy, for Eastern philosophy is as much a part of this debate as

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modes of thinking such discrepancies are found. It appears that variances in culture have shaped significant differences in the way Europeans and Africans view the world. Furthermore, in the discipline of philosophy itself, understood as philosophia perennis, discrepancies between the West, typically designated as European, and Africa are found. Because the answers to these perennial questions, even the questions themselves at times, seem to be continents apart, I am led to question whether the name philosophy is applicable to both enterprises. Not only am I left to ponder the commensurability between the concepts found in these different schemata, but I am left to question the activity in which both Westerner and African are engaged—perhaps the moniker philosophy belongs to only one or the other. In this essay, I propose to trace briefly the development of philosophy, considered both as an academic discipline and as a worldview, in Africa. By doing so, I hope to propose a cosmopolitan definition of the activity of philosophy—one through which we may be able to better understand the relationship between African and European thinking. After which, I shall then turn to the question of the commensurability of concepts between these two traditions.

Universalist and Particularist Approaches Much divisiveness regarding the nature of philosophy is to be found within the philosophical community, both Western and African. From whence does philosophy spring? What is its purpose? What is its scope? What is entailed in the activity of philosophising? These are the essential questions with which the discipline is constantly engaging. Because of its relative youth as a discipline, beginning in the mid-19th century and coming into its own post-World War II, the African philosophical climate is one that seems especially suited to begin addressing such questions. This adolescent struggle for identity has developed into two distinctive African philosophical trends—what I shall call, following Kwame Gyekye’s distinctions, the universalist/anti-revivalist/modernist position and the particularist/revivalist/traditionalist position. According to Gyekye, the particularist thesis maintains the particularity of philosophical ideas or doctrines: it holds that the historical-cultural mooring of philosophical ideas and proposals are sufficient evidence of their particularity and of the

the other two. But within the confines of this paper I shall limit the conjunction to just the two.

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The universalist thesis, on the other hand, holds that the relevance of philosophical ideas, insights and arguments can transcend the limits of the cultures and times of the philosophers who produced them…. The thesis does not deny the historical or cultural specificity of philosophical ideas or insights; but it maintains that this fact does not detract from the relevance of those ideas or insights to other cultures and times, and that they can therefore be considered universal (Gyekye 1997, 30).

One of its critics, Paulin Hountondji, extends the particularist thesis to more than recognizing cultural and epochal considerations to characterize the particularist thesis as maintaining philosophy, broadly defined, as something that “is experienced but not thought and that its practitioners are, at best, only dimly conscious of it” (1996, 56).2 This Weltanschauung definition of philosophy is the consequence of early anthropological studies on African cultures. Beginning with the ethnocentrism of LévyBruhl and his concept of “primitive mentality,” continuing through the missionary work of Placide Tempels and the work of ethnophilosophers such as Alexis Kagame and Léopold Senghor, a radical division is drawn between Europeans and Africans. Lévy-Bruhl’s position is moderately and graciously summarized by Hountondji when he describes the early anthropological opinion of the African as “at their highest level the mental functions of the individuals within [African] societies are regulated by the mythical archetypes … in which concepts have no place” (1996, 12). Rationality and an explicit, abstract conceptual framework, on the other hand, “was the prerogative of Western civilization” and defined the “quality of the white man which set him above the rest of humanity” (1996, 13). In Lévy-Bruhl’s understanding, there are “two mentalities which are face to face (sic) so foreign to each other, so divergent in their habits, so different in their 2

Gyekye cautions against mischaracterizing the particularist thesis by denying rationality to African philosophy, rationality at least as it is understood in the West. Cf. Gyekye, 1997, 29. And yet, Hountondji’s characterization does not deny rationality, but merely highlights that philosophy, in whatever its manifestation, is the product of particular cultures and times, and hence can often be equated with a general outlook on the world. Hountondji’s claim resides in the legacy of the ethnocentrism documenting African thinking and how it is co-opted by African philosophers in 20th century thinking.

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means of expression!” (1910, 505-506). Lévy-Bruhl’s own less gracious account presents “the collective representations of primitives” as differing very profoundly from our [Western] ideas or concepts, nor are they their equivalent either. On the one hand… they have not their logical character. On the other hand, they are not genuine representations… If I were to express in one word the general peculiarity of the collective representation which play so important a part in the mentality activity of undeveloped peoples, I should say that this mental activity was a mystic one (1966, 24, emphasis in the original).

Lévy-Bruhl eventually concedes that primitives do possess systematic thinking, not philosophical, not logical, but, rather, mystical based upon the particularities of their culture and time. The “philosophy” of primitive peoples amounts to a way of seeing their world. Placide Tempels continues the division between the European and the African in his work Bantu Philosophy. Unlike Lévy-Bruhl, Tempels acknowledges a philosophic framework in African thinking. Tempels proclaims that: To declare on a priori grounds that primitive people have no ideas on the nature of beings, that they have no ontology and that they are completely lacking in logic, is simply to turn one’s back on reality (1959, 16).

In his evangelical mission among the Baluba of Central Africa, Tempels had occasion to experience and question Bantu culture and beliefs. Among the Bantu, Tempels comes to recognize “an elevated system of thought which, though particular to them, with its own ‘local colour’… deserved to be honoured by the term philosophy” (Hountondji 1996, 16). While Tempels is willing to recognize an ontology that underwrites all Bantu life and activity, this ontology “can be thought of and made explicit only because of the conceptual frame of Western philosophy” (Mudimbe 1988, 139). According to Tempels, “It is our [Westerners’] job to proceed to such a systematic development. It is we who will be able to tell them in precise terms, what their inmost concept of being is” (1959, 67-68). Along the historical path of progress, philosophy begins here to broaden— Africans now are seen as having a distinct form of thinking, a philosophy even, yet it is still only through “advanced” Western systems that it can be made intelligible. The ethnophilosophers co-opt the distinction between African and Western philosophy made by both Lévy-Bruhl and Tempels, and divert it into a nationalistic enterprise—a revival of the “traditional” ways of

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thinking. Léopold Sédar Senghor, in his work on “negritude,” and Alexis Kagame, emending Tempels’ ontology through his linguistic analysis of the Rwandan language, affirm an African difference and suggest an “original formative environment” unique to the African mode of thinking. In short Senghor suggests “Emotion is African, as Reason is Hellenic” (1964) and Kagame asserts that it is only by means of the unique structure of the Rwandan language that a distinctive Bantu ontology is possible. In so doing, Senghor and ethnophilosophers in general assume on their own accounts the “dichotomy between the nature of the mind of the European and the African made explicit by Lévy-Bruhl and, paradoxically, press (sic) into [their service] the notion of ‘primitive mentality’, which formerly carried a pejorative connotation, in order to give it a new and positive meaning” (Hountondji 1996, 18-19). Through the course of its historical unfolding in Africa, the idea of philosophy has become broadened. The activity of philosophy has widened from a critical and systematic examination of ideas underlying human experience to the mere possession of beliefs that are enacted in everyday life. The scope of philosophy is no longer the explicit articulation of the concepts that shape our world. It has, rather, been transformed into a way of seeing the world. Building on the early ethnocentric anthropology and subsequent ethnophilosophy, the particularist view taken to its logical conclusion, as Hountondji asserts, claims that philosophy is a “kind of wisdom, individual or collective, any set of principles presenting some degree of coherence and intended to govern the daily practice of a man or a people” (1996, 47).3 By this definition, anyone is a philosopher. By experiencing the world, interacting with and in it according to our own unique cultural and epochal particularities, we “have a philosophy”. Thus anyone with a set of beliefs is a philosopher and has a philosophy. As there are various opinions and beliefs about the world, it follows that there are numerous, distinct philosophies: minimally a distinction between European and African philosophies—more exaggeratedly between anyone that does not align themselves identically with others’ beliefs. This ideological understanding of the word philosophy is a pivotal point of contention between particularists and universalists. Particularists maintain this broad definition, which applies to everyone at all times, whereas the universalists narrow the definition to a discipline, which 3

This radicalization is, perhaps, the mischaracterization Gyekye cautions us against, but does seem to be the legacy of the particularist thesis and the way in which it is manifested in ethnophilosophy as a clear break from the academic discipline known in the West.

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constantly defines itself and its concepts by means of self-reflexive critique. Because it is attempting to make explicit its own role and purpose, universalists maintain philosophy “can be regarded as the most self-conscious of disciplines” (Hountondji 1996, 7). Despite their disagreement over the scope of philosophy, one thing remains common between the universalist and particularist—the origin of philosophy. The origins of philosophy draw from the same inspiration—by living in, thinking about and seeing the world. The difference, however, is that the particularist will suggest experiencing the world is sufficient in order to have a philosophy, whereas the universalist suggests this is merely a beginning. Biological functions and empirical experience lie at the heart of the universalist claim regarding a unified discipline of philosophy. Kwasi Wiredu suggests: The human constitution of flesh and bones, quickened by the electrical charges and wrapped up in variously pigmented integument, is the same everywhere; while there is only one world in which we all live, move, and have our struggles, notwithstanding the vagaries of climate (1996, 23).

At the biological level, all humans are the same—we are animated, self-enclosed, acting beings that experience our environment. As human organisms, we all share the same capacity to experience our world. This claim does not deny the variety of ways by which we experience the world. Those afflicted with colour-blindness do not experience red and green the same as someone who is not colour-blind—the wavelength receptivity on the cones in the eye does not register identically between the two cases, this much is clear. But this is a difference of degree, not of kind. The universalists’ claim is that, despite textual differences, the act of experiencing the world is analogous throughout the human species—we experience the world as humans. Furthermore, there are basic experiences that all humans share in common. In our more basic modes of life all humans respond to the environment by “drives for equilibrium and self-preservation” (Wiredu 1996, 22). These instinctual drives, so the universalists claim, will ensure “uniformity of reaction within a species.” The suggestion here is that while cultural differences may prompt divergent courses of action, the action will be appropriate to the event, e.g. whether fighting or fleeing, the action is in response to the instinct of self-preservation. The point here is not that we all preserve ourselves, although this is important, what is key to the universalist position is that we all recognize the experience and conceptualise what is appropriate to the situation, i.e. self-preservation. As

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Gyekye points out, “Human experiences or problems may not be shared by all humans. But the fundamental mundane goals of human beings can be said to be held, ultimately, in common by all” (1997, 32). At a base level, through our interaction with the world we conceptualise, whether explicitly or implicitly, our relationship to the world. In the process of conceptualising the world, all humans do so according to certain principles—those of non-contradiction, induction (understood here as learning from our environment), and sympathetic impartiality (Gyekye 1997, 27, 29). In brief, the principle of noncontradiction can be asserted merely on the grounds of identification.4 If one is to flee in the face of a threat, one must identify the phenomenon as a threat and not as a non-threat. Simply put, in order to preserve ourselves, we must be able to consistently recognize what threatens us, or else we shall not be preserved for long. Induction follows a similarly simple explanation; either we learn what threatens us or we shall not live for long (that is, unless owing to an improbable series of fortuitous circumstances). The argument for sympathetic impartiality is considerably more complicated. Briefly, social interaction involves, minimally, giving “due concern” to those with whom you interact. The full ramifications of this due concern is left open to argumentation (minimally—the negative duties to others found in egoism; maximally—in the positive duties to others found in the Kantian categorical imperative). What is of decisive importance here is that “due concern” is “essential to the harmonization of human interests in society.”5 Integral to the universalist account of a “common human identity” is the capacity to communicate. “Without the ability to communicate there can be no human community” (Wiredu 1996, 21). In order to have a sensus communis there must be an ability to share perspectives, opinions, values and beliefs. Without a common medium through which humans communicate there can be no community. Since communication does occur, human beings must share something in common—this commonality is precisely the ability to conceptualise the world we experience and to articulate that experience (Wiredu 1996, 22).

4

The debate concerning the principle of non-contradiction and excluded middle is still an ongoing debate. For a fuller examination whether alternative logics exist, more specifically in the African culture, cf. E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, 1937; D. Bloor’s Knowledge and Social Imagery, 1976; and the debates between Triplett (1986, 1988, 1994), R.C. Jennings (1989) and L. Keita (1993). 5 For a full exposition of the possible scope of due concern cf. Wiredu 1996, 29.

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With a universal, human ability to conceptualise and the capacity to articulate that conceptualisation, even making allowances for cultural particularities, the notion of two divergent, incommensurable philosophies, a Western philosophy, based upon abstract and theoretical interests, and an African philosophy, based upon a tacit worldview, is unnecessary. Philosophy can thus be reunited under a common aegis, that of experiencing and communicating about the world. Yet, unlike the Weltanschauung understanding of philosophy, integral to the articulation of our experience is making explicit our conceptualisation of the world— both to ourselves and to others. Reflection upon what constitutes our thinking is essential to fully articulating how and why we see the world. Should anyone wish to conduct themselves in the world, by all means it is their prerogative, and should they want to communicate their experience, by all means, but let us not call this philosophy. However, if one should want to articulate their experience and do so in a way that provides critical reasons for what and how they experience the world, should they want to justify their experience, let them enter into the realm of precise, systematic critical inquiry, let them enter into philosophy. As Kwame Gyekye suggests: Even though philosophers, whether from the same culture or from different cultures, are not in complete agreement on the definition and methods of their discipline, a close examination of the nature and purpose of the intellectual activities of thinkers from various cultures and societies of the world reveals nevertheless that philosophy is essentially a critical and systematic inquiry into the fundamental ideas or principles underlying human thought, conduct, and experience (1997, 5).

Philosophy cannot, then, be merely the ideological position of having a set of beliefs. Philosophy by this stricter definition is “a specific theoretical discipline with its own exigencies and methodological rules” (Hountondji 1996, 47). Contrary to the particularist definition of philosophy, one can no more easily spontaneously become a philosopher by experiencing the world than one can spontaneously become a chemist or mathematician (ibid.). Like any other discipline philosophy has a specific methodology proper to its exercise. In order to engage in philosophy as a discipline, a discipline that examines the presuppositions and conceptualisations of thinking for the articulation of our experience in the world, one must engage in another mode, a critical mode, of understanding human experience in the world. Although the examination of conceptualisation has been brought under a unified discipline, universalists will not deny particular cultures have

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specific interests to which they focus their attention. It would be obtuse to think the particular tradition in which one is acculturated does not create a backdrop against which one conceptualises the world. The universalist claim is not that there is only a specific set of questions that arise because of instinctual unanimity. Human experience is governed by instinct, but it, too, is informed by culture. Minimally, cultures’ histories promote certain settings within which humans attempt to determine meaning. Specific questions are answered according to the framework within which they are posed. Obviously questions such as “What is justice?” or “What is being?” will have pertinent contextual considerations that lead to the specific inquiry. Hence there will be a certain range of possible answers, limited to the particular milieu, that the investigators will find sufficient. The overriding concern of the universalist is to create an arena in which different cultural traditions can begin to correspond with one another, to create the grounds upon which a communicative exchange is possible. Without the common medium of human identity, homo sapiens, we would be left with cultural solipsism. And this is the position that the universalists set out to refute. Based upon biological operations and the conceptualisation necessary to encounter the world, universalists claim that humans have enough in common to begin meaningful, albeit often confused and frustrating, discourse. Although particularities will arise, they are not absolutely disparate. Based upon mere biology, species-wide biological identification, humans have an experiential ground from which they can begin discourse.

A Question of Translation Because of the activity of intercultural discourse, i.e. the work of Tempels and Kagame, and the assumption that such discourse is meaningful I propose to turn now to concrete examples of such an interchange. Should the reader be generous and grant that there are universal, constitutive human experiences and thus fundamental conceptualisations of these experiences, a question still remains; can we communicate radically different conceptualisations of primordial experiences? The universalist position seems to presume that we can on a priori grounds. Yet, if the work of Tempels shows us anything, in empirical exercise the chasm between cultures appears nearly insurmountable. In his work Bantu Philosophy, Tempels claims:

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We [Europeans] can conceive the transcendental notion of ‘being’ by separating it from its attribute, ‘force’, but the Bantu cannot. ‘Force’ in his thought is a necessary element in ‘being’, and the concept ‘force’ is inseparable from the definition of ‘being.’ There is no idea among Bantu of ‘being’ divorced from the idea of ‘force’ (1959, 50-51).

And further, For the Bantu power is not an accident: it is more even than a necessary accident; it is the very essence of being … Being is power, power is being. Our notion of being is ‘that which is’, theirs is ‘the power that is’. Where we think the concept ‘to be’, they make use of the concept ‘power’. Where we see concrete beings, they see concrete forces. Where we would say that beings are distinguished by their essence or nature, Bantus would say that forces differ by their essence or nature (1959, 35-36).

Clearly, there is a discrepancy between the two conceptualisations of being. The disagreement here is not merely verbal. According to Bantu ontology, one can increase the power one possesses, thus have more force, and hence “be” in a different way—essentially one can become more human. In the Western conception, one is either human or not, but one cannot become more or less so. Certainly, the conflict here is between a static substance ontology and a dynamic event ontology. What is critical inquiry to make of such seemingly irreconcilable differences? Under the universalist assumption, one can go back to the empirical example to determine whether both groups are describing the same experience. And this suggestion works well with concrete, ostensible examples, i.e. those found in the natural sciences.6 But how shall we go back to the primordial experience of being? How can that be demonstrated? One suggestion for a possible resolution to the conflict in Tempels is to be found in Tshiamalenga’s interpretation of Tempels’ project. Tshiamalenga argues that the irreconcilability between Western “being” and Bantu “being” is one created by Tempels himself. Mudimbe reckons that Tshiamalenga’s accusation is that Tempels “constructed a philosophy but did not reconstruct Bantu philosophy” (Mudimbe 1988, 140). The accusation is that a “superficial comparison and premature generalization” (Tshiamalenga 1981, 179) led to Tempels’ assessment of irreconcilability. Owing to my ignorance of Bantu world-views and African philosophy in 6

Even demonstrable cases prove difficult, e.g. How can one “be certain that a series of noises means ‘Look at the cattle!’ rather than ‘Look at the undetached cow heads!’?” (Hallen and Sodipo 1986, 25).

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general, I am in no position to assess the veracity of this accusation. Nevertheless, Tshiamalenga’s argument only delays the problem of irreconcilability, it does not resolve it. Suggesting that the initiator of the conflict was himself mistaken does not resolve the real issue at hand, that of “radical translation: translation from a remote language on behavioural evidence, unaided by prior dictionaries.”7 This project of radical translation will ultimately fail unless the behavioural evidence is supplemented with verbal clarification. Yet even behavioural evidence clarified by discussion cannot guarantee translatability. The verbal discussions themselves may hinge on untranslatable concepts, e.g. the Acholi people and their understanding of the Christian god. One plausible suggestion to combat the difficulty of translation is to depend upon bilingual experts in the field of philosophy. In Quine’s words, the appropriate intermediary between two seemingly irreconcilable conceptualisations is the one who “steeps himself in the language, disdainful of English parallels, to the point of speaking it like a native” (1959, 474-475). Bilinguals, it is suggested, might broker between the two languages to effect meaningful translations between languages and cultures. And yet, the “deceptively exceptional case of the bilingual” is still not entirely sufficient. As Hallen and Sodipo point out; “Learning fluency in two languages is one thing, translating between them is another” (1986, 25). What Sodipo and Hallen suggest here is that even though the translator is fluent in both languages and understands the concepts in each respective language; she may nevertheless be merely transliterating the word into the new language without any conceptual content. What is transliterated in fact may be incoherent in the conceptual schema of the new language. With this difficulty it would seem that we are at a loss to defend the commensurability between conceptual schemas and languages. Perhaps Tempels articulated a fundamental irreconcilability between world-views, perhaps incommensurable philosophies do exist—perhaps the particularists were correct and there are inherent discrepancies that preclude a universal philosophy. There is one resolution to the aporia of translatability. It is not, however, a linguistic methodology nor a reliance upon trustworthy translations. The resolution to the conflict of incommensurability depends upon the notion of philosophy as suggested by the universalists. It hinges upon the notion that philosophy is “an activity, a pursuit”, that is 7

Hallen and Sodipo 1986, 20. For a thorough analysis of Quine and his application to African philosophy, see that volume in general.

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the activity of rational examination and analysis of human thought and action with a view clearly to understanding them or coming to have selfknowledge of them; it is an activity of search and of raising questions, challenging assumptions and beliefs that have hereto been taken for granted (Gyekye 1997, 13).

If philosophy is an open discussion, the issue of incommensurability is usurped by the ongoing discourse to define what it is that is seemingly irreconcilable. In the case of Tempels and Bantu ontology what might be suggested is a meta-ontology, under which we can subsume the two conceptualisations offered. A synthesis might be offered wherein both accounts make sense. This is not without precedent; already within metaphysics there are certain structures within which opposing conceptualisations are meaningfully debated, e.g. free-will and determinism, substance dualism, and especially the substance versus event ontology debate. The very fact that the discussion of irreconcilability can occur at all suggests a commonality from which we can begin to address the question. In the case of translation what is required is diligent work and exacting description, not merely an attempt at word-to-word correspondence for concepts. Perhaps, with enough time and scholarship, neologisms and a specialized, technical language can be formed to bridge the gap between languages. In order to pursue this activity, however, we cannot merely dismiss different world-views as irreducibly other. It requires a critical examination of both positions and methodologies in an attempt at communication. After all, untranslatability can be a problem “but it does not necessarily argue unintelligibility” (Wiredu 1996, 25).

References Bloor, D. 1976. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gyekye, Kwame. 1997. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Hallen, Barry and J.O. Sodipo. 1986. Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy. London: Ethnographica. Hountondji, Paulin. 1996. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press. Jennings, R.C. 1989. Zande Logic and Western Logic. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40(2):275-285.

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Keita, L. 1993. Jennings and Zande Logic: A Note. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44(1):151-156. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 1910. Les functions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures. Paris: Felix Alcan. —. 1966. How Natives Think, trans. Lilian A. Clare. New York: Washington Square Press. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p’Bitek, Okot. 1970. African Religions in Western Scholarship. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Quine, W.V.O. 1959. Meaning and Translation. In The Structure of Language, J.A. Fodor and J.J. Katz (ed.) 460-478. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1964. Liberté I. Paris: Seuil. Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu Philosophy, trans. C. King. Paris: Présence Africaine. Triplett, T. 1986. Relativism and the Sociology of Mathematics: Remarks on Bloor, Flew and Frege. Inquiry 29:439–450. —. 1988. Azande Logic Versus Western Logic? The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39(3):361-366. —. 1994. Is There Anthropological Evidence that Logic is Culturally Relative?: Remarks on Bloor, Jennings, and Evans-Pritchard The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45(2):749-760. Tshiamalenga, N. 1981. La Philosophie dans la situation actuelle de l’Afrique. In Combats pour un Christianisme africain, 171-188. Kinshasa: Faculté de Théologie Catholique. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

CHAPTER TEN ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHIC SAGACITY IN THE DISCOURSE ON AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AND ITS RELEVANCE IN MODERN AFRICA F. OCHIENG’-ODHIAMBO

Introduction Among the various African communities are to be found men and women whose thoughts are sagacious or wise despite the fact that they have not had the benefit of modern education. Sagacity consists of thoughts having or showing insight and good judgement. A distinction, however, exists between philosophy and sagacity. Not all sages are critical independent thinkers though some of them combine the conventional quality of wisdom with the critical attribute of philosophic thinking. “Philosophic sagacity then is only the critical and reflective thought of such sages” (Odera Oruka 1990, 17). As an approach to African philosophy, philosophic sagacity made its maiden appearance in international philosophical discourse in 1978 during the commemoration of Dr Anthony William Amo1 Conference held in Accra, Ghana. This was via an essay entitled “Four Trends in Current African Philosophy” written and presented by a Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka. The following year, Odera Oruka read a slightly different version of the essay during the 16th World Congress of 1

Amo was born in present-day Ghana in 1703. At four years old, he was in Amsterdam, possibly as a slave though other possibilities have been offered as well. Whatever the case might have been, while in Europe, he exhibited great intellectual élan, successfully undertaking undergraduate and graduate studies in various fields of study, namely law, medicine, psychology, and philosophy. He later taught at the universities of Halle and Jena, and published several philosophical works. He returned to his native land in Ghana in 1753 and died soon thereafter (see Hountondji 1996, 111-130).

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Philosophy in Düsseldorf, Germany. This essay has been seminal in academic African philosophy. Odera Oruka has also written two books and numerous essays on the subject of philosophic sagacity.2 It is therefore not surprising that within academic circles he is generally regarded not only as the icon of philosophic sagacity, but its progenitor as well. As is the case with the other approaches to African philosophy, philosophic sagacity has had its share of critics. However, this essay does not seek to directly address any of the specific criticisms. It is rather a general disquisition on philosophic sagacity, the aim being to give an accurate exegesis and account of the approach. Some scholars may be under the impression that the approach found its way into the academic philosophical arena in the early 1980s.3 Others may query its relevance beyond proving the fact that sages existed or exist in traditional Africa.4 Again, some may wonder what sets it apart from ethnophilosophy. Such impressions and queries may be made redundant by undertaking a careful analysis and explication of philosophic sagacity as an approach to the debate on the nature of African philosophy. In its specificity, this essay has two objectives: (1) to trace and enunciate the origins of philosophic sagacity as an approach to African philosophy in academic intellectual discourse, and (2) to highlight its relevance to modern African nationstates, despite its anchorage in traditional Africa.

Origin and Rationale Despite the fact that philosophic sagacity was announced to the international community in 1978, some may not be aware that Odera Oruka had actually started work on it a couple of years earlier in his two related research projects, one started in 1974 and the other in 1976. Hence, contrary to conventional belief, the birth year of philosophic sagacity (within academia) pre-dates 1978. Knowledge of this fact, as will be apparent below, is fundamental in that it not only enhances the general comprehension of the approach but also highlights its significance to some social-political realities and problems in modern Africa.

2 For a comprehensive listing of Odera Oruka’s publications see Granness and Kresse 1997, 261-5. 3 This could be because, though H. Odera Oruka read the paper “Four Trends in Current African Philosophy” in 1978, it was first published in 1981. 4 By traditional Africa is meant indigenous Africa, Africa of yesterday or parts of Africa today that are guided largely by African traditions, customs, cultures, and customs.

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In 1974, together with some of his colleagues at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, notable among them being the charismatic Dutch philosopher and theologian Joseph Donders, Odera Oruka formulated a research project at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. It was entitled “Thoughts of Traditional Kenyan Sages.” At its inception, the immediate aim of the project was to address the following question: Would it be possible to identify persons of traditional African culture, capable of the critical, second-order type of thinking about the various problems of human life and nature; persons, that is, who subject beliefs that are traditionally taken for granted to independent rational reexamination and who are inclined to accept or reject such beliefs on the authority of reason rather than on the basis of a communal or religious consensus? (Odera Oruka 1991a, 17)

In 1976, Odera Oruka designed yet another related research proposal of national and social significance. On the face of it, the project appeared rather ambitious given the enormity of its attendant implications in terms of duration and resources necessary for the fulfilment of its objectives. The project was entitled “The Philosophical Roots of Culture in Kenya.” As stated in the proposal, the research was initially meant to cover the Western part of Kenya. The ultimate objective however was: To uncover and map out the philosophical ideas which underlie some of the main cultural practices of Western Kenya. This would be treated as a regional investigation which, if co-ordinated and supplemented with researches from other parts of the Republic would provide an over all [sic] pattern of the Philosophy of Kenyan National Culture (Odera Oruka 1976, 8).

The objective of the 1976 research proposal was premised on two assumptions. First, philosophy is always the moving spirit and the theoretical framework of any national culture. Any serious and meaningful national culture must have a philosophy. Second, because Kenya as a State is struggling tirelessly to ground itself permanently as a nation—and a national culture is always the axis of a nation (Odera Oruka 1976, 8).

Given the gist of the two research projects one cannot fail to recognize that they were exercises in what Odera Oruka later christened “philosophic sagacity.” The 1974 project largely sought to identify philosophic sages,

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whereas the 1976 one was geared towards engaging their thoughts for the sake of social cohesion and national prosperity.5 During this period the discussions on the nature of African philosophy pointed in the direction that it was innocent of critical independent thinkers and also, therefore, that it had no relevance in modern Africa. The conventional view then was that because of its lack of second-order types of thinking, it was anachronistic. The 1974 project was basically meant to rebut the claim that African philosophy did not involve individual ratiocination whereas the 1976 project had in mind the question of anachronism.

The 1974 Project The late 1960s through to the 1970s was a turbulent period for African philosophy. It was the period during which African philosophy was attempting to ground itself in mainstream academic philosophy. Prior to this era, and also during the period, discussions regarding the nature of African philosophy were dominated by views that had been expressed by Tempels (1959), Kagame (1956), Senghor (1964), Griaule (1965), Mbiti (1969), and Horton (1970). Their views crystallized in what later became known as ethnophilosophy, “the study of collective forms of culture as manifestations of African philosophical systems” (Karp and Masolo 2000, 4). The ground, however, had been set by the French anthropologist, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1923), whose text Primitive Mentality had achieved some notoriety for its arrogance and hostility towards the mental capabilities of Africans. Paulin Hountondji, the fiercest critic of ethnophilosophy, saw it as consisting of ethnological works with philosophical pretensions (Hountondji 1996, 34). Generally, the critics of ethnophilosophy were, and still are, displeased with its ambiguous use of the term “philosophy.” When applying it to Africa, ethnophilosophers use it in an ideological sense. Hountondji, for instance, noted that: Words do indeed change their meanings miraculously as soon as they pass from the Western to the African context, and not only in the vocabulary of European or American writers but also, through faithful imitation, in that of Africans themselves. That is what happens to the word ‘philosophy’: applied to Africa, it is supposed to designate no longer the specific discipline it evokes in its Western context but merely a collective world5

The spirit of the 1976 research project is also discernible in H. Odera Oruka’s later essay titled “Sagacity in Development.” See Odera Oruka 1991d, 57-65.

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view, an implicit spontaneous, perhaps even unconscious system of beliefs to which all Africans are supposed to adhere. This is a vulgar usage of the word, justified presumably by the supposed vulgarity of the geographical context to which it is applied (Hountondji 1996, 60).

Malawian philosopher, Didier N. Kaphagawani, for his part, observes that given the supposition and underpinnings of ethnophilosophy, some philosophers justifiably see it as “simply a constitution of both schemes of conduct and schemes of thought (not a philosophy)” (Kaphagawani 1987, 130). African philosophy is presented by the ethnophilosophers as atypical, as a remarkable unanimity with no dissenting voice. It is a philosophy without any recognizable philosophers, a philosophy in which there is no room for Socrateses, Descarteses, Berkeleys, and Hegels. It is against this backdrop that the so-called professional school as an approach to African philosophy emerged. This school noted with concern an inappropriate application of the word “philosophy” by the ethnophilosophers. It held that the ethnophilosophers were using the word pejoratively and in service of the Western world. For instance, see Wiredu (1980), Hountondji (1996), Bodunrin (1981), Eboussi-Boulaga (1968), Towa (1971), and to some extent Crahay (1965). To these scholars of the professional school, African philosophy was not what the ethnophilosophers portrayed it to be, at least not in its totality. According to them, it was wrong to dress African philosophy essentially in traditionalism or communal folk thought. Just like Western philosophy, African philosophy was supposed to be seen from the professional and academic angle. It had to involve critical, discursive, and independent thinking. However, notwithstanding the noble intentions of the professional school, it caused some discomfort in two ways. (1) It was argued that what the school was referring to as African philosophy was not purely African. The proponents of this school, being trained philosophers and hence having basically studied Western philosophy and hardly anything about African philosophy, treated African philosophy from a typical Western standpoint. In this regard Odera Oruka noted that these scholars “are often accused of illegally using Western logic and principles to criticize and create what they like to call African philosophy” (Odera Oruka 1990, 19). The end result of what these professional philosophers considered African philosophy is in essence a scholarly exercise rooted in the West. (2) Though the professional school granted the existence of African philosophy in the technical and proper sense, it limited itself to modern Africa, giving the impression that traditional Africans were incapable of such a kind of philosophy.

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In the two criticisms leveled against the professional school lies the rationale of Odera Oruka’s 1974 research project. With regard to the second criticism, the project sought to prove that African philosophy does not begin in modern Africa; that even in traditional Africa there are individuals who are capable of critical, coherent, and independent thinking. Concerning the first criticism, it sought to identify African philosophy in the technical sense as seen through African spectacles, that is, as portrayed by Africans with little or no Western intellectual influence (Odera Oruka 1990, 16). On the whole, given the stipulations of ethnophilosophy and the professional school one may argue that philosophic sagacity as an approach to African philosophy seeks to retain or merge the African-ness of ethnophilosophy and the professionalism of the professional school. Conversely stated, it seeks to relegate to the periphery both the “philosophical” aspect of ethnophilosophy (because it is not genuine philosophy) and the “African” aspect of the professional school (because it is not African as such). Philosophic sagacity therefore acts as the crossroads of the two approaches (Ochieng’-Odhiambo 1997, 97-9).

The 1976 Project The 1976 project, unlike the 1974 one, presupposed the existence of critical independent thinkers in traditional Africa. It was geared towards the question of relevance of African philosophy to modern Africa. Its main concern was to disprove the view that traditional African thought was anachronistic. In the 1976 proposal Odera Oruka identified what he termed “philosophical naïvety” as posing a major threat and danger to the development of authentic national culture in modern Kenya, and indeed the rest of Africa. Philosophy in the usual sense, he argued, is sometimes naïvely regarded as autochthonous to the Greeks and thus treated as a typical European activity with the result that Africans are regarded as innocent of true philosophical thought and discourse. As already discussed, this also explains the hostility of the professional school towards ethnophilosophy.6 Because of the view that confines philosophy 6

Ethnophilosophy clearly distinguishes between philosophy as critical, individual, and independent mental exercise and philosophy as mere collective Weltanschauung. It further sees this distinction as being reflected in the epistemological differences between Western and African societies. The professional school for its part refutes the ethnophilosophical claim that critical

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to the Western world some people who have written or said something on African philosophy have done so with remarkable naïvety. They have argued that African culture and its philosophy are a lived experience, not a myriad of concepts to be pictured and rationalized by the mind. Thus, they see philosophy in Africa as an inseparable part of the concrete, of culture as Africans feel and live it and not an entity to be isolated and discussed. As a detailed critical activity and exercise, philosophy has, according to this position, no place in African culture. This view Odera Oruka believed, was misguided and a reflection of naïvety. The underlying assumptions of Odera Oruka’s 1976 proposal were that any genuine and concrete national culture should be identical with the unifying or common patterns of the general way of life of a people living as a community or believed to have the same identity. Accordingly, a national culture must have two aspects: practical and theoretical. Things such as music, dance, and fashion make up the practical aspect. The theoretical aspect is formed by the philosophy (principles and ideas) that justifies such activities. A culture without a clear philosophy is incomplete, or as Kwame Nkrumah puts it, “practice without thought is blind” (Nkrumah 1970, 78). Such a culture is therefore blind and hence easily lends itself to any alien traditions. On this point Odera Oruka was emphatic that such a culture would be vulnerable to every foreign value and idea no matter how obnoxious those values may be. A quick glance at the changing cultural attitudes and trends in Africa today confirms Odera Oruka’s view. Because indigenous cultural practices lack a clear and firm theoretical basis, Africa has become the home of varied foreign ideas and cultural practices. Odera Oruka, therefore, believed that one sure way of avoiding the invasion of foreign ideas (and practices) is for the various African nation-states to develop and articulate the philosophies (theoretical aspects) of their cultural practices. The gist of his argument was that one cannot fight for or defend ideas by use of guns; one can only successfully fight for or defend ideas with ideas. Besides being a threat to the development of authentic national cultures in various African nation-states, it is apparent that philosophical naïvety is preposterous. If one understands philosophy as exploring the tenets that underlie practice and action, the truth is that Africa must, as any other place, have philosophical principles that justify and govern its cultural practices. It is only that in Africa these principles may be mostly covert and left at the implicit level. It is important that these principles be unearthed and made explicit given that they are the pedestal upon which a independent thinking (philosophy proper) is a monopoly of the West and spontaneous collective thought a preserve of Africa.

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concrete and meaningful national culture would be built and anchored. This, according to Odera Oruka, was and still is the great challenge facing African scholars and cultural conservationists today. They should “investigate and unearth such principles. This is necessary for posterity and for the development of a national culture. This investigation should be part of the national programme in every African State” (Odera Oruka 1976, 8). For the sake of posterity and prosperity, Odera Oruka later added another dimension to the role that sagacious reasoning could play in the development of national cultures and social cohesion in various modern African nation-states. Sagacious reasoning is not just reasoning for the sake of reasoning. He noted with dismay that philosophy, especially in the academic understanding of the term, has tended to estrange itself from the “Socratic” partnership with wisdom, with the result that some philosophers have proceeded in a manner that they perfect their reasoning skills without caring about, or at the expense of, its practical utility. They have become too theoretical and rarefied, and have tended to divorce philosophy from society, and have been disposed to study the subject in a vacuum. Little wonder then that some people view philosophers with lots of suspicion. They consider philosophers to be individuals who are stuck to their armchairs in ivory towers having dreams that cannot be lived; people who cannot say anything sensible concerning the problems of life (Odera Oruka 1997, 35). This is an unfortunate state of affairs and is a challenge to all philosophers worth their salt, for in truth philosophy is after all for life and not vice versa.

Role of Sagacity in Modern Africa The general project of philosophic sagacity is an effort to bring back some of the lost glory of philosophy by emphasizing sagacious reasoning or wisdom. In his earlier essays, Odera Oruka had defined a sage simply as a person “versed in the wisdoms and traditions of his people” (Odera Oruka 1983, 386). However, in a later work, he attaches the ethical quality as an explicit and necessary component of the definition. This, he thought, would underscore the practical aspect of philosophic sagacity. The thoughts of the sages must be seen primarily as concerned with ethical and empirical issues within their societies. They must grapple with and offer insightful solutions to ethical questions affecting their societies. Odera Oruka was therefore unequivocal that a sage has two qualities or attributes:

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[…] insight and ethical inspiration. So a sage is wise; he has insight, but employs this for the ethical betterment of the community. A philosopher may be a sage and vice versa. But many philosophers do lack the ethical commitment and inspiration found in the sage […]. A sage, proper, is usually the friend of truth and wisdom. A sage may suppress truth only because wisdom dictates not because of some instrumental gain. Indeed, Pythagoras’ definition of a philosopher as the ‘lover of wisdom’ should have been reserved for a sage, since the sophists were the grave-diggers of wisdom and truth. Socrates was wrongly labelled, ‘philosopher’; he was first and foremost a sage. Socrates used philosophy only as a means to advance his sagacity and expose the hypocrisies of his time. But when all is said, one must still emphasize that sagacity and philosophy are not incompatible (Odera Oruka 1991b, 9-10).

Odera Oruka therefore rightly believed that if the thoughts of the sages were granted more intellectual and social space in modern Africa, then that would be one sure way of avoiding or at least downplaying the raging invasions of some potentially undesirable foreign ideas and values impinging on African cultures. Take for example what may be called technological morality. It is a morality in which technological innovations are preponderant and are objects of worship. It is a genre of morality in which technological superiority or efficiency is identified with the good. What is technologically possible and fitting is treated as also being morally permissible. And the bad is that which lags behind technological advancement. Thus, for instance, if abortion is medically possible and safe (a reflection of advanced technology), then it is treated as also being morally right for a woman to abort. In Africa today, it is increasingly becoming acceptable that to be good or beautiful one must be in possession of the latest technological gadgets and be fashionable. In a manner of speaking, a beautiful lady, for example, is no longer she who relies on her natural build. She is one who dresses fashionably and decorates her body with cosmetic trappings: thanks to technology. And the handsome man is he who owns what the latest technology has in store. To such persons, the opposite sex would be attracted as, analogically, flies are to a rotten body. Love and marriage are becoming material at the expense of spirituality. The question is no longer just how one can love one’s partner and enrich the marriage or relationship spiritually, but how one can materially benefit from the relationship. This could very well be one of the reasons why the divorce rate is spiralling out of control in the modern world. Technological morality is thus potentially dangerous to African societies because it could deprive culture of morality in the proper and desirable sense. If well articulated, properly documented, and easily accessible to community members especially in the urban areas,

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sagacity could thus act as check on technological morality as well as other potentially undesirable foreign invasions. In emphasizing the important roles of sages, Odera Oruka asserts that: Sages exist in all cultures and classes. Indeed, sages are among the custodians of the survival of their respective societies. A society without sages would easily get swallowed up as an undignified appendage of another. All societies use their sages or at least the ideas of their sages to defend and maintain their existence in the world of inter-societal conflict and exploitation (Odera Oruka 1991b, 3).

Since Africa is today at a crossroads and under threat of potentially undesirable foreign cultural elements, there is an urgent need that the sages are accorded more prominent roles in their respective societies, otherwise African cultures will end up being swallowed as undignified appendages of Western culture. At the political level, this has been the concern of some African statesmen and scholars. They have sought to address the resultant social-political problems that have bedevilled African nationstates, though the solutions they have offered have varied. Kwame Nkrumah, for example, called for a social revolution in the emergent independent African nation-states: a revolution in which African thinking and philosophy are directed towards the redemption of the African humanist society of the past. He believed that his notion of consciencism was best placed to achieve this. He defined it as: The map in intellectual terms of the disposition of forces which will enable African society to digest Western and Islamic and the Euro-Christian elements in Africa, and develop them in such a way that they fit into the African personality. The African personality is itself defined as the cluster of humanist principles which underlie the traditional African society (Nkrumah 1970, 79).

Julius Nyerere on his part advocated a brand of socialism he called ujamaa (familyhood). In ujamaa all persons are regarded as members of an ever extending family. It is opposed to capitalism which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of the human. It is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism which seeks to build a happy society on a philosophy of the inevitable conflict between social classes (Nyerere 1973, 170). Nyerere believed that these two ideologies and practices were foreign to African societies and were the root causes of social, political, and economic problems in African nation-states. Despite differences in Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s views concerning how to resolve social-political problems in African nation-states, one

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cannot fail to notice some compatibility between their views and the role of philosophic sagacity in modern Africa. All are anchored in African sagacity.

Conclusion The relevance of philosophic sagacity should not be seen merely in terms of its rebuttal of the ethnophilosophical claims nor its refutations of philosophical naïvety and its attendant implications. It could as well play an equally important role of bringing about national cohesion and unity given that various African countries are inhabited by people of diverse ethnicities. African governments could employ the services of philosophic sages to unearth and formulate the basic fundamental principles underlying the cultural practices of their respective ethnic groups. Of course some of these principles might be incompatible. The next step would then be to have these philosophic sages from the various ethnic groups hold discussions amongst themselves with a view to reconciling those principles that are seemingly in opposition. The resultant conglomeration of principles would then form the theoretical aspect of national culture, and there would be no reason why members of the various ethnic groups would not identify with it. When Odera Oruka presented his 1976 research proposal to the Kenyan government he had this objective in mind. Though welcomed by the government, unfortunately its support was too slow in coming and consequently ethnicity has continued to be a major problem in Kenya as was epitomized by the violence and senseless killings that followed the bungled general elections of December 2007.

References Bodunrin, Peter O. 1981. The question of African philosophy. Philosophy 56: 167-79. Crahay, Franz. 1965. Le Décollage conceptual: conditions d’une philosophie bantoue. Diogène 52: 61-84. Eboussi-Boulaga Fabien. 1968. Le Bantou problematique. Présence Africaine 66: 4-40. Graness, Anke, and Kai Kresse, eds. 1997. Sagacious reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH. Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmêli. London: Oxford University Press.

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Horton, Robin. 1970. African traditional religion and Western science. In Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson, 131-71. New York: Harper and Row. Hountondji, Paulin. 1996. African philosophy: Myth and reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La Philosophie bantou-rwandaise de l’être. Bruxelles: Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales. Kaphagawani, Didier N. 1987. The philosophical significance of Bantu nomenclature. In Contemporary philosophy: A new survey, ed. Guttorm Fløistad, 121-52. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Karp, Ivan, and D. A. Masolo. 2000. African philosophy as cultural inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. 1923. Primitive mentality. Boston: Beacon Press. Mbiti, John. 1969. African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1970. Consciencism: philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development with particular reference to the African revolution. London: Panaf Books. Nyerere, Julius. 1973. Ujamaa: The basis of African socialism. In Freedom and unity, ed. Julius Nyerere. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press. Ochieng’-Odhiambo, F. 1997. African philosophy: An introduction. Nairobi: Consolata Institute of Philosophy Press. —. 2002. The evolution of sagacity: Three stages of Oruka’s philosophy. Philosophia Africana 5: 19-32. Odera Oruka, Henry. 1976. The philosophical roots of culture in Kenya. Unpublished research proposal presented to the Ministry of Culture and Social Services, Government of Kenya. —. 1981. Four trends in current African philosophy. In Philosophy in the present situation of Africa, ed. Alwin Diemer, 1-7. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. —. 1983. Sagacity in African philosophy. International Philosophical Quarterly 23: 383-93. —. 1990. Trends in contemporary African philosophy. Nairobi: Shirikon Publishers. —. 1991a. African philosophy: The current debate. In Sage philosophy: Indigenous thinkers and modern debate on African philosophy, ed. Henry Odera Oruka, 15-32. Nairobi: ACTS Press. —. 1991b. Introduction. In Sage philosophy: Indigenous thinkers and modern debate on African philosophy, ed. Henry Odera Oruka, 1-11. Nairobi: ACTS Press.

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—. 1991c. Sagacity in African philosophy. In African philosophy: The essential readings, ed. Tsenay Serequeberhan, 47-62. New York: Paragon House. —. 1991d. Sagacity in development. In Sage philosophy: Indigenous thinkers and modern debate on African philosophy, ed. Henry Odera Oruka, 57-65. Nairobi: ACTS Press. —. 1991e. Sage philosophy: The basic questions and methodology. In Sage philosophy: Indigenous thinkers and modern debate on African philosophy, ed. Henry Odera Oruka, 33-44. Nairobi: ACTS Press —. 1997. Philosophy and other disciplines. In Sagacious reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam, ed. Anke Graness and Kai Kresse, 35-45. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Senghor, Léopold Sedar. 1964. On African socialism. London. Pall Mall Press. Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu philosophy. Paris: Présence Africaine. Towa, Marcien. 1971. Essai sur la problematique philosophie dans l’Afrique actuelle. Yaounde: Clé Editions. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER ELEVEN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AND NEGRITUDE LITERATURE KAHIUDI CLAVER MABANA

Of the African thinkers of this century, [Senghor] will probably have been the most honored and the most complimented, yet probably also the most disparaged and the most insulted, particularly by the present generation of African intellectuals. —Mudimbe 1988, 94

Introduction Who is entitled to construct an African system of thought that is credible and rigorously acceptable? Who is the real master of African discourse on Being and the world? What is African philosophy? The underlying question in this paper is about the impact of the Negritude movement on the development of African Philosophy. The paper seeks to objectively examine the relationship between Negritude and African philosophy and thought. Some African philosophers like Paulin Hountondji have in fact denied that the thoughts of Negritude writers such as Senghor are relevantly philosophical. It is time to evaluate the contribution of Negritude to African philosophy. How deeply has the thought of Senghor and his colleagues been studied? To me, Negritude remains the most important intellectual movement produced in Francophone African thought of the last century. Enlightened by the recent movement of globalisation, it would be interesting to examine this point in terms of a pluralist conception of rationality and in terms of identity. I aim to show that the present movements of African Identity, Antillanité, Créolité are to be considered as straight followers of Negritude.

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Negritude There are so many conceptions of Negritude that characterizing it might open up a controversy. Negritude embodies a Black literary movement and a socio-political ideology aimed at the emancipation of Black people. It is the equivalent of Anglophone African Personality. Although the precursors of Negritude are almost all African Americans of the Harlem Renaissance like W.E.B. du Bois, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Marcus Garvey, it mostly developed in France and the Francophone areas. The word “Negritude” is originally attributed to the Martiniquan writer Aimé Césaire who in 1939 published his surrealistic masterpiece Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) considered in literary criticism as the ethnic anthem of Blacks all over the world. United in revolutionary action seeking the liberation of the Blacks from Whites and colonial power, and the recognition of the Negro-African culture and civilization, Black students from the Caribbean and Africa started their movement in France in the late 1920s-30s. They were backed and encouraged by progressive Europeans from various spheres. The publications of Africanists like the French colonial writer Robert Delavignette (Les paysans noirs, 1931), the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule (Masques dogons, 1938) and Georges Hardy (L’Art nègre, 1927) underlined the great value of African sculptures, music and creative arts while the German ethnologist and archaeologist Leo Frobenius (Kulturgeschichte Afrikas, 1933) contemporaneously proved that Africa is the birthplace of Humanity. The leading figures of Negritude were: Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Leon Damas (1912-1978) from French Guyana and its major theoretician Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001). Others who belonged to the movement were: the Haitians Jean Price-Mars, Jacques Roumain, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, René Depestre; the Guadeloupean Guy Tirolien; the Martiniquans René Maran, Frantz Fanon; the Senegalese Birago Diop, David Diop, Ousmane Socé, Diange, Sembene Ousmane, Cheikh Anta Diop; the Guinean Camara Laye; the Ivorians Bernard Dadié, Ake Loba, Keita Fodeba; the Cameroonians Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono; the Malagasies Jacques Rabemananjara, Jean Joseph Rabearivelo. They all were activist poets who contested the White oppressive domination over people of African descent. Therefore their involvement in anti-colonial issues and in political action became inevitable. These Negritude poets claimed to re-write the Black history falsified by the West, to explore the Black culture and past, and to redefine their

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vision of the cosmos. They protested against all forms of exploitation of Africa and the Caribbean. By proudly affirming their African cultural and racial heritage, by celebrating the beauty of Africa and the enchanting charm of the Black woman, by singing the fights and by keeping alive the cruel tragedies of all Blacks, the poets of Negritude had a prophetic mission and a mystical vision of/in the New World. Their voices echoed the complaints, hopes, and deep feelings of Black people, denouncing imperialistic western ethnocentrism. The poetic collections beside Césaire’s Notebook include: L. Damas’ Pigments (1937), and Senghor’s Chants d’ombre (1945). Of great importance is Senghor’s anthology entitled Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre (1948), with a foreword titled “Black Orpheus” written by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1947, Alioune Diop created the cultural journal Présence Africaine which was committed to spreading ideas of freedom and emancipation, to act for a better life for all Blacks. Two international conferences of Black writers and artists were organized in 1956 (Paris) and 1959 (Rome). The first one was organized by Alioune Diop at the Sorbonne, in l’Amphithéâtre Descartes, September 19-21, 1956. Its main topic was described by its initiator as “la Culture moderne et notre destin” [Modern culture and our destiny], and its purpose was to give a voice to all Blacks in the world (Alioune Diop 1956, 3). Among the participants there were artists and writers from an Anglophone background such as the American Richard Wright, the Barbadian George Lamming, the South African Horace Mann Bond as well as intellectuals from Francophone contexts such as Jean Price-Mars, Jacques Stephen Alexis, L. S. Senghor, Aimé Césaire, F. Agblemagnon, Paul Hazoumé, Boubou Hama, Amadou Hampate Bâ, Cheikh Anta Diop, René Depestre, and Abdoulaye Wade. The second conference, held in Rome in 1959, opened the triumphant era of political independence, for various African nation-states, with the help of liberation movements. Besides these two conferences others included the First World Festival of Black Arts organized by Senghor and held in Dakar, April 1-24, 1966. This was followed by the conference of Algiers (1969) and a Second Festival in Lagos (1977). In November 2006 UNESCO and the African Society of Culture celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first conference. A Third World Festival of Black Arts is planned for December 1-19, 2009 in Dakar, an indication that the inspiration of Negritude is not completely dead. Many writers of the Negritude movement joined the political struggle for African independence. The principles of Negritude and other ideological movements across Africa (Panafricanism, Marxism, Nkrumah’s

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Consciencism, Sekou Touré) inspired their political action. In 1960 Senghor became the first president of Senegal, the Malian Seydou Badian worked as a minister in Modibo Keita’s regime, Birago Diop served later as ambassador to Tunisia. After 1960, the younger generation of writers and philosophers (Wole Soyinka, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Stanislas Adotevi, Marcien Towa, René Depestre, Tchicaya U Tam’si) virulently criticized the movement, contesting many debatable ideas associated with Senghor’s Negritude. The fact that many figures of the Negritude movement were active in politics, but acted and ruled like the former colonial agents and therefore did not succeed in bringing about the promised improvements, disappointed their fellow citizens. The movement became irrelevant. According to specialists in African and Caribbean Literature, the conference of Algiers, held in 1969, signified the official end of the Negritude movement. Thereafter no new impulse came from the founder members or their followers. Despite this controversy, Negritude remains to me the most important literary and philosophical movement of the Black Francophone world, because no other movement has replaced it totally, no other ideology or thought has contributed so significantly to the development of African thought as has Negritude throughout the last century. Even the movements that apparently contradict or oppose Negritude finally confirm its deep relevance. In the 1980s there emerged concepts of “national literatures” on the Continent, “creoleness” in the Caribbean, which have their roots in Negritude.

