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CURRICULUM  VITAE

 

 

NAMEBarry Hallen

 

 

PROFESSIONAL ADDRESS:  Southern Crossroads Academic, 7192 N. Leewynn Drive, Sarasota, FL 34240.

 

 

TELEPHONES: (941) 377-1757 (with voice mail).

 

 

EMAIL:                                               southerncrossroadsltd@gmail.com

 mrbhallen@yahoo.com

 

 

PLACE OF BIRTH: USA

 

 

 

1.  AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION.

 

 

Theory of Knowledge, African Philosophy,

Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Studies.

 

 

2. COURSES TAUGHT.

 

 

Theory of Knowledge, African and African American Philosophy, Invention of Africa, Black Athena, Contemporary Philosophy.

 

 

3.  QUALIFICATIONS AND POSITIONS.

 

     2000-2014 Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy & Religion, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA.

1995-2014 Fellow or Associate, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 

 2001-2008 Chair, Department of Philosophy & Religion, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA.

1997-2000 Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA.

 1989-1998 Project Director, SOUTHERN CROSSROADS: Routes of Commerce and Culture Through West Africa and the Early Sudan," an Associated Project of UNESCO's Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue.

1984-1988 Director, Yoruba (Thought) Research Project, Phase III, Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), Ile‑Ife, NIGERIA.

1983-1988 Reader in Philosophy, University of Ife, Ile‑Ife, NIGERIA.

1985-1986 Acting Head, Department of Philosophy, University of Ife, NIGERIA.

1980-1984 Director, Yoruba (Thought) Research Project, Phase II, University of Ife, NIGERIA.

1978-1983 Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Ife, NIGERIA.

1976-1980 Director, Yoruba (Thought) Research Project, Phase I, University of Ife, NIGERIA.

1975-1978 Lecturer I, University of Ife, NIGERIA.

1974-1975 Acting Head, Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos, NIGERIA.

    1974 Proficiency Certificate in Yoruba Language, University of Lagos, NIGERIA 

1970-1975 Lecturer II, University of Lagos, NIGERIA.

1970 Ph.D. in Philosophy, Boston University, USA.

1968-1969 Borden Parker Bowne Fellow in Philosophy, Boston University, MA.

1967-1968 Chief Graduate Assistant, Boston University, MA.

1968 M.A. in Philosophy, Boston University, MA.

1965-1967 Graduate Assistant, Boston University, MA.

1965-1968 Teaching Assistant, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA.

1963 B.A. in Philosophy, Carleton College, Northfield, MN.

 

 

4.  PUBLICATIONS.

 

a.  IN PRESS / PUBLISHED / Ph.D.

  

 

 2021 (forthcoming) "Yoruba, Concept of Human Personality," in Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy, edited by V.Y. Mudimbe and Kasereka Kavwahirehi. Stuttgart: Springer Nature.

 2021 Reading Wiredu. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

2021 "The Knowledge that Joins Ethics to Art in Yoruba Culture," in Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art, edited by James Harold.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2021 "African Ethics?," in Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, edited by William Schweiker et al. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

2020 "African Sculpture: Interrelating the Verbal and Visual in Yoruba Aesthetics," in Philosophy of Sculpture: Historical Problems, Contemporary Approaches, edited by Kristin Gjesdal, Fred Rush, and Ingvild Torsen. New York: Routledge, 93-110 .

2020 "Discussions of African Communitarianism with Specific Reference to Menkiti and Rawls," in Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person, edited by Edwin Etieyibo and Polycarp Ikueonobe. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 29-36. 

2019 "Reconsidering the Case for Consensual Governance in Africa," Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy n.s. Vol. III, No. 1: 1-21. 

 

                                                                                              

 

 

                                                                                              

 

RECONSIDERING THE CASE FOR CONSENSUAL GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA

 

Barry Hallen

 

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

George Washington

 

           Consensus has been highlighted by African philosophers as an element essential to African societies, past and present, that has not been assigned the importance it deserves.  The philosophers involved have done this in part by drawing upon firsthand experience of their own indigenous cultures.  Consensual governance presents a rather different view of the constitution of indigenous African societies and what should be their most appropriate form of political order today.  A legitimate concern, therefore, is why this element supposedly foundational to sub-Saharan African societies came to be underrated. 