African Philosophy Until the beginning of the last century colonial powers never acknowledged that Black people had any basic sense of a systematic way of thinking. According to Simon Obanda in his recent book Re-création de la philosophie africaine, Western philosophers since the early 16th century, including Hegel and Hume, developed a dominant euro-centric ideology on the evolution of societies, races and civilizations, based on the principle of race inequality. The White race was considered as the leading race among races. Hume even stated that Black people show “no sign of intelligence” and Hegel radically consolidated the idea (Obanda 2002, 55). Until the beginning of the 20th century, Europeans thought that Blacks were not capable of any creative, technical or intellectual skills. EvansPritchard would say that Black people were strangers to the principle of contradiction. Lévy-Bruhl would write in his famous Mentalité primitive that the Black is not able to philosophise. All these ideas along with the colonial hegemony worked to perpetuate European domination over Africa

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and the Caribbean. The young Belgian missionary Tempels who arrived in the Congo in 1931 was educated in this system. When in 1945 Fr Placide Tempels published Bantu philosophy, the first systematic attempt in the field to document African philosophy, the book was a revolution that brought turmoil to the Western way of thinking, for it contradicted and dismantled well-established ideas and ideologies. Tempels was amazed that contrary to what he had been taught, he discovered wisdom in Bantu thought and stated: “It is stupid, we have been responsible for killing the man in the Bantu” (Tempels 1959, 20, my translation). He summarizes the result of his study as follows: “Bantu behaviour […].is centred in a single value: vital power” (Tempels, 44): For Bantu power is not an accident: it is more even than a necessary accident; it is the very essence of being. […].Being is power, power is being. Our notion of being is ‘that which is’, theirs is ‘the power that is’ (Tempels translated by A. Rubbens 1959, 35).

At first glance Tempels’ essay is anthropological or ethnographical rather than strictly philosophical, following the fashion of the colonial scheme. The purpose of the Belgian missionary was evangelisation, to know better the Bantu souls in order to christianize them. Tempels concentrated his effort on comparing or finding links and gaps between Bantu animism and Western philosophy, by exposing their ancestral beliefs, their way of life, their social organization, their cultural features, etc. Shifting from evangelisation to ontology, Bantu Philosophy states clearly that the notion of vital force is the main impulse of African belief and thought. How did African philosophers and writers react to this book? The first African philosophers are to be found among priests or former students of major seminaries. They all unanimously greeted Tempels’ book as a challenging one and tried to implement his ideas in their research for doctoral theses or other academic purposes. Alioune Diop, the founder editor of Présence Africaine, published the French version in 1949 with a very warm foreword. Fr Alexis Kagame was the first scholar to assess Tempels’ work. He was writing a classical philosophy thesis in Rome when he discovered Bantu Philosophy and as a matter of fact he consequently changed his topic. Though he acknowledged the pioneering enterprise of the Belgian missionary, he criticized the method since the research only focussed on the Luba tribe of the Congo and yet Tempels extended his results to cover the larger Bantu family. Kagame’s first book, La philosophie bantourwandaise de l’être (1956), is an explication of Bantu ontology based on

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an accurate logical-linguistic study of a Bantu language, i.e. Kinyarwanda. In his discussion, he took advantage of two notions: negritude and vital force. His second book, La philosophie bantu comparée (1976) extends the investigation to the whole Bantu geographic area, the region from Douala to Cape Town, taking into account a range of traditions and beliefs in the region. Fr Kagame’s purpose and viewpoint in the second book remained the same as that of his first book. During the Tempelsian era, African scholars uncritically applied European methods to African studies, to Hountondji’s chagrin who asserted that: “Many Africans have plunged into the same field of research, correcting on occasion—but without ever questioning its basic assumptions—the work of their Western models” (Hountondji 1983, 58). Almost at the same period, Fr Vincent Mulago wrote Un visage africain du christianisme: L’union vitale bantu face à l’unité vitale ecclésiale. He used the same framework of research as Kagame but in a theological perspective. Fr Francois Lufuluabo published La notion lubabantoue de l’être in 1966. Other names such as Mutuza, Jean Kinyongo, Elungu Pene Elungu, Marcel Ntumba Tshiamalenga, Meinrad Hebga, Jean-Marc Ela, John Mbiti, could be cited. But these ones were very aware of the limits of the ethnophilosophical trend. In the early 1970s the majority of the philosophers who formed the Lubumbashi Circle were almost all former students of seminaries. The interrogation of ethnophilosophy as a trend in African philosophy did not take long to appear. Professor Franz Crahay with his famous article entitled “Le décollage conceptuel: condition d’une philosophie bantoue” was the first to attack Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy. He set up a list of conditions to be fulfilled before talking of Bantu philosophy. The conditions included: a good number of trained African philosophers; a reference to ancient Greek philosophy; and a conceptual distance from custom and belief. It was clear that Crahay’s argument implied that African philosophy as a rigorous and systematic knowledge did not yet exist, it still needed to be created from scratch. Most Africans read Tempels blindly, uncritically, and colonially with the result that they were proud to be attributed a system of thoughts and beliefs; a philosophy without philosophers. As Eboussi-Boulaga was to remark later, the situation was no different from that of Monsieur Jourdain who writes prose without being aware of doing so. After the Belgian Crahay, Eboussi was the first African philosopher to criticize both Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy and Kagame’s La philosophie Bantu rwandaise de l’être as works in ethnophilosophy and not philosophy as such. He characterised Tempels and Kagame as “investigators who

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undertake a survey of opinions or people who collect opinions, signatures or testimonies” (Eboussi-Boulaga 1977, 29, my translation). Calling into question the method and the concept of African philosophy, he stated that the duty of a philosopher was to create concepts, to account for the essence of things. A philosophy that is anonymous, collective instead of being of an individual thinking subject is not philosophy, given that the philosophising subject is not one person but the community. In his book Sur la philosophie africaine (1976), [African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, 1983] Paulin Hountondji deals with four arguments: An alienated literature; History of a myth; African philosophy, myth and reality; Philosophy and its revolutions. Distinguishing between a popular and a rigorous notion of philosophy, he disqualifies ethnophilosophy as a kind of pre-philosophy that takes refuge in tradition and projects into these traditions its own theses, its own beliefs. In other words, ethnophilosophy is a kind of a spontaneous philosophy without critical reflection, without substance, because philosophy within ethnophilosophy is “conceived as an unthinking, spontaneous, collective system of thought, common to all Africans” (Hountondji 1983, 55). The concept of philosophy changes when applied to Africa; it becomes a collective world-view, an implicit spontaneous system of beliefs to which all Africans are supposed to adhere. Therefore ethnophilosophy is nothing but a philosophical literature without a critical review of its value or credibility. Hountondji actually coined ethnophilosophy1 as a term to describe the work of Tempels and Kagame: “it is a smokescreen behind which each author is able to manipulate his own philosophical view” (Hountondji 1983, 62). Stressing the geographical origin of the scholar, Hountondji states that the concept of African philosophy has to be extended also to all research done by Africans on Western philosophy. He writes: A work like Bantu philosophy does not belong to African philosophy, since its author is not African, but Kagame’s work is an integral part of African philosophical literature. […] African philosophical literature includes works which make no attempt whatever to broach the problem of ‘African philosophy’, either to assert or to deny its existence. In fact, we must extend the concept to include all the research into Western philosophy carried out by Africans (Hountondji 1983, 64-5).

1

Hountoundji initially thought that he had coined the word “ethnophilosophy” in the late 1960s. However, in the second edition of African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (1996), he notes that Kwame Nkrumah had actually used the word earlier in his Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, published in 1957.

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The Cameroonian Marxist Marcien Towa is even more radical than Hountondji. He sees a racist and imperialistic issue in the concept of African Philosophy as portrayed by ethnophilosophers. For him, African ethnophilosophy cannot avoid being seen as a logical consequence and legitimation of Western imperialism. Endorsing African ethnophilosophy is automatically confirming the myth that “an African has a pre-logical mentality, foreign to Reason” (Towa 1979, 18). Other African philosophers like Alassane Ndaw, Elungu Pene Elungu, Jean Kinyongo, Nkombe Oleko, and Wamba dia Wamba attempted other ways to establish the basis of African philosophy, avoiding the problematic of its existence, by simply practising it. According to Mudimbe, the debate on the existence or the nonexistence of African Philosophy has become sterile and irrelevant (Mudimbe 2005, 33). There remains the question of philosophy itself “about which, I, personally, have no convincing definition, and which, in Africa as elsewhere, actualises itself as a perpetual recommencement” (ibid.).

Controversial Relationship with Negritude Considered from different viewpoints, the relationship between the writers of Negritude and the thinkers of African philosophy and thought is very controversial. The debate on the existence of African philosophy is not quite closed, since the questions of its borders, objects, approach methods and objectives are still being discussed. Some African writers such as Léopold S. Senghor, Hampate Bâ, Birago Diop, or Bernad Dadié saw in Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy the fulfilment of their struggle for liberation. In their writings they endorsed Tempels’ analysis by showing the consistency of the African tradition and wisdom, by justifying the African beliefs in gods or ancestors. Senghor especially was criticized for orienting the literary movement towards this direction. It is more than just an epistemic issue. When it comes to talk about African Philosophy, one notes that there is a hesitation to decide between two meanings of philosophy, namely philosophy as Weltanschauung, vision of the world on the one hand and on the other, philosophy “defined as a critical, auto-critical, explicit reflection bearing on language and human experience” (Mudimbe 2005, 21). And that seems to be the main issue dividing the trends. The debate is about who is entitled to philosophise and about the object philosophers can study and scrutinize. This decides the kind of philosophy one can practice. For all this, basic education and one’s general background are relevant because of the historical context. The fact that in the 40s Negritude was

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consolidating its effort to tackle colonialism when Bantu Philosophy was published can partly explain this situation. The book was considered as a supplemental contribution to the fight against colonialism and mental alienation. Founder members of the movement of Negritude expressed lots of ideas and theories on matters typically related to philosophy. There are many writers who claim to be philosophers. There are philosophers writing novels, plays and poems. When writers discuss philosophy, they add a theoretical vision or an ideology to support their creative skills. When philosophers write creative books, they state that it is in order to support their philosophical thought or system. The important question then is: who are philosophers? And what is philosophy? A good number of Negritude writers learnt lessons in basic philosophy at the end of their secondary schooling. This was the case for writers like Léopold S. Senghor, Alexis Kagame, Jacques Rabearivelo, Raponda Walker, Ousmane Socé. A good number of philosophers, I would say the first generation of African philosophers, were educated in major seminaries, since philosophy was a prerequisite to study theology. The scholastic tradition had it that philosophia ancilla theologiae (philosophy is the servant of theology). On the other hand the context of their education spread very clear ideas on matters like civilization, culture, race, primitive mentality, African history: a wide area of thoughts about which everybody should state a position. Black students from all over the world gathered by destiny in France joined in a common movement of liberation for the Black peoples. They founded their convictions on various discoveries issuing from the recent development of social and human sciences like history, sociology, anthropology, musicology, archaeology, and folklore. These sciences had the ability to revise and negate many stereotypes about so-called “savage peoples” or “frozen societies” held by Europeans. Western intellectuals and scholars helped these students become conscious of their historical mission to emancipate Blacks. Surrealism, Marxism, Communism, Psychoanalysis and Existentialism spread a vision of the world different from the one that founded colonialism. In this regard, Negritude rose out of a necessity for a Black discourse, i.e. philosophy; philosophy intended here as a theoretical background directed towards efficient action or an ideological praxis. Negritude is therefore to be considered as an important part of African philosophy. That was the mood of the time. Black writers became members of the French Communist Party: Césaire, Roumain, E. Lero and Alexis. Others like Nkrumah, Senghor and Nyerere defended socialist ideological

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principles. Later, Marxism was the main background of African politicians: Sekou Touré, Léopold Senghor, Marien Ngouabi, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Seydou Badian, Patrice Lumumba, and others attempted critical and practical analysis of Marxism in their publications. Black intellectuals all read Sartre and accepted his theory of alienation. “Senghor’s influence on contemporary African thought, particularly in Francophone countries, is considerable” (Mudimbe 1988, 95). So that when one criticizes negritude, it is typically Senghor that one criticizes. Senghor published many essays on philosophy. His Liberté 1-5 in five volumes constitute a huge sum of thought yet to be studied thoroughly. His background in Greek and Latin, his study and reading of all the books on social and human sciences published in the first half of the twentieth century, his essays on Socialism, and on the palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin, make him one of the greatest thinkers of Africa, and certainly the greatest of French-speaking Africa. He took advantage of the crisis of values in the mental universe of the West to strengthen the African contribution to the “Universal Civilization” he dreamed of. He defends a kind of African Socialism that combines Marxism and Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionist theory. His contribution to awakening the consciousness of Black people is immense. Moreover, he incarnates negritude literature. Mudimbe writes: There is an African literature that flatters condescending Western ears, in which Africans prove, by means of negritude or black personality rhetoric, that they are ‘intelligent human beings’ who once had a respectable civilization that colonialism destroyed (Mudimbe 1988, 36).

Some professional (trained) African philosophers do not believe that their counterparts in the field of literature have the competence to deal with questions related to African philosophy. For example Hountondji considers Senghor’s thoughts on Negritude as nothing but just “bavardages” [chatty disquisitions] (Hountondji 1996, 59). To their mind all untrained philosophers who use philosophy either do not understand what they talk about or are just pretentious. Therefore they are not entitled to debate on philosophy. They restrict the use of its concepts to their own field. As we see, all depends on the significance that is assigned to philosophy. Marcien Towa wrote a severe political critique against Senghor’s negritude: Léopold Sédar Senghor: négritude ou servitude? (1971). To him, Senghor’s negritude is a blind acceptance of Western colonial and racist clichés on Africa:

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African Philosophy and Negritude Literature The idea that a lot of Africans have of Negro-African Culture does not outreach the limits of their ethnic background. Senghorism has been victim of such shortsightedness in opposing Black emotion to Greek Reason without taking into consideration, as Cheikh Anta Diop has reminded it, that it is the Black peoples of the Nile Valley who developed the first sciences and techniques (Towa 1971, 24).

Senghor’s Negritude was called in question from all sides. Wole Soyinka ridiculed it, comparing it to Tigritude: “A tiger does not shout its tigritude: it pounces. A tiger in the jungle does not say: I am a tiger. Only on passing the tiger’s hunting ground and finding the skeleton of a gazelle do we feel the place abound with tigritude” (see Mezu 1973, 94; Feuser 1988, 559). Ezekiel Mphahlele states: “The poetry of négritude origin may also falsify the image of Africa by representing it as a symbol of innocence, purity, naked beauty, human decency […] Some négritude verse leaves one rather worried by its elusiveness” (Mphahlele 1972, 137). Stanislas S. Adotevi, Négritude et Négrologues (1973) and the Kenyan Henry Odera Oruka’s “Mythologies as African Philosophy” (1972) emphasize the same sort of point. As was said earlier, Negritude officially became irrelevant after the Conference of Algiers in 1969 but the debate on its legacy seems still open throughout different human sciences. As we can see, there are so many philosophical implications of Negritude that need to be studied in detail. There is a better way to evaluate positively Negritude as a philosophy. It is for example Elungu’s approach to Senghor’s Negritude. He seeks to search in negritude for the nature of philosophy (Elungu 1984, 86-92). Three major components are of interest: “la révolte culturelle ou le refus de l’assimilation; la mise en perspective philosophique de son œuvre littéraire poétique; la représentation par l’auteur de l’essentiel de la civilisation négro-africaine” (Elungu 1984, 86-87) [The cultural revolt or the refusal of assimilation; the philosophical turn of his literary poetic work; the representation, by the author, of the essence of Negro-African civilization]. Black civilization is founded on various elements. Senghor learns from ethnology about Blacks: Blacks have genuine feeling, emotion, participation, myth, rite, sacrifice, life, vital power or force, art, and all those values form what he calls Negro-African civilization. He takes advantage of ethnological data. But he defines culture as the dynamic spirit of civilization. Senghor is near to the French spiritual philosophy, a movement that comprises moral and Christian philosophers like René Le Senne, Louis Lavelle, Teilhard de Chardin, Emmanuel Mounier, or Pierre Emmanuel. Ontology and a philosophical ideology are related to Senghor’s negritude. “The elaboration, according to Senghor, of the

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negritude ideology is the result of a philosophy” (Elungu 1984, 91). Elungu actually suggests, contrary to Hountondji, that Senghor’s negritude has a sustainable philosophical background, and can be considered as a means to somehow enlighten the African conception of Man and the World.

Negritude, Identity, Antillanité, Créolité Aimé Césaire was very critical of and reluctant to endorse Tempels’ work. In his Discours sur le Colonialisme, the former Lycée Schoelcher student finds it a mischievous and colonial attempt to reduce Black people’s creativity. At that time Césaire used to flirt with Communism. I don’t know how Christian the former member of the French Communist Party was. However his dissident student Edouard Glissant created Antillanité in the 1960s. And the younger Caribbean generation born in the 1950s created in the late 1980s Créolité in reaction to his work and philosophy. The Communist who once dreamed of a “Copernican Black Revolution” is criticized for his paradoxical crossing of the century. To me Antillanité and Créolité are direct followers of Negritude. There would never be Antillanité nor would there be Créolité without Negritude. All the rest is a fashionable success of the present-day. Césaire’s re-interpretation of Caliban in The Tempest gave impulse to Black theoretic thought in the Caribbean. The allegory of CalibanProspero enlightens the present debate across the Black Old and New World. Césaire, Senghor and Damas have contributed considerably to define a Black identity. Frantz Fanon made Caribbean and African people aware of their inferiority complex. Cheikh Anta Diop’s Egyptology is based on Negritude, at least on the movement initiated by the Negritude ideology of re-writing the history of Black peoples, given that European historians falsified African history because of hegemonic and colonial purposes. Black people were required to see themselves through lenses of Western design.

Conclusion The contribution of the negritude movement to African Philosophy is immense. Negritude creative writings opened the possibility of positively studying in depth various facets of Black mentality. Negritude as an ideology is an incredibly rich subject for African Philosophy. Its conception is backed by a vision of man in society or society as a system of organization. African Philosophy largely depends on Negritude, even if

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only to negate its approach, which is somehow a way of acknowledging its philosophical pertinence. There are numerous philosophical studies on Senghor, Césaire, Fanon, Cheikh Anta Diop, Caliban dialectics, African identity and on other writers like Mongo Beti, Ousmane, Mudimbe, Ngal, Adiaffi, etc. and many writers have valuable backgrounds in philosophy, be it Marxism, Western or African, or just Negritude. Both Negritude and African Philosophy are tightly linked; they have without a doubt the same ideological goal: the valorization of Black People. Thinkers nevertheless criticized some controversial ideas of Senghor but did not dismantle his conception of Negritude. Despite its ambiguity Negritude remains an important part of African thought, a step of consciousness that opened up various trends in African philosophy. To me, Negritude constitutes the most valuable literary, cultural and ideological movement produced in Francophone Africa during the last century.

References Césaire, Aimé. 1956. Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris: Présence Africaine. Delavignette, Robert. 1931. Les paysans noirs. Paris: Editions Stock. Diop Alioune, ed. 1956 [repr. 1997]. Le Ier Congrès international des écrivains et artistes noirs: Paris, Sorbonne, 19-22 septembre 1956: compte-rendu complet. Présence Africaine, 8-10 (numéro spécial). Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien. 1977. La crise du Muntu. Authenticité et philosophie. Paris: Présence Africaine. Elungu, P.E. 1984. Eveil philosophique africain. Paris: L’Harmattan. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1972. Social Anthropology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Feuser, Willfried. 1988. Wole Soyinka: The Problem of Authenticity. Black Literature Forum. 22 (3): 555-575. Frobenius, Leo. 1938. Histoire de la civilisation africaine, trans. by Back and Ermont. Paris: Gallimard. Griaule, Marcel. 1938. Masques dogons. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie. Hardy, Georges. 1927. L’Art nègre. Paris: Laurens. Hountondji, J. Paulin. 1976. Sur la philosophie africaine. Paris: François Maspero. —. 1983 (2nd edition 1996). African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. —. ed. 1997. Endogenous Knowledge: Research Trails, trans. Ayi Kwei Armah. Oxford: Codesria.

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Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La Philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’être. Bruxelles: Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales. —. 1976. La Philosophie bantu comparée. Paris: Présence Africaine. Masolo, D. A. 2003. Philosophy and Indigenous Knowledge: An African Perspective. Africa Today 50 (2): 21-38. Mezu, Okechuku. 1973. The Poetry of L.S. Senghor. London: Heinemann. Mphahlele, Ezekiel. 1972. Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays. London: Macmillan. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 2005. An African Practice of Philosophy. A Personal Testimony. Query: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de Philosophie, XIX: 21-36. Ndaw, Alassane. 1997. La pensée africaine. Recherches sur les fondements de la pensée négro-africaine. Préf. par L.S. Senghor. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal. Nyerere, Julius. 1973. Freedom and Unity. Uhuru na Umoja. Dar-esSalaam: Oxford UP. Obanda, Simon. 2002. Re-création de la philosophie africaine: Rupture avec Tempels et Kagame. Berne: Peter Lang. Odeera Oruka, Henry. 1972. Mythologies as African Philosophy. East Africa Journal 9 (10): 5-11. Senghor, Léopold S. 1964. Liberté I: Négritude et Humanisme. Paris: Seuil. —. 1990. Œuvre poétique. Paris: Seuil. —. 1993. Liberté 5: Le Dialogue des cultures. Paris: Seuil. Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu Philosophy. Paris: Présence Africaine. Towa, Marcien. 1971. Léopold Sédar Senghor: négritude ou servitude? Yaoundé: Clé. —. 1979. L’idée d’une philosophie africaine, Yaoundé: Clé.

CHAPTER TWELVE KAGAME AND MBITI ON THE TRADITIONAL BANTU VIEW OF TIME KIBUJJO M. KALUMBA

Introduction In his classical essay “Empirical Apperception of Time and the Conception of History in Bantu Thought,” Alexis Kagame relies on an extensive sample of Bantu languages to advance several important theses about the traditional Bantu view of time.1 In one of these claims Kagame goes contrary to most leading African philosophers and endorses what John Mbiti regards as the traditional African view of time.2 Mbiti contends that, unlike the Western view of time, which is three-dimensional, comprising an indefinite past, a present, and an infinite future, the traditional African concept of time is two-dimensional, comprising the two tense-dimensions of Zamani and Sasa, which will be explained in the next section.3 After reconstructing Mbiti’s argument for the two-dimensional view of time, I examine the Bantu view of time embedded in Kagame’s essay. Besides being three-dimensional, this view’s ontological outlook is incompatible with that of Mbiti’s view. Hence I contend that Kagame 1

Liboire Kagabo (2004) gives a neat overview of Kagame’s life and thought. Those who have challenged Mbiti’s view include, among others, John Ayaode (1979), D.A. Masolo (1994), and Kwame Gyekye (1995). It must be noted that Mbiti takes his conclusions on time to be valid for all traditional Africa, a claim that has earned him the charge of hasty generalization from his critics. In contrast, Kagame is more cautious. His study concentrates on Bantu Africa, although he is convinced that “its conclusions are also valid, at least to a large extent, with regard to Sudanic culture” (1976: 89). 3 “Dimensional” and “dimension” are not used by Mbiti in the standard mathematical sense but rather to distinguish aspects or parts. I follow Mbiti’s usage throughout this paper. 2

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cannot consistently endorse Mbiti’s two-dimensional view. I conclude by observing that the three-dimensional view of time embedded in Kagame’s essay is well-entrenched in my native Luganda, one of the Bantu languages included in his research. Why then did Kagame deviate from this view to end up endorsing Mbiti’s two-dimensional view? I propose an explanation for this puzzling deviation. But before I proceed with Mbiti’s argument, I want to situate the principal thinkers of this paper in the wider context of an African philosophical debate. Following Henry Odera Oruka’s (1981) fourfold classification of African philosophy, many African philosophers today regard Mbiti’s and Kagame’s philosophical works as belonging to the trend of ethnophilosophy. According to Oruka, ethnophilosophers identify African philosophy with traditional African cultural thought and regard the African philosopher’s task as that of providing written explications and systematizations of this thought. Ethnophilosophy is usually viewed as opposed to what Oruka called the trend of professional philosophy, which defines all philosophy (including African philosophy) in terms of second-order critical reflection. Hence, according to this trend, the African philosopher’s job regarding cultural thought is not so much to explicate and systematize it as it is to critically engage it.4 Given both its style and its call for critical, analytical rigor below, many readers will probably align this paper with the trend of professional philosophy. I will accept this alignment as long as it is not taken to impute on me the disparaging attitude toward enthophilosophy that is associated with some professional philosophers. It is precisely because I see much that is of philosophical value in Mbiti’s and Kagame’s works that I have deemed it important to engage them critically. Let me now proceed with Mbiti’s argument.

Mbiti’s Argument for the Two-dimensional View of Actual Time For traditional Africans: 1. Time is nothing but a composition of events. (I call this the ontological thesis.) 4

The other two trends of Oruka’s classification are nationalist-ideological philosophy and philosophic sagacity. Nationalist-ideological philosophy comprises the anti-colonial, pro-independence literature of the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Championed by Oruka, philosophic sagacity comprises the views of individual traditional Africans regarded as exceptionally wise within their communities.

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2. Events (singly or collectively) must be experienced to be actual. 3. Therefore (from 1 and 2), time must be experienced to be actual. 4. Distant future events cannot be experienced. 5. Therefore (from 2 and 4), distant future events are not actual. 6. Therefore (from 1 and 5), distant future events do not constitute actual time. 7. Therefore (from 1, 2 and 6), actual time is exhausted by the two tense-dimensions that involve experienced events: the Zamani and the Sasa. (I call this the two-dimensional view of actual time.)5 According to Mbiti (1990, 21-2), the Zamani extends from the “nowpoint” into the Western indefinite past. The Sasa consists of the recently experienced Western past, the now-point, and the Western future of at most two years from the now-point.6

The Traditional Bantu View of Time Embedded in Kagame’s Essay A major difference between Mbiti and Kagame regarding the traditional Bantu view of time is implied by the following passage from Kagame’s essay: In traditional Bantu culture … time is a colourless, neutral, entity as long as it is not marked or stamped by some specific event: an action performed by the pre-existent [God], by man or animal, a natural phenomenon.… As soon as the action or event impinges on time, the latter is marked, stamped, individualized, drawn out of its anonymity, and becomes the time of that event (1976, 99).

It is clear from this passage that, contrary to Mbiti’s ontological thesis which identifies time with events, Kagame attributes to traditional Bantu a conception of time as a real entity that exists prior to and independently of the events that are associated with it. Otherwise, these events could not be 5

Mbiti (1990, 17) distinguishes actual time from “potential” time, a distinction that will be explicated later. 6 This argument is an almost verbatim repetition of my earlier reconstruction of Mbiti’s argument for the two-dimensional view of actual time. I refer the reader to Kalumba (2005, 12) for further details on this reconstruction. It is fitting to ask at this juncture how the two-year stretch from the now-point involves experience. Mbiti’s answer, which I don’t find convincing, is that traditional Africans regard the events within this stretch of time as so immediate and certain that they have virtually experienced them (Mbiti 1990, 21).

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said to “mark” it, “stamp” it, or “impinge” on it. True, according to Kagame, traditional Bantu see time as “colourless,” “neutral, “anonymous,” and so on, until it is stamped by some event, but this claim does nothing to diminish time’s real, independent status.7 That Kagame thinks traditional Bantu see time as existing independently of events is further supported by what he claims to be the Bantu’s fourfold classification of being. The Bantu, according to Kagame (1976, 89-91), regard every being as falling within one of the following categories: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Being endowed with intelligence (man). Being without intelligence (things). Localizing being (place-time). Modal being (accidentality, or modification of being).

According to this classification, time and space constitute an ontological category that is distinct from that of events, which as modifications or accidents of being must belong to the fourth category. It is indeed instructive that while Kagame (1976, 91) explicitly describes the beings of the fourth category as those “which by nature, are incapable of independent existence,” he does not extend the idea of dependent existence to “localizing being.”8 A combination of several claims from Kagame’s essay suggests a coherent picture of the specific nature of the real, independently existing time which he attributes to traditional Bantu. In one place Kagame contends that traditional Bantu regard every existent as “fraught with existential movement and proceeds upon its trajectory toward its 7

This is what Parker English and I failed to see several years ago. In English and Kalumba (1996, 81), we correctly observed that Kagame’s primary claim is that, for traditional Bantu, time is “colourless” unless it is marked or stamped by some event. Unfortunately, we proceeded to confuse this claim with the unwarranted claim that “time is not real for traditional Africans until it has been stamped by a socially significant event.” Combining this latter claim with the obvious fact that future time is not yet stamped by any event, we concluded, falsely, that Kagame believes that, for traditional Bantu, future time is “not conceived as being real in the way the present and past are.” In making this conclusion, we felt encouraged by Kagame himself, who, as we shall see below, purports to agree with Mbiti on how traditional Africans perceive the future. 8 Kagabo (2004, 235-7) believes that Kagame’s fourfold classification of being “is the most fundamental and original part of his account of Bantu philosophy.” He adds that Kagame is “right to stress that, for Bantu, ‘any conceivable entity comes down to one of those four, and there is no entity that remains outside those four categories.’”

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connatural consummation” (1976, 92-3). Then he goes on to say that traditional Bantu view this movement as taking place in time (and space), regarded as the “there where”, the “localizers,” and “the individualizing coordinates of all movements … of existents” (1976, 91-4).9 Given this description of time (and space) and the aforementioned thesis that existents stamp time with their movements, Kagame must be attributing to traditional Bantu a “plane view” of time. It is a view of time as a metaphysical background along which existents travel as they proceed upon their existential trajectories. Since this time plane is always in the background, it is not surprising that, according to Kagame, it remains neutral and colourless for traditional Bantu until some event stamps or marks it and draws it out of its anonymity for them. Whereas, as we have seen, Mbiti’s “event view” of time is twodimensional, Kagame’s plane view is clearly three-dimensional. Apart from the present dimension, it has an indefinite past dimension as well as an indefinite future dimension. The past dimension of the time plane must stretch at least beyond the period of the Bantu’s early ancestral “innovators” who initiated the constitutive elements of their cultures, thus marking time by their inventions. We must keep in mind the principle referred to above of the ‘stamping’ of time. The initiators left a deep mark on time during their existence on earth: in other words, they launched a series of entities (their ‘inventions’) on their existential trajectory, and their descendants, from generation to generation, repeat the stamping of time on a large scale (Kagame 1976, 110).

The future dimension of the time plane must also stretch indefinitely in the opposite direction, since, according to Kagame (102), the Bantu believe that their social groups, such as large families and tribal nations, will certainly mark it with their activities for generations to come. Despite this three-dimensional view of actual time that is clearly embedded in his essay, Kagame proceeds to endorse Mbiti’s twodimensional view of actual time as follows: On the metaphysical plane, ‘future time’ … is merely a projection of our minds. In order to appreciate the extreme limit of such anticipation, a distinction must be made between the individual and the social or political group. John S. Mbiti, in African Religions and Philosophy (p.17) writes: 9

Kagame contends that traditional Bantu merge space and time into one single ontological category of localizing being, a claim I will attempt to elaborate on below.

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The future is virtually absent because events which lie in it have not taken place, they have not been realized and cannot, therefore, constitute time. If, however, future events are certain to occur, or if they fall within the inevitable rhythm of nature, they at best constitute only potential time, not actual time.10 I therefore agree with this excellent writer’s opinion, although our starting points are different. The ‘future’ cannot be marked by actual events and therefore cannot be regarded as knowable time. A man who projects his mind into the future is not even sure of being there on the morrow. As a Rwandese proverb has it: iby’ejo bibara ab’ejo: ‘the things of tomorrow occupy the conversations of the people of tomorrow’. In other words, ‘if I am there tomorrow, I shall see about it’ (1976, 101).

There is no doubt that Kagame endorses Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time in this passage. This is true because the original intent of the direct quotation from Mbiti’s book, which Kagame must be aware of, is to show that actual time is two-dimensional, since the future is virtually nonactual. Here is how Mbiti begins the paragraph that includes the part that Kagame reproduces: The most significant consequence of this is that, according to traditional concepts, time is a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present and virtually no future. The linear concept of time in western thought, with an indefinite past, present and infinite future, is practically foreign to African thinking. The future is virtually absent because events which lie in it have not taken place, they have not been realized and cannot, therefore, constitute time (1990, 16-7).

Kagame’s endorsement of Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time is definitely puzzling, and in what follows I propose an explanation for it. The first step of the explanation consists in realizing that Kagame uses two different senses of the expression “the past” or its synonym “past time” in his essay. In the first or primary sense, “the past” refers to the dimension of the time plane that chronologically comes prior to the present dimension. Kagame describes “the past” in the secondary sense as “the sum total of the activities by means of which the ancestors stamped their own time and which they have transmitted to their descendants” (1976, 101). Given these two senses of “the past,” it is plausible to 10

It is interesting to note that by saying, in the quoted passage, that coming events lie in the future, Mbiti seems to distinguish the future dimension of time from the events that will take place in it. This, of course, goes contrary to his ontological thesis.

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maintain that Kagame uses the expression “the future” or its synonym “future time” with two different senses as well. The first or primary sense of “the future” is that of the indefinite third dimension of the time plane I mentioned above. “The future” in the secondary sense must mean the sum total of the activities by means of which individuals will stamp time in days yet to come, and which they will transmit to their descendants. Which one of the two senses of “the future” does Kagame employ in the passage that endorses Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time? The answer, I believe, is that he employs both senses, thereby equivocating on the expression “future time”. Let me elaborate. In the first line of the passage, Kagame must be using “future time” in the secondary sense of those activities individuals anticipate to perform in coming days. Since this future is neither actual nor certain, or as he calls it, “a projection of our minds,” Kagame can plausibly use it to endorse Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time. Kagame’s problem is that he confuses the two senses of “the future” and proceeds to use “the future” in the primary sense to endorse Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time. That he makes this switch to the primary sense is evinced by what he says immediately after the direct quotation from Mbiti’s book. In this portion of his passage, Kagame states his agreement with Mbiti, and immediately links the agreement to the “future” that “cannot be marked by actual events.” Since this future is distinct from events, it must be the future referenced by the primary sense. And it is clear that Kagame cannot consistently employ this future to endorse Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time, since this very future constitutes Kagame’s third dimension of actual time. It is not surprising that, in this portion of the passage, his attempt to justify the agreement with Mbiti involves confusion as well as incoherence. In the text that immediately follows the direct quotation from Mbiti’s book, Kagame ends up confusing ontology with epistemology. This is true because the conclusion he needs to endorse Mbiti’s view is that future time cannot be regarded as actual time, a statement about the ontological status of future time. What he ends up arguing, however, is that future time “cannot be marked by actual events and therefore cannot be regarded as knowable time,” an epistemological inference about future time. Moreover, the claim that unmarked time is unknowable time is incompatible with Kagame’s principle of stamping time. The principle does not state that unmarked time is unknown; it states, instead, that unmarked time is colourless, neutral and anonymous. Incoherence is interwoven with confusion. Unfortunately, these are not the only problems entailed by the quoted passage. Here is another one.

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In the second sentence of the passage of the endorsement, Kagame introduces a distinction between the individual and the social or political group which he revisits a few paragraphs later (1976, 101-2). In these paragraphs Kagame uses the distinction to argue that an individual’s future activities (his or her future time in the secondary sense) cannot be anticipated with certainty, since the individual “who projects his mind into the future is not even certain of being there in the morrow.” In contrast, he argues that the future activities of social or political groups (their future in the secondary sense) can be anticipated with certainty, since such groups are certain to continue in existence for several generations to come. What Kagame seems to conclude from the contrast is that whereas the future (in the secondary sense) of social or political groups is indefinite and actual, the future (in the secondary sense) of individuals is not actual.11 What Kagame fails to realize in making this inference is that no degree of certainty of anticipation is capable of making actual any future activities. Activities can only be made actual by their realization in the present. It is indeed surprising that Kagame fails to realize this fact, given that in the passage of the endorsement he reproduces the very text in which Mbiti distinguishes between actual time and potential time. Given what he says both in this text and in his argument, as reconstructed above, Mbiti limits the extent of real or actual activities (the activities that constitute actual time) to those that fall within the range of two years from the now-point. Any activity beyond two years from now, certain to occur, or otherwise, is simply not actual, and therefore is not part of actual time, although it might be part of potential time. So to be consistent with Mbiti’s view Kagame needs to describe the future activities of social groups (their future time in the secondary sense), not as actual or real activities but as potential activities.

11

This is my interpretation of the three rather confusing paragraphs that immediately follow the passage in which Kagame endorses Mbiti’s view. To get some idea of the confusion involved, the future of social groups which is described as “infinite” in the second of these paragraphs, is described as “indefinite” in the third paragraph. Moreover, even though the context of these paragraphs is that of justifying Kagame’s endorsement of Mbiti’s view that the future in the secondary sense is non-actual, the last sentence of the third paragraph is devoted to the future in the primary sense of time that “is anticipated as certain to be marked by the activities of the group” (1976, 102).

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Conclusion Is Kagame’s three-dimensional, plane view of actual time found in all Bantu cultures? I am not qualified to answer this question. All I can say with competence is that the view is embedded in my native Luganda, the only Bantu language I speak fluently. The Baganda (native speakers of Luganda) do have a locative, three-dimensional view of actual time that is distinct from the events that take place within it. The locative nature of this view is reflected in the fact that we use the same concords (mu or in, ku or at, wo or there where) to refer to time as we use to refer to space and place. This I believe is what Kagame (1976, 92) means when he says that traditional Bantu merge time and place in the same third ontological category that, as we have seen above, he calls localizing being. And frankly I cannot think of a basic feature of Kagame’s plane view that is not reflected in the Baganda’s view. In addition to the plane view with its primary senses of “the past” and “the future,” the Baganda also have expressions that are translatable as “the past” and “the future” in the secondary sense described above. For example, the expression eby’edda can be translated as “the past” in the sense of “the things (actions, events, phenomena, and so on) of long ago.” Likewise, the expression ebiri mu maaso can be translated as “the future” in the sense of “the things (actions, events, phenomena, and so on) that lie ahead.” Hence, as far as Luganda is concerned, the two senses of “the future” used by Kagame are both legitimate. Kagame’s main problem is that, in the context of endorsing Mbiti’s two-dimensional view of actual time, he confuses the primary sense with the secondary sense, and, amidst the confusion, reads the properties of the latter into the former. My hope is that this exposition of Kagame’s analytical flaws will alert aspiring African philosophers to the importance of critical, analytical rigor as the only way to reduce similar problems in their own works.

References Ayaode, John. A.A. 1979. Time in Yoruba Thought. In African Philosophy: An Introduction, ed. Richard A. Wright, 71-89. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 2nd.ed. English, P. and Kalumba, K, eds. 1996. African Philosophy: A Classical Approach. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Gyekye, Kwame. 1995. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Kagabo, Loboire, 2004. Alexis Kagame (1912-1981): Life and Thought. In A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu, 231-242. Oxford: Blackwell. Kagame, Alexis. 1976. The Empirical Apperception of Time and the Conception of History in Bantu Thought. In Cultures and Time, 89116. Paris: The UNESCO Press. Kalumba, Kibujjo. 2005. A New Analysis of Mbiti’s “The Concept of Time.” Philosophia Africana 8: 11-19. Masolo, D.A. 1994. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mbiti, John S. 1969. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann. Reissued in a second, revised edition in 1990. All references are to the second edition. Odera Oruka, H. 1981. Four Trends in African Philosophy. In Philosophy in the Present Situation of Africa, ed. Alwin Diemer, 1-7. Weisbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.

PART III CARIBBEAN PHILOSOPHY

Since the Caribbean was the physical site for these conversations in philosophy, the nature of Caribbean philosophy was, not surprisingly, also given significant consideration. As was noted in the introduction to Part II, African philosophy has been questioned with respect to its origin and value. The history of the debate regarding Caribbean philosophy has seen similar concerns being raised. A major distinction, however, is that Caribbean societies, unlike African societies (being differentiated here from African states), are, in important ways, artifices. The peoples and cultures of the region are the result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, Asian indentureship and European settlement; the majority of the original inhabitants of the region having been killed as a part of the settlement by the Europeans. Even the name “West Indies”, which was used exclusively to denote the region for an extended period of time and still labels two of the most important institutions in the English-speaking Caribbean (the cricket team and the regional university), was the result of Columbus’ mistaken view that he had reached India. So while in African and western philosophy one may argue that there are traditional foundational principles that provide a launching pad for thinking about how to live in the world, where would such a foundation be located, or can one even be found for the Caribbean? Is the Caribbean worldview one that is “the melody of Europe, the rhythm of Africa” (Rex Nettleford’s phrase for a view he discusses in many places, e.g., Mirror Mirror: Identity Race and Protest in Jamaica, (Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s, 1970)) or is it a creolisation of all the worldviews that met in this group of islands, as suggested by Kamau Brathwaite (see, for instance, his Contradictory Omens (Mona, Jamaica: Savacou Publications, 1974))? Furthermore, the idea of a Caribbean philosophy is problematic for those who conceive of philosophy in the way one would think about a discipline such as computer science or physics. On that view, one could conceive of physicists and philosophers from all across the world using similar methodologies and exploring questions that are concerned with the lives and intellectual problems of human beings, a conversation that is

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universal in its issues and concerns. This type of view of philosophy is discussed and rejected by the first paper in this section. Mulvey notes that this traditional approach to (western) philosophy, which assumes the degree of objectivity and culture-neutrality that would be found in a discipline like mathematics, considers that only by being an “impartial observer … can theorising be considered rational”. But, Mulvey argues, appealing to the views of Sartre, Foucault and Horkheimer, value neutrality does not adequately or accurately represent the philosophical pursuit. Recognition of, and giving credence to, the cultural and social locations of humans should be embraced as more effectively representing the approach taken to theorising and developing knowledge. Mulvey therefore maintains that this shift in the conception of knowledge construction and theory formation allows for a much more nuanced understanding of how philosophy itself should be viewed, and opens the door for Caribbean philosophy to be seen as a legitimate enterprise. Bermingham’s paper can be seen as picking up on Mulvey’s theme, further arguing that for the notion of Caribbean philosophy to be feasible, it must be connected to the Caribbean experience, what it means to be “in the Caribbean”. The cultural realities of the Caribbean should be seen as having philosophical salience and Bermingham suggests how this theoretical space may be found. In some respects continuing the spirit of the comparative approach taken by Masolo and Hellsten in Part II (chapters seven and eight), he notes that the identification and valuing of these local Caribbean practices offers the chance to take them out of the periphery. At the same time, there is the recognition that the Caribbean experience cannot be entirely separated from other cultures, given the region’s history; being “in the Caribbean” provides the possibility for taking on a unique cross-cultural viewpoint, a viewpoint that can exploit the gaps created by the changes in conceptualising philosophical thought. Mulvey and Bermingham affirm that Caribbean philosophy could be realised, both arguing that a valuing of the geographical and cultural spaces is required for this to be viable. Bewaji is more emphatic in asserting the existence of Caribbean philosophy, but in doing so, he also shows why some geographical and cultural spaces tend to be treated as philosophically irrelevant and therefore in need of vociferous arguments for the existence of philosophy in these locations. By exploring the traditional view of philosophy that Mulvey also discussed, but highlighting its Euro-American bias, Bewaji argues that the debate about the existence of Caribbean philosophy, as it was for African philosophy, is artificial, created from the false idea that philosophy is essentially a European practice. Bewaji suggests that Caribbean philosophers (and Africana

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philosophers in general) have to work at two levels: at the metaphilosophical level, their work has to challenge the structures that allow the question of the existence of Caribbean philosophy to even be asked, while continuing the work at the level that is generally defined by the categories of the academic discipline. He ends by lauding persons whose work meet his criterion for doing Caribbean philosophy, noting however that many of these writers would not be seen as doing western philosophy. Geofroy attempts to provide a solution to one of the problems associated with philosophy in the Caribbean: the discipline is viewed as very abstract and separated in important ways from people’s lives. In taking on the task of answering a practical question—what curriculum is appropriate for Philosophy in the (Anglophone) Caribbean?—he argues that philosophy must reflect the Caribbean context. He also notes that many students of philosophy will not become professional philosophers and so their exposure to philosophy should include interaction with other disciplines. Geofroy argues that material for teaching Caribbean philosophy should ideally be taken from a variety of intellectual sources, which would reflect the historical and cultural traditions of the region, and thus include literature, religion, and philosophical contributions from the African, Indian, Latin American, and Western traditions. The two other papers in this section show that events and practices that are part of the Caribbean cultural sphere can be effectively utilised as a starting point for philosophical analysis. They both explore themes that are aspects of “academic philosophy”, using two of the most important aspects of Caribbean life: rum and music. Murray employs the Tuk Band’s arrangement and performance as a device for developing a creolisation model of epistemology and philosophy of science. Murray criticises the approach taken by traditional western science, which he argues is too narrow and restrictive in its way of viewing the world. A broader way of knowing is proposed, one which takes into account the different ways in which people conceive of reality and embracing the view that it should not be based solely on the traditional western conception of knowing. Using the different levels of the Tuk Band orchestra, Murray presents a particular way of conceiving reality that can be seen as developing within the Caribbean context. Headley also utilises a metaphor, in his case rum, to propose an AfroCaribbean existential ontology. Continuing a theme running through this section, Headley’s position is built on the view that there is no universal approach to meaning and knowledge formation, approving instead of ontology as a “study of the plural forms of human existence”. One of these ontologies is that which arises from the experiences of Africana people in

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the United States (Headley here examines the blues as a metaphor for the improvisation and affirmation necessary for the African American’s continued existence in the face of immense struggles). An examination of the role of rum in the Caribbean offers an effective tool for conceptualising a model of existence that steps outside the traditional ontological structure: rum is intricately connected to the historical development of the region; it serves a foundational role in birth and death practices and in important life events; it creates a unifying space that goes beyond racial, cultural, religious and other social differences. Even in what may be seen as the negative aspect of rum drinking, drunkenness, there is a cultural space that is created for transcending the “hegemony of an oppressive political arrangement”. Rum can therefore be seen as providing a metaphor for an underlying coherence to life in the Caribbean.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN CAN THERE BE A REGIONAL (CARIBBEAN) PHILOSOPHY? BEN MULVEY

Introduction As the head of a division of humanities of a large American university I am part bureaucrat and part philosopher. I am not of the Caribbean, unless you allow that Ft. Lauderdale is a Caribbean city. But because I am in Ft. Lauderdale, I have met and come to know many people from the region, particularly students. In my bureaucratic role I have been working toward building a Caribbean studies program at my university and in my philosopher role I then started to wonder what a course in Caribbean philosophy would be like or even whether such a thing was coherent at all. When I began thinking about this topic, I was immediately confronted with one significant objection to the whole enterprise of a regional or specifically in our case, Caribbean, philosophy. The objection can be characterized in something like the following way. Philosophy as traditionally understood in the West is a systematic, univocal, unified, coherent, and universal theoretical enterprise. This traditional or received view of philosophy marginalizes anything that cannot be construed as universal. Any theoretical endeavour that is historically or geographically specific is labelled “relativistic” and valueladen and is quickly dismissed as marginal or less than serious. These socalled relativistic tendencies in the theoretical endeavours of various subcultures that give license to previously repressed or contained transgressive tendencies are seen by some as poetic, but also as potentially dangerous. So the claim that a particular cultural style of thought is an example of relativism is not at all simply an esoteric academic dispute. I would like to respond to this objection by rehearsing a few arguments of some well-known critics of the traditional view. I will use the work of

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Sartre, Foucault, and Horkheimer to develop an answer to the question whether there can be a regional (or Caribbean) philosophy. I will conclude that not only is such a philosophy possible, it is vital for the development of the region’s own identity.

The Received View of Philosophy The “received view” in the history of philosophy situates Descartes at the origin of the programme of modern philosophy. In his book Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Stephen Toulmin offers an account of the young Descartes developing a conception of a programmatic philosophy in response to the scepticism and empiricism of Montaigne, and to the religious disputes that erupted into the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War. Descartes’ basic assumption is that in the absence of foundational truths and values, fragmentation and perpetual conflict was inevitable. The Meditations is the source in modern philosophy of the metaphor of the “foundation” and of the conviction that the philosopher’s quest is to search for an “Archimedean point” on which we can ground our knowledge.1 The Cartesian epistemological tradition was an attempt to formulate rules and procedures for attaining knowledge. Descartes claims at one point that the power of judging well and of distinguishing between the true from the false, which, properly speaking is what is called good sense, or reason, is by nature equal in all men.2

Descartes himself understood the procedure to consist in part in building knowledge out of the inferences from indubitable first premises. The empiricist tendency views knowledge as achieved by inference from basic sense experiences. The practical upshot of the empiricist tendency in the Cartesian epistemological tradition is its development into the positivist theory of knowledge and understanding of science. According to the positivist self-understanding of science, the adequacy of a theory is judged according to the theory’s “objectivity.” Objectivity in this sense means intersubjective verification made possible by valueneutrality. Scientists, according to the positivist view, should be sure to 1

Toulmin, Stephen. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, (NY: The Free Press, 1990), 177. 2 Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method, in Descartes: Philosophical Writings, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, (NY: The Modern Library, 1958), 93.

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purge their theories of their own “subjective” or partisan values, interests and emotions. These, it is claimed, would bias or distort the results of scientific inquiry. For the positivist view, scientists must be “detached” observers, following strict methodological rules that allow them to separate themselves from their field of study and the particular values, interests and emotions generated by their specific situation. The positivist criterion of objectivity finds it way into much contemporary moral and political theory. Here objectivity does not mean to be free of value judgments, but to be free of the value judgments of any particular person or group, to be “unbiased.” Consider these representative remarks by John Rawls: In order to find an Archimedean point it is not necessary to appeal to a priori or perfectionist principles. By assuming certain general desires, such as the desire for primary social goods, and by taking as a basis the agreements that would be made in a suitably defined initial situation, we can achieve the requisite independence from existing circumstances.3

Objective value judgments in this sense would be those made by an individual who was impartial in the sense of giving no special weight to his or her own or to any other special interests. The positivist political philosopher is one who is “detached” from the contingencies of his or her situation. Objectivism of this sort, assumes that without a neutral standpoint that is somehow detached from the present, it is impossible to make sense out of our own historical situation. The crucial positivist claim, for our purposes, is that an adequate study of society requires the theorist to be an impartial observer, neutral with respect to the values of the particular historical situation in which his or her theorizing takes place. Only then can such theorizing be considered rational. Leonard Tim Hector characterizes the traditional perspective by reference to Kant. [For Kant], the point is, whatever the inner voice of Reason commands is objective, universal, timeless, true for all men, and I add, not culture determined.4

Let us look at some important critics of this epistemologicalpositivistic tradition. 3

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 263. 4 Hector, Leonard Tim. The Making of Caribbean Philosophy, Part II, June 5, 1998, Fan the Flame, http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/fanflame.htm.

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Sartre’s Arguments against Value-neutrality Sartre sees the attempt to gain an “objective” knowledge of the world and oneself in the manner of positivism as an attempt to avoid the responsibility for choosing one’s project. The thesis of value-neutrality suggests, according to Sartre, both that there is a strict distinction to be made between “facts” and “values,” and that once one has a sufficient grasp of the so called facts, nothing remains for the theorist to do but to adopt an attitude that “conforms” to them such that rational discussion of what attitude to adopt would be inappropriate. Such a conception troubles Sartre because it masks the role of choice. It disguises the fact that to use one set of “true” sentences to describe ourselves is already to choose an attitude toward ourselves, whereas to use another set of “true” sentences is to adopt a contrary attitude. The notion that there is one right way of describing and explaining reality, the notion that defines “truth” for the positivist, is for Sartre, just the notion of having a way of describing and explaining imposed on us in that brute way in which stones impinge on our feet. Experience is confined to displaying the close connection between the physiological and psychological, and this connection is subject to a thousand different kinds of interpretation.5

From Sartre’s point of view, conceiving of knowledge as the one appropriate description assumes universality as an appropriate criterion of that knowledge. Universality in this sense is one way of conceiving of value-neutrality. For a universal description in this sense implies that it is appropriate for “anyone,” and the idea of an “anyone” is one that is an abstraction from real circumstances that define real persons. To look for a way of reducing all possible descriptions to one is to attempt to escape from humanity. To find a single universal descriptive vocabulary would allow us to identify human-beings-under-a-given-description with the human “essence”. And this conclusion is, of course, the sort of position to which Sartre’s entire project of existentialism is a critical response. Abstracting individuals away from their specific social situations as does the “analytic cast of mind,” as well as obscuring from view their solidarity with others in a like situation, precludes the sort of social and political analysis that motivates critical social theory. Moreover, it pulls the rug out from under those who are considering changing their social 5

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Materialism and Revolution,” in Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. Annette Michelson, (N.Y.: Collier Books, 1962), 201.

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circumstances by suggesting that those circumstances are simply given. The spirit of analysis embraced by science, claims Sartre, is really a “philosophy of oppression” because it tries to conceal its pragmatic character; as it is aimed not at changing the world, but at maintaining it, it claims to contemplate the world as it is. It regards society and nature from the viewpoint of pure knowledge, without admitting to itself that this attitude tends to perpetuate the present state of the universe by implying that the universe can be known rather than changed and that if one actually does want to change it, one must first know it.6

Either because it subscribes to a concept of a fixed human nature or because it considers itself to have achieved the privileged position of an absolute arbiter, the value-neutral approach of the analytic spirit masks its own normative status and often parades as a justification for exploitation and domination, especially, as Sartre’s later political essays attest, of a domination over native populations in colonial conquests. Thus Sartre rejects as a misleading myth the idea of a foundationalism that would provide the neutral ground upon which one could base his or her social criticism, as misleading as the notion of a value-neutral representation with which it is intimately bound up. As early as Being and Nothingness, Sartre claimed, “representation, as a psychic event, is a pure invention of philosophers.”7

Foucault’s Arguments against Value-neutrality Throughout his career Foucault has been concerned to uncover in the various human sciences the play of power that hides behind the mask of value-neutrality. Thus, not only does Foucault, like Sartre, argue against the associated notions of representation and foundationalism, but more importantly, Foucault believes with Sartre that claims to value-neutrality in the sciences amount to nothing more than myths, mystifying real networks of domination within which people are caught up. For Foucault “[a]ll knowledge is rooted in a life, and a language that have a history.”8 But moving beyond Sartre in a more radical way, Foucault suggests that 6

Ibid., 227-228. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, (N.Y.: Philosophical Library, 1956), 217. 8 Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (NY: Vintage Books, 1973), 372-373. 7

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more than simply masking plays of power, the discourse of valueneutrality itself can be a significant mode of operation of power. According to Foucault, the human sciences do not actually yield “truth” in the traditional value-neutral sense. The traditional view is that value-neutral truth, i.e., truth that is free of ideological commitments, is liberating, that once one is confronted by an accurate representation of reality, as it were, an individual or group will be freed from psychological or social delusions. But Foucault’s investigation of the social practices of the human sciences reveals that they establish “regimes of truth” which impose normalizing standards that have the effect of “subjectifying” human beings. That is, the human sciences actually make subjects out of us both in the sense of creating our identities and in the sense that we then become engaged in the creation of our own subjection.9 As with Sartre, Foucault suggests that a value-neutral stance presupposes a fixed object of study, such that one’s observations can be used as the basis of the universal claims of one’s science. This in turn presupposes that there is something fixed in human nature that can be the basis of the deep “truth” about human beings. Psychoanalysis, for example, in its claim to “reveal” the “truth” about ourselves, implicitly relies on a distorted view that there is an essence to reveal, an essence that can be reflected in the psychoanalytic mirror. This distorted view suggests that human subjects are “preformed,” that those subjects are often repressed by various ideological layers, and the expert is the one who can dispel these ideological clouds and liberate the real or true subject. Like Sartre, Foucault rejects the notion of a fixed human essence and understands subjectivity to involve a certain amount of creative activity. I think that from the theoretical point of view, Sartre avoids the idea of the self as something which is given to us.... I think that the only practical consequence of what Sartre has said is to link his theoretical insight to the practice of creativity.10

From Nietzsche Foucault accepts that there are no facts, only interpretations of the world; no objective truths, only the constructs of various individuals or groups. Since the world has no single meaning, but 9

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, (NY: Vintage Books, 1979), 27-28, 192-194, 217. 10 Foucault, Michel. “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, second edition, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 237.

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rather countless meanings, a theorist qua “perspectivist” seeks multiple interpretations of phenomena and insists there is “no limit to the ways in which the world can be interpreted.”11 The perspectivist position that Foucault comes to embrace holds that theories at best provide partial perspectives on their objects, and that all cognitive representations of the world are historically and linguistically mediated. Foucault rejects the philosophical pretension to grasp systematically all of reality within one philosophical system or from one central vantage point. This, of course, is another way of conceiving of the search for the elusive “Archimedean point” from which reality could be assessed and criticized and which, as we saw, was at the heart of positivism’s objectivist program.

Horkheimer’s Critical Theory: An Alternative In a well known essay Horkheimer opposed “traditional” and “critical” forms of theory. Traditional theory (or what we have here identified as the ‘received view’), beginning with Descartes, exhibits a concern with universal, systematic science.12

The first thing to note about Horkheimer’s characterization is that traditional theory aspires, as he says, to be “a universal systematic science” which “anyone … can use … at any time.” In contrast, a critical social theory analyses social situations in terms of those features of it which can be altered in order to eliminate at least some of the felt frustrations of its members. Given this as the aim of critical social theory, its analyses are necessarily bound by a specific historical horizon. Critical theories cannot be universal in any absolute sense and will therefore not, contrary to the claim of traditional theory as Horkheimer sees it, always be relevant. What is relevant is the particular social situation, the discernible frustrations of those involved with that situation and the specific relation between these two factors. The second feature in Horkheimer’s characterization of traditional theory is the assumption that the “conceptual apparatus” used for 11 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kauffman, (NY: Vintage Books, 1968), 326. 12 Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell et al. (NY: Continuum, 1982), 18889.

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analysing “inanimate nature” is appropriate for “animate nature” as well. That is, from a metatheoretical point of view, there need be no distinction between the method of the so-called natural sciences and that of the social sciences. The obvious underlying assumption here is that as the object of theory, there is no relevant difference between human beings and “inanimate nature”. To accomplish its aim critical social theory selfconsciously integrates theory and practice. That is, critical theory is “validated” to the degree that it informs practice in the desired ways. This means that what is desired and who is doing the desiring is relevant; that what sort of frustration is felt and who feels it is relevant to the theory and theorist. This is its “hermeneutical dimension”. In critical theory what is theorized are the intentions of agents. It is teleological in the sense that it attempts to “explain” action and in the sense that it attempts to contribute to the achievement of actors’ aims. According to this view, theoretical claims are confirmed to the extent that they succeed in these attempts. Measuring knowledge claims in terms of the satisfaction of human purposes and desires and limiting the range of these claims to a specific historical domain, i.e. to specific human purposes in a particular social situation, means that there must be a certain rapport between theorist and social actors. The claims of the critical social theorist and the selfunderstandings of actors must cohere and be reciprocally enlightening. Horkheimer says, It is the task of the critical theoretician to reduce the tension between his own insight and oppressed humanity in whose service he thinks.13

Furthermore this relationship implies a commitment on the part of the theorist and actors to explicit value assumptions. Situated in concrete social experience, critical social theory, then, not only eschews any pretence to value-neutrality, but explicitly embraces specific value assumptions. Simply put, for Horkheimer the major problem with traditional theory rests with its “objectivism”. That is, such theory assumes that the validity and truth of its knowledge consists in passively mirroring a reality, whose form and content is given independently of the subject’s activity. Above all, it falsely assumes that its perception of the facts is purified of all extraneous, subjective values and concepts. Appealing to the tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Horkheimer remarks that the “detached” perspective of the scientist is belied by recognizing that 13

Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” 221.

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the facts which our senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity.... The perceived fact is therefore co-determined by human ideas and concepts, even before its conscious theoretical elaboration by the knowing individual.14

Traditional theory becomes “ideological,” Horkheimer claims, by failing to acknowledge that its knowledge represents but one particular interpretation of reality which conditions, and is conditioned by, the historical world. The conception of knowledge as a function of passive and value-neutral observation tacitly legitimates the status quo, because such knowledge purports to satisfy conditions of necessity and universality. By making transparent the hidden social context of specific types of knowledge, critical theory dissolves the false notions of universality and necessity inherent in all forms of objectivism. Thus, claims Horkheimer, it enables the subject of knowledge and action to project new possibilities of knowing and acting that transcend those prescribed by tradition.

Conclusion My argument thus far has consisted in rehearsing some of the telling criticisms of the traditional understanding of philosophy levelled against it by Sartre and Foucault. Each of these philosophers, approaching the problem in his own way, shows that the requirement that knowledge claims be value-neutral is at best ill conceived. This opens the door for a new and different understanding of knowledge and of philosophy in general. We have seen that Horkheimer, for example, develops an understanding of philosophy in terms of critical social theory that, in contrast to the received view, is first, historically situated and, second, has as the object of its theory a social formation ultimately intelligible in terms of the human beings constitutive of it. These critics are not alone in developing new ways of conceiving of philosophy. Richard Rorty has pointed out that we can ... take from Heidegger the idea that the desire for an ‘epistemology’ is simply the most recent product of the dialectical development of an originally chosen set of metaphors.15 14

Ibid., 200-201. Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 163. 15

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Sartre agrees that what we call knowledge, for Heidegger a particular metaphor, is a specific choice bound up with our more fundamental choice of our way of being, our project. Another student of Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, explains it this way. The … ‘project’ ... results from a determinate choice, seizure of one among other ways of comprehending, organizing, and transforming reality. The initial choice defines the range of possibilities open on this way, and precludes alternative possibilities incompatible with it.... The object world is thus the world of a specific historical project, and is never accessible outside the historical project which organizes matter.16

In a more recent work Rorty himself calls people who are capable of adopting new languages “ironists,” because they inject even their most fervent commitments with doubt. It is possible that what they hold most intimately true today may be replaced tomorrow by better ways of seeing and saying things. They are aware of the contingency of their current state and display a willingness to change narratives.17 This is the idea that interests me in this essay about the possibility of a regional or Caribbean, philosophy. It is only when the traditional view is rejected that the possibility of building particular, historically situated, regional philosophies emerges as a real possibility. I am reluctant to offer specific suggestions as to what a new, specifically Caribbean philosophy, might be like. Such a project is beyond the scope of this argument. More importantly, I am not at all properly situated to have anything intelligent to say in this regard. This project would depend initially on the work of the poets (and artists in general). New languages, new ways of seeing and describing our world in a new language is the work of poetry. We can see this theme in the words of several contemporary poets of the region. For example, Derek Walcott, in his poem, Codicil, says, “To change your language you must change your life.”18 Bernard Boxill, in a very illuminating essay, pursues this idea at great length relative to Walcott’s poetry in particular. Boxill says of

16

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 210, 219. 17 Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 18 Walcott, Derek. Codicil, http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/poetry/walcott_derek.html#derek1.

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Walcott, “He chose to be St. Lucian, or a West Indian poet.”19 Furthermore, Kamau Brathwaite explains in an interview, .

We have not yet explored the potentialities of nation language and I think that we will not really know how far we can go with it until it becomes officially accepted. In other words, when news broadcasts can be read in nation language in addition to Standard English and when the Examination Council recognizes it and asks for it in their exam.20

Paget Henry says, “If we are to re-take control of the cultural aspects of our self-formation, then we must cultivate and produce the philosophical anthropologies, the ethical, ontological, epistemological, and other discourses that we continue to import from the West. The time for breaking these philosophical dependencies is now.”21 Wittgenstein said a language is a way of life. A new language is potentially a new way to live. Henry quotes Franz Fanon, “For Europe, for ourselves and for our humanity, Comrades, We must turn over a new leaf, We must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.”22 I await the words and visions of the poets.

19

Boxill, Bernard. “Derek Walcott’s One Endeavor.” Paper presented at the Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium, University of the West Indies, Barbados, March 31, 2005, accessible from http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/histphil/Philosophy/Chips/2005/papers/boxill.pdf, revised version in Shibboleths 2 (1): 1-15 (2007) (http://www.shibboleths.net/2/1/Boxill,Bernard.pdf). 20 Interview with Kamau Brathwaite, http://www.thecaribbeanwriter.com/volume5/brathwaite.html. 21 Henry, Paget. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. NY: Routledge, 2000, 276. 22 Ibid., 273.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN AM I “IN THE CARIBBEAN” AND (PHILOSOPHICALLY) DOES IT MATTER ANYWAY!? EDDY BERMINGHAM SJ

A contentious but not necessarily unfair description of where Caribbean philosophy is, institutionally, at the moment could be “that those who ‘do’ Caribbean philosophy are largely doing it outside of the Caribbean, and those doing philosophy in the Caribbean don’t necessarily claim to be doing Caribbean philosophy.” This raises a question: does “in the Caribbean” denote a “geography of reason” that in any way relates to the physical, social and political geography of the Caribbean? The fruitful exploitation of and demand to acknowledge the significance of geography in various “post-colonial” disciplines, would seem to suggest that the geographic location “in the Caribbean” must have a philosophical significance and that there are proper ways of attending to it.1 1

When I wrote the first version of this paper, I had only recently arrived in the Caribbean; I had begun teaching philosophy here three semesters earlier (in September 2003). I inherited a curriculum that was very familiar. In fact I could be teaching it in any British or American university. As I presented these courses I began to feel increasingly ambiguous about two things. Firstly, the validity of presenting these “traditional western courses” as if this is what philosophy is, with perhaps an introductory course in “Caribbean philosophy” tagged on the end. Secondly, the status of what is labelled as Caribbean philosophy, this labelling seems in some way to have been “outsourced” either because it looks to another continent for its inspiration or because those deciding about the labels live in another hemisphere. These ambiguous feelings have not subsided subsequently, in fact as I have worked with Professor Patricia Mohammed on developing courses that explore Gender and Philosophy in the Caribbean the sense of unease has if anything deepened. The source of my ambiguity is threefold. Firstly, on any heuristic version of a solution to this problem I am unlikely to be someone who can legitimately do

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This paper argues the notion “in the Caribbean” does have philosophical significance. Properly understood, it delineates a boundary between Caribbean and non-Caribbean. Where neither Caribbean or nonCaribbean are givens, but are discovered, made visible or present, through interactions which are sited in the gaps between the protagonists of competing ways of making sense of the world. The idea of borders of thought, delineating gaps or chasms between geographies of thought, has been developed by several philosophers.2 This paper will look at three (Martin Heidegger, Wilson Harris and Richard Bernstein) of these attempts to characterise this “gap” and the possible implications “in the Caribbean” of trying to think in that gap. The three writers in different ways and for different reasons point to the possibility of uncovering the “unthought thought”, that which cannot be thought because it is taken for granted. I want to suggest that philosophy that is earthed or grounded “in the Caribbean” may uncover “unthought thoughts” which are indiscernible apart from the novel vantage point afforded by the Caribbean terrain because the veiled thought is an indistinguishable part of a too familiar intellectual landscape. This is not simply a plea for the addition of a Caribbean perspective to the many other philosophical perspectives that abound. I am not assuming that the philosopher’s task is to uncover a universal all encompassing commonality which is currently impoverished and partial because it lacks a Caribbean aspect.3 But rather to begin to think about what might represent genuine commonalities and what must be acknowledged as authentic irreconcilable differences. philosophy in the Caribbean. Secondly, I instinctively react against “in the Caribbean” being used as an excluding mechanism. Finally, it seems to me that post-colonial thinking has fruitfully exploited “geographies of reason” without necessarily reflexively attending to the impact of an author’s “immediate geography” on their own thinking process. 2 Commenting on Arendt, Canovan notes that what keeps people together is not some common nature but “it is the space between [people] that unites them, rather than some quality inside of each of them”, cf. M. Canovan, “Politics as Culture: Hannah Arendt and the Public Realm,” History of Political Thought 6 (1985): 634 cited in Rudi Visker, “Philosophy and Pluralism,” Philosophy Today, Summer 2004. 3 For example, Merleau-Ponty’s work seems to be founded on a belief that the apparent incompatibility we encounter should not throw us off track because all of these divergent approaches in fact share a common source. See his Signs, trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964) and The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

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Heidegger’s “Clearing” amidst the Philosophical Trees Part of the reason why I believe “in the Caribbean” must be taken seriously can be seen in Heidegger’s twin notions of “clearing” and that which remains always “unthought”, because it always withdraws. Heidegger presents a history of being that concludes with the emergence of the technological understanding of being. This history acts as an explanatory tale that both exposes and seeks to overcome our dominant way of dealing with things, as objects and resources.4 It is important to realize that for the early Heidegger Being is neither substance nor process, rather it is “that on the basis of which beings are already understood”. In other words, our understanding of Being is to be found in the lifestyle that is made manifest in the way everyday practices are coordinated. It is a culture’s understanding of Being that allows people and things to show up as some-particular-thing. It is the shared practices that we are socialised into that afford a background understanding of what counts as a thing, as a human being and therefore what types of behaviour make sense (are acceptable). Such an analysis makes it plausible to ask whether “in the Caribbean” there must inevitably be a specific background influence that guides actions toward people and things. Heidegger goes on to suggest that this background, this understanding of Being, creates a “clearing” (Lichtung)5 that exerts an unnoticed control, which both opens up and limits what can show up and what can be done. That is to say, the “clearing” exercises an “unobtrusive control” (Waltens) over the members of any given culture. Crucially then, what remains “unthought”, because taken for granted, is highlighted, precisely because it cannot be taken for granted, in another culture.6 More specifically, when

4 Martin Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrel Krell, (HarperCollins, 1993) 369-392. Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Being and Power: Heidegger and Foucault” http://istsocrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_being.html. See also Hubert L. Dreyfuss and Charles Spinosa, “Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on how to affirm technology,” Man and World 30 (1997): 159-177. 5 Heidegger describes this point as “that place in which the whole of philosophy’s history is gathered in its most extreme possibility”, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrel Krell, 375. 6 Hubert L. Dreyfuss op. cit. An example of this might be the critical use to which Hegel and others have put “the master-slave bond”. “In the West” may not necessarily translate into the Caribbean which has a very specific history of this relationship. It may not be the case that the “wage slave” of the industrial revolution and the “plantation slave” of the colonial era can be easily elided one

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we consider cultures that originate “in the West” and those which originate “in the Caribbean” we may discover sufficient difference between them that people and things necessarily show up differently.7 For Heidegger, Being is not static, it is incarnated (partially never fully, it always withdraws, remains unthought)8 in particular historical social practices, and so the “clearing” is productive, it produces reality through the oppositional interaction of specific groups and individuals. It is possible then that “in the Caribbean” describes a particular set of historical practices that have philosophical significance. The gap9 demarcated by the difference between “Caribbean” and “Western” may provide an alternative basis on which human beings already understand one another. To use a spatial image, different entry points into the “clearing” govern what people consider to have significance in any experience and consequently shape the interpretation of any and every encounter with others.

into the other, not least because the wage slave is implicated in the enslavement of the other. 7 See Rex Nettleford’s work on creolisation, for example “The Melody of Europe, the Rhythm of Africa” in Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (William Collins and Sangsters [Jamaica] Ltd, 1972) or “Cultural Pluralism and National Identity” in Caribbean Cultural Identity (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Afro-American Studies 1978) see also Wilson Harris “Creoleness: the crossroads of civilisation.” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999). 8 “Beyond what is, not away from it but before it, there is still something else that happens. In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, a lighting .… This open centre is not surrounded by what is; rather, the lighting centre itself encircles all that is .... Only this clearing grants and guarantees to human beings the passage to those entities that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are” taken from “The Origin of Art” in Poetry, Language and Truth by Martin Heidegger (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) 53 translated by Albert Hofstadter from the Martin Heidegger Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann) vol. 5 39-40. 9 Derrida speaks of “blanks”, “voids”, “margins”. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1982. Rudi Visker suggests that Derrida’s point is influenced by Heidegger’s notorious remarks about the “nihilation of nothing” in his 1929 inaugural Freiberg Lecture “What is Metaphysics”. Heidegger’s idea that the nothing has a verbal character (das Nichts nichtet) implies that one should not understand it as privative absence of something present. It is, to the contrary, what allows for appearance and it thus points to ontological difference (Being/beings), “Philosophy and Pluralism,” Philosophy Today (2004): 125, fn. 10.

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The later Heidegger’s analysis of technology perhaps provides a clue as to the specificity of “in the Caribbean”. Heidegger’s “discovery” that it is technology, and not people, that exercises exploitation and control, is the departure point for a post-modern odyssey in which people no longer represent being to themselves. Rather, Heidegger argues, it is technology’s goal of ever increasing flexibility and efficiency simply for its own sake that forms/informs our current understanding of Being. Heidegger reaches this conclusion based on the discovery that information is endlessly transformable. Where once creation displaced Being and saw order brought out of the primal chaos by the creator, and subsequently modernity saw “man” usurp the creator, now there is ordering but no orderer. The suggestion is that everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing. Heidegger calls it standing in reserve (Bestand, i.e. resources). Technology, therefore, reveals itself as tending towards total ordering. Heidegger calls it “total mobilization,” a disposition that seeks progressively to embrace all aspects of life and in doing so eliminate those practices which might form the basis for the disclosure of new worlds. In their absence we are condemned to “more of the same” and as Heidegger says “the waste land” grows. This growth is unchecked because the essential action of human beings, that is to be disclosers of a series of total worlds, in and through their encounter in the “clearing”, becomes defunct. The Caribbean has been peripheral10 to this exercise of technological force. Whilst the centripetal force of technology has been felt, it has not been able to exert an all-pervasive influence in the Caribbean. Arguably the full force of technology’s normalising power has not been brought to bear. Consequently, there may be evidence of what the later Heidegger described as the gathering of local practices, which, at least temporarily, act as self-enclosed local worlds that are resistant to the technological understanding of Being with its emphasis on flexible and efficient ordering. As such, these local practices continue to allow for the essential task of disclosing new worlds, thereby potentially undermining the totalising and dispersing effects of technology.11 10

See Enrique Dussel on the relationship of centre and periphery, The Underside of Modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty and Taylor and the Philosophy of Liberation, trans. Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Humanity Books, 1999). 11 Hubert L. Dreyfuss and Charles Spinosa “Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on how to affirm technology” Man and World 30 (1997): 159-177.

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If there is evidence of the existence/persistence of such local practices in the Caribbean they would afford the possibility of reconfiguring the practices that have closed the “clearing” to us. The effect of bringing marginal practices to the centre is that the apparently central practices are marginalized—once displaced from its central position the central practice can be seen for what it is, merely one interpretation amongst others and bereft of any semblance of the inevitable logical necessity that led to its occupying the centre in the first place.

Harris and the Cross-cultural Imagination Wilson Harris poses difficult questions for those seeking to do philosophy in the Caribbean. He cautions that great care needs to be taken if we are to avoid categories that act as repetitive vestiges of an old, and by definition non-Caribbean, order; or worse to allow these categories to function as oppositions that wear the mask of the revolutionary but are in fact impotent because they are ill equipped to address the ontological crisis at hand. Harris sees these barren categories as “limiting”, “atrophying”, “a tautology of models”. These death-dealing modes of thought—not only do not carry life within them, but inhibit, or prevent, ways of thinking that could be fruitful.12 We do not need to fully accept Harris’ diagnosis; a partial acceptance will permit us to recognise the legitimacy of his concerns. In fact, as we shall see later, the partiality of any position is something that Harris puts a good deal of store by. Harris’ juxtaposition of intellectualism (which he disparages) with imagination; with its attendant critique of any understanding of rationality which privileges the “reasonable” over the “intuitive” raise important questions for how philosophy can be done in the Caribbean. Speaking in 1970 Harris expresses the concern that “no philosophy of history exists in regard to the Third World.”13

12 Harris’s views may be contentious but they are far from unique. For example, Sylvia Wynter writes of the bankruptcy of the various “historical projects” pursued in the Caribbean, which inevitably fail because they don’t incorporate a new model of what it is to be human. See for example “1492: a new world” in Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), and “The Ceremony Must Be Found,” Boundary 2 12 (Spring 1984): 26-37. 13 Wilson Harris “Continuity and Discontinuity” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999).

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Am I “in the Caribbean” and (Philosophically) Does it Matter Anyway!? In a society which has been shot through by diverse inter-racial features and inter-continental thresholds, we need a philosophy of history which is original to us and yet capable of universal application.14

Harris was not bemoaning the lack of any discourse in the area of third world (sic) philosophy of history. It was the nature of that discourse that concerned him. One has the sense that a plea is mounted on behalf of the black man and the deprivation that he has suffered. A plea which invests in deterministic horizons with the past, present and future. Once, again, therefore, it seems to me the native consciousness is being overlooked within deterministic projections, and criteria are invalidated which might probe into unpredictable perspectives, latent spaces we need to unravel in our age.15

The deterministic horizons that prevent native consciousness articulating itself ultimately serve those vested interests that seek to embalm the “fact” of exploitation as somehow natural. The dilemma, therefore, is that unless it can sufficiently distance itself from the “old heritage” the structure of intellectual moral protest16 will continue to adopt embalmed postures. It seems that if philosophy in the Caribbean does not find ways of attending to this “native consciousness” it risks remaining ensnared in a dialectic of protest unable to free itself to take on the responsibility of making a civilization. In Harris’ opinion nothing short of “immense new disciplines (a new anthropology …)” will suffice to effect the disentanglement from the “old heritage” and enable the dismantling of the “adamant and inflexible psychological fortress”.17 The pursuit of philosophy in the Caribbean, therefore, must contribute, in some way, to the sculpting of just such a new anthropology. In contrast to, and possibly as an antidote for, the “dialectic of protest”, Harris seeks to engage the “cross-cultural imagination” that is first and foremost a process of intuition rather than of reason. Intuition is privileged because of the immense difficulty unaided rationality has in detecting the vestiges of the “old heritage”. The philosopher in the Caribbean, it seems, must operate a very precise “hermeneutics of suspicion”. Where others are suspicious of the 14

Op. cit., 180. Op. cit., 180-181. 16 This thrust was spearheaded by Elsa Goveia and C. L. R. James amongst others. 17 “Continuity and Discontinuity” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999) 180-181. 15

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origins/genealogy of a “line” of thought, the work of the creative imagination is suspicious of too easily separating “our” experience from “theirs”.18 Harris resists the resistance to “outside” influences, repeatedly asserting that, properly understood, the particular history and hybrid nature of Caribbean culture and society, characterized as it is by multiple external influences, is better equipped than most national or regional actors, perhaps uniquely so, to enable an “art of creative co-existence [that] is of the utmost importance.”19 Its importance lies in the ability to move beyond the “umbrella tolerance” of multi-culturalism to the profound dialogue of the cross-cultural imagination: an incandescent imagination that may so balance shadow and light, age and youth, strength and weakness, poverty and wealth, that it throws a ceaseless bridge across the chasm of worlds.20

Suspicion is cast, therefore, on any and every worldview that fails to see, or hides, the profound mutuality between and in-between cultures. This openness to other cultures, however, is not expressed by a simplistic absorption of ideas that “seem to fit”; much less in privileging certain (i.e. American) modes of thought because they are “more advanced”. Rather, it is articulated in the hard work of “the mining of the chasm”, the inbetween-ness, that allows for the kind of interstitial analysis, an inhabiting of the gaps, that is of the utmost importance to Harris. The failure to adopt this hermeneutic stance risks a premature foreclosing of thought, which throws a veil over the mystery of one’s peculiar dialogue with the past and [how] it proves or validates what C. G. Jung calls the ‘collective unconscious’ and its

18

Asking “This Homi Bhabba is black man?” does not reflect the dispositions that allow for the profound dialogue that Harris invites us to enter into. Cf. Mark McWatt’s description of the kind of unhelpful attitudes he encountered amongst students who were resistant to any “outside” influence, demanding that theories or critical methodologies be concocted that are indigenous to the Caribbean, “World Texts and Contexts in Wilson Harris’s Critical Writings” in The Theatre of the Arts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002) 126. 19 Wilson Harris, “History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and the Guiannas” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999) 158. 20 Wilson Harris, “Creoleness, The Crossroads of a Civilisation?” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999) 247.

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Am I “in the Caribbean” and (Philosophically) Does it Matter Anyway!? eruptions within processes of hard work, concentration and creativity, into the subconscious and conscious.21

Harris’ critical analysis of works such as Intruder in the Dark and phenomena such as the limbo dance22 illustrate how the gaps between cultures may disclose hidden truths within a culture. The limbo dance is understood as a gateway, a limbo state, between old and new world. Far from everything that follows the survival of the Middle Passage being a footnote to an imperial narrative—the limbo gateway leads to a re-birth, producing a resonance with some Christian traditions, which invoke a stage of pain and suffering between heaven and hell. Harris deploys a spatial metaphor of the missing limb to suggest that “the re-assembly of dismembered man or god—possess[ing] archetypal resonances that embrace Egyptian Osiris, the resurrected Christ, and the many-armed deity of India.”23 Harris argues that Limbo, therefore, simultaneously commemorates the fracturing and dismembering of African tribes whilst seeking through music and exuberant dance to recapture the dancing limb of joy that has been amputated by slavery. If we consider the phenomenon of the all-inclusive Caribbean holiday, one of the perennial sites for limbo today, it is salutary to reflect on whether the dancers or the tourists can access any of these “limbo meanings” and thereby enter through its gateway. Harris would insist that if dancer and tourist could inhabit the chasm new commonalities would be disclosed. The tourists might discover that their “escape” holiday package is premised on the notion that only the dancers are free to go where they wish? The dancers’ “envy” of the tourists’ situation, (possibly) institutionalised in the tradition of emigration, would need to accommodate the apparent un-freedom of the tourists they encounter. To address such questions involves, according to Harris, entering the chasm, forcing self to be open to the profound commonality of the other; equally we must ask what must be forcibly maintained/denied “in the Caribbean” if the chasm is to remain tightly closed, if the current self-perception of tourist and dancer is to remain intact?

21 Wilson Harris, “Profiles of Myth and the New World” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999) 201. 22 Wilson Harris, “History, Myth and Fable in the Caribbean and the Guianas” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (London: Routledge, 1999) 157-158. 23 Ibid., 158.

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Bernstein and Two Fertile Metaphors Richard Bernstein24 identifies two metaphors that he has found useful in reflecting upon the current “modern/postmodern situation or predicament”. “Constellation”25 is defined as a “juxtaposed rather than integrated cluster of changing elements that resist reduction to a common denominator, essential core, or generative first principle.”26 Bernstein finds this metaphor attractive because he wishes to argue that the “modern/postmodern” situation both defies and resists any attempts of reduction to “a common denominator, essential core, or generative first principle.”27 It is no longer tenable to hold that ultimately all positions can be reconciled, as in the Hegelian master metaphor of Aufhebung, but Bernstein insists that it is still legitimate to pursue whatever degree of reconciliation remains possible. This is the promise of rationality. However, we undertake this endeavour fully aware that there will always be “unexpected contingent ruptures that dis-rupt the project of reconciliation”28 because the awareness of this “new” constellation makes clear the depth of radical instabilities. Doing philosophy in this context is to learn to “think and act in the ‘in-between’ interstices of forced reconciliation and radical dispersion”.29 We saw earlier that thinking “in the Caribbean” opens up gaps, reveals the fissures, where interstitial thinking can occur. This might suggest that doing philosophy “in the Caribbean” may involve embracing the role of being an “unexpected contingent rupture”. When a thinker “in the Caribbean” finds that specific philosophical modes of expression seem insufficient, inadequate or do violence to the Caribbean reality then there is the possibility of a rupture, the recognition of a genuine irreconcilable difference. The assertion of difference where its recognition is resisted reveals the sort of instability within the philosophical universe that this metaphor helps to disclose.30 24

Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992). 25 Bernstein indicates that the notion originates in the writings of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. 26 Martin Jay, Adorno (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984) 14-15. 27 Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992) 8. 28 Ibid., 8. 29 Ibid., 9. 30 So for example, the issue of gender definition (female and male) has largely been pursued separately in the West, and has tended to be understood initially as two distinct identities, one (the male) re-aligning itself with the development of the

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The second metaphor helps to clarify further the status of “in the Caribbean”. This metaphor, that of force-field (Kraftfeld), is central to Adorno’s thought and is used to depict a “relational interplay of attractions and aversions that constitute the dynamic transmutational structure of a complex phenomenon.”31 Bernstein suggests that the task of comprehension today demands doing justice to the fragile and unstable balance of such “attractions and aversions”. So, for example, Paget Henry’s Caliban’s Reason seems to suggest that the two main strands in Caribbean philosophy, historicist and poeticist, simultaneously complement and compete with each other. What must be the focus of philosophy “in the Caribbean” if we are to properly realize the dis-ruptive element of our work. Here again Bernstein is helpful. He draws our attention to the fact that increasingly ethicalpolitical questions have been brought into the foreground of our modern/postmodern horizons.32 Whereas the earlier works of Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault and Rorty seem to ignore such questions—increasingly they come to the fore in their later works. Bernstein suggests that this is not a coincidence; rather it reflects a gravitational pull, a dialectical consequence of the questions they have been pursuing. Similarly, there are ethical-political questions that force themselves upon philosophy “in the Caribbean”, questions that are not easily compartmentalized under political philosophy or applied ethics. If “in the Caribbean” reflects a globalized modern/postmodern consciousness then the Socratic question “how are we to live together?” will not be easily answered. However, this cannot justify not asking the question. Whilst at this juncture it may only be possible to give partial expression to concerns that arise “in the Caribbean” this does not invalidate or disqualify these concerns. In fact the lack of resources to fully articulate these concerns may be a constitutive element of “in the Caribbean”. Bernard Williams’s reflection on critique seems apposite: other (the female). Patricia Mohammed suggests that because of the specific struggles both genders have had to undergo there is much more reciprocity and mutuality in the definition and re-definition of gender within the Caribbean. This raises the question with respect to gender definition and re-definition. Are there two distinct processes, one Western and fundamentally antagonistic, the other Caribbean and rooted in negotiation. Or is it possible that adopting the antagonistic paradigm is a mistake? Could it be that the Caribbean experience points to a (historical) misunderstanding of how processes of gender definition take place and that the process is better understood as a process of negotiation? 31 Martin Jay, Adorno (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984) 14-15. 32 See Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

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there are many styles of critique, and the most potent of them rely, as they always have, not so much on philosophical arguments as on showing up those attitudes as resting on myths, falsehoods about what people are like.33

When a voice “in the Caribbean” says haltingly “No, we are not like that!” a philosophical process is instigated that demands that attention is paid to uncovering the false assumptions that generate and perpetuate the “falsehoods about what people are like”.

A Conclusion? We have seen that for different reasons philosophers have argued that the notion of in-between-ness is important. Whether it be the language of “gap and border”, or “chasm” or “constellation and forcefield” the need to identify and inhabit the spaces between particular outlooks recurs. The precise delineation of each gap will remain illusive, however the awareness of the existence of a gap can disappear altogether where a particular territory remains unremarked, a form of colonisation, such that no self-understanding is possible; the only understanding accessible to me is that of another. Consequently, the need to theorize and thematize the nature of “in the Caribbean” becomes crucial. Perhaps an aspect of the situation “in the Caribbean” that highlights the existence of and power of the “unthought thought” is the suggestion that “epistemic sovereignty”34 is not as yet fully enjoyed in the Caribbean. If I understand the tradition correctly the lack of epistemic sovereignty was/is seen as a negative thing to be overcome. I am suggesting it may also be seen in another, critically more incisive light; where the binary “we enjoy epistemic sovereignty”, “we do not enjoy epistemic sovereignty” gives rise to a re-reading which unveils the emptiness of the notion of “epistemic sovereignty”, thereby challenging one of the central premises of the western philosophical tradition.

33

Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985) 71, cited in Richard J Bernstein, op. cit., 318. 34 As far as I know, this notion of “the lack of epistemic sovereignty” was first explored amongst the members of the New World Group; it was a recurring theme in the journalistic writings of Lloyd Best, one of the early members of that group, until he died in 2006.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN PHILOSOPHY, CULTURES AND ERRORS OF ONTOGENESIS–CHALLENGES AND DANGERS JOHN AYOTUNDE BEWAJI

It is argued here that Caribbean philosophy exists, and that this philosophy is strong, influential, variegated and rigorous by the highest standard that anyone may require. In order to do this, we go over beaten grounds again, as it is only by examining the claims that underwrite the ways in which Africana philosophies have been derogated that we are able to see the futility of exhuming a dead debate regarding the philosophical creativity of non-Western societies.

Philosophy and Cultures There is a tendency to make everything controversial in “philosophy”. This is even celebrated as an indication of the special nature and virtue of the discipline, what can be called the philosophical soul itself, and the character of philosophical reflection generally. Philosophers are given to celebrating what divides them more than they are inclined to mention what unites them, but at the end of the day, some of the so-called controversies generated by philosophers regarding the nature of philosophy could be seen as superficial, as the central reflective core of humanity grappling with existential issues, leads to philosophical textures and implicit dicta, brought out in intellectual reflections and explorations of meta-reflective natures post eventu. Most philosophers will disagree about even the definition of philosophy itself, which does not easily allow for a single definition. The discipline is instead generally identified with a variety of traditions and associated vocabularies. Invariably, each tradition aims to prove its primordial “truthfulness”, while dismissive or wary of other positions. It is because of this context of the current practice of philosophy

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that one can ask such well-worn meta-philosophical questions as: What is philosophy? What is philosophical? In what ways are philosophical issues and ideas generated and/or codified? Must philosophy become a professional discipline and must philosophers become professionals in a narrow sense? Must all humans see and engage philosophy in the same way? Or, are there geo-culturally determinable ways of understanding and engaging in philosophy? To what extent would such relativities of perspective be necessary for the richness of the tapestry of philosophical discourse that we would wish to have within the universal philosophical realm? Why are some geo-political centres of knowledge able to engage in philosophy with no care as to the immediate relevance of their disquisitions, interests or meaning, while others are, indeed must be, preoccupied with the relevance of what they do, why they do it, and what results can be garnered from their efforts? Is this a curse or a blessing? Who determines whether this is a blessing or curse? I do not raise these questions in ignorance of the fact that many others before me have raised these questions and answered them probably more competently than I. Instead, they are raised again in the hope that the discussion may help in the process of reshaping the tenor and direction of human relations to each other in fairer, equitable, just and responsible ways in the future. I suggest that these questions should be discussed in light of the recognition of what may be regarded as the peculiarities of philosophy and philosophising in various cultures. I do this against the background of what has constituted philosophy in the Western, AngloAmerican philosophical tradition and the attempt by some to make this tradition the tradition for determining the validity, excellence, and robustness of scholarship and discourse in philosophy, by contrast with what is regarded as the practice and praxis in Eastern European, Asian and Pacific, African, Afro-Caribbean and Latin-American philosophical traditions. It would be useful to begin by discussing how cultural and anthropological considerations may help to explain this phenomenon.

Cultures and intellectual ontogenesis Clashes of cultures, civilizations, ideas and systems are not intrinsically good or bad (Sen 2006). Such clashes may be morally neutral in ways that may defy a classical Christo-centric understanding of morality in bi-polar terms of good and evil. This does not mean that they do not carry with them loaded moral, social, psychological, and other feelings related to and implicating ethical or unethical beliefs, actions, behaviour and judgments. In themselves, these cultural, ideological and civilizational

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clashes are the harbingers of the transcendence of old frontiers and the discovery of new vistas in human possibilities and existence. They are necessary consequences of the interactions of humans from different parts of the same planet. But increasingly over the last many centuries, the desire and the efforts of one group to foist its ideas, cultures, beliefs, systems of existence and civilization on others have often been cloaked in pretentious, deceptive, highfalutin, impressively resonant and patently altruistic diction; without the honesty to own up to these motives. Human forms of interaction beyond mere exploratory exchanges about what the other has that will be beneficial to one generally involve efforts at understanding the other, especially where there is parity of power and influence. Where there is a perception of inequality of power and influence, various intellectual and practical devices are brought into play to gain the confidence of the other who is in the superior situation, or to take advantage of the other when that other is in a defenceless inferior situation. These forces have been at play in human interactions from time immemorial. Through various theoretical and applied intellectual disciplines, the interaction of humans have been dotted with theories, hypotheses and ideologies that ingrain in the consciousness and subconsciousness of humanity, various ideas invented accidentally or deliberately to order, maintain and perpetuate inequalities of access and success. Where this is most remarkable is when others have had the privilege of telling the stories of others for them, without the possibility of the other, whose story is being told, agreeing or disagreeing with the veracity of the story so told. Numerous ways have been found to sanctify the stories that are told about others, most important of which is invoking the name of “the” (that is, some) almighty to justify various actions to the other. One can identify a number of consequences of this activity (a) the capacity of humans to delimit the temporal historicity of intellectual and critical thinking in societies they are not familiar with, (b) the determination of the kinds of thoughts that are possible in such societies by the teller of the story, regardless of patent contradictions these stories portray with regard to what is known of human intellectual efforts universally, (c) the use of the resources at the disposal of one’s society, culture and politics to make the story stick as the truth, (d) the teaching of this version of truth to all and sundry as the only truth, especially to the converts to the educational systems of the story-telling people, and (e) the self-perpetuating form, shape and reality this version of theory takes even among the persons about whom the story was originally told, though it

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was a falsehood that should have been so obvious to the subjects (objects) of such theory. When the intellectual agents of the various interfacing societies and groups try to understand the new peoples they have to interact with, theories have to be developed. The efforts of the various “scholars” who followed the explorers, colonizers, traders, missionaries, etc., to Africa and other places to understand and make understandable to their compatriots have been celebrated enough by scholars from a diversity of intellectual disciplines. What we are yet to fully understand is how far-reaching the theories these “scholars” have spawned have been, and how these theories still continue to determine what constitute knowledge and truth in the world today. It is even more relevant, in understanding why peoples outside the concentric rings of power and dominance are perpetually determined to be preoccupied with issues of cob-web clearing from their intellectual closets, to rid those closets of the negative dirt of intellectual squalor that they have been blessed with by the scholars of the metropoles. The problem however is that by becoming preoccupied with what seems to be an unending meta-task of “claiming” knowledge, truth and science for one’s kind, for many Africana (and other non-Euro-American) scholars, this project becomes a substitute for the real task of generating knowledge, truth, and science. As the Yoruba proverb says, bi ina o ba tan l’aso, eje ki i tan l’abe eekan; that is, “if lice still infest the cloth, blood must remain under the finger nails”; hence, when challenges to the humanity of oneself persist, efforts at self-affirmation become primary. Until the degradation of Africana peoples ceases to be the norm, the attention of Africana scholars must remain riveted to the defence and affirmation of the humanity and cultural advancement of Africana peoples writ large. While Anglophone Euro-American students of philosophy are able to devote themselves to abstractions like the meaning of “numbers”, theories of “types” and “descriptions”, the meaning of “implication” in the “biconditional” logical sign, or the over-ratedness of propositional knowledge (Friedell 2007), given the cultural denial and degradation of the Africana intellect, the Africana scholar and intellectual must be concerned about whether there is philosophy in her historical antecedents, whether Africans even developed intellectual ideas about the origins, ends, and ultimate reality of the universe. She must be reminded every day that to even be allowed to pretend to be doing philosophy is a huge step forward toward admission into the fold of humanity, from the proper place to which she should have been confined.

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Several historians are ahead of many philosophers when it comes to how the intellectual history of Africa is depicted. Through a combination of scientific evidence, garnered from archaeology, written and oral documents, they have been able to arrive at a meaningfully sustaining history of Africana civilizations from as far back as 10,000 years (Davidson 1995). If we compare then the notion of Africana intellectual and philosophical heritage embraced by Africana philosophers to those of historians, we see a remarkable diversity that cannot be explained. Historians, like Davidson, acknowledge that there can be no great civilization, such as were found in ancient Zimbabwe, West Africa, the Congo, etc., without serious intellectual capital to drive it. How could cities of over 1,000,000 people have flourished in Africa before Europe became civilized enough to travel on their “discovery voyages” unless there were intellectual, practical and scientific material and theoretical culture in these societies to sustain them? Yet some Africana philosophers maintain some archaic diffidence regarding the intellectual and philosophical heritage of their progeny (Henry 2000). Richard Bell says, There is not what could be called a ‘philosophical tradition’ that can be traced back very far historically in most of the continent. So the issues in ‘understanding’—cultures and philosophies—are complex (2002, ix).

What does he mean by this? How can this be the case, when traditions of great advancements in science, technology, medicine and social and political engineering indicate otherwise and historians acknowledge this much? Who is lacking in imagination here—the historian or the philosopher? Fasoro speaks of tracing “philosophy to its early years in Miletus” (in Bamikole 2002, 1). Having been subjected to so many years and generations of intellectual adulteration makes such a huge difference to how Africana peoples perceive themselves and their heritage. As Fanon suggested, clearly most of our intellectuals and leaders today would seem to need very serious intellectual psychiatric help, not of the kind that is available in orthodox medical venues to treat clinical depressions or mental malfeasance (as the problems that need attention are not the kinds that drive persons to become domiciled on the streets in the cities and towns and are popularly called madness), but one steeped in traditional African culture, to cure the mind of the double tragedy of human selfdeprecation that colonialism, slavery, dysfunctional Western (mis)education and racialist world religions have inflicted on the Africana psyche (Fanon 2001). This advice goes for many Africana thinkers like, Makinde, Fasoro and many others. Makinde, for example says,

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If a philosopher in one culture sets a higher standard of philosophizing than some others in other cultures, it is because one culture sets a higher standard of education, knowledge, moral and social values than some other culture, the practical ends of which would be the training of peoples to be good members of the society (1988, 15).

He would further think that African languages, science, philosophy and scholarship generally are late starters, and need time to develop to have any chance of competition with other intellectual disquisitions from other regions of the world. This is a remarkable evidence of the limitations imposed on the mind by Western education, which makes it difficult to ask important questions or to provide creative answers to the ones that are raised, to reflect any modicum of historicity and facticity.

Myth Making and Philosophy Human beings are wont to create myths. Where none exist, humans, searching for explanations which their current technologies and science cannot provide, will create myths to make up the tally of information and “evidence” needed to satisfy the questing mind. The issue of the existence of Caribbean philosophy is very akin to the vexed issue of whether Africans and its Diaspora peoples are given to reading. It is often suggested that what makes the difference between Africans and Americans or Europeans, when it comes to information use and management, is the interest in reading of the Europeans and Americans, while their African and Diaspora counterparts are more interested in visual images. As an example, there is the myth of the disposition of Africans to athletic and physical matters, following on the heels of the Senghorian idea that logic, reason and science are Hellenic, while emotion, dance and passion are African of Negritude infamy, so too African children are channelled toward sports, rap, hip-hop, gun culture and degradation of femininity in English and American educational systems (Senghor 1964). The bottom line is simply to question the capacity of Africans and peoples of African descent to handle intellectually complex, abstract and abstruse matters. All these are no more than the need to show that there is a genetic, not merely phenotypical, difference between Caucasoids and Negroids. Creating another myth, we are warned that if you want to mystify matters for the typical black person, put it in black and white. Clearly, he/she would only take a cursory glance, lose interest and agree to whatever is requested, without further investigation. This is not strange, the protagonists of this myth would suggest, as it all comes from the innate

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weakness of the Negro mind to handle complex, attention wasting, and time consuming abstract matters. These myths try to identify some ossified racial features of human beings and unfortunately too many people have become victims of such myths. Caribbean and other non-Euro-American geo-philosophies have also been the victims of myth making, motivated in many respects by a set of biases and worldviews that helped to create the previously mentioned myths. But the myths related to these non-Euro-American philosophies are outgrowths of a larger set of myths about the nature of philosophy more generally. By exploring and hopefully highlighting the problems with these myths, it can be made clear why questions of the existence of Caribbean philosophy should not be seen as reasonable. Traditionally, philosophy has been demarcated into four major headings—metaphysics or ontology (from which this essay takes its title), epistemology, logic and axiology. These are identified as the general headings under which humans have reflected on the conditions of their existence, relations with each other and with the world, understood realities and non-realities, made sense of before life, life and death and after life, examined the best ways of reasoning and justifying claims and speculated about what constitute philosophy and what not, who were philosophers in history and who are not. This is not to mention the crossdisciplinary reflections of ideas and epistemes from these many philosophical sub-disciplines. Consequently, the nature of philosophy is glaringly different from the nature of most other disciplines, as it constitutes the hallmark of reflection. But the basic methods of philosophical reflection remain the human ability to ask questions, peruse issues and propound theories based on the human capacity to reason. Even these methods however embrace certain myths, as discussed below.

(i)

Philosophy is critical, analytic, discursive and argumentative.

We challenge the myth that philosophy is only a critical, analytic, reflective and discursive activity in which most, if not all, humans engage. We would add that philosophy is also a speculative, intuitive and reflexive activity that humans undertake consciously and otherwise. The reason for this is that allowing a partial truth to sum up the whole truth is a disservice to human intellectual heritage, thereby allowing the friends of Descartes and the advocates of Negritude to enjoy a free ride to self-deceiving victory. Not all humans can be self-consciously engaged in philosophy as it is practised in Western academic circles, insulated from the realities of

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life. But all humans go through life, confronted by all kinds of issues, and they are pressed to reflect on these matters whether they like it or not, and whether they are able to provide satisfactory solutions or not to the problems that they generate in their minds and in their discussions with others. This narrow academic understanding of philosophy has, by extension, had the effect of making philosophical problems perennial, insoluble and at times frustrating, which led the group of scientists and mathematicians of the Vienna Circle to issue a condemnation of traditional philosophy as it was practised by thinkers up to their time in European history. They claimed that philosophical problems have been insoluble because philosophers have been asking pseudo-questions, being inattentive to the language and meanings of the words that they employ in their discourses, and ignoring the principles of verification that would give meaning and content to their theories. It is probably desirable that philosophers, working within that tradition and for the often insular audience in Western academia, meet the impractical requirement of scientism and the verificationism that it generated. It could be, and often has been, a shackle to the understanding of the multiplicity of the fundamental problems of humanity, reducing philosophy in the West, that is, that one narrow tradition of it, to no more than pedantic logic chopping, concerned with irritating hair-splitting and luxuriating in distractive and pointless abstractions. Clearly reflective thinking does not start at the level of formal logic—whether Aristotelian, Boolean or Hegelian—in order to be incisive, rigorous and useful for the understanding of reality and experience. Philosophical thought in early human history would have been clearly reflective, and reflected the nature of the concerns of humans in these epochs. And Greek philosophy, when it finally started, late in human history, did not start with logic. It was after almost half a millennium that attention was directed by Aristotle at the formal act of argument representation. This speaks volumes to the nature of philosophy and the position of logic in philosophy. In this regards, the existence of other philosophical traditions in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Oceania and even in Europe (East, Central and West), on the one hand, has served to put to rest the negative attitude of these positivist and neo-positivist critiques of philosophy and, especially of African philosophy (and now of African Diaspora or Caribbean philosophy). While on the other hand, the rediscovery of metaphysics, the transcendence of Newtonian-Cartesian mechanistic rationalism, through the relativity engendered by Einstein and the paradigm shift engaged by quantum physics and the holographic space, have all created even more

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radical circumspection among the creative and honest thinkers in the West, ushering in a new awareness of pluralism and a palpable need to be more tolerant of other and diverse means of attaining knowledge. Thus, when one hears such views as (a) Caribbean people are not disposed to abstract thinking or philosophical reflection, (b) Caribbean philosophy is a late comer, (c) Caribbean people have little room for philosophical reflection, or (d) Caribbean philosophy is yet to be created, one must be very careful that we do not get drawn into a diversionary, retrogressive and overly patronizing ontological debate about what genetically has been part of the very natural inclinations of humans everywhere, and indeed of African peoples of the Caribbean region right from the beginning (Henry 1997, 2000). It can be said that the positivists and neo-positivists in the West, and their surrogates in Africa and the Diaspora, have not totally abandoned their goal. The need to be very cautious in what claims we make with regard to regional philosophies is, therefore, very important. The various coping mechanisms, methodologies, activities and reflections of Africans in the Caribbean, whether through Kumina, Jonkanu, Pan Music, Voodoo, Carnival, Reggae, Dancehall, Jazz, or even the dominance of the West Indies in cricket for almost four decades in the latter part of the 20th century, is reflective of the reflective capacity and philosophical capability of Africans of the Caribbean region (James 2005). If we do not look at continental North America and suggest that America has no philosophy (a society that developed in no less cathartic a historical fashion than the Caribbean), why would we even bother to wonder whether the Caribbean people(s) have developed philosophical ideas? This would show that the thoughts of Caribbean peoples should be accorded the respect due to them, and that we need to understand the crucible from which they have emerged, engage their thoughts in ways that creatively provide insights into human existence, and assist the rest of humanity to learn from these philosophical and intellectual ideas for the upliftment of humanity in general (Bewaji 2003b, 2003c).

(ii)

Philosophy is an individualistic, written discipline.

If we take the contentious myth that philosophy is essentially an individualist, written (mis)(ad)venture, we may respond by simply saying that: (a) Writing is not essential to thinking. That is, philosophizing is reflective, speculative, intuitive, reflexive and critical thinking, while

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writing is only a medium for the expression of thoughts, ideas, ideals, beliefs, fears, hopes, etc., just as singing, speaking, painting, drumming, dancing, sculpture, etc. are other media. Thus, writing is a useful means of documenting philosophy, but not the only means. (b) The second response has been to show that some of the most respected thinkers in all classical and traditional societies, even in the West, have been people who did not write down their ideas. Socrates and Jesus are examples. But even if we put these aside, we find that there are works produced by peoples of the Caribbean that clearly pass muster as philosophical texts, which we may not be teaching, for no fault of the authors but our own, and which we need to be teaching, as they constitute Caribbean contributions to human efforts to understand reality and make sense of human existence. There is an even more important element of this discourse that we need to attend to. This relates to the individualistic nature of the critical reflection called philosophy. It is often assumed that philosophers create their ideas in a vacuum, out of earshot and eyesight of all other humans, and hence deserve credit for the genius they display when they come up with novel ideas. This is part of what fuels capitalistic individualism in the Euro-American tradition, and it is the harbinger of patent rights, copy rights and ownership property rights. Thus, the negation of, “I am because we are”, constitutes material for the denial of creativity to the people who refuse to allow individualism to lead to atomism, existential angst and nihilism for themselves.

(iii)

Philosophy as universal and not culture-dependent

Given the nature of philosophy as the love of wisdom and the process of asking questions to satisfy the inquisitive nature of humans, it is clear that we need to be responsible in our comments on the intellectual contributions of peoples whose languages, ways of life and cultures are different from our own, lest we reify our ignorance to the level of certainty. As human preoccupations differ from society to society and from epoch to epoch, it is clear that the philosophical ideas generated by thinkers in different societies will differ. As a consequence, we must not expect all thinkers to be existentialists across the world at one particular time, and phenomenologists at the next. If the concern of our great grandparents were with who made the world, ours could be what consequences would derive from genetic engineering for human nature as we know it if humans can be successfully cloned. We cannot, because

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some persons postulated some spirits as the source of their being, then condemn such people as barbaric for not thinking of DNA or protein.

Caribbean Philosophy and Caribbean Philosophers I am sure readers will be interested in how the questions: a) What is Caribbean philosophy? and, b) Who are Caribbean philosophers? are to be answered (Henry 2000, xi). But if I raise the analogous questions: “What is American, Western or European philosophy?” “Who are American, Western or European philosophers?” and “Whether all of American, Western or European philosophy was done or written by Americans, Westerners or Europeans?” “Is there American, Western or European logic?” they may feel that I have asked very awkward, irreverent and irrelevant questions. Perhaps this is part of the difficulty one faces on being asked these questions about Caribbean or African philosophy and philosophers, especially when we bear in mind that we seldom ask these ludicrous questions about other regional philosophies and philosophers. In most cases, when questions are asked about Western philosophy, it is supposed to mean “what is philosophy?” as if all philosophy is Western, or that all philosophers are Euro-American English speaking persons or, for that matter, as if all philosophers are Western Europeans and there is no philosophy outside of Western European philosophy and, to compound the confusion, as if all philosophical agenda have, historically, been Western and Euro-American. Along with this concealment of an ironical inquiry there is a sense of patronage, a condescension, which strangely evokes a cynical smile that invites the Africana thinker to join a meaningless, nonsensical, nonexistent debate made profound by some irony of historical perversion. In this sense, the thinker is given a withdrawn and negativized ground for discourse, where, if he/she becomes aggressive in projecting a humble submission that philosophical reflection is as natural to rational beings in search of meaning and understanding of self, the universe and beyond as eating or breathing, he/she is labelled a radical and asked to produce evidence that his/her progenitors were rational humans; and if he/she withdraws into logical reflection as to why Europeans only started reasoning at the middle century before the Common Era, there are blank stares from various directions. In my view, the task of Caribbean philosophers is the critical, speculative, analytical, reflective, introspective, retrospective, conscious and intuitive attempts to find solutions to profound life puzzles by persons

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of Caribbean and affiliated origins. Consequently, I name a few illustrious thinkers from the Caribbean whose thoughts are philosophical, regardless of whether we as academics have found space to teach their ideas in our philosophical curricular or not. These thinkers and world respected philosophers, not in any order of temporal presentation or importance, include but are not limited to the following: Marcus Garvey, Stuart Hall, Walter Rodney, Rex Nettleford, Kamau Brathwaite, Lewis Gordon, Ivan Van Sertima, Paget Henry, Rupert Lewis, Charles Mills, C. L. R. James, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Blyden and Orlando Patterson.

The Professionalization of Philosophy Beginning with the itinerant Sophists who went around exhorting payment from the highest bidder to teach rhetoric in the name of philosophy, making it possible to confuse smartness with wisdom, humanity has witnessed the appropriation of a noble human engagement away from the realm of its relevance. Thus, in the West, philosophy has become an activity of semi-sane, mainly male, leisure loving, provincial persons, who affect an air of erudition to cover their ignorance, irrelevance and eccentricity. When we look at the names listed in the last section, they were not concerned with abstract, irrelevant and irresponsible hairsplitting; because the matters confronting them were serious, they had to address these matters with equal seriousness, as the totality of existence of peoples of their kind were seriously affronted and needed the intellectual effort of these thinkers to assuage their suffering (literally). Consequently, the philosophy that such philosophers propound reflects, and is reflected in, the governance, the morality, the culture, the vocations, the ecology, the economic, the international and environmental relations of global existence, the religion, the music, the art, the songs, the plays, the recreation and leisure, the daily life of their people in the society and in world societies at large (Bewaji 2003a, 33). Like Western classroom formal (mis)education which only trains and produces a partial human being, able to read, write, speak in a tongue (attain some expertise, that is), Western philosophy has succeeded in alienating the populace, breeding all sorts of irrelevant theories which are mostly impractical, impracticable and often anti-social, hence having little impact on various aspects of life, leading to a situation that meaning has to be siphoned out of these aspects only after they have been created, as art critics and philosophers do, post eventu, after the real sages and artists have left the thinking and creative scene. Thus philosophy and, indeed,

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philosophy of art, has been regarded as a “second order” activity insulated from reality and self-insulating in return (Bewaji 2003a).

Concluding Remarks When Paget Henry (2000) indicated, in Caliban’s Reason, that Caribbean Philosophy is at best in its infancy, it is the same kind of intellectual disease that is spread by colonialism and slavery that afflict the appraisal of the intellectual traditions of the Caribbean by Henry. I have dared to take to task Henry (2000) and others who are of the view that Caribbean Philosophy is either non-existent or in its infancy. In the words of Serequeberhan (1991), we need to get beyond this myopia, stop celebratory adulation of oppression and put behind us the putative inability to repose confidence in our own heritage—inclusive of the good, the bad and the ugly, as all cultures, civilizations and ethnicities have a surfeit of them to learn from. While the attention of Serequeberhan was directed at African intellectuals and ruling elites, it is clear that his words are also fitting as a description of the attitude and actions of Africana intellectuals and leaders generally. He says, As Edward Said correctly points out, the result of colonialism in the colonized world was ‘a widely varied group of little Europes in Asia, Africa and the Americas’. The ‘little Europes’ constituted on the African continent required replication of European institutions and forms of life and the simultaneous depreciation and suppression—as barbaric, savage, nonhuman—of African institutions and culture. They also required the systematic inculturation of urbanized Africans, whose very formation as a section of the dominated society was predicated on the rupture of African historical existence in the face of European violence. Thus, the Europeanized sections of colonized Africa were physically and culturally disinherited. The non-Europeanized sections, on the other hand, were forced to submit to a petrification of their indigenous cultural and historical existence (1991, 8).

In my humble submission, based on my familiarity with the ideas and views of Africana thinkers, there is no way of absolving many Africana intellectuals of complicity in the parlous state of our societies; this category of people who owe an obligation to lead their peoples that we need to focus attention on, suggesting a serious re-education for them, so that they cease to see themselves as surrogates of their slave/colonial masters who pull the strings. It is however the hope of this writer that the time seems to be here now to understand the need for proper re-education and retooling of Africana intellectual capital to facilitate the transcendence

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of the narrow agendas that have been formulated for peoples of colour exogenously by those who would want the self-fulfilment of predictions of intrinsic intellectual incapacity of peoples of colour, abetted by mentally and intellectually enslaved Africana thinkers and leaders who fail to see that they are mere puppets in the schemes of things facilitating the continued domination and pauperization of their heritage by the forces of oppression from the West. It is bearing this in mind that I salute the efforts of those Caribbean thinkers who have refused to lie down and play dead in the face of all the adversities. These honourable persons mentioned above have over many years produced thoughts, ideas, concepts and philosophies that have been most liberating and creative, charting the course of life for the peoples of the world in similar circumstances, leading to the liberation of oppressed peoples in various parts of the world, and constituting examples of intellectual resistance to domination, oppression and genocide. It is in works like these that Caribbean Philosophy lives; in the Caribbean texts, ideas, discourses and theories embedded in the lives and material culture of the Caribbean people which are worthy of scholarly research.

References Bamikole, Lawrence O. 2002. Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Lagos, Nigeria: Majab Publishers. Bell, Richard. 2002. Understanding African Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Bewaji, J. A. I. 2003a. Beauty and Culture: Perspectives in Black Aesthetics. Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books Ltd. —. 2003b. If my people must go, they will have to find their way by themselves – Critical comments on Wim Van Binsbergen’s Ubuntu and the Globalisation of Southern African Thought and Society. South African Journal of Philosophy 22 (4): 378-287. —. 2003c. Beyond ethno-philosophical myopia: Critical comments on Mogobe B. Ramose’s African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. South African Journal of Philosophy 22 (4): 388-401. Davidson, Basil. 1995. Africa in History. New York: Touch Stone Books. Fanon, Frantz. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Penguin. Friedell, D. 2007. Propositional Knowledge is Overrated. MA Dissertation in Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. Henry, Paget. 1997. Rex Nettleford, African and Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. Caribbean Quarterly 43 (2). —. 2000. Caliban’s Reason. New York: Routledge.

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James, C. L. R. 2005. Beyond a boundary. Durham: Duke University Press. Makinde, Moses Akin. 1988 African Philosophy, Traditional Medicine and Witchcraft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sen, A. 2006. Identity and Violence. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Senghor, L.S. 1964. On African Socialism, trans. Mercer Cook. New York: Praeger. Serequerbehan, Tsenay. 1991. African Philosophy: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN CONCEPTUALIZING PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN PHILOSOPHY FOR A CARIBBEAN UNIVERSITY STEPHEN GEOFROY

Introduction Consider a university engaging in deliberations regarding the introduction or revision of a programme in a particular field of enquiry. This should ideally involve a process of curriculum development, “by which a professor or group of professors solve the complex problem of constructing a learning plan by making a series of decisions” (Stark and Lattuca 1997, 385). It would be reasonable to suppose that those in decision-making positions possess adequate knowledge of the discipline itself, including its aims and objectives. This prerequisite of rational planning would influence the processes (processes that can and do occur at various levels of decision-making) that would be set in train to determine the particular shape and emphases of the discipline. A part of this process would also be a consideration of its overall worth and whether the programme’s introduction would be worth the university’s effort. Whatever the outcome may be, it would be expected that this would be in keeping with the view and aims of that particular university. Settlement of such points would, among other factors pertaining to the elements of curriculum development, influence the designation of content of courses and also the eventual teaching arrangements. With respect to philosophy, its value would of course be related to the form that it takes. While not wishing to pre-empt the discussion about form, certain preliminary comments can be made at this point with respect to standards and justification. First, the philosophy that is being dealt with

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is understood as a form of critical enquiry, capable of fostering the level of intellectual rigour consistent with accepted university standards. Secondly, though the problems of conceptualisation and form are the concern of the paper as a whole, certain initial comments on the value of the discipline can already be made on the basis of prior knowledge and experience. In a post-colonial context, otherwise well-meaning authorities preoccupied with the need to further their country’s development may not see the importance of providing for the study of philosophy. Philosophy, even if already on the cards, may often not be considered as significant as other disciplines, especially in a context of scarce resources. One person with experience in this matter, having drawn up philosophy curricula in two universities in Nigeria, comments that For this reason many people regard a department of philosophy in a university as a luxury item which developing countries can ill afford….. The philosophy department, usually the latest arrival in the faculty, is the first to be scrapped in the face of any reduced subvention to the institution (Etuk 1987, 59).

Yet oddly enough the point is precisely to take issue with what is meant by development. This pertains to the role of philosophy as a critical exercise. The nature of human development, human ideals and concepts of human flourishing have traditionally been topics for philosophical attention from ancient times. Reflection on human development issues has also not been static but has gradually evolved (Ul Haq 1995, 23), and philosophical reflection continues to be valuable as an important tool in the process of development. Furthermore, in a post-modern context where contestation of values is commonplace, and where forms of bigotry, both religious and otherwise, rush in to fill a perceived value void, philosophy has a role in providing possibilities for reasoned discourse for the renewal of civil society. As an instrumental justification, philosophy can make its contribution, alongside other discourses, in serving to further the creation of just and fair relations for human life and society. This need is as real in the Caribbean as in any other region of the world. The words of Simon Critchley underscore the importance of philosophy done in context: this is what I want to offer as the promise of philosophy … that philosophy might form an essential part in the life of a culture, in how a culture converses with itself and with other cultures. Philosophy is that moment of critical reflection in a specific context, where human beings are invited to analyse the world in which they find themselves, and to question what passes for common sense in the particular society in which they live by

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raising questions of the most general form: What is justice? What is love? What is the meaning of life? Even more crudely stated, the hope is that the various considerations to which such questions give rise can, through enquiry and argumentation, have an educative, emancipatory effect (Critchley 2001, 127).

Given the value of philosophy generally, it is reasonable that the worth of having a philosophy programme is recognised and accepted. Where philosophy is to be implemented at a tertiary level institution in the English-speaking Caribbean, it can be argued that the peculiarities and challenges of “being” and “reflecting in” the Caribbean should affect to an appropriate degree the philosophising that is introduced in to this context. This would involve among other factors, a recognition of the multicultural and post-colonial character of most of the Anglophone territories.

Conceptions of Philosophy In many fields of enquiry, there is some difficulty in arriving at unambiguous definitions and thus clear boundaries, with this being especially evident in the social sciences and humanities. History, language, psychology, sociology and even the natural sciences all have some connections beyond. Philosophy is no exception and many themes discussed by philosophers are discussed by scholars in various disciplines: Consider for example the issues philosophers raise in their discussion of the theory of knowledge. Many of these are discussed by natural scientists and also by psychologists. Similarly with questions arising in ethical theory and in almost every other branch of philosophic discourse (Mandelbaum 1977, 563).

Due to problems in defining the boundaries of philosophy, the general guidelines pertaining to curriculum planning take at once a complicated turn. Lacey put it well when he remarked that “‘What is philosophy?’ is itself a philosophical question” (Lacey 1976, 159). Planners have to consider issues deriving from the contested nature of philosophy, issues which range from potential conflict over aims and objectives, to content, teaching strategy and all the other elements that contribute to a curriculum in the making (Stark and Latucca 1997, 16). This paper offers reflections on three approaches to conceptualising philosophy and their implications for curriculum development. It is not suggested that these provide an exhaustive account of attempts to define philosophy. However, reflections on each conception should give a good idea of some crucial practical

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problems and controversial elements involved in any process of formulating an academic plan for the teaching of Philosophy in a university in the contemporary English-speaking Caribbean.

1. Philosophy is what philosophers do: a multiple or single discipline, autonomous or submerged Some persons argue that it is only in the act of philosophising (what philosophers do) can a person learn what philosophy is. Lauer states it this way: “We cannot define what philosophy is before doing it; we can come to know what philosophy is only in doing it” (Lauer 1989, 16). In this view, philosophy is a “hands on” discipline. Knowledge of what philosophers said in the past and even a study of the evolution of ideas certainly belongs within but still does not exhaust its boundaries. One approach is to argue that “doing philosophy” is inextricably linked to a particular dispositional or attitudinal feature, and this is what gives philosophy its unique character. In the West, philosophy has its beginnings among the Pre-Socratics, with the arrival of a new rational attitude. In their attempt to come to terms with their reality they engaged in a certain type of thinking: philosophy began when human beings first sought to explain rationally what had previously been explained by an appeal to authority, to myth, to tradition, or simply to common opinion (Lauer 1989, 22).

This attitudinal stance is however generally dedicated to particular subject areas. So one could think about what philosophers do by examining what has engaged philosophers and continues to preoccupy them, and this could be seen as fitting into the standard division of philosophy: logic, epistemology, metaphysics and axiology. Observing what philosophers do could lead to a consideration of philosophy as a meta-subject. In this respect, philosophy attends to issues pertaining to other areas of enquiry producing a philosophy of: History, Language, Gender, Economics, Science, Mathematics, or Sport, among other possibilities. Stressing this “meta” approach has direct implications when considering the practicalities of arranging for the teaching of philosophy. The question that emerges for planners is whether to place philosophy as part of other disciplines rather than having an autonomy which would allow students to read for a major in the subject. One practical reason for encouraging this “meta” approach is that the vast majority of students choosing a course or courses in philosophy will not become professional philosophers. In view of this it can be argued that

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philosophy should interact and interface with concerns pertinent to other disciplines, since this is where people would be doing the philosophising that matters to them—in the midst of their respective disciplines. On the other hand, such a conception of philosophy as a service discipline and the consequent arrangement for teaching does pose potential dangers. There is first of all a concern relating to faculty competence. Experts in subject areas other than philosophy may not be competent enough in philosophy to be the agent of “philosophical servicing”. On the other hand, where an expert philosopher is called in to cover the philosophical section, he/she may not enjoy sufficient depth in the discipline or be up to date with new developments to adequately take issue with the problems that are raised. Another concern is that persons who conceive the discipline differently could charge that this approach allows philosophy to be too submerged in other subjects, thereby compromising large tracts of what was traditionally designated as the domain of philosophy proper. Philosophy teaching could become swallowed up by the particular concerns of different fields and a dispersed and amateur approach could come to stand for what it means to do philosophy. Apart from not attending to foundational or core issues of the discipline, what may also be compromised is a traditional view of philosophy as a worldview where opinion is not merely inspected and scrutinized but organized into a meaningful and coherent system providing a picture of the universe. An emphasis on philosophy as a service discipline may leave no place for comprehensive philosophical system-builders. Perhaps the solution lies in taking from both approaches. Having a department of philosophy, in the Humanities, with faculty dedicated to its traditional expression would make for attending to what is traditionally designated as core. The onus would lie on such faculty and those in other disciplines, to be in continuous dialogue for their mutual enrichment. Such meetings can perhaps be structured in the form of colloquia involving colleagues and also students from other departments and faculties in the university community. In addition, there can be provision made for continuous staff development and updating. These recommendations can help to address the problems raised above and could give new meaning to the qualification of “Ph.D.”, that has become the norm for university lecturers to possess. The title “Doctor of Philosophy” carries with it an expectation that its bearer has attained a distinguished standard of education in breadth and in depth and whose competency is the ability most of all to think and to be in on the cutting edge of developments in academic research.

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2. Philosophy as “intellectual history” Rorty’s exposition of methodological genres is relevant to any discussion of what philosophy is about and especially interesting in relation to the task of formulating curricular content and purpose. In the first place, Rorty criticizes a historical approach, “doxography”, that consists of a fixed set of authors and topics deemed worth exploring: A collection of what various figures traditionally called ‘philosophers’ had to say about themes traditionally deemed ‘philosophical’... a genre that inspires boredom and despair (Rorty 1998, 261).

He resists the notion that “philosophy” is the name of a natural kind: “the name of a discipline that, in all ages and places, has managed to dig down to the same deep, fundamental questions” (Rorty 1998, 262). A major problem with a historical doxography is that this it rigidly fixes the authors and topics worth exploring while the fundamental questions of philosophy can be thought of as the ones persons really ought to have asked and did not (Rorty 1998, 262). Rorty thus distinguishes four useful methodological genres: historical reconstruction, rational reconstruction, Geistesgeschichte and intellectual history. In the historical reconstruction genre, the thoughts of philosophers are recognized as historical and contextual products (Rorty 1998, 247-254, 267). An advantage of studying philosophy in this vein would entail a ready familiarity with past “greats” and the intellectual context of their time—a history of ideas approach. Rational reconstruction looks not merely at ideas in context but also asks the values of these ideas. It is an enquiry into the possible truth and significance of assertions arising from the text and from making conversational partners of the dead (Rorty 1998, 253-254). The Geistesgeschichte or canon formation approach, parasitic upon the two aforementioned genres, focuses on assessing which topics ought to have been at the forefront at any point in the history of philosophy. While the rational reconstruction approach would involve differences as to which solutions to problems may be the best, this genre questions which problems need discussion, which problems are the problems of philosophy and which thinkers should more appropriately grace a philosophical canon (Rorty 1998, 254-260). Intellectual history is the fourth genre identified by Rorty, which he says “consists of descriptions of what the intellectuals were up to at a given time and of their interaction with the rest of society” (Rorty 1998, 267). It involves reproducing what it was like to be an intellectual in a certain spatio-temporal region. This approach includes all influential

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people who would not normally get into a philosophical canon. It requires wide reading and greater breadth of intellectual openness that pays less attention to any taboos of venturing beyond boundaries between disciplines (Rorty 1998, 267-269). Rorty gives a new spin to the initial problems of boundaries: the distinctions between great and non-great dead philosophers, between clear and borderline cases of ‘philosophy’ and between philosophy, literature, politics, religion and social science are of less and less importance (Rorty 1998, 269).

What this means for the canon is constant revision to bring it in line with the present needs of high culture. The formation of a philosophical canon becomes possible when there is an attention to both contemporary needs and to the recent writings of revisionist intellectual historians. Intellectual history thus plays a role in the reformulation of philosophical and other canons (Rorty 1998, 267-273). In the light of Rorty’s distinctions and recommendations, it is useful to consider implications for curriculum planning in philosophy. Settling on an acceptable collection of which ideas or thinkers are to be included means, for the curriculum development team, an acquaintance with the first three methodological genres and an avoidance of the doxological trap. This would also entail employing the methodology of “intellectual history”, requiring a willingness to engage in wide reading beyond what is traditionally regarded as philosophical. For faculty this involves continued discussion and careful analysis as new insights arise. This idea resonates with that made previously where constant interaction is required among scholars in various fields. Such an exercise engaged in by faculty in various contexts (and according to the background of their training and their own thought-out positions) might well result in different accounts of what it means to be engaged responsibly in the philosophical exercise in the situation of university teaching, but this may well be the way to a more exciting approach. The fruit of Rorty’s critique is not easily captured but if a way could be found where constant curriculum development could be instituted and made workable, especially when considering that faculty often have a heavy workload, then this will augur well for the quality of philosophical reflection undertaken at the university. This once again raises the issue of quantity of staffing and of ongoing development of staff. Philosophy done in the Caribbean, as elsewhere, would benefit from an ongoing process of curriculum development to keep it on the cutting edge of critical thought. In the spirit of openness that this requires, certain

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Caribbean thinkers (and others around the globe) could be singled out for their philosophical contributions as trail-blazers and generators of insight. Philosophy done in this mode would be forever on the look-out for scholars from every field who could be profitably engaged with, in respect to their usefulness for philosophical discourse.

3. Philosophy in the Caribbean: Multiple traditions Should philosophy be taken to be one discipline, or even to retain a substantial core while servicing other disciplines, there remains a related though further problem of designating its main expression, such as Western (Continental or Analytic), Indian, African, Caribbean, or whatever category may be deemed suitable as connecting with the realities of being in the contemporary Caribbean. To acknowledge its tremendous historical and global influence, Western Philosophy would be taught in a Caribbean university, both the Analytic and Continental approaches. In identifying and responding to “crisis” (Kearney 1994, 1), the latter tradition in particular would resonate easily with students’ life situation. Issues relating to women, oppression of minorities and violation of human rights require courageous critique and careful analysis in the Caribbean. In proposing a simple model for philosophy in the Continental tradition Critchley incorporates the notions of critique, praxis and emancipation: That is, critique is a critique of existing praxis because it is felt to be unjust, unfree, or whatever. Furthermore it is a critique that aims towards an emancipation from that unjust praxis towards another individual or collective praxis, a different way of conceiving of human life (2001, 74).

Provision should be made for sensitivity to the characteristics of Caribbean territories, such as their historical, geographic, socio/economic and cultural elements. An example of a concrete issue for curriculum planners would be the justification of the type of philosophy to be taught in the English-speaking Caribbean where the vast majority of the students are of African, mixed (mostly African/European) or Indian ethnic background. In turning to African philosophy for assistance in this quest, one can identify two camps of professional philosophers. One school of thought affirms that there is African philosophy and looks to explore myths and ethos, value systems, arts, religion and world views for its framework. The first view is in fact worth exploring and explicating as Africa forms a major part in the genesis of Caribbean peoples. In the region, African retentions and Afro-Caribbean innovations in thought and culture (e.g., syncretism in indigenous Caribbean religions) can be examined for their

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philosophical import and a framework developed along the lines of an ethnophilosophy conceived in this way. The opposing camp holds that there is nothing that can be traditionally termed “African philosophy”. One major African thinker, Kwasi Wiredu (1980), while belonging to this camp, holds that philosophy can have an African orientation when it manifests a sensitivity to what is specific to the African situation (Etuk 1987). Wiredu’s option, on the other hand, is valuable in recognizing that all have a part to play in contributing to and developing what could be seen as the common cultural heritage of humanity and to apply tools from this heritage, no matter their origin. It can be argued on his behalf that a standard view of what education is about in the contemporary world involves sharing in “the best that has been thought and done by human beings” (Winch and Gingell 2004, 20). In practical terms, a preference for Wiredu’s vision could result in a philosophy emerging from the Caribbean that, though inclusive of and sensitive to ethnic, cultural and other forms of particularity, would not be limited to this. One fruit of the above tension that arises in a study of African philosophy could therefore be both a commitment to explore uniqueness and foster openness to what is going on in the world. A curricular consequence could be the inclusion of courses on African philosophy, and philosophy of the African diaspora. We must add to this a recognition that a substantial proportion of Caribbean peoples is not of African ancestry. There are, for instance, large populations of Indo-Caribbean peoples. In this case consideration of Indian philosophy would also be relevant. Traditionally, nearly all philosophical activity in India was a matter of commentary: Nearly all philosophical contributions in India were made by people writing (or speaking) commentaries on already existing texts; to be a philosopher was to interpret a text and to be part of a more or less well defined textual tradition (Hayes 1998, 737).

According to Chattopadhyaya, the philosophical heritage of Asia was not developed in isolation but was affected by cultural migrations. This is true also in more recent times, where there were several movements in which Indian intellectuals struggled to reconcile and incorporate traditional Indian ways of thinking with European influences (Chattopadhyaya 1986). Caribbean philosophers may not have any ancient indigenous heritage of written philosophy to refer to in seeking to come to terms with their contemporary problems, but they can be aided by various conceptual tools that may be at their disposal, including that of Indian thought, culture and religion. In Caribbean theology, Sirju (1995) has contributed to the process

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of enculturation by comparing aspects of models traditionally associated with holiness (e.g. Mary, mother of Jesus) with that of icons of holiness in the Hindu tradition. Such activity is very fertile for the ongoing progress of creative philosophical thought aimed at a (re)-conceptualization of the Caribbean self. In this vein, students could explore themes such as the Advaitic conception of liberation and what this understanding of human freedom presents to the Caribbean self, as in Indich (1980), and Indian ideas on learning and knowledge, as in Krishnamurti (1994). As alluded to in the discussion of African and Indian philosophy, religious beliefs and practices will need to be given consideration. A teaching programme in philosophy should be sensitive to the philosophies of the various religions that form an important part of the Caribbean mosaic of belief and practice. While not attempting to venture into the realm of theology, some form of critical encounter with the myths and truth-claims of the various religions would be in order and would no doubt contribute to the building of a more intellectually healthy citizenry. Any attempt at a Caribbean formulation of a philosophy cannot preclude a familiarity with Caribbean literature or ignore the wider intellectual tradition. Authors like Wilson Harris, C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, Eric Williams, Silvia Wynter, George Lamming and other noted Caribbean thinkers would inform philosophy done in the Caribbean (Henry 2000). In keeping with Rorty’s point concerning the importance of the intellectual histories approach to philosophy discussed above, Caribbean philosophy should also be informed by noted thinkers of the Latin American region who share with the Caribbean basin a past history of Colonial exploitation. Themes of liberation would hold prominence here and in addition some exploration of modes of social consciousness. Here the oppressed as the presence of the “Other” urges a theory of liberation. Worth exploring also are the elaboration of new integrating categories with respect to “self-ness” and the redemption of the human person in society (Roig 1986). Also in keeping with the idea of an intellectual milieu, attention should also be given to intellectual movements in the Spanish, French and Dutch speaking territories. The point of these foregoing paragraphs is that in decisions to determine the shape of a programme for philosophy teaching, such elements would demand serious attention. While possibilities explored in this section are geared towards a consideration of Caribbean particularities, this does not thereby imply a tunnelling of vision. In keeping with what was said above, part of philosophical enquiry, as in any academic discipline, is an attitude and determination to articulate and

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understand as comprehensively as possible. The implications for curriculum content would thus be to include a wide array of course offerings that reflect the variety mentioned above.

Conclusion Whatever “philosophy” turns out to mean, as practised in the academic context it would necessarily be the result of debate, contestation and compromise. Points and clarifications raised above could serve as ingredients for considering its eventual shape and justification in a Caribbean university. One issue that recurs is the need for ongoing dialogue among scholars (faculty and students) on what is deemed philosophical in whichever discipline that it is to be found. Selecting goals, determining content, sequencing courses and course content, considering the characteristics of the learners involved, deciding on instructional approaches, attending to instructional resources, engaging in evaluation exercises, and adjusting course and programme, are tasks of curriculum planning and development (Stark and Lattuca 1997, 385-388). All these tasks are directly related to the outcome of decisions as to what shape philosophy would take at a particular campus. Decision-making takes place at different levels in the academic institution. A huge problem would arise where adequate consultation with the practitioners of the discipline who are aware of its peculiarities is not carried out as is needed. While the task of defining philosophy remains open, shifting boundaries and overlaps with other disciplines do not necessarily have to be seen in a negative light. All subjects, though valuable in their own way, would have some measure of overlap with philosophy. Curriculum planners thus need not be daunted by varied descriptions and shifting boundaries. In the final analysis clearly demarcated boundaries may be something of an outmoded preoccupation, a major aim of education being that at the end of the day students should learn how to think critically and creatively and to do that well.1

References Chattopadhyaya, D. 1986. Philosophy in Asia and the Pacific region: retrospective and prospect. In Teaching and Research in Philosophy: Asia and the Pacific,. 375-386. Paris: UNESCO.

1

Acknowledgement: Dr Brian Hurst for his inspiration.

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Critchley, Simon. 2001. Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Etuk, U. 1987. Philosophy in a Developing Country. Philosophy 62: 5966. Hayes, Richard. 1998. Indian & Tibetan Philosophy. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4, ed. Edward Craig, London: Routledge. Henry, Paget. 2000. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Indich, W. 1980. Consciousness in Advaita Vedanta. Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass Private Ltd. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1994. On Learning and Knowledge. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Kearney, Richard. 1994. Modern Movements in European Philosophy. 2nd edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lacey, A.R. 1976. A Dictionary of Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lauer, Quentin. 1989. The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Mandelbaum, Maurice. 1977. The History of Philosophy: Some Methodological Issues. Journal of Philosophy 74 (10): 561-572. Roig, Arturo. 1986. The actual function of philosophy in Latin America [A philosophy of liberation]. In Latin American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, 245-259. New York: Prometheus Books. Rorty, Richard. 1998. Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sirju, Martin. 1995. An attempt at Indo-inculturation. In Theology in the Caribbean Today: Perspectives, 75-81, ed. Patrick A.B. Anthony. St Lucia: Archdiocesan Pastoral Centre. Stark, J, and L. Lattuca. 1997. Shaping the College Curriculum: Academic Plans in Action. London: Allyn & Bacon. Ul Haq, M. 1995. Reflections of Human Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Winch, Christopher and John Gingell. 2004. Philosophy and Educational Policy: A Critical Introduction. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN TUKONTOLOGY: AN APPROACH FOR DESCRIBING EUROPEAN AND AFRICAN ORCHESTRATIONS OF REALITY IN THE CARIBBEAN DERYCK MURRAY

Introduction Any full investigation of Caribbean lifeways must be able to account for the creolising interactions of Amerindian, African, European and Indian ways of knowing and making in the region’s transcultural space.1 There are various creolisation models that seek to accomplish this task.2 Unfortunately, they all suffer from the self imposed limitation of focusing only on the cultural side of the modern nature/culture duality.3 They often 1

Sylvia Wynter argued that the Caribbean should be viewed as a “transcultural space” where old world African, European, Asian, and New World indigenous cultures encountered each other to produce hybrid cultures (Wynter 2002). 2 Kamau Brathwaite developed the theory of creolisation as a dynamic process that produces new cultural products as a result of the yoking of a dominated “capsule” (protective) African culture being yoked to a dominating European “missile” (seeking and destroying) culture (Brathwaite 1974; 1978). A rich discourse on creolisation as a model has developed in the Caribbean even if some scholars dispute its claims and its analytical usefulness. See for example the collection entitled Questioning Creole (Shepherd and Richards 2002). 3 To be modern, according to Bruno Latour, is to accept the “modern settlement” where nature “out there,” and mind “in there” are to be connected by epistemology; where collective minds, connected by psychology make society; where society is then connected to nature through ontology; where God is “up there” and connected to mind through theology and to society through politics and morality; and where epistemology, ontology, psychology, politics and theology are spoken of independently. Latour insists that this modern settlement is one that can be replaced

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describe in detail the plural cultural beliefs of the Caribbean. At the same time, however, they pay homage to western scientific “facts” about nature and routinely use them as an unproblematic resource to explain the “beliefs” of all others. In other words, they behave as though no one, other than Europeans, ever developed knowledge that is authorised to explain the one possible reality known as nature even though all peoples may have constructed many exciting, interesting and exotic cultural beliefs. This “great division,” recalling the human/animal divide, opposes Europeans who invented reason, science, and what it means to be a free to other societies who “let themselves be defined by tradition” and opinion (Stengers 2000, 62). This manner of reasoning is at the heart of western hegemony. Tukontology was developed to counter this western hegemony and to reform the creole models that accept the modern invention of plural cultures playing over a single nature. Informed by Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), it uses music as a heuristic that should give scholars who may not be familiar with the theoretical nuances of Science Studies the opportunity to internalise an approach that is easy to visualise and that can make a fundamental difference to how they describe the world. It also eschews the habit of viewing western science as the only authority that “knows” about a single nature and, because of this authority, is able to judge all other ways of knowing and making to be mere cultural “beliefs.” This new approach is proposed as a practical tool that will enable scholars to synchronically and diachronically describe the outcomes of colliding traditional lifeways and their derivative ontologies. Importantly, it neither starts with the modern assumption of a culture/nature duality nor does it use the hegemonic “laws” of western science as resources across all ways of knowing. This paper will briefly outline the basic tenets of ANT that are immediately relevant to tukontology. It will then fully discuss tukontology as a musical model while using references to African and European lifeways in the Caribbean.

Sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) versus ANT Western science claims to be able to uniquely access objective knowledge of ontological entities. It further asserts that the behaviour of these entities is governed by universal laws that have always existed. by many others and that it makes no sense in Science Studies to speak of epistemology, ontology, psychology, politics and theology as independent spheres (Latour 1999, 14).

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Western science is therefore normally understood to be both objective and universal. This unique access to universal reality gives western science its authority (Latour 2004, 32-41). Europe’s historically situated invention of nature as a separate domain from culture has led to western science also being understood as radically different from the old ways of knowing found in all traditional societies. According to western science, previous ways of knowing never developed any method of systematically knowing the real world (Stengers 2000, 21-35). Modern scholars who attempt to describe western science and other ways of knowing still labour under the Cartesian duality that insists on cultures being studied as so many variations on the interpretation of a single natural world. Consequently, western science is habitually used as a resource to reveal the many misunderstandings and diversions into irrationality by non-western traditional peoples whose sciences, often miscategorised as religions in the Caribbean, are then treated as purely symbolic at worse, or as sophisticated attempts at social control at best. Fortunately, this unlawful authority given to western science has been undermined irreparably by the symmetry postulate developed by David Bloor. Bloor argues that it is not consistent to attribute scientific truth to a rationality that systematically unveils the state of nature but attributes scientific error to lapses in rationality due to social and political influences (Bloor 1999, 84). This method of dealing with scientific truth and error asymmetrically is termed the “weak programme.” It is contrasted with the “strong programme” of the Edinburgh school’s Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK). The strong programme deployed the symmetry postulate which insists that analysts maintain a methodologically neutral stance toward all contending claims. As a method, it requires that any consistent account of science treat both truth and error symmetrically and sought to achieve this by proposing that scientific knowledge is socially constructed. Unfortunately, social constructivism attracted the critical and damaging fire of realists who categorised it as a species of philosophical relativism (Golinski 1998, 7-8). To defend against these attacks, the proponents of the strong programme denied that they were making any ontological claims but rather, that the symmetry postulate was merely a methodological caution (Golinski 1998, 8). Unfortunately, by insisting that it is simply a method for analysing competing scientific claims, this variety of social constructivism continues the modern of habit of denying non-western traditions a seat at the table where realities are negotiated and composed since the fundamental issue of who has access to reality has already been decided in the favour of the modern west. The strong programme is, as a

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result, still too weak for the purposes of scholars in places like the Caribbean. Bruno Latour, himself an early pioneer of the strong programme but refusing to sustain its original social constructivist approach, made another turn to the symmetry principle by arguing that knowledge is not only constructed by humans, but that nonhumans are just as actively involved in the process of construction. Not only should truth and error be treated symmetrically but humans and nonhumans should be so treated as well. Through ANT, Latour credited things with agency and, even against cries that he was reintroducing hylozoism, sought to anchor the idealist tendencies of the social constructivist approach in the solidity of a new materialism that involved more than mental constructs (Latour 1999a, 113129). He retained the term “social” only as long as it is accepted that societies are collectives populated by both humans and nonhumans, all of whom make a difference. ANT therefore assembles actors that include nonhuman things, facts, artefacts and forces along as well as humans into collectives that are then represented by spokespersons in such a way that the agency of nonhumans is not always easy to distinguish from that of humans. Once assembled, everything and everyone in the collective actively contributes to the performance of their assembly. From time to time a particular actor within a collective is selected, given a name, imagined as having an essence and finally ascribed all of the collective’s power.4 ANT makes stronger claims than SSK since it does not merely caution the analyst on methodology but undertake to trace the construction of reality. Western science is therefore understood as one possible way of composing reality and cannot properly be used to describe or explain other ways of knowing. It is neither objective nor does it have unique access to reality. In addition, ANT denies the existence of universal laws in agreement with Alfred North Whitehead who insists, “there are no natural laws, there are only temporary habits of nature” (Price 1954, 367). ANT avoids universal laws by shifting from a “reductionist” to an “irreductionist” philosophy. By denying any difference in kind between power/force and knowledge/reason, a difference thought by Latour to be the root assumption of all other theories of knowledge, ANT maintains an irreduced picture of science and society that refuses to reduce anything to

4

In the above respects, ANT has much in common with African notions of interrelatedness, reciprocity, spirit or agency, and force manifested as being (Richards 1981, 218-220).

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anything else and suspends our knowledge of what we call a force (Latour 1988, 153-157).5 In this philosophy, force and reason are of the same kind. There are two important ANT innovations that must be understood in order to make sense of the tukontological process. First, “The real is not one thing among others but rather gradients of resistance” (Latour 1988, 159). There is, therefore, a continuum from unreal to real or imagined to tangible. Reality grows from unreal actors that barely resist trials by other actors to those that are fully realised and strongly resist the trials of many other actors. Secondly, truth is not an absolute either/or state. Truth-value is related to the type and quality of articulation between actors of a collective. Truth-value circulates throughout these unbroken articulations (Latour 1999b, 24-79). While SSK still pays homage to western science, ANT opens up the possibility of valuing other ways of knowing as sciences. ANT, positioned as neither an idealist nor a realist project, makes it supremely suitable to undergird any approach that seeks to describe the “other” without losing its anchor with tangible world.

Orchestral performance Edmund Leach originally elaborated on Claude Lévi-Strauss’ notion of orchestral performance as a heuristic to assist anthropologists trying to understand and describe epistemological relativity between different nonwestern traditions (Leach 1976, 43-46). Stripped of any allusions to structuralism, orchestral performance will once again serve as a heuristic in an effort to make ANT a more intuitive tool for historians, anthropologists and other scholars. It is important to combine these approaches since on the one hand, Leach’s orchestral performance strengthens visualization, but suffers from operating only at the level of culture by investigating signs and symbols. On the other hand, although ANT does allow access to reality by all traditions, it has not yet been presented in a form that is easily grasped and applied. The musical metaphor is meant to aid with the visualization of how reality is constructed. Music, however, and its language of composition 5

For a full discussion of ANT see Latour’s Pandora's Hope (Latour 1999b), Reassembling the Social (Latour 2005), and Politics of Nature (Latour 2004). For a more philosophical approach see section two of The Pasteurization of France called “Irreductions” (Latour 1988). John Law also maintains an excellent internet resource on ANT, its history and its applications along with several publications at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/research/resalph.htm (accessed March 3, 2008).

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and orchestration were chosen to demonstrate the process of world making for another important reason. The creation of music is in itself an orchestration of reality. The playing of Jazz, for example, is a compressed, instantaneous example of the tukontological process that starts with inspired, improvised melodies and harmonies, almost unreal and only in the head of the musician. The notes and arrangement of this music are shaped by the ways of hearing and playing internalised by the musicians after a life-time of practice. The process ends when the orchestration, made as real as possible with music emanating from an instrument and interacting with the player, produces the sounds being appreciated by an audience. The reified notes become melodious, harmonious sounds produced through the agency of both the musician and the instrument. Neither the human player nor the non-human instrument alone can be ascribed all of the activity to music making. They form a collective and, as all accomplished improvisational musicians know the results are often beyond intent; often surprising. There is never complete mastery. The actors are always “overtaken” by the action (Latour 1999, 280-281). The music heard is now as real as the walls of the auditorium. Musicians therefore participate in the process of making unreal musical ideas into real music. They make reality. Obeah, Vodun and Orisha sages reify forces in the same way. Scientists do the same for electrons. It is this movement from the almost unreal imagination all the way through to the very real world that allows tukontology to tell a complete story about world making and history in the Caribbean as opposed to the creolisation models that only do half the work by being restricted to culture.

Tukontology Tukontology is an approach to describing how traditions compose their worlds. The name is taken from the strolling musicians found in the Caribbean island of Barbados known as Tuk Band orchestras. Playing African rhythms on English drums, they themselves are a product of creolisation. Its major strength is its symmetrical approach to both western scientific and traditional ways of knowing. It allows scholars from nonwestern traditions, for the first time, to sit at the same table as scientists, with full and equal access to reality, without being relegated to the unreal world of culture, symbols and rhetoric. The word “Tuk,” thought by some to have a Scottish root meaning “to tap” (Downes 2000, 103), alerts us to the notion of Caribbean peoples beating out their own existence. Whereas creolisation theories focus on texts and culture while leaving the business of access to reality to western science, tukontology continues

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the African and early European traditions that never knew of a separation between minds and the world. It therefore does not need to invent ways of reconnecting them through epistemology. By embracing ANT’s assumption of a reality continuum, everyone is given enough space to lead relative existences by gradually creating, adding, growing, and sometimes removing ontological entities. The triune drum motif, as one of the highly visible legacies of Africa that has persisted in the Caribbean, will serve as the metaphor for orchestral performance.6 Triune drum orchestras always have a foundation drum that anchors the rhythm and sets limits while allowing creative scope to the other drummers, especially the improvisational top drum. The rhythm of the middle drum is partly determined by the foundation rhythm. It is the bridge that holds together the unstable improvisational top and stable, regular bottom. Change, however, becomes more difficult the deeper you go into the music from the creative improvisational top, to the responsive middle and the stable foundation.7 Tuk Band musicians ordinarily have set bass and middle patterns that heed the instructions of the flute to start up and stop at will. They strive to make melodious music. However, the tukontological players are different. These troubadours master instruments capable of generating worlds. They have always been performing, and will never stop striving to harmonise their cosmos. In a tukontological orchestra, the Boom Drum, Kettle Drum, and Penny Whistle compose a foundation of human and nonhuman collectives, middle as ways of knowing, and improvisational moments of creative action respectively.8 These three levels combine to orchestrate relative existences. But any orchestration of music, or worlds, requires something that has not yet been mentioned, even though it was there all

6

The author is a drummer with more than seventeen years experience studying and performing with drummers around the Caribbean. 7 This motif expresses itself in a number of Caribbean institutions. The Pan Caribbean Nyahbinghi Rastafari have the Father (foundation), Mother (middle) and Children’s drums (improvisation), while in Trinidad, the shango drummers play Boa (foundation), Oumele (middle) and Congo (improvisation) drums. Cuban Santeros have Itotele (foundation), Okonkolo (middle) and Iya (improvisational) bata drums. In Barbados, the Tuk Band orchestra, one of the more creolized drum orchestras, is predominantly used for secular performances and was the inspiration for the label “tukontology” as a way of understanding how traditions compose their worlds. 8 Dr Ikael Tafari arrives at a similar formulation for his “Black Trilectics” except that his is an epistemological rather than ontological model (Tafari 2001, 156).

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along and is as much a part of the fabric of music as it is of material worlds. We must make space for “silence.”9

Silence Irrespective of the tradition and metaphysics involved, this is where we go for innovation, insight, discovery, and inspiration.10 This is the home of creativity. The one metaphysical commitment of this notion of silence is that it does not account for heterogeneity by accepting any Cartesian type absolute division into a duality or plurality of the universe. Substances or processes are not so estranged that reconnections or associations are forbidden forever. In this silent space, boundaries disappear and traditional categories dissolve as scientists, sages, artists, and anyone else, groping for new arrangements of things, facts, musical notes or forces, strive to generate novelty. However, tukontology gives to silence a more specific meaning that derives from its embrace of West African ontology and the findings of science studies. Silence, in tukontology, is that moment when collectives are still inarticulate. Silent actors cannot be said to be associated to form any proposition that can be named and later essentialised as a thing or force. When they are silent, actors are not represented and make no difference in the world. They are unreal. Silence is the place of mystery out of which the web of very real existence emerges from a world of the unreal. In the same way that African sages divine by either speaking on behalf of collectives or, in the most convincing communications, letting them speak for themselves through actual spirit possession, ANT considers that scientists speak on behalf of their scientific collectives. If the scientist is doubted, she can make the collective speak for themselves through experimental demonstrations. It is because everything has agency that they can speak for themselves if their human spokespersons are not convincing. Scientists compose collectives in laboratories by conducting experiments that are designed to elicit performances from chains of actors which populate the laboratory. They then list the results of these experiments as attributes that gradually construct an identity for the collective. At this stage the collective has not been assigned an essence. It is simply composed of the list of attributes; no more, no less. For example, in closing years of the nineteenth century scientists in competing 9

Although there is talk of levels and a top and bottom, this is not intended to ascribe a greater value or priority to any level. 10 A discussion of the possible metaphysics of the universe is beyond the scope of this paper.

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laboratories were composing a newly emerging and mysterious, but now well-known collective. At the moment of its birth, this assembly was described in terms of the following list of attributes: From the liquid produced by macerating malt [is extracted] through the action of alcohol, a solid, white, amorphous, neutral, more or less tasteless substance that is insoluble in alcohol, soluble in water and weak alcohol, and which cannot be precipitated by sub-lead acetate. Warmed from 65º to 75º with starch in the presence of water, it separates off a soluble substance, which is dextrin (Latour 1987, 87-8).

It is only later that this list of attributes was given a name and thought to have an essence. A new “thing” had been composed. This new thing though, is only reified through the actions of a collectivity of actors that include the scientist, the instruments of the laboratory, and the substances undergoing the tests. The organic compound with the above list of attributes is now widely known as an “enzyme” (Latour 1987, 86-90). After an initial “discovery,” further research in other laboratories often modifies the list of attributes of a collective. However, even though the other scientists may compose a new thing simply because the list of attributes may have changed, they will often retain the original name for practical reasons unless these differences are significant. More fundamentally, a name is kept because of the habit humans have of supplementing collectives with an imaginary essence. In general, scientists who work at defining, naming and essentialising new collectives become the experts who speak on behalf of these things. They become their spokespersons. African reality has also been described as collective to the point where the “concatenation of everything is so tight that to subtract one item is to paralyze the system” (Asante 1987, 77). West African sages compose invisible forces through a list of attributes. Amongst the Yoruba there are numerous forces of nature called orisha. In fact, there may well be an orisha for everything and every action imaginable.11 Some insist that there is an infinite number of orisha (Edwards and Mason 1985, 1). Others simply state that there is a “legion of saints [orisha]” (Smith 1963, 112). Orisha are usually identified by their attributes. Elegba, for example, is described in such a way that new initiates gradually come to know him through his attributes. 11

This was personal communication from Okan Tomi, a Lukumi priest of oshun for over 20 years at the time in November 1998 during the author’s initiation into the mysteries of ochosi in Panama.

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It is said that Elegba offers choice; sits at the threshold of every decision; offers the options that decide our future; was present at the creation of the universe; guards the principle of free will; is the messenger between God, the orisha and humans; travels great distances in an instant; and keeps the ashe (divine force), which is the essence of God (Edwards and Mason 1985, 8-13). Sages initiated into the mysteries of a force become the spokespersons of this force. During rituals, the attributes of the orisha as represented on the physical plane by specific colours, foods, plants, chants, drum rhythms, animals, and artefacts are so concentrated in a restricted space and time that the force’s full identity completely reifies by manifesting in human form during possession. The collective then speaks for itself and can now be said to be fully articulated. Wellarticulated collectives with spokespersons make a difference in the world. Born being invisible, unreal, and silent, they gradually become visible, real and articulate. Their “voices” are heard. African sages, scientists, writers, and Penny Whistle musicians know the world of silence well. Their vocation demands that they leave the noisy world of hard categories, tight connections, and solid facts to journey through this silent space of blurred boundaries, loose associations and inchoate facts to create and recreate, to improvise, to innovate and compose new melodic arrangements of things, facts, and forces before proposing them as loud but fresh additions to the ongoing chorus.

Penny Whistle: Creative power The Penny Whistle improvises on top of the existing rhythms and in between the silent spaces of the Tuk Band. This is the level of creative action. It is this top level of action and interaction that drives the usually slow evolution of Caribbean middle rhythms (ways of knowing), and the even slower changes in the underlying foundational Bass (Ontology). Whether we follow sages who become possessed by working within contrived zones of liminality in their ritual spaces; scientists who dream up new concepts and inventions within their laboratories of concentrated artifice; philosophers, writers and artists engaged in some species of phenomenology to find new concepts and images; or musicians at work with their eyes closed, the outcome is always the same—something new is created by escaping the boundaries that demarcate the categories of ordinary life, including those of subject and object, those between disciplines, imagined essences separating things, and established rhythms. They ignore and cross these boundaries as often as necessary to produce novelty. Alternative images, words, strategies, connections, concepts, and

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melodies are generated as potentially new sources of power to escape the dogmatic habit of every age that tends toward certitude where “Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred” (Price 1954, 7). This can be regarded as the level of tukontology that maps a synchronic axis of existence where new almost unreal actors are born and proposed to the world as candidates to whom reality can be added through association with many other actors. Penny Whistle players invent novel, interesting and relevant—that is, melodious and fitting with existing rhythm—arrangements of notes on the spot. As was often the case in the Caribbean, African sages in the Caribbean constructed new forces/Gods made up of collectivities that include new arrangements of old African actors such as ancient rituals, prayers and implements as well as completely new actors, such as the bible, Catholic Saints, new world flora, fauna, landscapes, that were never before associated in order to survive and live in strange lands while resisting enslavement. Obeah, Kumina, Comfa, Shango Baptist, and Santeria were all proposed as relevant forces among African communities. They are examples of new Penny Whistle melodies. Scientists also work tirelessly to associate theories, experimental techniques, and laboratory instruments to make economically, medically, and politically relevant facts and objects. These novel facts and objects not necessarily must always tested by other scientists. They may or may not hold but at this Penny Whistle level the important point is to create and propose these new melodies, forces, objects, or facts that must then await acceptance, or rejection, by an established middle level ways of knowing. If accepted they gain maximum reality by being fully instituted/associated into larger more stable collectives at the bass level. If power is understood as the accumulated force that enables a collective, acting as one, to make a difference, even if sometimes one person or thing is ascribed all of the power while ignoring the others in the collective, then it is the Penny Whistle improvisers who produce new forms of political power by sourcing an inexhaustible reservoir of actors with whom alliances are formed and on whose behalf experts speak to add force to their otherwise weak position. This is true when feminists deconstruct and reconstruct facts that become new actors in old arguments; when Blacks create new religions as actors to hold together and value African lifeways; or when scientists propose the existence of new entities to make their theories stronger when accounting for perplexing phenomena. This level should be understood as the ultimate source of empowerment for the dominated.

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Kettle Drum: Ways of knowing Middle drum ways of knowing refers to a role and not a musical scale. The tone of the middle drum may be high or low in relation to others but its importance is in bridging the foundation and improvisational drums. It is the filler that prevents a musical collapse while the improvisational drum is creating new patterns by ranging far and wide before coming back to harmonize with the middle and foundation. The middle fills out the music to reduce any tension that the improvisational drummer may feel when crossing rhythmic boundaries. It promotes and supports creativity during improvisation. The music is never static and during prolonged play the rhythms interact, feedback, and change each other organically. The broad notions of “world readings” and world sorting developed by John Pickstone to follow ways of knowing in Europe can be usefully applied to the middle level of tukontology (Pickstone 2000, 7-17). World readings refer to how people decode their world and imbue it with meaning. Although he did not use the phrase world sorting, the activities of describing, classifying, and dissection that reduces complexity to regularities or elements (analysis) that he identified are all methods of sorting. All traditions read and sort the world through a historically determined way of knowing. Novel propositions from the Penny Whistle level of improvisation are filtered through the Kettle Drum level of ways of knowing which emerges from, and is constrained by the ontological foundation of actors in collectivities where things with definite forms, certain facts, and implicit assumptions are uncontested in an all-embracing but stable web of associations. It is at this Kettle Drum level that habits of thought emerge to determine the legitimate questions, meaningful problems, appropriate measures, rational answers, correct rankings, and real entities and then assign spokespersons to make these assessments. Everything at this kettle drum middle level is negotiable and truthvalue is relative. But since ANT is not a species of idealism, what passes as true is still firmly rooted in reality except that now “truth” is understood as a continuum where well-articulated collectives are “truer” than those which are poorly-articulated. On the other hand, any association of actors that is tightly connected, but still relatively free to move, and which has a spokesperson whose rhetoric is not easily separated from what is actually happening in the chain of actors is said to be well-articulated. Truth-value circulates freely in this collective. For example, colour blind people whose assembly of actors is made of a chain that includes the brain, the nerves, the retina, eye lens, light waves, and things are not as well articulated as

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normally seeing persons who therefore have a well articulated chain of actors or actor-network. The truth-value of the colour that the colour blind person sees is therefore lower than someone who is not colour blind. Since the identity of a collective can be defined as the list of differences that are registered as reality when individual actors associate with each other, it is the stability and smooth movement, or the quality of articulation, of this identity that determines whether a spokesperson is speaking truthfully. Remembering that things have no underlying essence that serves as a target for reference by an alienated human subject, truth cannot mean the existence of a bridge between an active subject and a passive object. Rather, it is the uninterrupted circulation of an identity through all of the actors of a collective (Latour 1999, 24-79). Realities that are better constructed are therefore truer. Ways of knowing at this kettle drum level can now be understood as experiments in construction or, in keeping with the metaphor and to avoid confusion with idealist forms of social constructivism, experiments that orchestrate worlds.

Bass Drum: Collectives of actors All communities of people accept the existence of unshakable facts. Perhaps, at some point in the past, these facts might have been highly contested; however, over time they came to be accepted as “true,” “universal” and “unquestionable.” If doubted, it is too expensive or technical for the average person to pursue a challenge of these fundamentals to the end. This is because these facts, over time, become associated with many other people, things, other facts, artefacts and theories in order to become strong collectives that are black boxed and unquestioned. It is the same for black-boxed processes and machines. Only a handful of specialists know their inner workings. However, a wider community of people can utilize the process or machine with only the knowledge of its inputs and outputs. These black boxes could also be viewed as institutions that have been stabilized out of heterogeneous collectives by inscribing them into more durable materials and methods. Institutions are the melody of the tukontological Bass Drum. The individual notes represent all of the associations that are being held together as a unit that is coherent, aesthetically pleasing—and therefore appearing to be rational—and since reality is not now conceived as an all or nothing binary, it is possible for people to experience institutions as having achieved differing levels of existence. Large assemblies of wellarticulated actors, each making their contribution to felt differences, all register a cumulatively forceful difference as reality increases by degrees

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with the number of associations. A fleeting new melody, proposed by the Penny Whistle player, if picked up by the bass player, kept and played in a repeating pattern, would have started out as an inspired but almost unreal chain of notes before finally being incorporated into the very real and durable bass but as part of a larger bass melody. For example, a new African God, appearing in the vision of a single sage, may become widely acknowledged to the point where it is adopted as the patron deity of an entire community with numerous shrines while frequently possessing many of its priests. A new scientific thing, if accepted, will be incorporated into a larger discipline in the way that, for example, the double helix Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) is now central to the massive association of scientific, industrial, and political actors involved in the discipline of human genetics. Entities that are not sufficiently articulated to make a forceful difference, and to which other actors are insensitive, are less real. Like a musical score, collectives therefore display a spatiotemporal envelope that is traced out from their participation in a continuum of reality over time. As shown above, entities may grow in reality and be sustained in existence through time or, on the other hand, entities may be withdrawn from reality in the way that the ether and phlogiston were withdrawn from science and in the lost of some African Gods in the Caribbean. Translated into a musical model under tukontology, this envelope is represented as the melodic changes that occur at the ontological level. Unheard and unreal notes, each a separate actor, lie inaudibly in wait in the space of silence until they are weaved into a proposition for presentation to the orchestra as a new melody at the creative Penny Whistle level. This new collective, filtered through a Kettle Drum way of knowing, is then incorporated into a Bass Drum melodic pattern where it is given the stability and durability of an institution. In short, propositions born through the improvisational exploration of paradigmatic space are read and sorted through ways of knowing, before being fully instituted as stable syntagmatic chains of actors (Latour 1999, 146-168). The cost of this institutionalisation is often paid for by subtracting increasingly incommensurable collectives. Rarely, a new composition will force out a long-standing and well-connected collective in order for the new orchestration to hold together. Kuhn called these large scale and sudden changes “paradigm shifts” (Kuhn 1970). Propositions can thus be seen to move through a process of reification from being nonexistent to existing fully by being created at the Penny Whistle level and descending to the Bass Drum for institutionalization.

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Conclusion Even though his creolisation models only did half of the work on the cultural side while tukontological orchestration speaks to complete mixings, Kamau Brathwaite had the right idea when he maintained that: What I’m suggesting here is not that there is a ‘right’ African explanation, or a ‘wrong’ Euro-scientific one, but that a proper understanding of ourselves can only be arrived at by a recognition of both traditions, both areas of explanation; and that for the Afro-Caribbean it will be increasingly more just to seek, in the first instance, African explanations (Brathwaite 1974, 41).

A philosophy of science that uses the resources of western science to judge all other ways of knowing will never do justice to, or respect the reasoning of other peoples. The west would always “know” while all others “believe.” Philosophy should therefore not concern itself with validating the rationality of the west and the possibility of curing the irrational others. It should take up the more humble task, already well underway in Science Studies, of describing how well various peoples orchestrate their collectives to produce good or bad worlds. Tukontology is an intuitive approach that, once internalised, should serve as an antidote to the unquestioning acceptance of the hegemonic modern settlement that dominates the academy. It will also guard against the replacement of the modern settlement by any other orchestration that behaves as if it were the only one possible.

References Asante, Molefi K. 1987. The Afrocentric Idea. USA: Temple University Press. Bloor, David. 1999. Anti-Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 81-112. Brathwaite, Kamau. 1974. Contradictory Omens : Cultural diversity and Integration in the Caribbean. Mona, Jamaica: Savacou Publications. Brathwaite, Kamau. 1978. The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Downes, Aviston D. 2000. Sailing from Colonial into National Waters: A History of the Barbados Landship. Journal of the Barbados Museum Historical Society XLVI: 93-122. Edwards, Gary and John Mason. 1985. Black Gods—Orisa Studies in the New World. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Yoruba Theological Archministry.

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Golinski, Jan. 1998. Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —. 1999a. For David Bloor… and Beyond: A Reply to David Bloor’s “Anti-Latour”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 (1): 113-128. —. 1999b. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. London: Harvard University Press. —. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. London: Harvard University Press. —. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leach, Edmund. 1976. Culture and Communication: The logic by which symbols are connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pickstone, John V. 2000. Ways of Knowing: a new history of science, technology and medicine. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Price, Lucien. 1954. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Richards, D. 1981. The Nyama of the Blacksmith: The Metaphysical Significance of Metallurgy in Africa. Journal of Black Studies 12 (2): 218-220. Shepherd, Verene S. and Glen L Richards. 2002. Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers. Smith, M. G. 1963. Dark Puritan. Kingston: Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of West Indies. Stengers, Isabelle. 2000. The Invention of Modern Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Tafari, Ikael. 2001. Rastafari in Transition: The Politics of Cultural Confrontation in Africa and the Caribbean (1966-1988). Vol. 1 Kingston, Jamaica: Research Associates School, Times Publications & Miguel Lorne Publishers. Wynter, Sylvia. 2002. On the Relativity, Nature-Culture Hybridity, and Auto-Institutedness of Our Genre(s) of Being Human: Towards the Transculturality of a Caribbean/New World Matrix.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE ONTOLOGIES: ROOT METAPHORS OF EXISTENCE CLEVIS HEADLEY

Ontology is not as obvious a field of study as is theology; the mere mention of ontology spontaneously connotes some esoteric branch of philosophy long since denounced as speculative nonsense. But such quick denunciations of ontology are not only misleading, they are also lacking in imagination. This brief essay represents a comparative study of ontology. It examines formal ontology and presents examples of formal ontologies; second, it clarifies a general distinction between strong and weak ontologies; third it focuses on existential ontologies, specifically situating this shift to existential ontologies within the context of the Heideggerian distinction between the ontic and the ontological; and finally, it offers two cases of Africana ontologies: one African American and the other AfroCaribbean. The conclusion or, rather, thrust, of the essay is to recommend greater investigation of existential ontologies in order to counter the hegemonic project of globalizing the barren ontology of political liberalism.

Formal Ontology We can start by narrowly identifying formal ontology as the study of the essential features of being in itself—being construed, among other things, as a thing, a substance or an object. Note however that to construe being as a thing, a substance, or an object is not intended as an exhaustive accounting of the fundamental categories of being. The preceding construal of ontology does not entail the study of any particular thing or individual. Rather, formal ontology is an investigation into the fundamental categories of being. From a metaphysical perspective, we can expand upon the preceding view and define ontology

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as the formal science of what is, more specifically, an inquiry into the nature of reality such that for every area of reality we seek to identify the kinds of objects, the structures of the objects, and the properties and relations characteristic of reality. Before briefly examining some examples of formal ontologies, it would help to set an appropriate context of investigation. Quine’s notion of ontological commitment is helpful in situating this context of discussion. The basic idea behind Quine’s notion of ontological commitment is that one is committed to the entities that one must posit as existing in order to determine the truth of one’s sentences. For example: (1) (2)

New York is north of Bridgetown. Four is greater than two.

In order for (1) to be true, one must be committed to the existence of cities and in order for (2) to be true, one must be committed to the existence of numbers. In another context, Quine explicitly connects the idea of ontological commitment to ontology.1 He states that “One’s ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme by which he interprets all experiences, even the most commonplace ones.”2 If it is true that individuals use a conceptual scheme by which they interpret all experiences, one’s ontology is basic to one’s conceptual scheme in that what one is committed to as existing is going to be determined by the entities posited by one’s conceptual scheme. Quine maintains that, Our acceptance of an ontology is … similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics: we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged. Our ontology is determined once we have fixed upon the over-all conceptual scheme which is to accommodate science in the broadest sense.3

Ontologies are as plentiful as philosophical positions. Using the basic distinctions suggested by Carrara and Varzi, (linguistic reconstructivists, ontological reconstructivists, and ontological realists), I will briefly review some formal ontological positions.4 Linguistic reconstructivists, such as 1

See Willard Van Orman Quine, “On What there is,” in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953). 2 Ibid., 10. 3 Ibid., 16-17. 4 See Massimiliano Carrara and Achille Varzi, “Ontological Commitment and Reconstructivism,” Erkenntnis, 55 (2001): 33-50.

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Quine, seek to answer the question of what we must be committed to as existing in order for sentences to be true. Indeed, the main concern of linguistic reconstructivists is to reveal the ontological commitments entrenched in different kinds of language. Linguistic reconstructivists, however, maintain that natural language is referentially opaque, and hence, argue that ontological commitments can be obtained only by paraphrasing them into a canonical language such as first-order predicate logic.5 Here language use determines our ontological commitments. Consider the following statement by Quine: [W]hen we say that some zoological species are crossfertile we are committing ourselves to recognizing as entities the several species themselves, abstract though they are. We remain so committed at least until we devise some way of so paraphrasing the statement as to show that the seeming reference to species on the part of our bound variable was an avoidable manner of speaking.6

Here, Quine is employing his own claim that one’s use of language commits one to recognizing entities posited by one’s conceptual scheme. Ontological reconstructivists, unlike linguistic constructivists, take the ontological commitments of natural language at face value; however, they consider natural language metaphysically deceptive. It should be noted that linguistic reconstructivists, like Quine, can also be considered ontological reconstructivists. Ontological reconstructivists maintain that natural language commits us to a certain kind of ontology. For example, paradigmatic entities of such an ontology would be a chair or a table; however, the ontological reconstructivist claims that chairs and tables are not what we think they are. Ontological reconstructivism is supported by Carrara and Varzi. They write that: ordinary language need not be massively corrected or reinterpreted, and neither is it ontologically neutral. The ontological reconstructivist will not deny that tables exist (for instance). Yet she will urge that tables are not what we normally think they are.7 5

My interpretation of linguistic reconstructionism is influenced by Cohnitz and Smith. See Daniel Cohnitz and Barry Smith, “Assessing Ontologies: The Question of Human Origins and Its Ethical Significance,” in Persons: Person—An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by E. Runggaldier and C. Kanzian (Vienna: Öbv & hpt, 2003), 43-59. 6 Quine (1953), 13. 7 Massimiliano Carrara and Achille Varzi, “Ontological Commitment and Reconstructivism,” Erkenntnis, 55 (2001): 46.

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Finally, ontological realists do not support a reconstructivist agenda, for they do not acknowledge any need for reconstruction, whether ontological or metaphysical. Ordinary language, they maintain, is in good ontological order, and so there is no need for any technical ontological reconstruction. Smith and Brogaard, being ontological realists, hold that not only is ordinary language in (broad) ontological order as it stands as far as its true positive assertions about reality are concerned, but also is the language of science. Not only do tables exist, but so also do electrons and molecules, and entities of each of these types are what we normally think they are.8

Length constraints do not allow for any extended and detailed analysis of formal ontology. But it should be noted that the program of formal ontology must face the insurmountable challenge of contestability precisely because of the assumption of digitality, the idea that concepts have clear and sharp boundaries, and the additional assumption that the interchangeability of synonymous concepts can take place without change of truth value; put differently, the substitution of synonymous concepts should not create a change in truth value.9

Naturalizing Ontology There have also been some radical developments in science with regard to ontology. Perhaps the most radical development has been the call for a naturalization of ontology. The main idea behind the program of naturalized ontology is “that in science ontological practices are already in place that dictate scientific commitments, and that to engage in ‘naturalized ontology’ is simply to adopt those practices.”10 This new development is to resist the notion that there should be some autonomous criterion for what exists in science. Naturalized ontology limits ontological commitment within science to the practices that are already in place. 8

Daniel Cohnitz and Barry Smith, “Assessing Ontologies: The Question of Human Origins and Its Ethical Significance,” in Persons: Person—An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by E. Runggaldier and C. Kanzian (Vienna: Öbv & hpt, 2003), 43-59. 9 For an important criticism of formalism see, Brian Cantwell Smith, On the Origin of Objects (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996). 10 Jody Azzouni, Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case For Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5. See also Penelope Maddy, Naturalism in Mathematics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Furthermore, it is a repudiation of those who support the idea of fixing the criterion of ontological commitment by an a priori method. Azzouni supports the position called ontological nihilism, the view that there are no philosophically conclusive ways to argue for our criterion for what exists. That is, we can imagine alternative communities with the same science we have but with different beliefs about what exists because … they have a different criterion for what exists; they’re otherwise unaffected by their choice.11

Another radical ontological position with regard to scientific practices is the natural ontological attitude (NOA) of Arthur Fine. Fine maintains that science is not in need of any robust ontological support. Indeed, the foundations of science are appropriately secured without needing any major philosophical reinforcement. According to Fine: That attitude, to let science stand on its own and to view it without the support of philosophical ‘isms,’ is what characterizes NOA. All the isms (realism, nominalism, idealism, conventionalism, constructivism, phenomenalism, positivism—and even pragmatism) involve global strategies, approaches to interpreting and providing a setting for science as 12 a whole.

Clearly, the traditional philosophical project of ontology does not enjoy the allegiance it once commanded from philosophers. But the dethroning of formal ontology does not foretell the demise of any possible inquiry into ontology from alternative perspectives.

Strong and Weak Ontologies There is another significant distinction with regard to ontology that, although not directly rooted in the concerns of formal ontology is, nevertheless, motivated by that project. In this context, the logical and other theoretical issues that emerge in formal ontology are not the focus of attention. Some thinkers have distinguished between strong and weak ontologies. “Strong [ontologies] are those ontologies that claim to reflect for us ‘the way the world is,’ or how God’s being stands to human being, or what human nature is. For strong ontologies, the whole question of passages from ontological truths to moral-political ones is relatively 11

Ibid., 5-6. Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game; Einstein, Realism and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 9. 12

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clear.”13 Strong ontologies are foundational in that they court the idea of there being metaphysically transcendental grounds or universal truths to legislate politics and ethics. Weak ontologies eschew the attraction of foundationalism and resist any infatuation with the existence of transcendental truths to underwrite politics and ethics. Rather, weak ontologies are interpretive-existential constructs. “Weak ontologies are … not rooted in a crystalline conviction of ultimate cognitive truth. Rather, … they are interpretations of the world. They are contestable pictures with a validity claim that is two dimensional. [Weak] [o]ntologies provide a framework of meaning for basic existential realities such as natality, language, and finitude…. [They] might be characterized as the most basic frames we use both to access and construct ourselves and the world.”14 Clearly, then, weak ontologies are metaphorical or analogical pictures human beings utilize to constitute the conditions of the possibility of self-fashioning and world-construction. Weak ontologies are best characterized as existential ontologies. Now that we have been familiarized with the formal study of ontology, let us turn to examine the more recent radical philosophical rethinking of ontology from the perspective of existential phenomenology.

Existential Phenomenology: Difference between the Ontic and the Ontological Heidegger’s approach to ontology represents a radical displacing of traditional formal ontology. Indeed, Heidegger deplores the substance metaphysics of traditional Western philosophy, the tendency to think of Being as an entity. He rejects the tendency to think of Being as analogous to philosophical thinking about objects. For him, Being qua Being is not an entity, a substance, or a particular thing; nor is it an aggregate of particulars. Heidegger was also equally against scientism, the tendency to describe Being as receptive to instrumental rationality but totally alien to values and meanings. Once again, this tendency imposed the vocabulary of materialism on Being itself. However, Being qua Being, according to Heidegger, claims ontological priority over particular beings; it is the background that facilitates the appearance of beings. This development required a new vocabulary to describe Being, new metaphors to facilitate the disclosure of Being. Heidegger’s revolutionary turn calls for an 13

Stephen White, “Weak Ontology and Liberal Political Reflection”, Political Theory, 25 (1997): 505. 14 Ibid., 506.

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existential phenomenological approach to the study of being. Investigations into being, according to this view, must be concrete, implying that any plausible approach to Being must begin with that being for whom its being is a question, the being who, in other words, asks questions about the meaning of Being; it follows that human beings must be the starting point for inquiry into Being. Accordingly, ontology for Heidegger becomes what he calls fundamental ontology, which roughly means that we can only understand Being through an understanding of human being or what Heidegger calls Dasein. Heidegger maintains that an investigation of the basic existential modes of the being of human beings or human-being-in-the-world prepares “the way for the problematic of fundamental ontology—the question of the meaning of Being in general.”15 With Heidegger we have a revolutionary distinction between the ontic and the ontological. The ontic is restricted to the study of the nature of beings. The ontological, however, pertains to the ways of being or rather to the question of Being. The ontological is more closely connected to the existential understanding of being precisely because it is a hermeneutical understanding of the ontological structures of existence. And since we are told that the question of Being is best approached from the concrete standpoint of the human being, ontology becomes the study or interpretation of the plural meanings in which human beings exist. Ontology is transformed into an inquiry into the problems of human existence. If ontology in its new existential phenomenological guise studies or interprets human-being-in-the-world, it would seem then that the Heideggerian attempt to develop an analytic of existence would facilitate ontological drift, meaning that instead of pursuing a universal ontology, we can more constructively consider particular ontologies or specific ontologies that would be emergent from different styles of existence. Indeed, Levinas has registered his disapproval of Heidegger’s emphasis on ontology. According to Levinas, despite his radical deconstruction of the philosophical tradition, Heidegger ironically is still imprisoned within this tradition to the extent that he privileges ontology over ethics. The Levinasian focus on ethics as first philosophy would seem to qualify as a more radical gesture to the idea of existential ontology by way of working through difference and otherness. It should be noted that Levinas’s idea of ethics as first philosophy is his way of counteracting the violence of traditional metaphysics and epistemology to the extent that metaphysics 15 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 227.

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privileges Sameness and identity and epistemology seemingly can only think the Other by reducing the Other to the logic and intelligibility of the categories of the Same. Levinas maintains that the Other can only be properly approached as the Other if our point of departure is ethics, which is a matter of assuming responsibility for the Other. So, the move from formal ontology—hegemony—to fundamental ontology ends in existential ontology and heteronomy, namely to the acknowledgment of there being different ontological structures of human existence, in other words, plural forms of being. A more radicalized understanding of ontology is found in the work of Foucault. In his essay “What is Enlightenment?”,16 Foucault referred to what he calls “the historical ontology of ourselves”. He indicated that historical ontology would be the kind of study concerned with “truth through which we constitute ourselves as objects of knowledge.” Historical ontology would also assume the burden of studying power, which, according to Foucault, would be the “power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others”. Finally, historical ontology would also study the “ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents”. Clearly historical ontology would be the kind of study that is existentially projected precisely because it concerns the various practices through which human beings constitute themselves as objects of knowledge, subjects of power, and moral agents. This new understanding of ontology in the guise of existential ontology, the study of the plural forms of human existence, certainly conflicts with the project of the coloniality of being. The coloniality of being is the modern project by which the West seeks to promote its particular mode of being, its own parochial form of life, its myopic particularism to the status of universality. This ontological imperialism in the form of the Western colonialization of being unsettles ways of being not immediately supportive of the Western order of consciousness. But a fundamental problem with the project of ontological colonization is the obscuring of existential ontology. For the modern Western project, as exemplified in liberal political theory, has embraced a strong ontology that takes the form of the social application of formal ontology. The end result is an unacknowledged ontological nihilism regarding the ontology of everyday life. Modern political liberalism has extended to us “a picture of selves as essentially ‘possessive individualists’ whose essential connection to others is constituted instrumentally in terms of self-interest.”17 Society 16

Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984). 17 Stephen White 1997, 508.

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is nothing but an aggregate of self-interested individuals who interact on the social plane of everyday life like material objects caught in the swirl of a mechanical choreography patterned to the rhythm of physical forces. The sacrifice of social particularity in exchange for abstract individualism robs individuals of the rich existential ontological standpoint that would have better oriented their being in the world. According to communitarian critics of liberalism, the self is not antecedent to the community but rather flourishes within the context of a community. The self is not unencumbered in the sense that each individual, in isolation, is free to frame, revise, and pursue his or her own conception of the good life. Communitarians deny that the right is prior to the good and, hence, support the view of the self as encumbered; as individuals we become members of communities and it is from within these communities that we inherit traditions, language, culture, and a conception of the good life.18 The liberal view of the self invites us to view individuals as creating values and conceptions of the good in the anonymity of public space. The attempt to ground politics and ethics in transcendental fictions, and not metaphorical and analogical interpretive structures that are more conducive to the flourishing of robust conceptions of selfhood, is a repudiation of existential ontology. Indeed, it is this flight from concrete existence and the complicit notion of formal ontology that Fanon correctly observed as a danger to black existence. Fanon maintains that In the [world-view] of a colonized people there is an impurity, a flaw that outlaws any ontological explanation. Someone may object that this is the case with every individual, but such an objection merely conceals a basic problem. Ontology–once it is finally admitted as leaving existence by the wayside–does not permit us to understand the being of the black man. For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man.19

Africana Existential Ontologies Against this modernist tendency to separate the self from social particularity and house it in the opaqueness of an abstract transcendental universality, I want to make the case that Africana ontologies, namely 18 For an excellent discussion of the differences between liberals and communitarians, see Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals & Communitarians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 19 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1976), 109110.

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Africana existential ontologies, are more inclined to support a poetics of existence. We should understand Africana ontologies as inclusive of the various structures of meanings, practices and beliefs that people of African descent utilize to orient their existence. These ontologies are accordingly to be found in the cosmologies, worldviews, and conceptual schemes of people of African descent. However, the idea of Africana ontologies does not presuppose any essentialist view of African people and cultures sharing universal essences; rather, the intent is to acknowledge a family resemblance among the various elements constituting these ontologies. Here, I will be looking at the blues as an ontology of life, as well as rum as an ontology of life. These ontologies of life are obviously metaphorical ways to interpret ontological structures of black existence. The rest of this discussion aims to show how Africana ontologies subvert the strong ontology of political modernism by examining Ralph Ellison’s idea of the blues as an ontology of life. Haunted by persistent historical structures of nonbeing: racism and racial discrimination, the double consciousness of having to exist in a world in which one is forced to live in accordance with the stereotypical representations of an oppressive dominant society as well as how one sees oneself, cruel social invisibility, and the despair and absurdity characteristic of such unimaginable treatment, African Americans became masters of the affirmation of life. This existential affirmation of life, even when confronted with threats and assaults against African Americans’ being, assumed several manifestations in African American culture. This affirmation is heroic because it emerged from the ability of a people to conquer threats to their survival instead of surrendering. It is also heroic precisely because it represents a repudiation of the seductive lure of becoming pathological, allowing one unfortunate circumstance to erode the basis of self-respect and dignity. Perhaps the most intriguing manifestation of this heroic affirmation is the blues. Ralph Ellison has championed the idea that the blues can serve as a metaphor for human existence and the idea of a blues ontology, a philosophy of life grounded in the complexities of improvisation. The existential thrust of the blues suggests the idea of rolling with the punches, knowing that life is not always easy, but that despite the desperation of less than perfect situations, there is always the potential of overcoming, of finding a way to work things out. Ellison describes the blues in the following existentialist grammar. He writes: The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged edge and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing

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from it a near-tragic, near comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.20

It is not difficult to tease from Ellison’s remarks his keen appreciation of the importance of understanding that the freedom of the individual is not some mechanical option one can call upon when things go wrong. Rather, transcending and expressing our freedom is a matter of working through the horrible details of tragic situations only to emerge more resilient as we ready ourselves for future challenges to our temporary episodes of existential comfort. Albert Murray expands Ellison’s take on the blues in the following manner: In a sense the whole point of the blues idiom lyric is to state the facts of life. Not unlike ancient tragedy, it would have the people for whom it is composed and performed confront, acknowledge, and proceed in spite of, and even in terms of, the ugliness and meanness inherent in the human condition. It is thus a device for making the best of a bad situation. Not by rendering capitulation tolerable, however, and certainly not by consoling those who would compromise their integrity, but—in its orientation to continuity in the face of adversity and absurdity…. There is also the candid acknowledgement and sober acceptance of adversity as an inescapable condition of human existence—and perhaps in consequence an affirmation disposition towards all obstacles…. 21

In another context Murray writes that the blues deals “with the most fundamental of all existential imperatives: affirmation, which is to say, reaffirmation and continuity in the face of adversity.”22 The notion of the blues as an ontology of life can be formulated as a three-step process. According to Craig Werner, The process consists of (1) fingering the jagged grain of your brutal experience; (2) finding a near-tragic, near-comic voice to express that experience; and (3) reaffirming your existence.23 20

Ralph Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues,” in Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 78-79. 21 Albert Murray, The Hero and the Blues (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 36-37, 106-107. 22 Quoted in Craig Werner, A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul of America (New York: Plume, 1999), 70. 23 Craig Werner, A Chance is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul of America (New York: Plume, 1999), 69.

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The importance of affirming existence when confronted with threats of nihilism and absurdity, an existential imperative employed in the context of African American struggle for freedom, is also evident in the AfroCaribbean society. Indeed, Caribbean society can also be correctly described as an existential space sustaining the mode of the AfroCaribbean-being-in-the-world.24 The Afro-Caribbean-being-in-the–world suggests the manner of existing or living that is characteristic of how AfroCaribbean people experience and understand the world. The Caribbean mode of being need not be limited to the plantation ontology of slavery. Consistent with the general thrust of Africana ontologies as poetics of existence, I want to suggest that, like the blues, rum can transcend its categorical assignment and, similarly, also serve as an ontology of life. It should be noted that I offer the following discussion as an impressionistic sketch and not as a comprehensive theory. The idea of rum as an ontology of life would appear preposterous to many, bordering on the absurd. The close relation between rum and slavery, and even the current social and psychological cost of the abuse of rum, certainly would seem to qualify rum to be, if anything, in violation of the very thrust of life and survival. However, despite these unfortunate liabilities we should not be too quick to denounce rum as the demon drink without working through the complex history of rum in the modern world, as well as its complex integration into the existence of Caribbean peoples.25 Hence, instead of locating the phenomenon of rum within an identity logic and then denouncing discursive efforts to thematize and place rum within cultural space, it would be more productive to appeal to the dialectics of rum and, consequently, refrain from judging its potential negative effects or consequences as a defective. Rather, its contradictions should be seen as providing the opportunity to think outside the restrictive binary opposition of having to judge rum as being either completely good or bad but not both. We can start by first acknowledging the role of rum in generating a strategically shared space within Caribbean societies, as well as among Caribbean societies. It is not that rum literally eliminates differences, but 24

One interesting essay on the idea of a Caribbean ontology is Holger Henke, “Towards an Ontology of Caribbean Existence,” Social Epistemology 11 (1997): 39-58. 25 Two recent histories of rum have appeared, which document its dominance in the development of the New World, see Charles Coulombe, Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink that Conquered the World (New York: Kensington Publishing, 2004) and Ian Williams, Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776 (New York: Nation Books, 2005).

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rather, it serves as a metaphorical basis for negotiating or transcending internal differences of political, social, and cultural power. It is over a bottle of rum that people from different social and cultural spheres come together to participate in the ritual of drinking, a shared experience as well as a basis for further social interaction. In transcending differences of power of social status, a basis is provided for human connection and understanding across differences that would otherwise prohibit the possibility of mutual understanding. In short, then, rum allows for face-to face encounters that facilitate the levelling of social distinctions. Second, the rum ontology can function as an analytical construction to manage differences of language, history and cultural influence among the different societies of the Caribbean. As Ian Williams writes in his recent history of rum, [R]um is the one common factor of a recognizable common Caribbean culture. The Dutch-, English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking islands have separate strands of culture, and even within the different language blocks, the islands are similar but distinct. On each island, the scars of slavery manifest themselves in different ways. But on all of them, islanders make, drink, and relish … rum.26

We can also talk in terms of an ethics of rum. First we should note that rum drinking is often a communal affair, meaning that the ritual of drinking rum is not something done privately. Rum drinking is really a social activity precisely because there is no privacy of rum in the sense that individualistic consumption of rum is not socially sanctioned. Here it would be helpful to clarify that rum drinking, as I understand it, should be seen as a collective ritual and that, as such, it requires communion with others. Of course, people do consume rum privately within moderation. But solitary drinking of rum, even if not in excess, does not qualify as the ritualistic social drinking of rum. Social drinking of rum is analogous to the collective practice of a religion. We would not consider an individual who engages in the solitary performance of the practices of a religion to be actually performing the collective rituals of the religion. If the collective drinking of rum involves an ethics, consistent solitary drinking of rum, outside the context of an occasional after dinner drink, violates the communitarian ethics of rum. Furthermore, insistence on the private and isolated consumption of rum may be an indication of the weakness of the will, evidence of psychological or existential 26 Ian Williams, Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776 (New York: Nation Books, 2005), xv.

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malfunctioning. Of course this should not be interpreted as implying that all are welcome to the fellowship of rum drinking. Just as the ritual of rum drinking does not sanction private consumption, an action that would be judged as selfish, an action indicative of a more deeply distorted moral character, there is also the matter that an individual can be excluded from the fellowship of rum drinking because he/she has breeched social norms. Furthermore, rum as an ontology of life makes possible the diagnosing of clinical problems rooted in social and cultural spheres. The abuse of rum may very well be considered the violation of a social ethics. This violation can in turn function as evidence to confirm that an individual is not appropriately ontologically synchronized. One is ontologically synchronized to the extent that he or she can constructively participate in a form of life and is able to resolve problems that emerge within the context of that form of life. The inability to resolve internal contradictions within a form of life or to find interpretive and narrative schemes to deal with problematic situations may lead an individual to seek comfort in the abuse of rum. The idea here is that an individual who is in the midst of a traumatic experience is confronted with an epistemological crisis. The conceptual schemes and narratives that once provided answers to problems can become ineffective. The trauma associated with the death of a loved one or the end of a love affair can plunge individuals in depth of despair. The excessive consumption of rum or the abuse of rum, particularly in traumatic situations, does not entail any sinister conclusion about rum but rather indicates a breakdown of the coping strategies of an individual. Rum seems also to qualify as a metaphor of life precisely because of its almost “universal” relevance to birth, life, and the death. Caribbean peoples drink rum to celebrate the birth of a child; they drink rum in celebration of life’s joys, as well as to transcend the ordinary notions of space and time as we enjoy festivals of song and dance with the living; they also drink rum at funerals; and, finally, they drink rum to conjure up the spirits of the ancestors. They offer rum as libations to summon the ancestors in our existential struggles; we offer rum as the appropriate complement to secure such crucial assistance. Hence the power of rum to connect the circuit of being: the new-born, the living, and the dead. We should note that despite the uses of other beverages for ritual purposes, rum claims more existential ontological relevance in the role it plays within the circle of being as evident in Caribbean society. According to Williams, “Unlike whiskey, tequila, cognac, gin, or vodka, rum is more than just a beverage, having spiritual as well as spirituous connotations. The ‘demon rum’ of … evangelists is also the preferred drink of the gods

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of Haitian Voodoo ceremonies, where it provides a potent and palatable alternative to holy water.”27 Finally, rum encourages certain existential epistemological insights about social reality. Whether we refer to rum as madness or as a demon, rum has certain transcending powers. In other words, rum seemingly possesses a seductive quality to induce altered states of consciousness, a spiritual intoxication, whereby individuals escape mundane everyday consciousness. In this rum-induced mystical state, one can witness a purity of experience, encounter experience beyond the differentiations provided by socio-cultural worlds, differentiations that have a tendency to masquerade as absolute and final. This statement is not meant to romanticize drunkenness but rather to underscore the point that human beings consume various substances to displace or bracket the monotony and unimaginativeness of everyday reality. Transcending everyday reality apparently can be invigorating. Furthermore, the transcendent state of consciousness that rum drinking can induce provides individuals and communities with the courage to transgress social, cultural, and political boundaries that reinforce the hegemony of an oppressive political arrangement. There is one possible criticism regarding the idea of rum as an ontology of life that merits a response. The criticism is emergent from the observation that rum drinking tends to be an exclusively male activity. If it is true that rum drinking is a predominantly male activity, it would seem to follow that to choose it as a metaphor of life is to embrace an activity that is unjustifiably patriarchal and sexist. There is no denying the fact that rum drinking has been and probably still is an exclusively male activity. However, it would seem that properly integrating women in the social ritual of rum drinking is one of the many challenges confronting the patriarchy of Caribbean society. Nevertheless, in seeking to describe rum drinking as a dominant factor in Caribbean society, it is not my intention to offer a normative critique of gender roles in Caribbean society. Nor is it my claim that rum drinking is the only practice that can serve as an existential ontology of Caribbean society. There are other social practices, even if they are not in the vein of rum drinking, that are exclusively female that can also perform this function. Women have been dominant in the resolution of family conflicts, sustaining affective connections to the ancestors, and safeguarding ancestral memory. Surely it is possible to extract insights from these activities to forge an ontology of life.

27

Ibid., xvi.

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Conclusion To conclude, what I have been suggesting in this essay is that both the blues and rum drinking can serve as metaphors through which we constitute and interpret human experience. Furthermore, it should be noted that the blues is a musical metaphor and, accordingly, suggests a style of thinking about human experience that will be different from the connotation associated with rum drinking. The blues as a musical metaphor seemingly provides compelling ways to respond to personal existential situations; the blues communicates the importance of affirmation and improvising. Rum drinking also provides opportunities for improvising, particularly the opportunity to exploit the flexibility and the play of language, to use language as a tool for political commentary. On the other hand, rum drinking seems to be a collective activity that, instead of emphasizing individual affirmation, stresses connectivity with others and the importance of transcending of the various barriers that block or compromise fruitful human interaction. But whatever differences there are between the blues and rum drinking, these differences make possible comparative ontological investigation. Music sanctions distinctive ways of responding to things, and rum, likewise, also sanctions unique ways of responding to things. But the main similarity between them is that they can facilitate the constitutive and interpretive activities common to human existence. Having said this much about the blues and rum drinking, I do not want to be interpreted as suggesting a cheap relativism that sanctions the idea that if there are many different existential ontologies, then no one existential ontology is better than another. Of course, one can ask whether the social reality of human beings is characterized by a single fundamental ontology or whether existential ontologies are culturally specific. From the perspective of Africana philosophy, we need to reject the either/or logic of this question. We also need to reject imperial ontologies that would insist on the existence of a unique global ontology of human existence. Africana ontologies, such as those inspired by the blues or rum, remind us of the importance of avoiding ontological blindness; but they also show us how to avoid it by recognising the plurality of styles of human existence. No group has a monopoly on human existence or possesses the final and comprehensive way of being. If conflict and uncertainty are irreducible facts of human existence, we must be ready to re-evaluate, revise and remake our being-in-the-world and avoid mediocre and conventional ways of being that all too often threaten to mechanize or render opaque our being-in-the-world. Existential ontology hence needs to be more adequately foregrounded in our philosophical activities.

PART IV META-ETHICS AND ETHICAL ISSUES

As we noted in the introduction to Part I, our invitation to a dialogue across traditions predictably attracted a number of forays into ethical issues, given that philosophical analysis is so often directed at how we should live. Ethics certainly provides food for philosophical reflection. Many people invest codes formulated many years ago in the Middle East with a high level of authority. Others find, like Kant, a moral law within them that leads them to extreme positions, as Simon Critchley’s paper on Levinas and his “infinitely demanding” claims upon the ethical subject, illustrates. One crucial question, then, concerns how we should take our intuitive, unreflective stance towards morality. The first of our contributions here offers an extra consideration, if one were needed, in support of the position on meta-ethics argued for by John Mackie: an “error theory” of our common-sense thought about morality, and an impassioned plea for rational thought in working out how to re-invent and amend the moral principles under which we aspire to live. Brandon’s idea is that if ethics were objective we might be radically mistaken about its content, but, he supposes, no one would be prepared to accept radical correction; their confidence reveals that their ethics floats free of the nature of the world, it is their creation. He allows, however, that there may remain a question of how well the mechanisms we invent for dealing with the problems ethical thought addresses actually work, and that there is some scope here for discovering better, or worse, ways of achieving our aims. Bamikole’s paper is an exercise in comparative ethics, premised on the assumption that efforts to comprehend or explain any aspect of reality cannot be dependent on a single conceptual scheme. He argues, for instance, that in the Western conceptual scheme the self is an atom and therefore the basic unit of analysis for all political, ethical, and social matters. Emphasis is thus placed on the rights of individual human beings. In Yoruba philosophy, on the other hand, with a different conception of personhood, the question of rights makes sense only within the social context. Bamikole then argues that both positions oversimplify in that they

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do not reflect the complexity of contemporary realities: both conceptual schemes are inadequate and should be revised. Philosophy begins not in wonder but disappointment. This is the starting point of Critchley’s somewhat ambivalent discussion of Levinas. He notes the religious and political disappointments characteristic of modernity. The former provokes the question of the meaning of life in the absence of a transcendent deity, while the latter provokes the question of justice. In both cases, one response is to seek an ethics. Critchley looks at Levinas’ account of ethics: an ethics that does not mean what is typically referred to as morality, or a code of conduct about how one should act, but a calling into question of the same. It is an ethics in which the (ethical) subject is “defined by the approval of a traumatic heteronomous demand at its heart.” This demand splits the subject in that it is that by virtue of which it becomes a subject, yet it is infinite and hence the subject cannot meet it. Whereas Critchley’s paper can be construed as being critical of Heidegger for its concern and preoccupation with Being (the totality) and not what lies outside the totality (the infinite), Fitzgerald’s is Heideggerian. It is an effort to demonstrate that “Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics of the human situation suggests that development is too central to the human condition to be the exclusive concern of expert developers or of any positive discipline(s).” The paper is divided into two broad parts. While the first part examines Heidegger’s conception of philosophy and his understanding of philosophical concepts as formal indications, the second part is an examination of Heidegger’s formal indications of the social and their significance for understanding what it means to be a self. It is then argued that just as the self cannot be conceived as a substance, neither can the social (or society). Fitzgerald concludes by suggesting how a non-substantialist conception of the social has implications for the way international development is conceptualized. Schuster’s paper is inspired by phenomenology and focuses on an issue of overwhelming importance in the world as we sadly know it: the place of peace in a world, and in philosophies, pre-occupied by violence. In particular, the paper argues that the phenomenological line of thought, especially in Kant and Levinas, links philosophy fundamentally to the question of peace. According to Schuster, though both admit that the reality of human behaviour shows persons to be self-centred and aggressive, they (Kant and Levinas) nevertheless insist that an argument must be made for peace as a core principle in politics and philosophy. This collection has had its rigours. Life is not a bowl of cherries, and our contributors’ aim to display the importance of philosophical thinking

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in dealing with life’s problems, or understanding their inevitability, has led them to remind us of depressing facts. For those who have kept the faith to the end, or who wish to jump straight there, we end our conversations with Xavier Vanmechelen’s zestful defence of the importance of recognizing zest for life itself as a profoundly important moral value. He observes, however, that unfortunately the Western tradition is mainly hostile to zest for life. It perceives zest as something to be curtailed instead of stimulated and this, according to Vanmechelen, is reflected in both consequentialism and Kantian ethics. He claims that virtue ethics is more amenable to his project of embracing the “primordial importance” of zest for life, a virtue that is actually required for having a moral attitude.

CHAPTER NINETEEN THE ANTHROPOCENTRICITY OF ETHICAL NORMS AS AN ARGUMENT FOR SUBJECTIVISM ED BRANDON

If people in diverse social formations have engaged in what is recognisable as philosophical inquiry, one recurrent motivation has been to better understand how we should live—what the content of an examined life might be—another has been to better understand the world in which we live. However much traditions of philosophical debate have moved away to pursue smaller issues thrown up in these inquiries, answering these large questions remains what the general public perceives to be the point of philosophical discussion. A particularly pressing question arises at the intersection of these two concerns: what sort of issue is at stake in wondering how we should live? Is it a question whose answer is given in the nature of things, like questions about the chemical nature of our surroundings, however provisional our attempts at revealing such answers may be? Or is it a question that calls for a decision on our part, like questions about whether to have a tie-break in a game of tennis? Or, to counter our proclivity to deal in binary oppositions, is it a bit more complicated than either side of this contrast? The answer I am inclined to give derives from John Mackie, whose position is mostly summed up in his well-known Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong of 1977. As the sub-title suggests, Mackie’s sympathies lie mainly with the second sort of answer. We have to invent moralities, just as we have to invent the languages we speak. That analogy reveals at once that “invention” is here being used in a somewhat extended fashion: nobody sat down and invented English or Ojibwa, but equally nobody got them from the nature of things. And that last claim is what is important in Mackie’s espousal of subjectivism—the non-human world does not mandate this or that language or moral belief or practice. But just as language persists because it satisfies certain needs we have (I do not have to choose between needs to think or needs to communicate) and its

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capacity to provide those functions for animals such as homo sapiens puts certain limits on what its nature can be, so moral beliefs and practices persist for various reasons, and those reasons constrain to some extent its content. In developing his account, Mackie made an important distinction between what he called “morality in the narrow sense” and a wider understanding of morality. Morality in the narrow sense comprises sets of mechanisms for achieving the basic ends to provide for which human animals have invented morality. Very roughly, on one side graded constraints on conflict and violence against others, and on the other mechanisms to allow mutual benefit through co-operation (again typically graded and giving priority to family, friends, etc. over more distant persons), and a set of practices to inculcate these ways of behaving and the manner of thinking appropriate to their maintenance. The Darwinian idea is that a group of hominids that adopted such mechanisms would be more likely to prosper in generally disadvantageous environments than populations that adopted more extreme versions of altruism or egoism. But prohibitions on murder and theft, and mechanisms to make promises, do not exhaust most people’s understanding of what morality involves. That wider, and often all-encompassing, conception is what Mackie contrasts with the narrow core of morality. It, or rather its many variants, do not seem tightly constrained by the narrow core, and may often end up in conflict with it. In both areas, Mackie thinks our unsophisticated “take” on morality involves us in thinking that its requirements are demanded by the nature of things. This is the objectivist error in his “error theory”. But just as we naïvely take colours to belong to objects themselves until able to appreciate some sort of Lockean, secondary quality account of their nature, so we can continue to see the point of at least the narrow core of morality (and perhaps the desirability of some elements of a more extensive concern) when once we have abandoned the error of thinking that its demandingness or prescriptivity is part of the natural order. Having sketched the perspective I am adopting, let me turn to developing the idea I want to offer in its support. Mackie (1977, 21) reports Hare as not understanding what the objectivity of ethical value was all about. There are certainly problems in understanding what objective values would be like—Mackie made those problems a central part of his case against them, together with their being explanatorily otiose—but let us leave those issues aside and grant that we have some conception of objectivity in this context of the sort gestured at above in terms of what the natural world contains. Rather than focus on possible ways of taking the

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objective/subjective contrast, I propose to make use of what I claim is an associated point. Items we take to be objective are such that we have to allow for various ways in which, as a matter of fact, they may be radically different from how we conceive them to be.1 We have many examples where we think not only that they may be, but most probably are, radically different. Philosophically interesting examples here will be contentious, but one might suggest colour, an example I have already invoked, or the nature of spatio-temporal relations where Einstein’s theorising has subverted many of the notions we take for granted, or the idea of a self as a ghostly tenant of the body, which may remain how we naïvely think of ourselves but which is surely one of the least likely hypotheses about the nature of the self or consciousness. Less grandiosely, we have uncontentious examples in the unmoving earth and much else in our unschooled conception of things around us. I propose then that one aspect of what the objectivity of ethical value would entail is that we could be as radically mistaken about it as we have proved to be about the lack of motion of the earth. My suggestion is that no one would countenance that as a real possibility, so the implicit commitments of soi disant objectivists make them subjectivists in Mackie’s sense. In saying that objectivity brings with it the possibility of radical error I am assuming that whatever provokes our thought is not self-guaranteeing. A lot of what we think is simply picked up from our social environment, and some of it is purely fictitious. When perceptual experience exists to support our cognition, there may be extremely unspecific existentially quantified claims that are not likely to be mistaken (I shall leave aside sceptical hypotheses of evil demons or brains in a vat which could possibly be invoked to undermine even this much), but the point about the examples mentioned earlier is that much of the straightforward specific detail which we naïvely take to be there can be wrong: to take one of Sellars’ examples (1963), a pink ice cube is not a continuous chunk of pink stuff. Given that this is so for our ordinary beliefs about the world around us, it would surely be most peculiar if an exception should be made for our normative beliefs. It would no doubt be salutary to inquire where those beliefs come from: Freud has offered us a story of the aetiology of 1

Cf. Rescher’s remark: “The ontological independence of things—their objectivity and autonomy of the machinations of mind—is a crucial aspect of realism…. It is a salient aspect of the mind-independent status of the objectively real that the features of something real always transcend what we know about it” (2002, 251). Of course, this is not to say that our conceptions of the objectively real must be partially in error, but it certainly allows for that possibility.

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the Kantian conscience, as an introjection of parental/paternal demands, that would undermine its claims to objective authority. Even granting that Freud may have got it wrong, there most probably are stories to be told here that equally subvert our normative intuitions. What would it look like to be radically mistaken about ethical questions? How can we acquire a feel for radical alternatives to the ethical values we currently endorse? I propose to borrow Hume’s notorious suppositions that this universe is not the work of an omnipotent and beneficent creator who made us in his image but, as local observation might well suggest: This world … is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him (Hume 1947, 168).

These wild conjectures at least afford us the possibility of thinking that the over-riding goal of such incompetent creators might be the flourishing of beetles, dolphins, or the fractal intricacies of planetary systems. I am, of course, supposing that one source of objectivity could be the will of a creator—following in this Mackie’s preferred way of avoiding the Euthyphro dilemma (1977, 231). We could then suppose that one of Hume’s apprentice demiurges may have put us in as bit players in a cosmic drama focused on quite another galaxy; the rules for the universe might not speak to our concerns at all, any more than ours speak to the interests of oysters. My claim is that scenarios such as these would be rejected as not giving us what ethical norms are for: guidance on how we should live our lives. I think the rejection cannot be that such norms are logically impossible—the Humean suppositions are intended to show that they are logically possible. But rather it must be that the only norms that matter to us are ones that apply to us, that speak to our concerns and our condition. Supposedly objective norms must be anthropocentric in this way, even if it turns out that they apply more widely than to our own species. It is as if you were confronted with a problem in playing football but the only rulebook you could find was for cricket. I submit that if that was your situation you would just have to decide how to proceed—you might not be following what has been laid down by whoever makes the rules for the game, but too bad, you need to go on with the game. If the universe has

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been given, not to homo sapiens, but to super-intelligent beings in Alpha Centauri, we have still to go on with our game, and I don’t think we would decide to devote all our efforts to trying to discover what they would like us to do for them. While we are playing with theological fantasies, let us assume that the Carthaginian Ba’al is our actual task-master, and that those who sacrificed their children to him got it right. Again, my suspicion is that our objectivists would be horrified, and would reject the objectively grounded norm in favour of what they now regard as more enlightened. They would rightly be following in Karamazov’s footsteps (in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan says he would refuse to forgive those who butchered babies, even if the creator of the universe set the example). But that, or the assurance of the impossibility of my supposition that the truth about morality might be more “primitive” than our current conception, is in effect to privilege our actual thinking over whatever might be its objective grounding. If that is how people would reject the relevance of radically different objective norms, what they are doing is in effect putting our lives first in the order of things. I claim that they can only be assured that supposedly objective morality does fit the bill if in fact it is up to us what it looks like, that is to say, if we are indeed inventing it à la Mackie. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) claim that western philosophy has been a matter of what one might call the anthropology of ideas, a reflective exploration of the varying conceptions we have employed. Western philosophy has, of course, seen itself as doing more, limning the ultimate structures of the world. It is not my present purpose to consider the ambivalence of Lakoff and Johnson’s considered view of what (western) philosophy might become, once it learns the lessons of their neuropsychology, but simply to make use of their pleasingly simple contrast. Whatever one might want to say about the aspirations of metaphysics or philosophy of language, it seems to me that Lakoff and Johnson have got to be right about ethics, since there is nothing else for the subject to be than the reflective exploration of our varying ideas about these matters. Or, at least, there is no further reality of the sort objectivists have supposed there to be, whereas there is a reality of some sort answering to our metaphysical or linguistic speculations. Yet just as philosophy might, for Lakoff and Johnson, get beyond ethnography if it listens to the third wave of research in cognitive science, there might be something more than the seeking of a reflective equilibrium for moral philosophy, if what I have said is correct. The Mackean view says in effect, given what our lives are like, what “the human condition” is

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like, here are some ways of coping with it, of achieving at least some of our aims. This is a field where we may hope, not only to describe what we have evolved by way of coping mechanisms, but also perhaps to discover new ones. They would, of course, lack objective prescriptivity, but they would be, pertinently, discoveries. One might try to see some examples of what we like to think of as moral progress in this light. Utilitarian criticism of savage punishments showed, among other things, that they simply didn’t work very well to achieve goals that everyone would want to see achieved, as one might hope people would realise that the criminalisation of recreational drugs signally fails to produce worthwhile results. Some of the criticisms of slavery, patriarchy, or the use of torture work in similar ways, arguing that these institutions deform those who appear to benefit from them. Some of the features of Mackie’s position may be seen more clearly if we note that we can think in the same way about the situation of any other living creature and use the facts of its condition to indicate what would be conducive to its flourishing and what would be inimical. In doing this one needs no more than the facts of the case. One is deriving hypothetical imperatives (if you want healthy rabbits, give them lettuce; if you want a virulent strain of smallpox virus, …). The associated ought-statements acquire a truth-value from the basic claims on which they are based, given the agent’s desires. They are not the sort of thing that objectivists about morality want; they are not absolute, unconditional requirements. It may not be unfair to say that the Aristotelian tradition has seen humans as covered as much by these hypothetical imperatives as rabbits or viruses. Some of us, however, think that there is a significant difference, in that it is not obvious that we can tie down what will count as flourishing for human beings. We can specify some machinery that generally helps with whatever specific goals one might have (institutions to promote cooperation, for instance). But importantly we can also specify various ways in which human life does not flourish, and thus indicate what to avoid or to ameliorate. For liberals that might be enough by way of objectively based hypothetical imperatives to be going on with. What I have just done is echo very briefly some of the points Mackie made to ground the utility of his “morality in the narrow sense”. If I am right in seeing it all as a matter of hypothetical imperatives, we have perhaps part of an explanation for what has seemed puzzling to several commentators (my earlier self included, cf. 1980) in Mackie’s overall position. The puzzle is that on the one hand he thinks most people’s conception of morality is shot through with erroneous assumptions about objective prescriptivity, while on the other he wants us to self-consciously

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refashion a moral code understood without the factitious packaging. The puzzlement is similar to that occasioned some years previously by the then Bishop of Woolwich’s apparent atheism combined with continuing practice as an Anglican bishop. If it is all error, then one would think the honest thing to do is to junk it all, rather than carry on with a revised version. But as Burgess (1998) has observed, there are many cases where we want to say that there is an admixture of pervasive error in ordinary conceptions of things; what we think we ought to do next can vary from outright scrapping of the conception to continuing with that language game but with a more sophisticated interpretation on hand when we need it. (Burgess’ examples include witches for the first rejectionist strategy and engineers’ reliance on Newtonian theory for the opposite strategy of speaking with the vulgar.) The resolution in Mackie’s case would then be something like the following. For the elements in the narrow core of morality, we can find a basis in the human condition that makes them likely to be necessary2 for whatever other projects we might have. That basis shows them as intelligible and desirable in general without having to invest them with any factitious authority—Burgess draws attention to Mackie’s passing comment that “perhaps the truest teachers of moral philosophy are the outlaws and thieves who, as Locke says, keep faith and rules of justice with one another, but practise these as rules of convenience without which they cannot hold together” (Mackie 1977, 10-11). If outlaws can live with the objective truth about morality, so can the rest of us3—so we can reasonably propose to ourselves a project that includes both recognising that basis as all there is for morality in the narrow sense and drawing the consequences of that recognition for our extension beyond the narrow core to encompass wider and less constrained values.4 It is important that this 2

I am letting myself off too easily by qualifying “necessary” here. I think it needs argument to show that a feasible alternative to morality in the narrow sense (such as Hinckfuss 1987 advocated) is not available that would do the trick. My feeling is that any proposed alternative will turn out to be ordinary morality minus its objectivist pretensions, but that feeling is not an argument. 3 As Burgess also comments, it is perhaps odd that Mackie did not offer an account of what outlaws, or John Mackie himself, meant by their use of first-order moral language. 4 It is part of this suggestion that a revisionary view of morality will not destroy everything of current value. But I think it must also be acknowledged that revisionary views of morality (and of other associated claims about the universe) will undermine many values some people currently espouse. Such people are then

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way of presenting the issue does not operate with an “all or nothing” approach: we can deny that there is an objective requirement for Y without saying that consequentially anything goes, or that our moral demands on each other are nothing more than expressions of subjective feelings. The human condition generates the utility of X which itself, when extended, has an “elective affinity” with Y. So norms of kindness to family members are pretty obviously useful for those in a family; when multiplied exponentially to the human race, they suggest creating agencies to relieve hunger and alleviate the effects of disasters rather than building higher and more offensive borderlines, though one has to admit that these nasty reactions can also find a basis in the exclusionary aspects of limited altruisms.

References Brandon, E.P. 1980. Subjectivism and Seriousness. Philosophical Quarterly, 30: 97-107. Burgess, J.A. 1998. Error Theories and Values. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 76: 534-552. Hinckfuss, I. 1987. The Moral Society—Its Structure and Effects. Canberra: Department of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. Available, eventually, from http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/web/morsoc/MoralSociety.pdf. Hume, D. 1947. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Ed. N. KempSmith. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Mackie, J.L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin. Nagel, T. 1979. The Fragmentation of Value. In Mortal Questions, 128141. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rescher, N. 2002. An Idealistic Realism: Presuppositional Realism and Justificatory Idealism. In The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, ed. Richard M. Gale, 242-262. Oxford: Blackwell. Sellars, W. 1963. Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man. In Science, Perception and Reality, 1-40. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Waldron, J. 1998. Hobbes, Truth, Publicity and Civil Doctrine. In Philosophers on Education, ed. A. Rorty, 139-147. London: Routledge. right to fear the consequences of teaching the truth about (meta-)ethics (cf. Waldron 1998).

CHAPTER TWENTY THE CONCEPT OF RIGHT(S) IN WESTERN (ANGLO-AMERICAN) AND AFRICAN (YORUBA) PHILOSOPHIES: AN EXERCISE IN COMPARATIVE ETHICS LAWRENCE O. BAMIKOLE

Introduction Two assumptions are made in this paper. The first is that there is more than one conceptual scheme in any attempt to understand and explain the realities in the universe; whether natural or human, visible or invisible. The second assumption is that conceptual schemes are always amenable to revision given the changes in human experience about the natural and the social worlds. The first assumption is a direct antithesis of Davidson’s (1984) position that there is no alternative conceptual scheme beside the one that has been established by Western Philosophy. The second assumption is opposed to Kant’s (1965) view that conceptual schemes (categories) are fixed for all times. The position maintained in the paper is that there is indeed an African conceptual scheme which is different in some respects from the Western conceptual scheme. To claim that there are different conceptual schemes is to suggest that different cultures view the world through different lenses. Furthermore, conceptual schemes are capable of being revised in order to enable us to account for the mutual interactions that are witnessed through the different dimensions of the phenomenon of globalisation. These two positions have implications for a relational conception of persons and rights which are at the bottom of our attempt to give a more credible explanation of the notion of a person and the ascription of rights, within Western and non-Western philosophies.

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The Self in Western (Anglo-American) Philosophy The history of the analysis of the concept of self or person in Western Philosophy dates back to the Socratic period where attention was shifted from the Pre-Socratic philosophers’ attempt to search for the external realities of things to the attempt to search inwardly. This change of emphasis in the philosopher’s search for truth and ultimate reality was exemplified in the Socratic injunction, “know thyself”. The essence of this “revolution” in thought is that in order to get to know what exists in the external world, there is the need to be familiar with the internal operations of the human mind, because it is only through the mind’s operation that access to external realities can be achieved. However, the modern conception of self (person) can be traced to René Descartes (1911) who actually used the analysis of self for the larger project of searching for the criterion of truth and reality. Although the British empiricists’ (Locke, Berkeley and Hume) conception of the self was different from that of Descartes, the fundamental position regarding the notion of self was essentially the same, one that sees the self as the basic unit of analysis in all political, ethical and social matters. Even in the twentieth century philosophical systems like analytic philosophy and phenomenology, the underlying concerns about issues that constitute subjects for philosophical discourses were predicated upon the notion of self as an autonomous individual. The notion of autonomy in vogue here is that a person is a rational agent who is able to use her freedom to make a choice among competing alternatives opened to her. What runs through the modern conception of self is the idea of self as an atom (monad). The features of this idea of self were summed up by Allen (1997, 7): “the self is a separate independent, autonomous, I-me individual or ego.” What this means is that the self or person is an independent individual with no intrinsic relationship to other persons except when she needs them for the fulfilment of her own egoistic goals. From this conception of self many ethical, political and social positions were derived. The ethical position was exemplified by the moral theories of Kant (1956), J.S. Mill (1979) and contemporary intuitionists like H.A. Prichard (1912) and W.D. Ross (1949). Like the epistemological view which engenders these positions; there is the attempt in them to look for the foundation of morality. Such an attempt was typified by: i.

A determinate and objective decision procedure which allows human reason to adjudicate all or most value conflicts;

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The faculty of cognition is prior to and more important than the faculty of will—rational discovery is more important than nonrational conviction and commitment; iii. Proper principles of morality are ahistorical in that they are discovered outside specific societal and historical contexts; iv. These principles are incontestable and immune to revision (Belliotti 1989, 35).

Modern Western political theorists like the contractarians—the trio of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau and classical economists like Adam Smith— based their theories of the state on the assumption of the individual as an atom, a position that has been referred to by Macpherson (1962) as “possessive individualism”. It is also apt to note here that John Rawls (1971; 1993; 1999) the foremost political philosopher of the twentieth century was also an advocate of liberalism which has always been identified with the politics of individualism. The epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the notion of self or person have given rise to many traditional problems in (Western) philosophy. For example, in the area of knowledge, there is the problem of how it can be established that what is knowledge can go beyond the momentary situation of one’s own consciousness; in the area of ethics, there is the problem of whether self-interest is the only ground of moral obligation and in politics, there is the problem of explaining human relations, given the fact that the self is an atom but that she requires relating to others in an attempt to pursue her life goals. The kernel of the problem encapsulated by the Western (liberal) conception of self is exemplified in the fact that the individual is a free being who is self-interested and rational in the sense that she knows what she wants and how to get what she wants. On the other hand, this individual requires others in the bid to achieve her life goals. The problem then is what is or should be the relationship between the self as individual and others? It has to be noted that the Western philosophical system of thought has not been able to give an adequate account of this relationship. This problem is informed by the binary or polar concepts doctrine embraced by some philosophers within the Western conceptual scheme. It is also an assumption of this conceptual scheme that notions like that of the self constitute constant and fixed categories of understanding that are universal, transcultural and transhistorical. This position is exemplified by the liberal contractarian tradition (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and Rawls) which holds that particular social and political arrangements are derivable from particular conceptions of human nature.

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However, there are different ways of explaining the same world; in other words, there are different conceptual schemes. Furthermore, the history and sociology of knowledge have shown that what constitutes knowledge is informed by the culture of a given people and the state of human development that obtains at a particular time in history (Kuhn 1970; Rorty 1991). The point here is that reality is not a monolithic concept; rather reality is how it is viewed through the cultural lenses of a given society and this is informed by the experiences of the day-to-day events and situations of a given people. By the same token knowledge does not have an eternal essence. What constitutes knowledge is an index of the conglomerations of particular peoples’ interactions with their natural and social environments. The conclusion from this observation is that conceptual schemes are amenable to revision in order to capture the variations and dynamism which are at the heart of human attempts to explain and understand their world.

Ascription of Rights in Western Philosophy The ascription of rights in Western Philosophy is grounded upon the notion of self as explained in the preceding paragraphs. In other words, individuals are bearers of rights. In the Western (liberal) conception, rights are what individuals have. In the words of Ronald Dworkin (1977, ix), rights are political trumps held by individuals: Individuals have rights when for some reason; a collective goal is not sufficient justification for denying them when they wish as individuals to have or to do, or not a sufficient justification for imposing some loss or injury upon them.

However, to say that individuals are bearers of rights does not imply that there cannot be notions like social or collective rights. The essential thing, however, is that social and collective rights do not make sense unless they are conceived as the summation of the rights of individuals. Methodological individualism is the favoured doctrine of Western liberal thought. One implication of this conception of rights is that the individual in most cases is at war with the society. This is what has been responsible for the contemporary debate on the precedence of right over good, a position that has been elucidated by John Rawls (1993). One of the commonest versions of this debate is captured by Gordon Graham (2000, 73):

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The Concept of Right(s) in Western (Anglo-American) and African (Yoruba) Philosophies in the political sphere the implementation and application of impartial rules of social justice and civil liberty (the right) must take precedence over competing conceptions of what is or is not a valuable way of spending a human life (the good).

In line with the doctrine of binary opposites of some Western Philosophers, where concepts are often construed as if they are antithetical with one another (e.g. rationalism vs. empiricism, knowledge vs. opinion, analytic vs. synthetic, etc.), a distinction has been drawn between natural/moral rights and legal/civil rights. The first suggests the rights which an individual has as a human being based on the assumption that she is a rational and autonomous being and the second stands for rights that are conferred on individuals as members of a society by invoking explicit rules for human conduct. The distinction that is often drawn between moral and legal rights has led to the problem of articulating in a satisfactory way the grounds of these rights and the relationship between them. Thus, there is a school of thought championed by the legal positivists (Austin 1955) who denies that there are any rights which are conferred on individuals outside the society or a given political system. It therefore follows that the standard of right conferment is societal rather than natural or moral. On the other hand, the natural law theorists (Finnis 1980) claim that rights are conferred on persons on the ground of some (moral) criteria which are not necessarily formalized by the state. There is the assumption running through natural right theory that a person is a unique individual, who is autonomous, rational and responsible and it is on the basis of such features that persons deserve respect. The explicit rights that are conferred on persons by the society are derived from the rights which those persons have as humans. Thus, it has been the position of natural right theorists that legal rights derive their force and legitimacy from natural rights. It has to be noted here that the debate between natural rights theorists and their legal rights counterparts has taken a very sophisticated dimension which need not concern us here. However, the point that concerns us is that the fact that such debate arises in the first instance indicates how some philosophers within Western Philosophy have always formulated philosophical problems in terms of binary opposites which has led, in most cases, to difficulties in resolving contradictions in an attempt to adequately understand natural and social realities.

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The Person and the Ascription of Rights in African (Yoruba) Philosophy Just like its Western counterpart, the notion of the self (person) in African (Yoruba) philosophy is embedded in the African (Yoruba) conceptual scheme. In other words, in order to understand the African notion of self, that is a person, we also have to understand the African conception of reality in its epistemological, metaphysical, ethical and aesthetical dimensions. However, there is the need to acknowledge a point of view which has suggested that there is no one African view of reality given the fact that Africa is made up of numerous peoples with different and diverse cultures (Taiwo 1985). The quick response here is that there is no denying that Africa is made up of different nations, different ethnic groups, and different regional groups. It can also be admitted that within nations, people are differentiated along ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious lines. However, the existence of these diversities should not create an insurmountable problem for identifying what may be regarded as commonalities in cultures, if only for the purposes of methodological distinctions. Thus, it has been urged by Nwakeze (1987, 102) that “there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either the concept ‘African culture’ or ‘African cultures’ depending, of course, on whether one is concerned with cultural peculiarities or cultural uniformities.” Indeed if one can speak coherently about such phrases like “European culture”, “American culture” and “Asian culture”, one does not see any reason why one cannot speak of “African culture” or “African reality” in the singular. The position we take here is to toe a middle ground between what Allen (1997) has called “universal ahistoric objectivity” and “extreme relativism”. According to that distinction, realities do not enjoy absolute existence independently of a particular time and culture. Nevertheless, it is incorrect to claim that every aspect of reality is limited to certain time and particular cultures. There are certain realities which define human beings as they are independently of time and culture. These are commonalities. For example, there was no time in which indiscriminate killings were justified and there is no culture that tolerates an act of infanticide. The African notion of self is predicated on the reality of the African universe. The African universe or world view has been conceived by scholars along two perspectives: from a religious perspective and from a humanistic perspective. According to the first of these perspectives (Idowu 1966, Mbiti 1969) all the belief systems and practices in the culture are inextricably linked to the supernatural while the second (Wiredu 1983,

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Gbadegesin 1998, Bewaji 2003) holds that belief system and practices have as their foundation the human person (but not as atomic individual). The reasons for these perspectives are connected with the differences in the scholars’ conceptions of the foundation of morality, given the fact that a person is either a religious being or a moral being. This argument has taken a sophisticated dimension in the literature, the details of which need not concern us here. However, our suggestion here is that there is no point over-stretching the difference in the conception of the African world view, for on a deeper reflection, we may come to realize that the human person is made up of material and spiritual elements. The material elements are in space and time while the spiritual elements concern that which is divine. However, there is no watertight distinction between the world of humans and the world of the divine. For instance, within the Yoruba belief system, Olodumare, the Supreme Being is at the apex of the Yoruba pantheon. Olodumare creates the world (aye) and governs the world with the assistance of other gods (orisa), the ancestors (oku orun) and the laws of the land (ofin). For the Yoruba, just like any other cultural group in Africa, the relationship between the spiritual and the physical worlds is not mutually exclusive; it is an interdependent one. In contrast to the atomic conception of the self or person in Western Philosophy (liberal tradition), the person in African (Yoruba) Philosophy is essentially social, “man-inrelation-to-others” (Okolo 1992). The “others” here not only refers to human beings, but also to animals and plants and of course to the spiritual forces—God, gods and the ancestors. There is one fact to note about the relationship between the world of humans and the world of the spirit. This fact pertains to what Okolo (1992) refers to as the “dynamism” in African understanding of reality. For instance, it has been suggested, and this is also borne out from the day-today experiences of the African people, that the relationship between human beings and God is a practical relationship. It is an experiential relationship. For instance, persons bear names that are affixed to the name of the Supreme Being: Olorunfemi (God loves me) Olorunyomi (God saves me). Most African people always begin and end important endeavours and ceremonies with prayers to God and the ancestors. This is quite different from the predominant view in Western philosophy where God is only being used as deus ex machina. The use to which philosophers like Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, and Kierkegaard put the notion of God in their systems readily bears out this position. These philosophers were in the habit of bringing in God into the picture of their analysis when there were certain gaps in their positions which could not be bridged by means of rational argumentation.

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One of the implications of the African belief system for the conception of the self or person is that in view of the fact that the person is defined in terms of others, there appears to be the problem of not being able to identify the person as an individual whose essential attributes are autonomy, freedom and responsibility. However, this way of putting the problem seems to commit us to the Western way of understanding the essential attributes of a human person. Within the African belief system, freedom, autonomy and responsibility are understood within the context of a social and organic understanding of human relationships, in which the person and her attempt at making sense of the world becomes significant in light of the existence of other beings in both the physical and the spiritual worlds. The individual’s act of making sense of the world is not bound by any rigid interpretation of autonomy, for instance. There are instances where there have to be the recognition that autonomy is required when it comes to situations of making rewards or apportioning blame: enikan kii je awa de (no one individual answers “we”); ori to ba se loba nge (it is the individual who commits an offence that is punished); oko kii je ti baba je ti omo, ko ma ni aala (a farm plot does not belong to the father and the son without demarcation or boundary). At other times, when there is need for cooperation: airinpo lo je omo ejo niya (the lonely snake suffers because it walks alone); opo giri ese lo nyena (many legs walking together marks the way).

The Ascription of Rights in African (Yoruba) Philosophy From the African notion of self or person, it is clear that persons are not bearers of rights as atomic individuals, rather, the idea of rights make sense within a social context. Such social context is inclusive of other non human beings like plants, animals, the gods and the ancestors. To elucidate, the ancestors, for instance, can be said to have rights—rights to be remembered through sacrifices and rights to have their offspring catered for by the living members of the community. This, however, suggests that an ancestor actually lived a communal life when she was alive. There is no reason to believe otherwise because, as Nwakeze (1987, 102) points out: “the focal value of virtually all African cultures is community rather than individual with very powerful emphasis on the extended family and kinship relations.” This point has also been emphasized by Gbadegesin (1998, 132) and Menkiti (2002, 40). According to Gbadegesin,

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The Concept of Right(s) in Western (Anglo-American) and African (Yoruba) Philosophies A high premium is placed on the practical demonstration of oneness and solidarity among members of a community. Every member is expected to consider him/herself as an integral part of the whole and to play an appropriate role towards the good of all.

In the same vein Menkiti has this to say: The conception of self found within traditional society is one in which the self is already socially situated, a self which chooses in a world in which it has become a self by dint of embeddedness in an ongoing community of others.

On the basis of this essentially social and communal notion of person, the idea of individual rights based on the conception of persons as atomic individuals does not have a place in the African system of right talks. Rather, rights are conferred on individuals who are regarded as an integral member of the community. Here, as in the Western conception of person and ascription of rights, moral rights are automatically conferred on persons on the basis of the recognition that she is an integral part of the community. It is only in the modern world that political rights are conferred on persons on the basis of the law (ofin) which is the product of an explicit legislation. Within the Yoruba ethical system, there is a close relationship between right (eto) and knowing what is right (mo eto). There is no distinction which tends to exist in Western philosophy between searching for the foundation of right on one hand and doing what is right on the other hand. The Yoruba notion of omoluwabi is a person who recognizes what is right and does what is right without first asking why what is right is right. There is no suggestion here that the Yoruba does not reflect on the nature of right and wrong, for one can find this in some of their proverbs and wisesayings. In Yoruba society ethical behaviour is a product of socialization which begins at birth and goes through all the periods of development of the individual. Consequently, there is no gap between knowing and doing. Persons do what is right in accordance to the moral training that has been imbibed from childhood. The African (Yoruba) account of right(s) that has been presented here indicates that such things as property rights are socially grounded. For instance, a child who is entitled to her parents’ properties would realize that the labour that creates this property is socially originated. What is being suggested here is properties are acquired as a result of the combined labour of the extended members of the family. In fact there are certain communities in Yoruba culture where members of the extended family of

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the deceased are entitled to inherit some of her properties. This position is however different from Locke’s (2000) labour theory of value in which it is the mixing of the labour of the individual with nature that creates property. Rather, the African position is predicated upon the fact that property is a by-product of the labour of members of the extended family. Such an extended family is not an individual writ large, but it is a community of individuals bound together by family and primordial ties. One aspect of entitlement that is worth mentioning in traditional Yoruba society is related to the issue of the right which a son has to je ogun (inherit) the young wife of his dead father. The underlying factor for this right is the kind of relationship that exists among family members which gives rise to a situation in which no female member of a family that has been bound together by marriage, and has exhibited a good character, is expected to be severed from that family, especially in the event of the death of her husband. This is the kind of practice which people have frowned upon especially in contemporary times, given the realities of the health hazards involved in multiple partners and the attempt by some feminist groups to stand up for the rights of women to make informed choices, especially in relation to marital matters. It is in this connection that one can urge that the aspect of the African conceptual scheme on which this practice is based should be revised in order to take cognisance of the present realities in contemporary Africa.

Towards a Relational and Dialectical Notion of Person and the Ascription of Rights The philosophical problem that bedevils the notion of self or person in both Western and African philosophies pertains to conceiving the person in a way which tends to either extricate the person completely from the community or allows the community to swallow up the individual. The way out of this imbroglio, in our opinion, is to argue for a relational and dialectical conception of the person. The relational conception of person entails the position that a person should not be conceived as an atom with only an extrinsic relationship to another individual. The person in real life should endeavour to reach out to others within her own culture and outside it. In the process of reaching out, differences and commonalities between persons, nations and cultures are discovered and the methods of dealing with differences are sorted out. On the other hand, the person should not be seen as totally encumbered by external “others” in such a way that she totally forfeits her autonomy. What is involved in the relational conception of person is the fact that persons can no longer live in isolation, given the

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fact of the phenomenon of globalisation where persons live in a “shrinking” world. We need the assistance of one another to overcome both natural and human made problems which together give rise to the problem of the human condition. There is the need for the human race to come together to fight common enemies such as poverty, disease, injustice, oppression and terrorism—both of the political right and of the political left. It is this relational and dialectical conception of the person that can ground an adequate ascription of rights, not only on to the individual qua individual but to the individual who is related to others in such a way that her identity and destiny are bound up with these others. As Allen (1997, 20) remarks, “relating to other concepts of self, created by other cultures and even other historical periods, may serve as a catalyst to our own creative process of self development and self constitution.” We think that the relational conception of the person as proposed here can explain better the ascription of rights on the basis of the fact that rights are common grounds through which human beings are treated in certain ways which are not entirely dependent on their culture, race or creed. Rights are human entitlements which enable them to be distinguished from other non human beings and it is on this basis that they are accorded respect. Whether a person is conceived as an atomic individual or as a member of a community, the fact remains that she is a human being who deserves respect and it is the other who would accord her the respect. Consequently, in situations where rights are not recognized or where they are violated, there is a dissociation of one person from another on the basis of some prudential reasons that are indifferent to the fact that persons are relational beings that share certain commonalities with one another and on the basis of such commonalities, they should be treated with respect. The position in this paper is that the Western conception of person and its African counterpart are not immune to criticisms. This is to suggest that the conceptual schemes on which their conceptions of persons are grounded are capable of revision in such a way as to take cognisance of the contemporary realities of the world; the realities which tend to suggest that we need a common fulcrum point on which to tackle certain problems that confront human beings. Such contemporary realities are both natural and human. The natural realities pertain to the prevalence of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquake, floods and diseases like HIV/AIDS; while the human realities are the destruction of the ecosystem, poverty, oppression and various kinds of terrorism. As denizens of the world, every human being has the right to live a life that is devoid of certain preventable obstacles. As it is often said that “ought implies can”, there should be the commitment engendered by genuine dialogue and cooperation among

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nations and cultures to pave the way for the conditions that will make for the realization of human rights rather than the present situation in which only lip service is paid to the ideal of human rights.

References Allen, Douglas. 1997. Social Construction of Self: Some Asian, Marxist Critiques of Dominant Western Views of Self. In Culture and Self: Philosophical Perspectives, East and West, ed. Douglas Allen, 3-26. Boulder: Westview Press. Aristotle. 1984. Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Austin, John. 1955. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Belliotti, A. Raymond. 1989. Radical Politics and Nonfoundational Morality. International Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1): 33-51. Bewaji, J.A.I. 2003. Beauty and Culture: Perspectives in Black Aesthetics. Ibadan: Spectrum Books Limited. Davidson, Donald. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Descartes, René. 1911. Philosophical Works of Descartes, ed. .S. Haldane and G.T.R. Ross. London: Cambridge University Press. Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Finnis, J.M. 1980. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1991. African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary Realities. New York: Peter Lang. —. 1998. Yoruba Philosophy: Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order. In African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, 130-141. Oxford: Blackwell. Graham, Gordon. 2000. Politics, Religion, and National Identity. In Philosophy and Public Affairs, ed. John Haldane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Idowu, E.B. 1966. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longman. Kant, Immanuel. 1964. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton. New York: Harper Torchbooks. —. 1965. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Kuhn, T.S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Locke, John. 2000. Two Treatises of Government. In Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present, ed. William Ebenstein and Alan Ebenstein. USA: Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning. Macpherson, C.B. 1962. The Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mbiti, J.S. 1969. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann. Menkiti, Ifeanyi A. 2002. Philosophy and State in Africa: Some Rawlsian Considerations. Philosophia Africana 5 (2): 35-51. Mill, J.S. 1979. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishers. Nwakeze, P.C. 1987. A Critique of Olufemi Taiwo’s Criticism of “Legal Positivism and African Legal Tradition”. International Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1): 101-105. Okolo, Chukwudum, B. 1992. Self as a Problem in African Philosophy. International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (4): 477-484. Prichard, H.A. 1912. Does Moral Philosophy Rest upon a Mistake? Mind 21: 487-499. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. —. 1999. The Laws of People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ross, W.D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taiwo, Olufemi. 1985. Legal Positivism and the African Legal Tradition. International Philosophical Quarterly 25 (2): 197-200. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1983. Morality and Religion in Akan Thought. In Philosophy and Cultures, ed. H. Odera Oruka and D.A. Masolo. Nairobi: Bookwise.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE SPLIT SUBJECT: THE INFINITELY DEMANDING ETHICS OF EMMANUEL LEVINAS SIMON CRITCHLEY

We never know self-realization. We are two abysses–a well staring at the sky. —Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Before turning more closely to my interpretation of Levinas, let me quickly sketch the theoretical and socio-political framework that guides that interpretation and which is drawn from a recently published book.1 On my view, philosophy begins in disappointment. That is, modern post-Kantian philosophy begins not in an experience of wonder (thaumazein) at what is, but from an experience of failure and lack. One senses that things are not simply wonderful. The two main forms of disappointment I analyse in my work are religious and political: religious disappointment provokes the question of meaning (what is the meaning of life in the absence of a transcendent deity who would act as a guarantor of meaning?) and opens the problem of nihilism; political disappointment provokes the question of justice (how is justice possible in a violently unjust world?) and provokes the need for an ethics. It is in this connection and with the issues of religious and political disappointment in mind that I engage in a little Zeitdiagnose and try to paint a picture of the present age. I consider a couple of coherent, tempting, but in my view deeply misguided, diagnoses of our times, social pathologies if you prefer. I call them “active nihilism”, where I talk about those, like al-Qaida, who seek a violent destruction of the purportedly 1 See my Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of commitment, politics of resistance (London and New York: Verso, 2007).

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meaningless world of capitalism and liberal democracy; and “passive nihilism”, where I discuss forms of what Nietzsche calls “European buddhism” or indeed “American buddhism”, that is, forms of contemplative withdrawal where one faces the meaningless and violent chaos of the world with eyes wide shut. I reject both forms of nihilism, but think that each of them expresses a deep truth: namely, their identification of what I see as a motivational deficit at the heart of liberal democracy, a sort of drift, disbelief and slackening that is both institutional and moral. In the drift of this deficit, we experience the moral claims of liberal democratic societies as externally compulsory, but not internally compelling. We approach ethical issues in a spirit of Diogenean cynicism rather than free commitment, where, as Yeats writes, the best lack all conviction, whilst the worst are full of passionate intensity. The question, then, is how might we fill the best with passionate intensity? My larger claim that I deal with at length in the above-mentioned book is that what is required to deal with this motivational deficit is a motivating, empowering ethics of commitment and political resistance. What we need to start thinking about in order to begin to make up that deficit is a motivating theory of the ethical subject. On my view, an ethical subject is the name for the way in which a self binds itself to some conception of the good, whatever that good might be, whether it is Kantian, Sadeian or something in-between. At the core of ethical subjectivity is a theory of what I call ethical experience, which is based in two concepts: approval and demand. My basic claim is that ethical experience begins with the approval of a demand, a demand that demands approval. Ethical experience is virtuously circular. The nature of this demand varies in different thinkers: in Plato, it is the demand of the good beyond being, for Paul and Augustine it is the demand of the resurrected Christ, for Kant it is the demand of the moral law which is felt as the fact of reason, for Fichte the fact of reason becomes an act of the subject, for Rousseau it is the demand of the suffering human other, for Schopenhauer, it is compassion for all creatures, and so on and so forth. In the longer version of this argument, I illustrate the motivational deficit in morality with an extended discussion of the relation of moral justification to motivation in Kant as his work constitutes a locus classicus for the problem I am trying to address: namely, how a self binds itself to whatever it determines as its good. Through an analysis of the concept of the fact of reason, I try to show the fragile necessity at the heart of Kant’s claim for the primacy of practical reason and how this claim is taken up by contemporary Kantian philosophers, like Habermas and Rawls. I conclude with some remarks about what I call the “autonomy orthodoxy” in post-

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Kantian philosophy and try to begin to question the sufficiency of autonomy in our ethical thinking. The wider theoretical task, then, is the following: the construction of a model of the ethical subject. In order to do this, I take three concepts from three thinkers and then raise a question that I will address briefly at the end of this paper: the problem of sublimation. From Alain Badiou, I take the idea of the subject committing itself in fidelity to the universality of a demand that opens in a singular situation but which exceeds that situation, what I call a “situated universality”. From Knud Ejler Løgstrup, I take the idea of what he calls “the ethical demand” and his emphasis on the radical, unfulfillable and one-sided character of that demand and the asymmetry of the ethical relation that it establishes. From Emmanuel Levinas, I will try and show how this moment of asymmetry in my relation to the infinite demand of the other’s face defines the ethical subject in terms of a split between itself and a exorbitant demand that it can never meet, the demand to be infinitely responsible. So, my normative claim, if you will, is that at the basis of any ethics should be a conception of ethical experience based on the exorbitant demand of infinite responsibility. Not only that, I will also recommend that this exorbitant demand of which I approve is that in relation to which the ethical subject should form itself. The subject shapes itself in relation to a demand that it can never meet, which divides and sunders the subject, the experience of what I call “hetero-affectivity”, as opposed to the “auto-affection” of the autonomy orthodoxy.

Levinas Having sketched this larger framework, albeit too quickly and briefly, let me turn directly to Levinas. For Levinas, the core of ethical experience is, indeed, the demand of a Faktum, but it is not a Kantian fact of reason as much as what we might call “a fact of the other”. In Totality and Infinity, the name for this fact is the face of the other (le visage d’autrui). The ethical relation begins when I experience being placed in question by the face of the other, an experience that happens both when I respond generously to what Levinas, recalling the Hebrew Bible, calls “the widow, the orphan, the stranger”, but also when I pass them by on the street, silently wishing they were somehow invisible and wincing internally at my callousness. Levinas’s difference with Kant is that ethical experience turns around the facticity of a demand that does not correspond to the subject’s autonomy, but which rather places that autonomy in question. Ethical experience is heteronomous, my autonomy is called into question by the

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fact of the other’s demand, by the appeal that comes from their face and lays me under an obligation that is not of my choosing. For Levinas, there are two main tendencies in Western philosophy: autonomy and heteronomy. The former has usually been dominant, particularly in the modern period, and Levinas sees his task as the attempt to breathe some life back into the latter. For a philosophy that pursues the project of autonomy, the highest value is that of the subject’s freedom and what must be eliminated, philosophically and socially, is that which stands in the way of freedom. The most extreme expression of this view would be a sort of comic-book or Fukuyama-esque version of Hegel which would see history as the progressive realisation of freedom. Levinas’s claim is that responsibility precedes freedom, that is, prior to the free activity of the subject bringing all of reality within its comprehensive epistemic grasp, there is the experience of a heteronomous demand that calls me into question and calls me to respond. Autonomy comes back into the picture for Levinas at the level of another demand, namely the demand for justice, the just society and everything that he gathers under the heading of “the third party”. What must be acknowledged is the heteronomous constitution of autonomy, that the ethical demand is refractory to our cognitive powers and the other person can always resist whatever concept under which we may try and subsume them. In my view, the basic operation of Levinas’s entire work is the experience of an exorbitant demand which heteronomously determines the ethical subject. This demand is the imperative “tu ne tueras point”, “ you shall not kill” which is expressed in the resistance of the other’s face. The demand provokes an act of approval on the part of the subject, the words “me voici”, “here I am”, the Hebrew hinneni of Abraham’s response to the demand of God in Genesis 22. Levinas insists that the subject discovers itself as an object, in the accusative case as he puts it, as interlocuted by the demand of the other. But the Levinasian subject is constituted through an act of approval to a demand to which it is fundamentally inadequate. I am not the equal of the demand that is made upon me. It is this fundamental inadequacy of approval to demand that explains why, for Levinas, the relation to the other is asymetrical. That is, the subject relates itself to something that exceeds its relational capacity. This is what Levinas paradoxically calls “le rapport sans rapport”, the relation without relation, which is arguably the central concept of Levinas’s Totality and Infinity. Yet, how can there be a relation between beings that remain absolute within that relation? Logically speaking, this is a contradiction in terms, yet it is precisely such a relation that Levinas wants to describe as ethical.

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This difficulty can be illuminated by considering the function of the concept of infinity in Levinas’s work. From the late 1950s onwards, he describes the ethical relation to the other in terms of infinity. What does this mean? Levinas’s claim is very simple, but even quite sophisticated readers still get it muddled. The idea is that the ethical relation to the other has a formal resemblance to the relation, in Descartes’ Third Meditation, between the res cogitans and the infinity of God. What interests Levinas in this moment of Descartes’ argument is that the human subject has an idea of infinity, and that this idea, by definition, is a thought that contains more than can be thought. As Levinas puts it, in what is almost a mantra in his published work, “In thinking infinity the I from the first thinks more than it thinks.”2 It is this formal structure of a thought that thinks more than it can think, that has a surplus within itself, that intrigues Levinas because it sketches the contours of a relation to something that is always in excess of whatever idea I may have of it, that always escapes me. The Cartesian picture of the relation of the res cogitans to God through the idea of the infinite provides Levinas with a picture or formal model of a relation between two terms that is based on height, inequality, non-reciprocity and asymmetry. As he writes, in a characteristic series of antitheses, The idea of the infinite consists precisely and paradoxically in thinking more than what is thought while nevertheless conserving it in its excessive relation to thought. The idea of the infinite consists in grasping the ungraspable while nevertheless guaranteeing its status as ungraspable.3

However, Levinas is making no substantive claim at this point, he is not saying that I actually do possess the idea of the infinite in the way Descartes describes, nor is he claiming that the other is God, as some readers mistakenly continue to believe. As Hilary Putnam rightly points out, “It isn’t that Levinas accepts Descartes’ argument, so interpreted. The significance is rather that Levinas transforms the argument by substituting the Other for God.”4 2

See “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity”, in Collected Philosophical Papers (Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1987), .54. 3 “Transcendence and Height”, in Emmanuel Levinas. Basic Philosophical Writings, Peperzak, Critchley and Bernasconi (ed.), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 19. 4 See “Levinas and Judaism” in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, S. Critchley & R. Bernasconi (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 42.

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As Levinas is a phenomenologist, it becomes a question for him of trying to locate some concrete content for this formal structure. Levinas’s major substantive claim, that resounds in different ways throughout his mature work, is that the ethical relation of the self to the other corresponds to this picture, concretely fulfilling this model. One might say that the ethical relation to the face of the other person is the social expression of this formal structure. Levinas writes, “the idea of infinity is the social relationship”, and again, “The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face.”5 Thus, the ethical relation to the other produces what Levinas calls in a favourite formulation—rightly emphasized by Maurice Blanchot in his writings on Levinas—“a curvature of intersubjective space”.6 When I am actually within the ethical relation, I experience the other as the high point of this curvature. As such, the relation can only be totalised by imagining myself occupying some God-like, third-person perspective outside the relation. From a Levinasian point of view, this is the common shortcoming of various theories of intersubjectivity. For example, Hegel’s thesis is that subjectivity is constituted through an intersubjective dialectic, namely the life and death struggle of master and slave. For Husserl, my full constitution as an ego is dependent on a relation to the alter-ego, whereas for Heidegger Dasein is Mitsein, what it means to be a person is indistinguishable from my being with others. For each of “les trois H”, as they were called in France, the relation between self and other is a relation of equality, symmetry and reciprocity. Levinas’s polemical point is that the relation between myself and the other only appears as a relation of equality, symmetry and reciprocity from a neutral, third-person perspective that stands outside that relation. When I am within the relation, then the other is not my equal and my responsibility towards them is infinite. It is such a non-dialectical model of intersubjectivity that Levinas has in mind, I think, with the notion of the “relation without relation”. The picture of ethical experience that I am trying to elicit can be explored by picking out one item in the philosophical vocabulary of Levinas’s later work: trauma. What is trauma? Trauma has both a physiological and a psychological meaning, denoting a violence effected by an external agency, which can be a blow to the head as much as the shock of emotional bereavement. As such, a trauma is a heteronomous fact that comes from outside the self without warning, for example a terrorist explosion. Whence arises the riddle of traumatic neurosis. Traumatic 5

Collected Philosophical Papers, op. cit. 54, and Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis (Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1969), 50. 6 Totality and Infinity, 291.

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neurosis is the disorder that arises after the experience of a trauma, where its effect lives on at the heart of the subject. Like other neuroses, it is compulsive and repetitive: the original scene of the trauma is obsessively and unconsciously repeated, perhaps in nightmares or insomnia. It is the phenomenon of traumatic neurosis, in the form of shellshock or warneurosis, that causes Freud such theoretical difficulties in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This is for the simple reason that if there is a compulsion to repeat at work in traumatic neurosis that repeats the origin of trauma, then how can this be consistent with the thesis of Freud’s early work that dreams and other psychic phenomena are wish-fulfilments governed by the pleasure principle. It cannot, and it is on the basis of the clinical evidence of traumatic neurosis that Freud is led to introduce the repetition compulsion and to engage in the speculation that he calls “the death drive”. What does that have to do with Levinas? In his later work, Levinas constructs what he calls an “ethical language”, composed of several strange, wonderful and hyberbolical terms: persecution, obsession, substitution, hostage and trauma. Levinas makes the extreme claim that my relation to the other is not some benign benevolence à la Hutcheson, compassionate care à la Rousseau or respect for the other’s autonomy à la Kant, but is the obsessive experience of a responsibility that persecutes me with its sheer weight. I am the other’s hostage, taken by them and prepared to substitute myself for any suffering and humiliation that they may undergo. I am responsible for the persecution I undergo and even for my persecutor; a claim that, given the experience of Levinas’s family and people during the Second World War, is nothing less than extraordinary. Trauma was not a theoretical issue for Levinas, but a way of dealing with the memory of horror. In a number of texts from the late 1960s and 1970s, Levinas describes the relation of infinite responsibility to the other as a trauma. In “God and Philosophy”, he writes, This trauma, which cannot be assumed, inflicted by the Infinite on presence, or this affecting of presence by the Infinite—this affectivity— takes shape as a subjection to the neighbour. It is thought thinking more than it thinks, desire, the reference to the neighbour, the responsibility for another.7

In short, the Levinasian ethical subject is a traumatic neurotic. The ethical demand is a traumatic demand, it is something that comes from outside the subject, from a heteronomous source, but which leaves its imprint within 7

Levinas. Basic Philosophical ,Writings, 142.

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the subject. At its heart, the ethical subject is marked by an experience of hetero-affectivity. In other words, the inside of my inside is somehow outside, the core of my subjectivity is exposed to otherness. I focus on the notion of trauma in order to bring out the links between Levinas and the psychoanalytic dimensions of ethical experience, particularly when we think of Lacan. Although Levinas was extremely hostile towards psychoanalysis and largely ignorant of it, I would like to redescribe Levinas in psychoanalytic terms for at least two critical reasons: It is hoped that using Freudian categories to offer a reconstruction of Levinas’s work as a theory of the subject minimizes some of the metaphysical residua and religious pietism present in Levinas’s texts, but even more present in certain interpretations of those texts. For various reasons, I find the increasing hegemony of the religious reading of Levinas, whether Judaic, Christian or otherwise, the most disturbing feature of the events of his centenary year. In my view, psychoanalysis provides a non-theological vocabulary for conceiving the affections of ethical subjectivity. Turning briefly to Lacan’s The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, it is important to recall that there are two main topics in Seminar VII: ethics and sublimation. Might one not wonder whether Levinas’s ethics condemn us to a lifetime of trauma and lacerating guilt that cannot—and, moreover, should not—be worked through? Doesn’t Levinas leave us in a situation of sheer ethical overload where I must be responsible even for my persecutor, and where the more that I am just the more I am guilty. If so, then such a position risks amounting to nothing less than a rather long philosophical suicide note or at the very least an invitation to some fairly brutal moral masochism.8 In my view, thinking of the work of Melanie Klein, the trauma of separation requires reparation, the ethical tear requires repair in a work of sublimation that would be a work of love.9 In other words, Levinas risks producing an ethics without sublimation, which risks being disastrously self-destructive to the subject. The question is, and here we pass from ethics to aesthetics and overflow the limits of this paper, what form of sublimation might be imagined here? In my view, and here I differ from Lacan for whom the model of sublimation is always conceived in relation to tragedy, it is a question of thinking Levinas’s work in relation to a rather unusual conception of humour and the humorous self-division of the subject. 8

Judith Butler has recently suggested this criticism in a fascinating reading of Levinas in Precarious Life (London and New York: Verso, 2004), 140. 9 This criticism was suggested to me in discussion with Axel Honneth.

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To conclude, ethical experience in Levinas is rooted in the claim that responsibility begins with a subject approving of a demand that it can never meet, a one-sided, radical and unfulfillable demand in Løgstrup’s sense. Levinas writes, “To be I signifies not being able to escape responsibility”; or again, “to be a ‘self’ is to be responsible before having done anything.”10 I, as it were, decide to be a subject that I know I cannot be. I give myself up to a demand that makes an imprint upon me without my ever being able to understand it. “I” am an existential exaggeration. In language closer to Levinas, this is another way of thinking about what he means by the claim that ethics is not ontology. Arguably, the main thesis of Levinas’s work is that the ethical relation to the other is not one of comprehension and cannot therefore be subsumed within Heideggerian Seinsverständnis, understanding of being. We can now see how this thesis looks from the perspective of ethical subjectivity: the relation to the other lives on as an imprint in the subject to which it responds but which it cannot comprehend. That is, there is something at the heart of me, that arguably makes me the “me” that I am, but which is quite opaque to me. This is moment of irreducible facticity at the heart of the subject, a facticity that cannot be mastered in the kairos of the moment of vision or the free movement of existential projection. In my view, and this is a somewhat heterodox claim, the key concept in Levinas’s work is ethical subjectivity. The precondition for the ethical relation to the other is found in Levinas’s picture of the ethical subject. It is because of a disposition towards alterity at the heart of the subject that relatedness to the other is possible. This is why I tend to privilege Levinas’s later work, Otherwise than Being, over his earlier work, Totality and Infinity, for it is here that ethics is worked out as a theory of the subject, what he calls “the other within the same”. In terms of my overall normative argument, commitment or fidelity (Badiou) to the unfulfillable, one-sided and radical demand that pledges me to the other (Løgstrup) can now be seen to be the structure of ethical subjectivity itself (Levinas). The ethical subject is defined by the approval of a traumatic heteronomous demand at its heart. But, importantly, the subject is also divided by this demand, it is constitutively split between itself and a demand that it cannot meet, but which is that by virtue of which it becomes a subject. The ethical subject is a split subject and this is not tragic, it is comic.

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Levinas. Basic Philosophical Writings, 17 & 94.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT MICHAEL FITZGERALD

Introduction This paper has two parts. The first part examines Heidegger’s concept of philosophy as formally indicative and his understanding of philosophical concepts as formal indications, i.e., as concepts that do not refer to objects, but rather to conceptualizing itself. The second part examines Heidegger’s formal indications of the social and their significance for understanding what it means to be a self. Heidegger’s approach suggests that, just as the self cannot be conceived as a substance, neither can the social (or society). I conclude by suggesting how this nonsubstantialist conception of the social has implications for the way international development is conceptualized.

The Concept of Philosophy Heidegger’s concept of philosophy is that it concerns inquiry into how beings are encountered. Against the Neo-Kantians of his day, he argued that philosophy is not about knowledge of objects. The Neo-Kantian concept presupposed that objects are objects for consciousness, and that the philosophical question is about how such objects are constituted by and for consciousness, a view which Heidegger characterized as the “theoretical attitude”. In contrast, he argued that philosophy is about experience. What is characteristic of experience is not that it presupposes some experiencer to which it belongs as a property, but rather that it is experiencing, i.e., a happening in which there is an experience of what is experienced. Phenomenology approaches experience as it constitutes itself in itself. The method of phenomenology is to describe experience just as it

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shows itself, without presupposing that there is an experiencer to whom what is experienced appears. However, this raises the question of whether phenomenology, too, is a theoretical activity. For isn’t description a form of conceptualization? And isn’t conceptualization always generalizing or universalizing? If the theoretical attitude is unable to grasp objects purely as objects because it has to describe them, isn’t the phenomenological approach equally unable to grasp experience purely as experience precisely because it too has to describe? Heidegger presented this objection as follows: All description is a ‘grasping-in-words’—‘verbal expression’ is generalizing. This objection rests on the opinion that all language is itself already objectifying, i.e. that living in meaning implies a theoretical grasping of what is meant, that the fulfilment of meaning is without further ado only object-giving (GA56/57:111/93).

The claim that language objectifies because its meaning depends on objects also holds for concepts: the opinion is advanced that the generalization of the meaning function, its character of universality, is identical with the theoretical and conceptual universality of the genus concept, i.e. that there is only the theoretical universality of a genus and that all verbal meaning consists in nothing but this (GA56/57:111/94).

How can phenomenology describe experience as it is in itself, without conceptualizing and thus describing in general or universal terms? And therefore how can phenomenology do what it claims, i.e., to grasp experience in its full immediacy and concrete situationality?

Philosophical Concepts Heidegger argued that this objection failed to recognize the difference between philosophical and other concepts, pointing out that the former are not tied to objects they are concepts about, in either a generalizing or a formalizing sense. Philosophical concepts function quite differently from the concepts of positive disciplines, which are determined by the objects they investigate and thus remain bound to them. By referring us to the happening of experience, they ward off the tendency to determine them by specific, fixed meanings or contents. Rather than being bound to contents, they refer us to how the relation to such content comes about in experience.

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Heidegger called such concepts formal indications. The notion of formal indication was a radicalization of Husserl’s analysis of essentially occasional expressions such as “here”, “now”, “this” and, most importantly, “I”. Husserl argued that such expressions do not immediately present an object. In the abstract, devoid of context, “here” does not present some place, nor does “I” present some speaker. Yet this does not mean that such expressions are universal in the sense of applying equally to every possible place or every possible speaker. The general sense of such expressions, which Husserl called the “indicating meaning”, is directive. They direct the hearer or reader towards the specific context in which the expression has its particular meaning, which Husserl called the “meaning indicated”.1 Thus, such expressions are not subsumptive, but are indicative, involving a relation (the indicating) to a content (the indicated). Husserl’s analysis of intentional acts had discerned the relational sense and the content sense in intentionality, i.e., that in every such act there is a correlation between intending and what is intended. The phenomenon of intentionality, then, cannot be articulated as constituted by consciousness, its object, and the relation between the two, because neither consciousness nor the object is found within experience. Instead, what is found is the content, i.e., the experienced as it is “had” in the experience, and the relation, i.e., the experiencing as the “having” of the experienced. Husserl argued that experiencing and experienced always go together, because this is how any experience is constituted as an experience. Heidegger radicalized Husserl’s notion of indication by arguing that there was a sense of experience that Husserl had overlooked, namely its enactment sense. He argued that Husserl had overlooked the “going together” of intending and what is intended, i.e., of experience and experienced. Husserl’s analysis focussed on intentional acts as static, rather than as enactments. In this way, there was a latent theoreticism in Husserl’s approach. Intentional acts can easily become objectified if we do not pay attention to their enactment. Formal indication, then, is Heidegger’s method for grasping experience just as it is in itself. The immediacy and situationality of experience means that it can never be directly grasped, for such direct grasping involves generalizing or universalizing, whereas experience is always individual or, as Heidegger would say later, it is in each case mine. Furthermore, experience is not an object, but rather a happening, an enactment in which we enact ourselves. Every theoretical conceptualization destroys this enactment-sense, or “stills the stream”, of experience, as Natorp put it (cf. GA56/57: 100101/84-85). 1

Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations I, (London: Routledge, 2001), 217-21.

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Formal indications function in two related ways. They are nonobjectifying, because they are not bound either to determinate contents of experience, or to the relation to those contents. Instead, these concepts direct us to the very enactment of experience. But they can only do so by warding off or prohibiting the sense that experience is identified with what is experienced, as found in the positive disciplines.2 This is the “prohibitive-referring function” of formal indications:3 The formal indication ... possesses, along with its referential character, a prohibiting (deterring, preventing) one at the same time ... the formal indication functions both ... to guide as well as to deter in various ways (GA61: 105).

In discussing how philosophy itself can only be defined in a formally indicative way, Heidegger argues, It is characteristic of an indicative definition that it precisely does not present fully and properly the object which is to be determined. Indeed, it merely indicates, but, as genuinely indicative, it does give in advance the principle of the object. An indicative definition includes the sense that concretion is not to be possessed there without further ado but that the concrete instead presents a task of its own kind and a peculiarly constituted task of actualization (GA61: 26).

This does not mean that formal indications are completely indeterminate, however. Just as the indicating meaning of one occasional expression differs from that of another (“here” compared to “now” or “I”, say), and 2

This is evident perhaps in the question non-philosophers often ask, namely, what is philosophy about? In attempts to answer this by referring to determinate contents such as ethical principles or consciousness, philosophy gets conflated with positive sciences such as anthropology and neuroscience. The difficulty is not that philosophy is not “about” anything at all, but rather that it is about “being about” itself. 3 Formal indication has been discussed in English by a number of scholars. I have found the following to be particularly useful, and draw on them here: Daniel O. Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications”, Review of Metaphysics, 47 (June 1994): 775-795; Ryan Streeter, “Heidegger’s formal indication: A question of method in Being and Time”, Man and World, 30, (1997): 413-430; James Risser, “From concept to word: On the radicality of philosophical hermeneutics”, Continental Philosophy Review, 33 (2000): 309-325. Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), contains useful discussions of this notion, and helpful paraphrases of a number of Heidegger’s early lecture-courses.

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thus each one gives some direction as to how the meaning is to be fulfilled (by looking for some location, by noting the time, or by regarding the speaker, in the specific context), formal indications also have a reference. The term, ‘formally indicated’, does not mean merely represented, meant, or intimated in some way or other, such that it would remain completely open how and where we are to gain possession of the object itself ... There resides in the formal indication a very definite bond; this bond says that I stand in a quite definite direction of approach, and it points out the only way of arriving at what is proper, namely, by exhausting and fulfilling what is improperly indicated, by following the indication (GA61: 26).

Thus every philosophical concept, according to Heidegger, points out how to arrive at its fulfilment, at “what is proper” to it, by following the direction in which the concept itself points. In such following, however, we reverse the usual way in which we grasp objects through concepts. Instead of being presented with a determinate content or meaning by the concept, we have to actively enact the relation that the concept points towards. In doing so, we transform our way of understanding. This is the “reversing- transforming” function of formal indications. As Dahlstrom explains, The second function of a philosophical concept as a formal indication is to reverse the customary way of objectifying whatever is entertained, a reversal that transforms the individual who philosophizes. Accordingly, this second function is referred to as the ‘reversing-transforming’ function.4

Formal indications, then, are characterized by both completeness and incompleteness, or by determinateness and indeterminateness. They determinately refer us to the way in which they can be enacted or brought to fulfilment of meaning, but they are indeterminate with regard to the contents of such enactment. That is, they do not prescribe what is experienced, but only how we can approach the having of experience. As such, there is always the risk that we fail to pay attention to the formally indicative character of the concept altogether, and instead take it as presenting us with a determinate meaning. In such cases, we think we are dealing with a philosophical system or a finished work, and miss the way in which the philosophical presentation (e.g., the text or lecture) is intended to engage us. 4

Dalhstrom, supra note 1, p. 783.

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Being-a-self and Being-with-one-another Understanding that Heidegger’s concept of philosophy is formally indicative and that the concepts he employs are formal indications makes it possible to grasp what he intends with the descriptions of being-a-self [Selbstsein] and being-with [Mitsein] in Being and Time. In this text, Heidegger formally indicates the entity investigated as Dasein (which, following Sheehan, I translate here as “openedness”5), rather than “human being” [Mensch] or “subject” [Subjekt]. As a formal indication, “openedness” prohibits the immediate identification of this entity with those familiar notions, and refers us to the way in which we have access to it as that which we ourselves in each case are. We have access to this entity by being it, but this way of being is not immediately familiar. Heidegger designates being this entity as “existence” [Existenz], which, as a formal indication, is again not to be immediately identified with what is familiar to us in the philosophical tradition as existentia (SZ 42). Rather, it indicates that the characteristics of this being are “in each case possible ways for it to be” (SZ 42). Openedness is not a thing with determinate properties, like the human being or the subject, but “is in each case its possibility” (SZ 42). One of the fundamental structural features of openedness is that it appears, otherwise we could not say anything about it (which does not, however, mean that we are immediately familiar with how it appears). This feature is co-original with the “world” in which this being appears, and its being “in” the world. But all of these are formal indications, and thus really have to be put as questions, as Heidegger does in an early lecture-course: What is meant by ‘world’? What does ‘in’ a world mean? And what does ‘being’ in a world look like? (GA63: 65)

In Being and Time, Heidegger puts the third question as “who is it who is openedness in everydayness?” and formally indicates the answer as “being-with and co-openedness” (SZ: 114). Together, these constitute being-with-one-another.6 This structure is the ground for everyday beinga-self. 5

Thomas Sheehan, “A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research”, Continental Philosophy Review, XXXII, 2 (2001): 11-13. 6 In Being and Time, Heidegger does not make this entirely clear. In a lecturecourse from the previous year, however, Heidegger indicates that “[b]eing-withone-another ... combines the structure of being of my own temporally particular

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In our day-to-day way of being, we are ourselves in a kind of social anonymity or impersonality, which Heidegger calls Everyman [das Man], and which he indicates is an existential, or a fundamental character of being that constitutes openedness. Everyman formally indicates the social source of possibilities. Our possibilities, Heidegger argues, have two, related sources. One is the things that we deal with day-to-day, such as the computer I am writing on, the cup I am drinking from, and so on. Insofar as I have to deal with such things they are a source of my possibilities— possibilities of using them (whether skilfully or otherwise) to realize some purpose or other. Such everyday things also always refer to others—those who made them, others who use them, and so on. Thus, the second source of possibilities lies in the social. The different social roles that I can occupy (public servant, husband, son, musician, and so on) and the different social functions I can perform (shopping, cooking, etc.) are my possibilities. Nevertheless, they are possibilities for me in what Heidegger indicates is an unowned [uneigentlich] way. This does not mean that they are not genuine possibilities or that I am somehow socially dominated by others, but rather that they are not unique to me. Others can, and do, occupy the same social roles and functions. These are not possibilities that I somehow generate, but rather ones that I take up from my everyday social context. The self that I am being in this way is an unowned self, the Everyman-self [Man-selbst]. This might be taken to suggest that there is an owned [eigentlich] way to be a self that does not involve these everyday, impersonal social possibilities. However, this is to misunderstand Heidegger’s formally indicative approach. If there were such a way to be a self, then it would have to get its possibilities from another source, and that source would have to be internal, i.e., the self itself. This idea of the self is what we are familiar with as the subject, and is also how we usually unphilosophically take ourselves to be. But the formally indicative approach prohibits this straightforward identification of ownedness with subjectivity. By ownedness [Eigentlichkeit], Heidegger means a way of being-a-self that involves exactly the same possibilities as unownedness. It involves the same world of handy things and the same “circle of others” (SZ: 297). What does ownedness change, then? Ownedness really has to do with how all the different characteristics of openedness are unified into a whole. For instance, the possibilities I take up from my social context do not constitute me as a unified being. Their very impersonality obviates this. Dasein as being-with and the mode of being of others as co-Dasein” (GA20: 241). For purposes of brevity I will use the former expression.

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And if I just go along with being these possibilities of myself, then my very unity remains hidden to me. The modification of being-a-self from the unowned Everyman-self to owned self is a way in which my unity becomes transparent to me. I “see” myself not as a bundle of disparate possibilities, but as unified in that they are my possibilities, and I can be them. What these possibilities are is determined by my social context, i.e., the others I am with and the things I deal with. How they are my possibilities can be shown (to me) by the formal indication of being-a-self. The point here is that being-a-self is a formal indication referring to how it is enacted and prohibiting fixation on particular determinate contents that would provide the meaning of “self”. The aim of the existential analytic is not to tell us what the self is, but to indicate that being-a-self is in fact a formally indicative way to be. Being-a-self really indicates being my possibilities, which in turn indicates that the way of being of this entity, formally indicated as openedness, is being-possible. In a sense, Being and Time is the formal indication of possibility as that which constitutes our way of being. Arguably, the formal indication for Being and Time itself is “[h]igher than actuality stands possibility” (SZ: 38). In his analysis of being-in, another equioriginary structure constituting openedness, Heidegger argues that the fundamental way that we are in the world is as disclosed to, and disclosive of, things, others and ourselves, i.e., as disclosedness [Erschlossenheit] (SZ: 132-133). We discover things in the world by encountering them in dealing with them. We disclose ourselves as always already disclosed in one way or another. Our way of being fundamentally involves encountering things, others, and the self. As openedness formally indicates, the self is not a thing to which such encountering belongs as a property, but is the encountering itself. In every case we find ourselves to already be in the world, and in so finding ourselves, we understand our being as the possibilities so disclosed to us. Thus, being-in indicates that we are disclosing disclosedness. However, because openedness is not self-containment, such disclosing disclosedness is always also co-disclosedness. I am only disclosed to myself as who I am in being-with with others. Heidegger indicates this co-disclosedness as discourse [Rede]. Discourse, which is the ontological basis for language, is how being-inthe-world is made explicitly intelligible. Yet discourse refers fundamentally to being-with-one-another: Discoursing is the ‘signifying’ articulating of the intelligibility of being-inthe-world, to which being-with belongs, and that maintains itself in each case in a determinate way of caretaking being-with-one-another (SZ: 161).

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This is further demonstrated in the phenomenon of communication or imparting [Mitteilung]: The phenomenon of imparting must ... be understood in an ontologically broad sense.... It enacts the ‘partition’ of the co-disposedness and the understoodness of being-with. Imparting is never something like a transport of lived-through experiences [Erlebnissen], for example, opinions and wishes, out of the interior of one subject into the interior of another (SZ: 162).

Thus, being-with-one-another is articulated in imparting or communication. Communication is not the conveyance of internal experiences, but rather the co-establishment and co-articulation of the meaning of our ways of being-in-the-world as being-with-one-another. As a fundamental moment of the structure of openedness, then, being-with-one-another formally indicates that this being is constituted by co-openedness. Openedness is not a self-contained being, i.e., a substance, for the self is not a thing that can have contents. Rather, it is a way of being, which only happens in being-with-one-another, as articulated in communication. Just as the formal indication of our way of being as co-openedness involves a different way of understanding the self, it also involves a different understanding of the social. Being-a-self is about being my social possibilities. The social, however, is not thereby substantialized. Although the social is a predominant source of possibilities, in enacting possibilities of myself, I also co-disclose new possibilities for others. The way of being an owned self is to have a relation of being-possible towards the possibilities that are taken up from our social context. In his section on “The basic constitution of historicality” (§74), Heidegger indicates that being historical means being free for inherited possibilities, e.g., traditions and customs. But such inherited possibilities are never just there, in their full intelligibility for me to know. Rather, they are disclosed in “communication and contest” about them (SZ: 385). The communication and contest about the meaning of our inherited traditions depends on our co-openedness. Without this, we cannot possibly be our traditions, for we cannot disclose them as traditions. In summary, Heidegger’s formal indications refer us to our way of being possible as co-disclosed co-openedness. Without such co-disclosure and co-openedness, we could not be our possibilities. Yet to understand this, i.e., to disclose this aspect, it is necessary to prohibit the fixation of content about what those possibilities are. This, I think, is suggestive for how development needs to be understood.

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Formal Indications of Development? What is the purpose of a phenomenological inquiry into development? What might such an inquiry add to our understanding of this contested domain of representation and transcultural interaction? Such an approach allows us to analyse development from the “inside”, as it were, in a way which brings to light how development thinking tends towards the totalization not only of international relations, but also the self-relation of individual nations. Such self-relation is what constitutes a nation as the being that it is, as a preceptive going along with itself. Rather than constituted by founding documents and/or the principles they contain (such as constitutions and declarations of independence, or abstract principles such as the rights of man), a nation is what and how it is only in the constant re-appropriation of how it has already become, i.e., in becoming what it already is. The effective nexus that holds a nation together or gathers it to itself is not to be found either in a set of principles that demand allegiance or in the continuity of a particular history. In development thinking over the last fifty years, there has been a debate between those who argue that development’s possibilities are already available to us, and those who argue that any such determination of those possibilities merely reflects a hegemonic cultural understanding. In many respects, this debate echoes that found in late 19th-century Germany between positivists and historicists.7 Are there universal characteristics of social development, or is it culturally and historically specific? Both positions turn around the same kind of objectification that Heidegger identified in the theoretical attitude and historicism. The debate cannot be resolved simply in terms of what is taken to be objective, because this is precisely what is at issue. Heidegger’s method of formal indication, and his formally indicative concept of philosophy, suggests that the debate misses a fundamental aspect of our way of being. Because we are not self-contained beings, but are co-disclosed in being-with-oneanother, we only come to be who we are in the communication and contest over the meaning of our inherited traditions, which can be formally indicated as co-happening. Such traditions do not have meaning outside of our co-openedness, for there is no outside. As possibilities, we disclose them for one another, but as so disclosed, they can only represent formal 7

Discussion of this debate and its relation to philosophy can be found in Herbert Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany 1831-1933, trans. Eric Matthews, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Charles R. Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), ch.1.

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indications to one another as to our possible ways to be. It is in the enactment of these formally indicated possibilities of our being that we can come to understand how development is. The formal indication of co-happening points to the co-determination of meaning as part of the co-constituting of who we are. Co-determination and co-constitution always involve inherited traditions that constitute us. These inherited traditions are meaningful in terms of the possibilities they are understood as freeing us for. This is how they are co-determined, since such possibilities are disclosed in communication and contention. Traditions, however, are not objects but ways of being, and thus always have to be retrieved and repeated. They cannot be determined by empirical observation, nor are they simply had as shared practices. Communication and contention is how they are constituted as traditions. Furthermore, the intrinsic incompleteness of the human situation means that we only have traditions in being-with-one-another. Traditions are therefore not selfcontained. We inherit them both by growing up in them, and in the retrieval of them as they become distant to us. This happens both in “generational” co-happening and in the interaction between different traditions, for instance, with migration. Traditions are not self-contained isolates, but nor are they simply “options”. Co-happening formally indicates this structural incompleteness by prohibiting the identification of cultures, societies or countries as complete in themselves, i.e., as atomistic entities that are self-contained and self-constituted. Heidegger’s critique of the presuppositions of the theoretical attitude allows us to re-think the meaning of development in a non-theoretical way, and thus to bring into relief the way that developing is always a codeveloping. That is, the idea that development can be done by an agent for others is shown to rest on a theoretical separation of “developer” and “developee”, a gap that makes development itself incomprehensible. A phenomenology of development, I suggest, does not provide us with a new paradigm for putting development into practice, but rather allows the praxis that “transconstitutes” us to inform our understanding of the meaning of development. A phenomenological destruction of the dichotomies on which the current conception of development depends allows us to understand development not as a question of technical production of a generalized or universalized form of society, but rather as the transconstitution of historically singular ways of being-selves and being-with-one-another, whereby coming to understand who and how we are is first made possible by transcendence of our own historically singular situations. Such transcendence, or ways of being directed towards ourselves, however, is

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only possible insofar as we come to find ourselves in the communication and contest about the traditions we are immanent in. Development is one form of this communication and contest. Phenomenologically, then, development no longer appears as the technical transcendence of history, but rather as the provisional self-interpretation of the meaning of being developed. That is, development thinking has to be understood not as a theoretical attitude towards an objective process, but as belonging itself to the contest over historical meaning. Fundamentally, development has to be seen as a way in which the freedom to be our possibilities is understood and expressed, rather than as the application of a theoretical analysis that aims to establish a determinate historical trajectory on the basis of purported historical necessity. An appropriate account of the phenomenon of development has to include the enactment of meaning as co-disclosedness, but this shows that development cannot be an object. Thus, a different way of approaching the subject is needed. The “improper” approach of formal indication involves giving an account of the subject of development that includes the possibility of giving such an account, as part of what it gives an account of. That is, it includes the inquirer in the account, not concretely, but formally-indicatively. It thus suggests how each inquirer needs to take herself into account in the inquiry. Unlike with the concept of development, then, the formally indicative approach does not presuppose that what is inquired about—the subject of development—remains unchanged in the inquiry. Indeed, the very point of such an inquiry is to alter what is inquired into. What can be shown, ultimately, is that possibility is more central to the subject of development than the concept of development itself allows for. Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics of the human situation suggests that development is too central to the human condition to be the exclusive concern of expert developers or of any positive discipline(s). Co-happening is constitutive of understanding, and as such co-constitutes self-understanding. Because being-with-one another is constitutive of being human in its disclosed disclosiveness, the subject of development belongs to the problematic of human being. Above all, co-happening suggests that positivist development thinking needs to be understood as belonging to the phenomenon, rather than being able to determine it theoretically from an external standpoint, and thus is co-determined by the very situation it theorizes. On the other hand, co-happening suggests that historicist development thinking needs to be understood as predicated itself on a situational transcendence that is only made possible by the

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communication and contest of meaning through the interactions that it eschews.

Abbreviations used for Heidegger’s works GA20 History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. GA56/57 Towards the Definition of Philosophy, trans. Ted Sadler, London: Athlone Press, 2000. (German/English pagination). GA61 Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. GA63 Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. John van Buren, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. SZ Sein und Zeit, 18th ed., Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE IS PHENOMENOLOGY A PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE? JOSHUA SCHUSTER

Why are so few modern Western philosophers given to think peace, while instead the philosophy of war—whether implicit in nature, as just or unjust, as inextricable from civil society, as strategic or hegemonic— dominates across the majority of political theories? Those who philosophise peace tend to assume it under a theory of contracts, détentes, or a pause in conflict, rather than think peace under its own affirmative condition. Yet there is one line of Enlightenment philosophy, generally the phenomenological line of thought from Kant, through to Husserl, Levinas, and Derrida, that links philosophy fundamentally to the question of a possible peace. Why does phenomenology tend to make considerations of peace central to philosophy? Is it the case that thought itself unfolds peacefully or violently? If phenomenology poses the question of the theoretical basis of concepts and the processes of consciousness—which has a bearing on the political notions of peace and violence but is not reducible to it—what would it mean then to consider peace not just as a concept among others, but as the very condition of thought? One source of modern political philosophy is in the search for war by other means. Thomas Hobbes envisions a socio-political matrix where the condition of nature, dominated by the war of all against all, calls for mediation by the state. Nonetheless, violence is ambient and pervasive. A juridical matrix is needed to divide persons from persons, to inhibit contact, to put up artificial walls in nature (thus the origins of the city) so that communities and states obstruct the animal instinct of war that is instigated by human contact. In this political schema, power (of the state and sovereign) mediates inter-personal violence. All subsequent contract theory implicitly approves mediation and regulated contact as politically expedient.

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Peace is generally practised, if at all, as a peace of non-contact, of mediation, of juridical codification for the sake of separation. It is a peace of non-confrontation and enforced distance—typically it is an abdication of any substantial peace, a peace steeped in the burdens of collective reliance on shared material conditions and inter-personal connections. What of a peace that is not afraid of contact, of face-to-face confrontation, or of people stumbling over one another—is there an idea of such peace in modern Western philosophy? I do not want to produce blatant generalizations on the whole of Western philosophy; instead I mean to indicate the historical limitations of my argument as well as describe what is a consistent assumption among such philosophers that peace is both a modern and a naïve idea, progressive and fanciful due to our violent nature. While there are many political philosophers we can turn to for an explanation of why peace is only a brief cessation of continuous warfare—from Machiavelli’s view that political power and the struggle for it is inseparable from the social to Marx’s claim that class warfare is structurally embedded in a capitalist world-system to Carl Schmitt’s philosophy that one must make a fundamental war-like division between friends and enemies when it comes to self-preservation in life and death matters—I propose to turn to Freud who insists that the conflicts in the mind inherently destine civilization to a state of discontentment and discord. Freud confirms the Hobbesian philosophical attitude that peace is a recent invention, one that is easily disillusioned by the twentieth-century predilection for mass violence or war. However, according to Freud, there is no “drive” or instinctual aim for either peace or war, although there is one for pleasure. Pleasure can manifest itself as happiness for the individual, and on occasion this can be extended throughout the community. However, persons are constantly competing for the desires and attentions of others, for the other’s attention both satisfies my pleasure and seems to “objectively” confirm from the outside the wishes of my own ego. But the desire of others is always fickle for various reasons, and if all relations are rife with rivalries for affection, we can easily imagine how social situations are a complex network of attention, affection, mistrust, jealousy, and aggression, with only occasional instances of sustained happiness. Even if pleasures somehow were satisfied in a utopian manner, Freud argues that constant pleasure actually dulls the emotion and renders it less cohesive. Continuous daily happiness, if at all possible, unavoidably leads to diminishing returns on the feeling, and soon perpetual joy turns into a humdrum habit. True happiness can only be intermittent and requires regeneration through the highs and lows or “vicissitudes” (Freud’s term) of life.

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This may explain conflict on an inter-personal level, but why does this lead Freud to claim that inter-state war is also inevitable? Freud argues that war flushes out the instincts on a societal level (alluding to the Greek catharsis) and gives social purpose to the aggressive feelings that are part of the way desire works but become increasingly nasty and potent if persons or whole societies are repeatedly frustrated in their aims to satisfy themselves. World War I played a major role in prompting Freud to theorize the connections of individual psychology to Massenpsychologie, the psychology of the mass or “group.” In the essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915), Freud disdains modern war machines but dismisses as moralism the notion that violence can be overcome by civilization, which itself is originally established through violence. “In reality there is no such thing as ‘eradicating’ evil tendencies,” writes Freud. “The inmost essence of human nature consists of elemental instincts, which are common to all men and aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These instincts in themselves are neither good nor evil.”1 Here again we can add that the instincts are neither peaceful nor war-mongering. Yet the unconscious goes as far as beckon a call for murder of one’s rival to appease its fear of insecurity and its own death (Freud later re-evaluates this after theorizing a death-drive within the unconscious). Freud manages to mount a defence of war in the name of allowing outlets for such unconscious drives. His essay finishes by banishing peace to the wish-fulfilment scenarios of bourgeois idealists. “But war is not to be abolished; so long as the conditions of existence among the nations are so varied, and the repulsions between peoples so intense, there will be, must be, wars” (234). Here it seems that the fact of human diversity itself, or “varied” nations, is the cause for war. Freud does link the desire for love to the instauration of civil society, but tempers any idealism by arguing that love is always self-driven and reinforced by the pleasure principle. Still, there is room to ask whether there can be a “base” or “low” peace, a peace that enters via pleasure through the drives—would we just as well call it love? Or does peace always necessitate an overcoming of nature and the drive system? If so, peace would have to occur as something that interrupts the drives at the same time as it recognizes their relentless presence, while also claiming the means of the pleasure principle as its own. This may sound like a fanciful desire again, but we can begin by noting that drives can almost always be overcome by surprise (the psychologist Silvan S. Tomkins categorizes surprise as an affect, and affects can circumvent drives, for 1

Sigmund Freud On Creativity and the Unconscious (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 213.

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example, the way shame can short-circuit the sexual drive2). The psychology of surprise may help to initiate the different kind of thinking and existing of peace that cuts through the economy of the ego. But there is also something to be said for understanding how the variety of affects such as shame and joy contribute to the politics of peace. Interim communities tend to form spontaneously around the vicissitudes of shame (alcoholics anonymous and victim support groups) and joy (a city that wins a football game). Peace is not a drive but it is loaded with complimentary and contradictory affective resonances.

Perpetual Peace: Permanent or Infinitely Changing? This brief sketch of conflicts within and between the mind and body indicates that a working plan for peace would have to untie or cut a lot of the knots that make up the complexity of existing social relations. I will turn now to two philosophers who admit that the reality of human behaviour shows persons to be self-centred and aggressive, yet nonetheless they insist an argument still must be made for peace as a core principle of politics and philosophy. For Kant, this means leaving violent human nature in place while overlaying on top an argument for peace as the immanent path of rational human history. However, Levinas argues for cutting through the knots in the same way that surprise interrupts the drives: he claims that violence is not the primary fact of existence for persons, and indeed depends on a more fundamental non-violent relation to the world that is defined by the continual interruption of the other in the self. Kant’s “Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch” (1795) is arguably the most famous attempt to posit the agenda of peace as the telos of Enlightenment political philosophy. The position espoused in the essay is one of diligent progressivism, where the institutionalisation of reason will lead forward to a near-utopian condition of collective cosmopolitanism, even if individual humans will forever remain greedy and distrustful. Kant’s utopianism does not conflict with his pursuit of normative rational claims; indeed, the combination of utopianism and rationalism is quite typical of Enlightenment philosophy. For example, Hegel is able to invoke a State of Right perched at the end of history, using eschatological language carved out of a utopian template, without discarding liberalist tenets. Though there are no lack of eschatological claims for utopia and 2

See Silvan S. Tompkins Affect–Imagery–Consciousness (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1962).

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messianic ends among Enlightenment political theory, Kant stands out by rallying for peace without invoking religion. What Kant writes is a cross between a secular manifesto and a governmental bill, with a series of articles proposed either for ratification by a republic or as a public harangue to be nailed to the door of the innkeeper who mocked perpetual peace in the first place by associating it with a cemetery. The main terms of contention for Kant’s argument are not religious dogmatisms but the organized social versus the natural. Kant concedes Hobbes’ vision of human nature as vicious and duplicitous; therefore “A state of peace among men living together is not the same as the state of nature, which is rather a state of war.”3 Instead a state of peace must be “formally instituted” (98), which is linked to the development of public right in general. Kant intends to replace eschatology with universalism; peace becomes perpetual by extension to a “universal community” (107) of “cosmopolitan right” (108). It is enforced by a “federation of free states” and “federation of peoples” (102), which are progressive institutions of modernity. Peace as a form of public right situates itself against naïveté by pragmatically pitting one person’s self-interest against another so that all will find it advantageous to submit themselves to the law of the republic to best protect their limited self-interest. Kant’s perpetual peace is above all designed to prevent inter-state war, leaving the problem of violence (ambient in human nature) to be restrained through a mix of ethical norms and international laws. Thus Kant concedes personal violence so as to win his argument over theorists of the perpetual state of war among collective entities. Kant’s federated peace agrees with Hobbes in replacing contact with contracts. Hidden behind Kant’s claim that “a conclusion of peace nullifies all existing reasons for a future war” (93) is the concession that self-interest and viciousness still roam and flourish on an individual level. Kant’s moral philosophy is not based on changing human nature, but on instituting the human’s capacity to reason, which is a “free cause” independent of nature yet also works as if the nature of humans drove them to reach their highest intellectual capacity (since everything in nature tries to maximize itself, peace and prosperity are said to be the maximization of the capacity to reason that is inherent in human nature). Levinas does not propose changing human nature either, but argues that if aggression and morality try to co-exist within reason, non-stop war will always reign. Moreover, reason itself would be shown to be powerless against violence at the level of thought. But is thought inherently violent? 3

Immanuel Kant Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 98.

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Can we describe thinking as an aggressive pursuit of an idea with its ideational content? What Levinas proposes is a detailed phenomenological account of how the very possibility of new thought and action beyond the already given are only possible if one exposes oneself in a non-dominating way to other persons and ideas outside of oneself. To be sure, Levinas never dismisses the possibility that at any moment one could think or act violently, or refuse influence from the outside. But he shows that any thought that unfolds in time or any action performed in space must deal with how time always changes and space is always reoriented. My relation to the other, who is also other in time and space, is also always changing. Thus all thought and action that is in contact with an outside world must cope with otherness, with how conditions are always becoming-other. And the only way to philosophise the other is not to turn it into the same but to respect it as other. Here then we have the minimal basis for understanding how philosophy itself thinks ethically.

Levinas and Phenomenology Levinas’ work stems from the phenomenological method of Husserl but criticizes it as actually perpetuating violence at the level of thought. Philosophers typically critique each other for thinking irrationally, relying on contradictions, or perhaps offering a poor explanation of a complex reality. Rarely is someone criticized for thinking too violently; yet Levinas even accuses Husserl of thinking falsely because he unwittingly espouses an intellectual form of violence that undermines alterity. What part of Husserl’s phenomenology is said to be violent? Husserl’s phenomenological method, as summed up in Cartesian Meditations (1931), involves suspending or bracketing the natural, empirical worldview for a brief moment to consider how the act of thinking lines up with any particular content of thought. The bracketing of phenomena lets one be conscious of consciousness itself. From this approach one can study the process of how thoughts take on content. The suspension of the everyday experience allows one to conceive of the world in a slightly different way from the automatic presentation of the world. Thus instead of the apparently spontaneous correlation of mind to world, phenomenology shows how this correlation is actually mediated by the more immediate relation between consciousness and intentionality, the act of thinking and its intentional object, noesis and noema. This suspension allows consciousness to break loose from the dominance of nature, to think beyond its datum, and thus can be seen as a practical form of intellectual freedom that seems to have some political valences.

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In Husserl’s articulation, it is consciousness turning on itself that is said to interrupt the natural worldview. This act of consciousness turned toward itself invokes a tradition of self-analysis and responsibility for one’s thoughts that is also a hallmark of ethical philosophy. Selfconsciousness thus is said to ground reason in its irreducible, self-critical responsibility for itself. Husserl believes responsibility for one’s selfconsciousness, the foundation of reason, would by extension lead to responsibility for the life-world beyond oneself. But is self-consciousness the utmost phenomenon for a phenomenology of mind? Perhaps not consciousness reflecting on itself but consciousness interrupted is the first critique of the natural worldview. Husserl’s bracketing of the world provided him with a protected and privileged clearing in which to study thought (we can note the same for Descartes), but Levinas claims that consciousness retreating into itself to arrive at its own certainty is not only a pointed refusal of the world but actually does violence to thought by shutting it off from a constantly changing world. Indeed, Levinas describes how one first needs to tend to the body, find a place of shelter, and have one’s future secure for the moment in order to begin to philosophise—in other words, one must be invested in and already dealing with a changing world before abstracting oneself from it. What Levinas then proposes is nothing less than re-orienting the entire phenomenological project around non-violent or peaceful thought as its primary condition. At the same time, he launches one of the more distinctive criticisms of the tradition of Western philosophy: he accuses philosophy of being too violent to adhere to any truth. It is not enough for philosophy to seek the truth, argues Levinas, but it must do so without the aid of violence. Thus it is peace, just as much as truth, which becomes the central problem for philosophy. Generally violence is assumed to be only a problem for political philosophy, and not a logical or ontological problem. Perhaps only one other modern philosopher, Nietzsche, supposed that violence played such a prominent role in philosophy. Nietzsche distinguishes between a reactionary violence, one that works against the primary forces of “life” and represses the individual in the name of some asceticism, and an ontological violence that is the realization of the underlying forces of becoming. Interestingly, Martin Heidegger provides a lengthy reading of Nietzsche where he criticizes Nietzsche’s philosophy as a metaphysical misunderstanding of being that reduces being to the violent interactions of powers, forces, and wills. By privileging the violence of becoming as the essence of all being, Nietzsche fails to offer a philosophy that adequately respects the whole of the meaning of Being. But Heidegger does think that the difference between being and becoming, as well as

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individual being and the totality of meaning of Being, is best understood as a polemos or war-like strife.4 Levinas radically disagrees with Heidegger, not just for the latter’s infamous political choices, but because, according to Levinas, Heidegger uses a form of intellectual violence that stunts all thinking at the level of being. Levinas claims that violence surges as a consequence of ontology, which for the subject means persisting in one’s own being and thus constant re-assertion of the self-same. “Ontology as first philosophy is a philosophy of power,” Levinas writes.5 Power is defined here by the capacity to impose one’s own coherent being over and against the change of other beings. By privileging one’s own being over any other being, ontology insures the superiority of the ego and demands that thought adhere to a reinforcement of the consistency of being. In order to uphold ontological security, thought must be adequate to being (even if the totality of the meaning of Beings escape it) in the way that Husserl described how an idea always fits with its ideational content. Conceptual unity, harmony of identity, A = A formulises this sameness both at the level of logic and of existence. Levinas applies the phenomenological method not to suspend or bracket the outside world (granted that Heidegger also argues thought must always presuppose a world), but to show how consciousness unfolds by interaction not with itself but with otherness. Levinas applies phenomenology to interrupt nature but the primary phenomena that is 4

See Martin Heidegger Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Levinas insists that this line of argument in Heidegger truly means that a war over being is at the basis of his philosophy. This is a tendentious reading that Heidegger appears to reject explicitly: “The polemos named here [cited in a fragment of Heraclitus] is a strife that holds sway before everything divine and human, not war in the human sense. As Heraclitus thinks it, struggle first and foremost allows what essentially unfolds to step apart in opposition, first allows position and status and rank to establish themselves in coming to presence. In such a stepping apart, clefts, intervals, distances, and joints open themselves up. In con-frontation, world comes to be” (65). Polemos here is then akin to a theory of how becoming “strives” or unfolds within being by interruptions—however, this essay by Heidegger is written on the brink of the outbreak of World War II, a war he initially supported enthusiastically (see his speech as university rector) and seemed to think was necessary to fight off the “pincers” of Communism and American capitalism from dominating his German homeland. In the 1953 edition, Heidegger adds in parenthesis: “Confrontation does not divide unity, much less destroy it. It builds unity; it is the gathering (logos). Polemos and logos are the same” (65). 5 Emmanuel Levinas Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1995), 46. Cited hereafter as TI.

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under scrutiny is not the experience of the self but the encounter of the other. Not raison d’être but raison d’autre. I want to emphasize that one of the most compelling aspects of Levinas’ philosophy is his provocative explication of why interruption, disturbance, and discontinuity, far from blocking thought, actually aid one in thinking beyond oneself and in accordance with the reality of being and time (indeed time, by definition, is always interrupting itself by itself). Moreover, this fact of thought as interruption is the very basis for my response-ability to another person who is always disrupting my world and making demands on me that I cannot control. But is not disruption always somehow violent? I think it is fair to describe this interruption as a form of minimal shock or surprise (returning to issues in psychology mentioned earlier), but this disturbance is not antithetical to peace in which violence would be dissipated. Only if we respect both time interrupting itself and beings interrupting other beings can we begin to understand the fundamental conditions of thought and life. The basis for thought then is not adequation, Husserl’s argument for the cohesion of idea and ideational content, but non-adequation, or not reducing the changing contents of the world to a stable and timeless idea. Instead of a self-satisfied and selfcertain ontology, this condition of existence is one of perpetual desire. The first section of Levinas’ major work Totality and Infinity is titled “Desire for the Invisible” because philosophy itself begins with the desire to know (which harkens to Freud’s notion that we always desire the desire of the other), but to really “know” alterity we must not reduce it to what we can already see, the visible as defined by my capacity to appropriate something to my vision, for this again would convert the other into the same.

Politics with Anarchy, and the Non-Reversibility of Peace Ethics involves being interrupted by and response-able to the other, whether at the level of thought or of overt interaction with another person. Levinas refers to ethics as a kind of “an-archy,” in the sense that there is in ethics no origin (arche), no centre point of justification or order. There is no point of origin because ethics and thought itself is relational, and relationality is always open to change. The self is seized at the root of its subjectivity by the call of the other. But can a peaceful ethics be implemented without international laws? An-archy yet the necessity of laws? Yes, but not in the sense that an-archy is lawlessness (a-nomos). Rather an-archy is the breaking point at which laws cannot be totalised. Laws left alone to dwell in their legality establish foremost a bureaucracy. But for laws to have ethical resolve, such laws must be subject to

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interruption, to unexpected surprise, to an-archy of interaction with unpredictable human behaviour. Without accounting for this dynamic tension of an-archy characteristic of the reality of time and space, laws would harden into finished and predictive norms. Laws that welcome the unexpected?6 What does it mean that law that is built not on the anticipation (and prevention) of the unforeseeable, but on openness towards the unimaginable (invisible)? Perhaps something of a permanent reminder of the strangeness of the law itself. A unique Levinassian contribution to legal theory: laws not of precedence or of nature, but of the an-archic surprise of the other. A frequent mistake made in receptions of Levinas’ philosophy is to apply ethics straightforwardly to other categories and considerations: ethics and politics, ethics and aesthetics, etc. There is no smooth transition since Levinas’ ethics is based on interruption and a-symmetry and thus is not an easily portable or transferrable philosophy. Levinas insists on the non-thematizable and non-conceptual role of ethics, which occurs in the unpredictable contact with the face of another. This does not mean that ethics cannot be an “applied philosophy,” only that its application cannot be scripted by any method or “revealed” in cultural analysis that reduces an experience to an ethical theme. Levinas’ philosophy is simply not a set of repeatable categories and never systematic; in other words, the method is not wholly methodical. Responsiveness to the imprévu extends to Levinas’ political theory, which he articulates against contract theory. Thus I argue that, in Levinas’ philosophy, contact (which need not be physical) supersedes or overwhelms any contract. The unforeseen contact, the difficult freedom of an encounter, the spontaneity of the event: “Political theory derives justice from the undiscussed valued of spontaneity; its problem is to ensure, by way of knowledge of the world, 6

A colleague from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, approached me after the symposium and remarked that a significant amount of behaviour by persons that is spontaneous and disruptive can more often than not lead to a breakdown in ethical relations. If I act spontaneously and decide not to honour a contract, or not show up at a given time, how can this be considered within the parameters of Levinas’ philosophy? It is a crucial question that I can only try to respond to as best I can here. First, if the disruptive act destroys the conditions for an encounter at all, then it is definitely an evasion of the ethical. Yet ultimately when Levinas foregoes predictability or normative ethical scripts, he leaves anyone in this ethical model exposed to varieties of mistreatment by the other. But at the moment of mistreatment, the encounter is broken and the calculation of justice must ensue. Otherwise, spontaneity, as long as the person shows up, is always in play.

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the most complete exercise of spontaneity by reconciling my freedom with the freedom of others” (TI 83). Yet Levinas’ proposition that ethics precedes politics does not mean that ethics washes its hands clean of all Realpolitik. It is a misreading to find Levinas as marking a strict division between ethics and politics, favoring the one and remaining distant from the other. There is an imperative to act in the political sphere in Levinas’ philosophy, although the point is that one can act in the political sphere without necessarily using only political actions (these actions include in particular legal adjudication, enforcement, and statecraft). Ethics, which does not avoid the political sphere, is not reducible to politics.7 For politics to have the most potential for realizing a peaceful freedom, it must not be reduced to mere politics: “[P]olitics left to itself bears a tyranny within itself; it deforms the I and the other who have given rise to it, for it judges them according to universal rules, and thus in absentia,” remarks Levinas (TI 300). Indeed, the most political act is that which goes beyond mere politics. To touch the other’s soil, to see their homes, smell their markets, listen to them express their lives—this is the promise of a Realpolitik, a politics that would approach the other in the ways he or she understands and lives. A Realpolitik of the other’s reality, not mine. Still, readers of Levinas are often tempted to banalise his work in the political sphere by promoting it as a “politics of the other.” It is a mistake to transpose Levinas’ ethics of the other into a political methodology, whereby the other becomes the privileged figure of the political to the extent that the two are fused. In Levinas’ philosophy, a “politics of the other” would serve to reduce the scope of the possible relations with the other. The other cannot be reduced only to politics, she exceeds the very category of the political. Levinas’ philosophy is not a politics of the other precisely because it tries to think of the relation with the other in a way otherwise than merely political. Levinas remarks in the essay “Peace and Proximity” (1984) that “one can ask if peace does not respond to a call more urgent than that of truth and thus distinct from the call of truth.”8 Wisdom inheres in heeding that which is most urgent—philosophy responds to the more urgent call of peace prior to the call to truth. The urgency of peace is what one could call a non-pacificist peace. Peace is not defined as the exclusion of all dangers, 7

For a solid study of Levinas’ political philosophy and his own personal political views, see Howard Caygill Levinas and the Political (New York: Routledge, 2002). 8 Emmanuel Levinas Altérité et transcendance (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1995), 142-43, my translation.

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the purification of all conflicts, the pacification of all things disruptive. Peace that sits calmly within itself slowly eats away at its own strength. “Vow of a peace that is no longer rest within oneself, which is no longer only self-sufficient autonomy, which is not the discourse of the famous interior dialogue of the soul with itself, doors and shutters closed.” 9 Like all things Levinasian—difficult peace! Peace is not a day at the beach. It is not a relaxing evening, nor is it pure joy. Rather, Levinas describes peace as worried, nervous, insecure, in constant vigilance. A peace of confrontation, engagement, and insistence on continual investment rather than abandoning peaceful talks whenever an excuse for conflict arises. Levinas’ peace requires constant originality, incessant uniqueness, surprise of the other even though we knew to prepare for her coming. It always wonders if it is good enough, if it has done enough. In an early essay titled “Violence and Metaphysics” (1964), Derrida critiques Levinas’ promise of ethical metaphysics as unable to definitively overcome the models of alterity in Husserl’s phenomenology, Hegel’s negativity, or Heidegger’s becoming. Derrida argues that philosophy is always embedded in a discourse that would not exist without a certain negativity of difference and complicity in becoming that is a play of presence and absence. Furthermore, philosophy cannot exist without language, and language always compels self and other into the preset grammatical rules of representation and visibility. A truly nonviolent language would have to be a language that speaks in nothing but proper names: “Since the verb to be and the predicative act are implied in every other verb, and in every common noun, nonviolent language, in the last analysis, would be a language of pure invocation, pure adoration, proffering only proper nouns in order to call the other from afar.”10 Ultimately, one would have to do endless violence to language to ban violence from language. Yet perhaps this is what the poet Wallace Stevens means when he says that the mind “is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without.”11 Derrida is highly critical of all of Levinas’ purported attempts to eliminate violence from thought or existence. Perhaps the most unnerving remark made by Derrida is that the self and other are endlessly relative

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Emmanuel Levinas A l’heure des nations (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), 9-10, my translation. 10 Jacques Derrida Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 147. 11 Wallace Stevens The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1951), 36.

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terms, that I am the other to the other and so on.12 The very reversibility of these terms constitutes what Derrida calls a “transcendental violence”: That I am also essentially the other’s other, and that I know I am, is the evidence of a strange symmetry whose trace appears nowhere in Levinas’ descriptions. Without this evidence, I could not desire (or) respect the other in ethical dissymmetry. This transcendental violence, which does not spring from an ethical resolution or freedom, or from a certain way of encountering or exceeding the other, originally institutes the relationship between two finite ipseities [selves]. (128)

Derrida goes on to propose that violence can never be banished from philosophy, that indeed pure nonviolence would be again reversible into pure violence since both portend the end of all relationality and history.13 Derrida then insists one must consider the continual difference between terms that are never stable, and always exceed or interrupt or even reverse into each other, but never transcend the violence of history or language. Ultimately he finds we are condemned to aim for the least violent situation in a condition that is never free from violence. But are all of Levinas’ core terms reversible? Is there more to say than just difference as such, reversibility as fact? Logically, terms such as self and other can be endlessly reversible, but socially the self and the other encounter each other already with historical narratives of their arrival and bear specific situational trajectories. Was I the host or the guest? Did I arrive first or did he? Did I yield my seat on the bus to her or did she get up for me? If I take a seat on the bus, then the one standing is the other to me both in abstract logic and in the social context; but if the other accepts my offer to sit in my stead, then the gift that was proffered and taken defines the trajectory of the situation rather than abstract logic. To ask that 12

For a longer Derridean reading of violence in Levinas that concludes by arguing that Levinas’ philosophy is built on several contradictions, see Martin Hägglund “The Necessity of Discrimination: Disjoining Derrida and Levinas,” Diacritics 34.1 (Spring 2004): 40-71. I do not agree with all of Hägglund’s claims, but his essay has been helpful to me in considering the stakes of the reversibility of terms like self and other. 13 Derrida: “We do not say pure nonviolence. Like pure violence, pure nonviolence is a contradictory concept. Contradictory beyond what Levinas calls ‘formal logic.’ Pure violence, a relationship between beings without face, is not yet violence, is pure nonviolence. And inversely: pure nonviolence, the nonrelation of the same to the other… is pure violence…. A Being without violence would be a Being which would occur outside the existent: nothing; nonhistory; nonoccurrence; nonphenomenality” (146-47).

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the gift be given back, that I take back my seat, would be to do violence to the initial offer. Instead of the reversibility of all positions, what we have are endless series of what Didier Franck calls “the drama of phenomenon”14—situations unfolding in time among persons that follow a kind of theatrical performance of an event. The characters in the play are not reversible because they are persons with specific histories, and though the nominal position of the self and the other always can be reversed (and can be the source of comedy or tragedy), the play proceeds in an irreversible dramatic time. What is of utmost importance then is to study the many situations, histories, and narratives where any abstraction of the relations into endless reversible terms would be to do blatant violence to the social specificity of the drama in question. Moreover, Levinas and Derrida neither pursue an awed silence before the other nor a strict condensation of thought into a language of pure proper names. What both have in common is a pursuit of a new philosophical language, a set of vocabulary and key terms, a series of concepts and descriptions of events that give contour to the irreversibility of the ethical condition. For Derrida these terms include tribute, friendship, hospitality, asylum, vigilance, vulnerability, pardon, the gift, and, I emphasize, peace. I am not saying it is impossible to view these terms as reversible, only that they are fundamentally marked by situations in which self and other are not abstract logical positions but have unique historical narratives that are crucial to the meaning of the situation. Finally Derrida writes intimately of the specificity of the terms life and death, for no one can live for me and no one can die for me. I cannot say adieu to myself, the term is not reversible. But when I say it to another, I enact the ethical injunction of remembrance for one who leaves me, just as when I die another will say adieu to me. All these terms that show themselves to be non-reversible at crucial ethical moments may even serve to replace the triumvirate of politics, ethics, and religion—traditionally the primary parameters of thinking peace but also just as much for the preparing of war. These terms or conditions can help build not a utopia where all our desires are fulfilled but a kind of critical hospitality for a future peace. Phenomenology invites the primacy of an ethical peace within the drama of phenomena, though this means that such ethics is never at peace with itself.

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Didier Franck Dramatique des phénomènes (Paris: P.U.F., 2001).

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR ZEST XAVIER VANMECHELEN

Sometimes it makes sense to shout “Live!” to someone who lives. This sounds like a koan, but is not as puzzling as it seems. The speaker just wants to express the thought that the addressee lacks zest. What is zest? It is an attitude towards life. It is the very basic attitude of embracing life and it manifests itself as vitality. A zestful person shows interest and enthusiasm. She is ready both to take action and to go through experiences. I owe the term “zest” to Bertrand Russell. In The Conquest of Happiness (1930) he argued that zest is “the most universal and distinctive mark of happy men” (Russell 2006, 110). I believe that Russell has a point here. Zest is of utmost importance for a human being. This essay extols zest as a virtue. My plea requires that one takes normative ethics broadly, i.e. not only as the search for principles of right action. Broadly conceived normative ethics tries also to answer the question of how one should live or just what is really important when it comes to living the life of a human being. My claim is that the virtue of zest is a primordial component of the moral attitude broadly conceived. The starting point of my argument is the mental state in which zest has vanished completely: depression.

Endemic Depression: a Western Concern? Clinical depression is what psychiatrists call a mood disorder. The two major diagnostic systems for mental disorders—ICD-10 of the World Health Organization and DSM-IV of the American Psychiatric Association—are fairly in concert when it comes to describing clinical depression. A person affected by depression suffers, for a long period, a general loss of interest in daily and social activities she used to enjoy: she is listless, she is disinterested in life up to the point of feeling lifeless, her energy decreases, she feels tired, she oversleeps and loses appetite, she has difficulty concentrating and making decisions. It should be mentioned that

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in a case of bipolar depression this general loss of interest alternates with agitation or excitement: a depressive person can also be restless, feel anxious, keep moving around, be sleepless or overeat. Or, in my own terminology: either zest disappears or frenzy takes its place. A person affected by depression also feels sad: she feels empty, worthless and even guilty, she thinks she is helpless and hopeless, and she considers self-harm or even suicide. Clinical depression is a serious situation. It becomes even more serious when we look at the alarming figures about the one year prevalence rate of clinical depression in the West. Major depression and less severe depression known as dysthemia actually affects 9.5% of Americans and 8.6% of Europeans in any given year. There is a remarkable gender difference in both regions: the prevalence rates for women are respectively 12% and 10%, for men 7% and 6.6% (NIMH; Ayoso-Mateos et al. 2001). Thirteen per cent of the people affected by major depression sooner or later commit suicide. According to the DALY-indicator1 used by the World Health Organisation to measure the burden of diseases on a society, depression is the most important burden of disease in the United States and the third most important burden of disease in Europe. The prediction is that the relative importance of depression as burden of disease will increase. In nonWestern regions the figures are less alarming. In Africa depression only takes the thirteenth place as a burden of disease (Üstün 2004). Of course one has to be wary of figures. The European study proves that there are significant differences between urban and rural regions in Europe. And it is not true that depression is only a marginal problem in the rest of the world, especially not in the Middle East and the rest of the Americas. The prevalence of depression in developing countries, especially for women living in extreme poverty is high as well (Patel et al. 2001). Moreover, it is well-known that symptoms of depression can vary with culture, so one should wonder whether clinical depression is always diagnosed as such. Many more questions can be asked about this way of presentation. I only take these figures as an indication that Western society seems to struggle with a depressive state of mind (according to figures which are themselves the product of a Western approach). Matters become still more slippery when we ask about the causes of depression. When it comes to explaining depression it is very common to take an “ecumenical” stance. There are many factors explaining depressive periods in a human life: biological, psychic and social factors. The challenging question is: how do these factors relate? It is neither my aim to 1

Disability adjusted life years (DALY) is the sum of the years lost due to premature mortality (YLL) and the years lost due to disability (YLD).

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answer this question, nor to go into the different theories on depression. In line with the motto of the symposium—“It is a function, indeed a duty, of philosophy in any society to examine the intellectual foundation of its culture” (Kwasi Wiredu)—I want to tackle the question: is there something in the attitude of Western culture towards zest which could help to explain the actual prevalence of depression in the West? I believe we can find a clue for an answer in Western ethics.

A Western Ethical Deficit There is no doubt that an important strand in Western culture is hostile to zest, because it is a kind of lust: lust for life. Think about Plato’s attitude towards desire. In his picturing a human being as a driver (reason) trying to control two horses (honour/pride and desire), it is the desirous horse which seems the prime candidate for bringing the human being to ruin. Add to this the Christian tradition in which the earth is the vale of tears where one will work in the sweat of one’s face because of one’s sinfulness, and in which lust (usually understood as sexual desire) is one of the seven deadly sins, and we have a setting which is quite hostile to zest (Blackburn 2004). It is this tendency in Western culture which feels suspicious about readily enjoying the basic activities and experiences of human life (many of which are joint activities and experiences)—e.g.: to eat, to drink, to work, to dialogue, to sing, to dance, to have sex, to learn, to rest, to feel the morning sun and the evening breeze—or about being curious or adventurous. In this tradition zest is something to be curbed instead of stimulated. Human flourishing is dependent on one’s capacity to control zest. That is what morality is all about, is it not? I do not believe that this tendency totally exhausts Western tradition. There has at least always been a marginal tendency to oppose this suspicious attitude towards zest. Think of the Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, who highly valued the immediacy and the simplicity which are characteristic of zest: he spoke frankly, he satisfied his desires immediately, he was undaunted by the authorities and he did not give a damn about public opinion. Think also of Friedrich Nietzsche for whom morality is only a revengeful instrument of weak people to control strong people and who furiously opposed a morality of obedience. He wanted to turn this kind of morality into a morality of the will to power, also described as the will to live (Nietzsche 1990, §62). This will to live was in his view overpowering, exploiting, dangerous and morbid (for insightful readings of Nietzsche’s virtue ethics of enthusiasm and life affirmation, see Solomon 1998, 110-116 and Swanton 1998). Diogenes and Nietzsche point in a provocative way to an

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important deficit in mainstream morality and ethics, which is in my view a lack of recognition of the moral importance of zest. I prefer a less provocative version of their plea for zest which is in line with a contemporary discussion in normative ethics, initiated by Elisabeth Anscombe’s 1958 paper “Modern moral philosophy”. Modern ethical theory has been dominated by consequentialism— defending some or other version of Bentham’s utility principle, e.g.: the right action is the action that promotes maximum well-being from an impartial point of view—and Kantian ethics—defending some or other version of Kant’s categorical imperative, e.g.: the right action is the action which shows unconditional respect for all persons concerned by not allowing someone to disagree with it. In the 1970s and 1980s objections were raised against these two theories, noting that they were not able to account for some aspects of a human life which we nevertheless consider very important. To put it differently: it is possible to act perfectly in accordance with the principles of consequentialism and/or Kantian ethics, without being an admirable person. Bernard Williams held against consequentialism that it cannot account for the importance of “being taken up or involved in any vast range of projects” and of the commitments these projects imply (Williams 1973, 110-117). In a similar vein Michael Stocker argued that modern ethical theory in general does not account for the importance of personal relationships of love, friendship, fellow feeling, and so on. For that reason he thinks that there is a disharmony between normative ethical theory and what motivates people in moral practice (Stocker 1976, 455-462). In Susan Wolf’s view a person may be a moral saint according to the principles of utilitarianism or Kantian ethics, but fail to be the kind of person we want her to be: a person with projects, a person who is aiming at individual perfection (Wolf 1982, 427-435). Harry Frankfurt repeatedly argued for the importance of personal ideals which are in his view irreducible to morality: what we identify with and care about, what we love (Frankfurt 1988, 80-82; Frankfurt 2004, 5-8). And finally, there is Michael Slote, who used Williams’ Gauguin example (Williams 1976, 117-122) to show that a person can be admirably immoral. From the point of view of utilitarianism and Kantian ethics, Gauguin’s decision to leave his family to go and live as an artist on a Pacific island cannot be morally justified. However, many will admire his resolution to leave his family, which turned out to be a quite successful choice, artistically speaking (Slote 1983, chap. 4). All these objections point in the same direction, i.e. a deficit in modern ethical theories. To all appearances, there is something beside the promotion of maximal wellbeing and the unconditional respect for all persons concerned which is of

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utmost importance. Depending on whether one has a broad or narrow conception of morality, the additional element—an interest of some kind—will be included in or excluded from normative ethical theory. Since I see no reason to exclude from the moral attitude any component which is of utmost importance when it comes to live the life of a human being on the condition that one controls it to some extent, I will defend an inclusive view. An obvious ally in this defence is the virtue ethicist. The objection that a person may act perfectly in accordance with the principles of consequentialism and/or Kantian ethics without being an admirable person led to the recent revival of virtue ethics. Contemporary virtue ethics, like its classical predecessor, concentrates on what it means to be a good person. It is not action-centred but agent-centred. It argues for the importance of having excellent character traits. A character trait is more than mere tendency (Hursthouse 1999, 10-14). It is a deeply embedded way of perceiving and attending to situations, feeling about them, evaluating them and making decisions. Because of this a person with, for example, an honest character will reliably act honestly. Typically, virtue ethics will also oppose the possibility to codify virtuous behaviour. Michael Slote makes a distinction between virtue ethics that is only agentfocused and agent-based virtue ethics (Slote 1995, 83-84; Slote 1997, 178, 206-210). Both give character traits pride of place, but only the latter finds a foundation for the excellence of the character trait in itself. It does not refer to something like “human nature” or to the principles of consequentialism and/or Kantian ethics (these moral theories might easily grant importance to character traits, but can never make them the norm). Essential to agent-based virtue ethics is that the character fixes the rightness of an action: an action is honest or zestful merely because it is the expression of honesty or zest. The moral importance of honesty or zest cannot be derived from something external to the character trait. Slote makes a further distinction between “warm” and “cold” agent-based virtue ethics. He advocates a virtue ethics based on compassion or universal benevolence, which is “warm” because it implies caring for others (Slote 1997, 216-229). My proposal is to examine the other track, so-called “cold agent-based virtue ethics”, by giving zest centre-stage. This is not inimical to the “warm” track. Zest is all in all a kind of love for life. But I decline to link zest immediately to personal relationships because this brings us straight back to the high-minded moral ideals which turned out to leave something important out. The objection of Williams, Stocker, Wolf, Frankfurt and Slote himself could be maintained against an ethics of compassion and universal benevolence (remember the Gaugain example).

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The Virtue of Zest Let me specify the nature of zest. The attitude of zest is not simply an attitude of valuing life. Some particular moral traditions sanctify life but despise zest. Zest is the attitude of embracing life or of being attached to life. It is the attitude of taking interest in or being enthusiastic about the activities and experiences which constitute a human life. What is important is not the precise list of these activities and experiences (they can take many shapes: see the previous section for an arbitrary open-ended list and Russell 2006, 113-115), but their uncomplicated nature. They have nothing to do with some idealised or lofty image of what a human being should aim at. Zest is an attitude of openness towards these uncomplicated activities and experiences. The attention turned outward is also Russell’s main characterisation of zest (Russell 2006, 112-113). It is the capacity to undertake action, to take the initiative or to make a first move, as well as the capacity not to be hostile to being overcome by events, to count oneself lucky when events turn out to be good and not to be completely upset when they turn out to be bad. Although zest relates to the uncomplicated activities and experiences constituting a human life, it is itself a complex attitude. Zest has the structure of a mood with a strong conative and a hedonic component. It is the mood of being positive towards life which pervades someone’s Lebenswelt: it is a way of looking at things, events, situations, courses of action, encounters, and of evaluating them. It is the kind of mood to which a strong desire belongs. It implies lust for life. Therefore it is a kind of basic vitality to do or to experience what is part of a human life. Moreover, someone having zest enjoys life. This means that his activities and experiences are seasoned with pleasure. Without zest it is impossible to develop particular attachments to activities, experiences, things and persons. Might zest be a virtue? Definitely. First, zest is a candidate for being a virtue because it is a deeply embedded character trait which makes someone act reliably in a certain way. Although it is basically a disposition to enjoy uncomplicated human activities and experiences, I have just demonstrated that it is a rather complex disposition. It implies a durable way of looking at the world, of evaluating actions, of feeling, desiring, acting: when someone has this disposition, it ensures that to some extent she will exhibit vitality and enjoy life. Although one can give some general description of what zest consists of, it cannot be codified because of the innumerable forms it can take: it can be expressed in multifarious ways. Secondly, zest seems to be also a good candidate for being an agentbased virtue because it cannot be reduced to realising human nature or to

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the principles of consequentialism and/or Kantian ethics. Someone acting zestfully is not perfecting his human nature: he is just open to what the world and human life offer. Moreover, zest is important regardless of considerations of well-being and of the basic attitude of unconditional respect for human beings. Is zest a good to be promoted because it contributes to someone’s well-being? Leaving aside that promoting enthusiasm will always be a self-destroying activity, the importance of zest for the moral attitude does not amount to take a promoting attitude towards it, but to have it as a disposition that motivates human action. This disposition can conflict with the attitude of promoting well-being, e.g. when zest seduces someone to undertake something risky or for a moment not to care too much for his health. Compared to someone lacking zest, e.g. in chronic depression, someone having zest is of course better off, but that doesn’t make zest a good to be promoted. Certainly not as it is understood in the utilitarian version of consequentialism: zest is not the attitude of promoting pleasure, but of enjoying acting and experiencing things. And neither is zest a duty one has out of respect for oneself or other persons: it is an attitude of love towards life, not of a duty to live. The irreducible character of zest becomes clear in situations where well-being and respect are almost absent (such as slavery), but zest is the last straw one can grasp at. Singing the blues could be for that reason the paradigm of indestructible zest. So the rightness of an action as to its zestful character is just that it exhibits zest. The importance of acting zestfully is not reducible to something else. Here comes the crucial question: is zest a virtue of basic importance? Why should normative ethics start with the quite unusual plea for zest? This is Russell’s argument: Suppose one man likes strawberries and another not. […] There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good; to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. What is true in this trivial instance is equally true in more important matters (Russell 2006, 111).

This seems to boil down to the argument that if someone has a choice between a life in which she likes doing and experiencing things and a life in which she doesn’t, others things being equal, the former life is the better one and ought to be chosen. More is needed however to prove that zest is primordial in the moral attitude. I have two further arguments. The first is

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that it fills the ethical deficit attributed to consequentialism and Kantian ethics. Like other proposals it points to the importance of taking an interest in something. Highlighting the importance of zest is nothing but defending in the most general way the importance of being interested in the external world. So far I am in line with the widespread objection that mainstream normative ethics leaves something out. The second argument is that zest fills the ethical deficit better than rival proposals. Whereas most critics have high-minded ideas on what should be added, my answer is much more down to earth. The importance of special relationships and projects, personal ideals and individual perfection, the “warm” or other-directed virtues of caring, benevolence or compassion all have the disadvantage that they risk to maintain the ethical deficit they are meant to fill. They are lofty ideals threatening to overlook the importance of taking interest in and being enthusiastic about the simple things of life. To that extent they join the long tradition of suspiciousness of the lusty life. Let me put it in another way: compared to other proposals, zest is the better candidate for being a virtue in the strong, agent-based sense of virtue. Whereas caring, benevolence, and so forth have components which can easily be accounted for by considerations of well-being or an attitude of unconditional respect for persons, this is not the case for zest. The importance of zest lies completely in itself. Here is an important additional remark. Of course I am not arguing that zest is the only important component of a moral attitude. I am only arguing that normative ethics should acknowledge the primordial importance of the virtue of zest, which is nothing else than an affirmative attitude towards life. This does not exclude that we should also live up to principles of mainstream normative ethics. It is also of the utmost importance to live well, i.e. to promote human well-being. This holds as well for unconditional basic respect for the human person, i.e. to give everyone a voice, and so on. And I agree that conditions of well-being and of respect can become so bad that a person loses zest as well. My claim is that we should aim at an integrated normative ethics that supplements considerations of well-being and the attitude of unconditional basic respect with the virtue of zest, understood in the agent-based way. The virtue of zest does not merely support considerations of well-being and an attitude of unconditional basic respect, but should be treated on a par with them. In order to highlight the basic and irreducible importance of zest, imagine a person who has lost zest: someone chronically depressed. The point of considerations of well-being and even of unconditional basic respect seems to vanish for the depressed agent because of a lack of zest, and not

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the other way around. So, in my view the virtue of zest is primordial for the moral attitude.

Two Objections I will consider two objections against supplementing considerations of well-being and the unconditional respect for persons with the virtue of zest as the most basic element of the moral attitude. These objections also explain the tacit opposition in moral practice and ethics to the recognition of the moral importance of zest. The first objection is that zest tends to be excessive and as a consequence immoral. Lust is considered to be a deadly sin because one leaps to the identification of sexual desire with excessive sexual desire, as if appetite were always gluttony. The supposition is that the strong desire belonging to zest must, by its very nature, end up in excess. This is a deeprooted and also very popular idea. Human desire would tend to transgression and the object of desire would be infinite, impossible to realise and so on. I have two replies to this objection. First, I agree that the desire to live may become excessive. It is possible that zest ends up in a kind of frenzy in which one insatiably jumps from one activity to another, from one experience to the next (as in the periods of excitement in bipolar depression). The question is whether this is necessarily the case. Is desire by nature unbridled? I do not think so. Why would a sense of moderation or measure be completely alien to desire? The idea that a human being always wants more or never gets what he really wants is the very idea I am questioning here. Excess is definitely not part of the attitude I was thinking about when I described zest as taking an interest in and being enthusiastic about activities and experiences constituting human life. I am not saying that excess is no problem. It is a tremendous problem, but one related to the absence of zest much more than to its presence (remember again the periods of agitation in bipolar depression and the excesses of the Western leisure industry). What I am saying is that I oppose building excess into the concept of desire (Blackburn 2004, 27). My second reply is that excess is no less problematic for mainstream normative ethics. Think of the demandingness of consequentialism and of the unconditional character, and for that reason rigourism, of Kantian ethics. Both lead quite directly to excess. How many generations does one have to count in promoting the well-being of humanity? Is it really so that one should never lie or that one ought never to do something which does not have the consent of all persons involved? I do not think so. Hence, even unquestionable principles of ethics turn out to be vulnerable to excess. That is why I think it is also

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necessary to make a plea for a second virtue in the strong, agent-based sense, viz. detachment. It is the capacity to let things go in due time and in this way it is the antidote to our susceptibility to excess. As an attitude towards life it is as important as zest. Since it falls outside the scope of this essay I will not go into it. However, I want to note that detachment is not the opposite of zest for life. It does not oppose being interested or being enthusiast. It only requires becoming detached from life when necessary, e.g. when some enterprises do not belong any longer to one’s possibilities because of failing health, in the same way that it requires becoming detached from the promotion of well-being and equal basic respect when necessary. It protects one from excess. It is in fact the attitude which safeguards the other components of a moral attitude. Like zest it is rarely considered part of a moral attitude (many would rather consider it a religious attitude). The second objection goes in the opposite direction. Whereas the first puts zest in the realm of vice, this objection puts it in the realm of innocence. The objection is that having zest is something that happens to one. It is a character trait the presence or absence of which is highly dependent on one’s genes and social environment. “Genuine zest … is part of the natural make-up of human beings except in so far as it has been destroyed by unfortunate circumstances” (Russell 2006, 118). So, it is a character trait one is not accountable for, no more than one can be blamed for being in a state of chronic depression. In other words: zest precedes morality. One should count oneself lucky if one has it. There is no need to be upset if one does not, for nothing can be done about it. How can one reply to this objection? It is a difficult problem because it concerns also the complex question of how the common sense view of a human being as a rational and autonomous agent relates to biological, psychic and social causes determining his behaviour. Therefore, I can only reply in a general way. Let me admit that to some extent zest is a biopsychosocially determined state of mind. To the extent that zest is determined by factors individual agents do not control it is a matter of (moral) luck. Does this exempt us completely from responsibility as to an attitude of zest? Compare this to the excessive behaviour of an addict. It has been proven that to some extent the inclination to addiction is biopsychosocially determined. Does that mean that the addict is completely cleared of accountability when it comes to the use of psychoactive substances? Of course not. Similar things can be said about zest. More importantly, zest is not at all an ‘innocent’ attitude. It is a complex attitude that can be sustained or undermined. It is possible to encourage someone’s lifeaffirming attitude or to discourage it. Being interested is something that we

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can teach our children by showing them the enjoyments of a common meal, by arousing their curiosity, by teaching them to dance and to sing, and so on and so forth. It is also possible to run counter to their enthusiasm by pointing immediately to risks or to the lurking threat of excess. Zest (and its absence) is something that can be cultivated. To the extent that something can be done about it, some kind of moral approval of zest and of disapproval of its absence is appropriate. This is the consequence of widening the scope of morality. Broad ethics asks for milder moral reactive attitudes than blame and praise. It is not done to blame someone for not behaving zestfully (e.g. when he is depressed), but nevertheless one can think it morally deplorable because of the importance of zest in a human life, and because something can be done to retain or restore zest.

Conclusion I am no friend of hasty generalisations about cultures. Nevertheless, this essay tries to show how the actual endemic depression in the West could be related to a longstanding deficit in Western ethics, reflecting, to an important extent, everyday morals: its underestimation of the value of taking an interest in anything. I have argued that this ethical deficit is primarily filled by the virtue of zest, i.e. the attitude of openness to and enthusiasm about basic activities and experiences constituting a human life. In my view this virtue is the most basic element of the moral attitude. Mainstream normative ethics should therefore be supplemented by the virtue of lust for life understood in an agent-based sense.2

References Ayuso-Mateos, J.-L. et al. 2001. Depressive Disorders in Europe: Prevalence Figures from the ODIN-Study. The British Journal of Psychiatry 179: 308-316. Blackburn, S. 2004. Lust. The Seven Deadly Sins. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frankfurt, H.G. 1988. The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. 2004. The Reasons of Love. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2

This essay has been read at the Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium II (Barbados) and at the third meeting of the Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy (Lisbon). I thank the participants of these conferences and the editors of this volume, Ed Brandon, Roxanne Burton and Frederick Ochieng’-Odhiambo, for their stimulating comments, and Jo Clijsters for checking the English text.

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Hursthouse, R. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nietzsche, F. 1990 [1886]. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,. trans. R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. Patel, V. et al. 2001. Depression in Developing Countries: Lessons from Zimbabwe. British Medical Journal 322: 482-484. Russell, B. 2006 [1930]. The Conquest of Happiness. With a new preface by A.C. Grayling. London: Routledge. Slote, M. 1983. Goods and Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —. 1995. Agent-based virtue ethics. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 20: 83-101. —. 1997. Virtue Ethics. In: M. Baron, P. Pettit, and M. Slote (ed.), Three Methods of Ethics: A Debate, 175-238. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Solomon, R.C. 1998. The Virtues of a Passionate Life: Erotic Love and “The Will to Power”. Social Philosophy and Policy 15: 91-118. Swanton, C. 1998. Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics. International Studies in Philosophy 30: 29-38. Stocker, M. 1976. The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories. The Journal of Philosophy 73: 453-466. Üstün, T.B. et al. 2004. Global Burden of Depressive Disorders in the Year 2000. The British Journal of Psychiatry 184: 386-392. Williams, B. 1973. A Critique of Utilitarianism. In: J.J.C. Smart, and B. Williams. Utilitarianism, For and Against, 75-150. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. —. 1976. Moral Luck. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: Supplementary volume 50: 115-136. Wolf, S. 1982. Moral Saints. Journal of Philosophy 79: 419-439.

CONTRIBUTORS

Lawrence Bamikole holds a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He is at present a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. Between 2002 and 2007, Dr Bamikole was a Lecturer in the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. He has published many articles in the areas of Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, with his most recent publication being “Culture and Development in Africa” in Temisan Ebijuwa (ed.) Philosophy and Social Change, Ibadan: Hope Publications, 2007. His current areas of research are Comparative Philosophy and Africana Philosophy, and he is currently working on a book project, entitled Violence and Democratic Politics. Eddy Bermingham SJ was born in Dublin, Ireland. He moved as a child to England, entering the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1975. He trained as a youth and community worker, specializing in the practice of detached youth work and between 1985 to 2002 worked in a variety of community-based programmes and projects including founding the Jesuit Volunteer Community in Britain, Manpower Services Commission Programmes, and immediately prior to leaving England running a large youth centre in Sunderland, in the North East of England. In all of these community-based contexts action-based research informed the practice that was developed, hence his interest in the ways in which local communities interface with and engage government-sponsored programmes. Since moving to the Caribbean, Guyana and then Trinidad in 2002, he has been teaching philosophy, primarily in the Regional Seminary of St John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs but also on the campus of the UWI, St Augustine. His two main areas of research currently are a) the significance of the Liberation Philosophy movement for the development of strands of Caribbean philosophy and b) the uses and abuses of philosophy in the development of Caribbean Feminist perspectives. John Ayotunde Bewaji trained in Philosophy at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and University of Ibadan, Ibadan in Nigeria and obtained a Master of Arts in Distance Education

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Contributors

from Commonwealth of Learning, Canada and Indira Ghandi National Open University, India. He has taught at University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Ogun State University, Ago-Iwoye in Nigeria, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana and University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica where he was originally a Rhodes Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy before becoming a full member of staff and coordinator of the Philosophy programme. His publications include two books, Beauty and Culture (2003) and An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (2007), and numerous essays, book reviews and book chapters. He is currently researching Africana philosophy of leadership, Africana legal philosophy and Africana philosophy. He was the founding President of International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), and is editor, coeditor or consulting editor for many journals devoted to Philosophy and Africana Philosophy. He has been an International Philosophy Citizen Ambassador to Hungary and Russia and Caribbean Exchange Scholar, Hunter College, CUNY. Stephen Boulter is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. Prior to taking up his current post he was Gifford Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His primary interest is metaphilosophy and methodology, and he has just published a monograph on these matters, The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy, with Palgrave Macmillan. This book, and his many articles, touch on topics from metaphysics to ethics, drawing on such figures as Aristotle, the Scholastics, Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore, as well as evolutionary biology. Ed Brandon works in the Principal’s Office of the newly created Open Campus of the University of the West Indies, and assists in the Cave Hill Campus’ Philosophy programme. He spent many years teaching philosophy within departments of Education, at UWI Mona in Jamaica and St Mary’s College, Cheltenham, England, after a short time in the philosophy department of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. His training in philosophy was mainly under the tutelage of John Mackie, at the University of York and University College, Oxford. His publications are accessible from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/edpubs.htm. Roxanne Burton is a doctoral candidate at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, undertaking research in philosophy in/of literature, specifically using the writings of Jamaica Kincaid. She is also a

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temporary lecturer at UWI, Cave Hill Campus. Her research interests include Caribbean philosophy, social philosophy and feminist philosophy. Richard L. W. Clarke is a lecturer in Literary Theory at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies in Barbados. He is editor of Shibboleths, an open access online journal of mainly Caribbean theory: http://www.shibboleths.net/. Simon Critchley is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. He is author of many books, most recently Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2007). The Book of Dead Philosophers is forthcoming from Granta in the UK and Vintage in the US. Claus Dierksmeier is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stonehill College in Easton (Boston), Mass., USA. His current research focus is on the connections between economics and the philosophy of freedom. He has published widely on the philosophy of Kant and German Idealism, especially in regard to legal, political, and religious questions. Michael Fitzgerald works in the Northern Affairs Program of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada. After studying physics, music, philosophy and economics in Canada, he received his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore in 2007. His doctoral research focused on a Heideggerian conception of international development. He has worked on development projects in a number of countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam and Tanzania. His current research interests are (i) the locus of the interaction of principles, policy and practice in international and national development; (ii) the groundwork for a phenomenology of development; and (iii) Marx’s philosophy of economy and development. He is also an active amateur musician, and has an ongoing interest in the phenomenology of music and sound. Fr Stephen Geofroy is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and the Catholic University of Louvain, and has been involved, from its inception, in the Conference on Catholic Theology in the Caribbean Today, which began meeting in the mid 1990s. He has taught Theology and Philosophy over the years as well as having the benefit of many years experience of pastoral work in various parishes in Trinidad and Barbados. He lectured in Philosophy at UWI, Cave Hill from 2003 until 2006 and is currently a lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Education, at the St Augustine Campus in Trinidad. He is working towards a Ph.D. in

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Education with an emphasis on the human development of young males in contemporary Trinidad. Clevis Headley is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master’s in Liberal Studies Program. Professionally, he has served as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He has published in the areas of Critical Race Theory, Africana philosophy and Analytic philosophy, focusing on Gottlob Frege. Sirkku K. Hellsten is presently working as Counsellor for Governance and Human Rights at the Embassy of Finland in Nairobi. She is on leave of absence from the University of Birmingham, where she is Reader in Development Ethics at the Centre for the Study of Global Ethics. Before joining Birmingham, she spent four years as Coordinator for the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dar es Salaam, while also conducting research as Senior Research Fellow in an international development ethics project funded by the Academy of Finland. She also holds the title of Docent of Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has undertaken numerous research projects in the fields of global ethics and global bioethics, development ethics and human rights in the USA, New Zealand, Germany, Tanzania and now in the UK and published widely on these topics. She is one of the chief editors of the Journal of Global Ethics. In addition to her academic activities, she is the Manager of an NGO-led outreach project funded by the Finnish Development Agency. Kibujjo M. Kalumba was born and raised in Uganda and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Indiana University, USA. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Ball State University, Indiana, USA, with the rank of Associate Professor. He specializes in Social and Political Philosophy as well as African Philosophy. His most important publication is an anthology co-edited with Parker English: African Philosophy: A Classical Approach (Upper-Saddle River: Prentice-Hall), 1996. Kahiudi Claver Mabana, a Congolese from the DR Congo, holds a BA in Philosophy (Mayidi, 1978), a BA in Theology (Rome, 1982), an MA in French, Linguistics and Philosophy (University of Fribourg, Switzerland, 1992) and a Ph.D. in French (Fribourg, 1999). He taught African

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Literature at the Humboldt University from 1999 to 2001. He is at present a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Literature at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus (Barbados), where he is also coordinator for the modern languages programme. Besides many articles he has published two books: L’univers mythique de Tchicaya à travers son oeuvre en prose (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998) and Des Transpositions francophones du mythe de Chaka, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2002). He co-edited Hispanic and Francophone Studies. Contemporary Perspectives, (with Victor C. Simpson, Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, Barbados, 2007). D.A. Masolo is a native of Kenya. He received his Ph.D. from Gregorian University in Rome, Italy. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Previously he taught philosophy at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and at several other American Universities and Colleges. His work focuses on the history and development of African philosophy, as well as the relationship between philosophy and culture. His notable works include African Philosophy in Search of Identity (1994), and African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry (2000). He has also published numerous essays in journals and written several book chapters. Ben Mulvey received a doctorate in philosophy with a specialization in applied ethics and political theory from Michigan State University. In 1988 he joined the faculty at Nova Southeastern University where he is currently an associate professor in the Division of Humanities. Since arriving at NSU he has become increasingly involved in biomedical ethics. He has been a member of several bioethics committees in Florida and remains on the board of directors of the Florida Bioethics Network. Aside from his long standing interest in issues related to oppression and the possibility of democracy, his current research interests centre around the ethical systems of classical antiquity and how they might be applied to contemporary ethical issues in biomedical ethics, business organizations, civil society, and institutions of higher learning. Deryck Murray embarked on a journey that forced him to cross the demarcation between the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus, where he gained a first degree in Biology, and the Department of History in the Faculty of Humanities and Education where he is completing his doctorate. He submitted a thesis entitled Obeah: West African Medicine in the British

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West Indies (1645-1838) in November 2007. He is convinced that reconstructing the fragments of African knowledge in the Caribbean would reveal practices more akin to sciences than religions because of his early intuition that knowledge about the real world could not be available to the modern west alone. Describing these African ways of knowing is the focus of his ongoing research. He recently published an article in the Journal of Southern African Studies entitled “Three Worships, an Old Warlock and Many Lawless Forces: The Court Trial of an African Doctor Who Practised ‘Obeah to Cure’, in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica.” F. Ochieng’-Odhiambo received his Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He teaches philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. He previous taught at the University of Nairobi and at the National University of Lesotho in southern Africa. His research interest is African philosophy with a focus on Philosophic Sagacity, an area in which he has written several journal articles. His books include Philosopher’s Companion (forthcoming), Foundations of Ethics (forthcoming), Introductory Symbolic Logic (2003), African Cultures and Religion (1999), Handbook on Some Social-Political Philosophers (1998), African Philosophy: An Introduction (1997), Logic and Induction (1996). Joshua Schuster is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. He has articles in the Journal of Modern Literature, Open Letter, and Other Voices. Some of his forthcoming essays are on Arakawa and Gins, and Louis Zukofsky. He is working on a book entitled Organic Radicals: Poetry, Biology, and American Modernism. Mark K. Setton is an Associate Professor of World Religions at the University of Bridgeport. He earned his doctorate in Oriental Studies at Oxford. An internationally recognized scholar of East Asian thought specializing in Confucianism, he has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard and at the University of California at Berkeley. His book Chong Yagong: Korea’s Challenge to Orthodox Neo-Confucianism (SUNY Press 1997) is the only full-length work in the English language of one of Korea’s most celebrated thinkers. His second book Confucianism: Tradition and Innovation, which traces the philosophical unfolding of Confucianism through China, Korea and Japan, is to be published by SUNY Press shortly. He is also a prominent member of the group responsible for the http://pursuit-of-happiness.org website.

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James Stillwaggon is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Theory at Iona College in New York. His principal interests include questions of desire and subjectivity in educational relations and the history of educational thought. Recent publications include “Performing for the Students: Teaching Identity and the Pedagogical Relation” in the Journal of Philosophy of Education and “‘Would he not get his eyes full of darkness?’ Objectivity in Republic V and VII” in Philosophy of Education 2007 (University of Illinois Press). Michael L. Thompson is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida. He is finishing his dissertation on Kant and the imagination. He is the author of “Tragedy: Art of the Sublime” in Being Amongst Others: Phenomenological Reflection on the Life-world. Xavier Vanmechelen was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and the Université de Montréal (Canada). He published Irrationaliteit (Leuven, 2000), a book on akratic action and self-deception, and was the editor of Afhankelijkheid zonder dominantie (Leuven, 2002), a volume on the social and political philosophy of Philip Pettit. Philosophical psychology and ethics are his research interests. He lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

INDEX

A Achebe, C. · 81, 89 Actor-Network-Theory · 226-229 Ahluwahlia, P. · 115 Allen, D. · 269, 273, 278 Althusser, L. · 83 Amo, A.W. · 133 Anscombe, G.E.M. · 320 aporia · 1-2, 11-17, 22, 130 Appiah, A. · 81, 88 Aquinas, T. · 9, 15 Arendt, H. · 19, 21, 23, 27, 187 Aristotle · 1, 7, 9, 11-12, 14-16, 44, 205, 265, 330 Azzouni, J. · 244-245

B Badiou, A. · 283, 289 Bell, R. · 202 Berkeley, G. · 11, 269, 274 Berlin, I. · 87 Bernstein, R. · 187, 195-197 Best, L. · 197 Bewaji, J.A. · 52, 273-274 Bhabha, H. · 78 Bloor, D. · 227 blues, the · 250-252, 323 Bodunrin, P. · 51, 104, 137 Boxill, B. · 184-185 Brathwaite, K. · 171, 185, 209, 225, 239 Buddhism · 57-58 Burgess, J. · 266

C Carrara, M. · 242-243 Césaire, A. · 81, 101, 109, 111, 147148, 157-158, 209 Chattopadhyaya, D. · 221 Chomsky, N. · 37 Coleridge, S.T. · 29 common sense · 10-11, 16-18 communitarianism · 98-102, 249, 274-277 comparative thought · 74, 76-102, 105, 268-279 Confucian ethics · 58-59 Crahay, F. · 151 creolisation · 171, 225, 230, 239 Critchley, S. · 29, 32, 214-215, 220 culture · 77-83, 89, 108-111, 198203, 206

D Danto, A. · 45 Daoism · 56-58, 60-61 Darwinism · 11, 261 Davidson, B. · 202 Davidson, D. · 268 De Man, P. · 34 death · 23-26, 85-86, 254, 277 Deleuze, G. · 45 depression · 317-319, 327 Derrida, J. · 32, 34-35, 45, 189, 196, 303, 314-316 Descartes, R. · 9, 11, 14-15, 30, 176, 269, 274, 285

Conversations in Philosophy: Crossing the Boundaries development · 107-114, 116, 214, 258, 299-302 Diogenes of Sinope · 319 Diop, A. · 148, 150 Diop, C.A. · 110, 156-157 Dworkin, R. · 271

E Eboussi-Boulaga, F. · 88, 137, 151152 Ellison, R. · 250-251 ethnophilosophy · 3, 51, 75, 82-83, 115, 124, 136-138, 151-153, 161, 220-221, 264 Etuk, U. · 214, 221 Evans-Pritchard, E. · 82, 149 Eze, E. · 104, 106-107, 111

F Fanon, F. · 88, 97, 110-111, 157158, 185, 202, 249 feminism · 113, 277 Fine, A. · 245 Foucault, M. · 32, 37-38, 111-113, 172, 179-181, 183, 196, 248 Frankfurt, H. · 320 free will vs. determinism · 13-14 Freud, S. · 262-263, 287, 304-305

G Gadamer, H.-G. · 24-25, 40 Gbadegesin, S. · 49, 274-275 geography, significance of · 186197, 199 Glissant, E. · 157 Gracia, J. · 47-48 Graham, G. · 271 Griaule, M. · 51, 136, 147

337

Gyekye, K. · 51, 81, 121, 127, 130131, 160

H Habermas, J. · 90, 282 Hallen, B. · 48, 102, 130 Harris, W. · 187, 189, 191-194 Hayes, R. · 221 Hector, L.T. · 177 Hegel, G. · 64, 66, 68, 71, 80-81, 96, 106, 108, 149, 182, 286, 306 hegemony, Western intellectual · 80-81, 94, 105-107, 109-112, 115-116, 149, 179-181, 199-201, 210, 226-229, 239, 248-249, 268 Heidegger, M. · 29, 33, 48, 80, 94, 183-184, 187, 190, 196, 246-247, 258, 286, 290-301, 309-310 Henry, P. · 52, 185, 196, 202, 206, 208-210, 222 Heraclitus · 15, 79, 310 hermeneutics · 34, 40, 180 Hinckfuss, I. · 266 history · 19-22, 27, 80-81, 94, 106107, 179, 188-189, 191, 193, 284, 306 Hobbes, T. · 270, 303, 307 Horkheimer, M. · 172, 176, 181-183 Hountondji, P. · 51, 82-83, 88, 101, 122-127, 136-137, 146, 151-153, 155, 157 Hughes, L. · 89, 147 human nature · 9, 36-37, 77-79, 99102, 125-128, 178-180, 262, 264, 269-278, 297-298, 305-307, 321322 human rights · 96-97, 107, 112, 220, 257, 271-272, 275-279 Hume, D. · 9, 29, 106, 149, 263, 269 Husserl, E. · 82-83, 98, 286, 292, 303, 308-311

Index

338

I immortality · 24-25 induction · 11-12

J James, C.L.R. · 206, 209, 222 Johnson, M. · 264

K Kafka, F. · 19-20 Kagame, A. · 76, 122, 124, 128, 136, 150-152, 160-168 Kant, I. · 9, 14-15, 64, 100, 106, 177, 182, 257-258, 268-270, 274, 282-283, 287, 303, 306-307, 320 Kaphagawani, D. · 137 Kincaid, J. · 53 Klein, M. · 288 knowledge · 21-22, 24-25, 33-37, 40, 52, 65-66, 83-84, 90, 93-95, 98-99, 110-113, 116, 176-179, 182-184, 226-229, 271 Krause, K. · 3, 63-72 Kresse, K. · 52 Krishnamurti, J. · 222 Kuhn, T.S. · 238, 271

L Lakoff, G. · 264 Latour, B. · 225, 227-228, 238 Lauer, Q. · 216 Leach, E. · 229 Levinas, E. · 247-248, 257-258, 281, 283-289, 303, 306-316 Lévi-Strauss, C. · 229 Lévy-Bruhl, L. · 122-124, 136, 149

liberalism · 67, 87-88, 91, 93, 96-97, 114, 241, 248-249, 270-271, 274, 282, 306 literature · 2-3, 29, 40, 43-53, 155, 222 Locke, J. · 29, 106, 269-270, 277 logic · 8, 11-12, 104-105, 107-108, 126, 137, 203-205, 243, 315 Løgstrup, K.E. · 283, 289 Lowe, E.J. · 8

M Machiavelli, N. · 304 Mackie, J.L. · 260-267 Makinde, M.A. · 202-203 Marcuse, H. · 184 martial arts · 3, 56-62 Marx, K. · 182, 304 Masolo, D.A. · 94, 104, 106, 136, 160 Mbiti, J. · 76, 109, 136, 160-168, 273 McKenzie, E. · 53 McWatt, M. · 193 Mencius · 59 Menkiti, I. · 275-6 Merleau-Ponty, M. · 187 Merquior, J.G. · 32 meta-ethics · 260-267 metaphor · 21-22, 34-37, 173-4, 184, 194-6, 229-38, 246-56 Mill, J.S. · 29, 269 mind-body problem · 13-14 Moore, G.E. · 16 Mphahlele, E. · 156 Mudimbe, V.Y. · 51, 80-81, 88, 90, 95, 129, 146, 153 Murray, A. · 251

N Negritude · 75, 146-158, 203-204

Conversations in Philosophy: Crossing the Boundaries Nettleford, R. · 171, 189, 209 Nietzsche, F. · 33, 180-181, 309, 319 Nkrumah, K. · 109-112, 139, 142143, 152, 154 Norris, C. · 32 Nussbaum, M. · 44-45 Nwakeze, P.C. · 273, 275 Nyerere, J. · 109-110, 112, 142-143, 154

O objectivity · 33-35, 79-80, 94, 108, 172, 176-183, 227, 261-264, 239, 271, 273 Ochieng’-Odhiambo, F. · 52, 138 Odera Oruka, H. · 51, 75, 110, 133143, 156 Okolo, C. · 274 Olsen, S.H. · 46, 50 ontology · 68-72, 123-124, 129, 131, 150, 160-165, 173, 204, 225, 232, 241-252, 256, 289, 310-311 Otabil, K. · 88

P Parmenides · 15 peace · 258, 303-316 phenomenology · 246-248, 258, 290-301, 303, 308-310, 314 philosophy African · 2-3, 51-55, 73-172, 201-203, 205, 208, 220-221, 273-277 Caribbean · 51-53, 171-256 Indian · 67-70, 221-222 nature of · 1, 4-18, 29-40, 43-52, 65-66, 94-95, 104-110, 113, 116, 121-126, 130-1, 175-183,

339

198, 203-210, 215-223, 260, 281, 290-294, 314 Pickstone, J. · 236 Plato · 9, 15, 29, 31, 46, 282, 319 Priest, G. · 4 Putnam, H. · 285

Q Quine, W.V.O. · 17, 35, 130, 242243

R rationality · 36, 81, 177, 191, 195, 227 Rawls, J. · 177, 270, 271, 282 religion · 80-81, 153, 221-222, 230, 232-235, 238, 254, 263-264, 273274, 281, 285, 288, 319 Rescher, N. · 262 Rickman, H.P. · 43, 49 Roig, A. · 222 Rorty, R. · 1, 28-40, 183-184, 196, 218-219, 222, 267, 271 Rousseau, J.-J. · 270, 287 rum ontology · 252-256 Russell, B. · 317, 322-323, 326 Ryle, G. · 7, 10

S sagacity, philosophic · 51, 75, 133143, 161 Said, E. · 110, 112, 210 Sanz del Río, J. · 65 Sartre, J.-P. · 29, 32, 50, 172, 178180, 183-184 Schmitt, C. · 304 Schopenhauer, A. · 3, 63, 71-72, 282 Searle, J. · 11, 14

Index

340 Sellars, W. · 4, 7-8, 10, 30, 262 Senghor, L.S. · 82-83, 109, 124, 146-149, 153, 155-158, 203 Serequeberhan, T. · 51, 210 Sirju, M. · 221 Slote, M. · 320 Socrates · 1, 2, 15, 21-27, 141, 207, 269 Sodipo, J. · 102, 130 Soyinka, W. · 156 Spivak, G. · 90, 98 Stocker, M. · 320 subjectivity · 93-95, 98-99, 180, 282, 286, 288-289, 296, 311-312

T Tafari, I. · 231 Taiwo, O. · 273 Taylor, C. · 95 technology · 111, 141, 190 Tempels, P. · 80, 82, 101, 102, 122124, 128-131, 150-152, 157 time Bantu view of · 160-168 future · 19-27, 76 Tomkins, S.S. · 305 Toulmin, S. · 176 Towa, M. · 137, 153, 155

translation · 47-48, 102, 128-131 Tshiamalenga, N. · 129-130 Tuk Band · 230-238

V Varzi, A. · 242-243

W Walcott, D. · 184 Werner, C. · 251 Whitehead, A.N. · 228 Williams, B. · 196, 320 Williams, I. · 253-255 Wiredu, K. · 83-84, 87, 98, 100, 125-126, 131, 221, 273, 319 Wittgenstein, L. · 47, 90-91, 93, 98, 185 Wolf, S. · 320 Wynter, S. · 191, 225

Z zest for life · 259, 317-327