There were a number of publications about consensual governance as an African alternative in the late 1990's and first decade of the Twenty-First Century.  But since then interest in it has declined and critics have dismissed it as unrealistic.  The point of this essay is to suggest that, as African nation-states which purportedly endorse liberal democracy continue to experience serious political problems, consensus deserves reconsideration.  Therefore consensual democracy will be reexamined as a possibly more suitable and sensible alternative for sub-Saharan Africa than the so-called liberal democratic form of government.

            For introductory purposes, there are several more general notions of "consensus" that occur in studies related to sub-Saharan African cultures and societies which deserve preliminary consideration.  This is appropriate because, when an English-language abstraction such as "consensus" is applied to African cultures, it is helpful to confirm the precise attributes that are meant to carry over from an English-language context.  Obviously, cross-cultural meanings for "consensus" have to be involved in what is being described as consensual governance and consensual democracy.

            In the discipline of Sociology as it relates to Africa, there is considerable discussion of Consensus Theory.  Consensus Theory is one of those foundational sociological frameworks that are meant to help us analyze and understand human societies generally.  Though it may be of Western provenance, the theory is said to be applicable, in principle, to any society in the world.  Consensus Theory suggests that, for a number of human beings to live together, they must share a consensus about certain basic ideas, norms, values, rules, and regulations.  It is also said that the knowledge and endorsement of these ideas, norms, values, and so forth is initially imparted to individuals by the family environments in which they are raised.  What, more specifically, those ideas, norms, values, and so forth have to be is not specified which, perhaps, is acknowledgement of their possible diversity.  The ongoing overall consensus that enables such societies to endure arises from the individual choices and intentions of their members.  Expositions of consensus theory like to compare the various institutions of a society-the economy, the military, the judicial, and so forth-to the different organs of a human body, with each making its positive contributions to the maintenance, health and stability of the whole.  Consensus Theory can accommodate a degree of social conflict and change, but as channeled by the beliefs, practices and institutions meant to prevent such things from disrupting the overall stability of a society.

           Consensus Theory is frequently paired with Conflict Theory, which is said to be its theoretical opposite.  Conflict Theory argues that Consensus Theory is misguided in that societies are most importantly grounded on competing groups or classes that promote their interests by contesting for control of the institutions of a society.  It therefore disputes what it regards as the exaggerated importance of some overall uniform consensus shared by the individual members of a society.  Groups that do succeed in controlling a society's institutions, for example the economy or the military, will use that power to advance their own interests at the expense of others.

Both of these frameworks have been applied by sociologists to the contemporary societies of sub-Saharan Africa.  Case in point: Margaret Peil's Consensus and Conflict in African Societies, which applies the theories to many different aspects of the societies of 1970's sub-Saharan Africa.  I will leave it to others to be the final judges of the relevance of these theories to that subject-matter.  But it is the case that someone like the African philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, a proponent of consensual governance, would say that contemporary African nation-states that are supposedly examples of liberal democracy are best analyzed using Conflict Theory.  While nation-states that would embrace what he terms consensual democracy will be best understood using their sociological namesake, Consensus Theory.

If Consensus Theory is meant to be applicable, in principle, to any society at any point in its history, what about the case of precolonial Africa?  Accounts of governance there, which themselves will be disputed by the proponents of consensual governance, do not seem to support the role of an individual's voluntary consensus with respect to governance or intellect:

In terms of governance, tribal society was undemocratic. . . . Power and law emanated from the tribal head who governed by divine right rather than the law, mainly because the head was lauded as the representative and spokesperson of the gods as well as the ancestors on earth.  Members of the political community could not claim to be independent, autonomous and rational persons with the right to participate in the governance of a community.  They were subservient to the king or chief who embodied the power of the community in himself and exercised it for and on behalf of his people.  Tribal heads ruled virtually by divine right; and so members of tribal societies had no public space for participation in government.  They were subjects, not citizens.

            If the notion of "consensus" in Consensus Theory is meant to involve something voluntary on the part of the population that subscribes to it, such tribal societies would appear to fall outside of its purview.  Consent in this representation of tribal society is demanded of or enforced upon the population by a higher power.  Those who dare to disagree or resist may be subject to arbitrarily punitive measures.

To introduce yet another application of the term to the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, the social anthropologist Robin Horton finds the idea of the "consensual" appropriate for characterizing what he calls theoretical or abstract thinking in ‘tribal' societies in the traditional African cultural context.  Analogous to scientific theory, certain indigenous beliefs and practices, e.g. religion, qualify as theoretical because they are used for the explanation, prediction, and control of events in the world.  Beliefs and the practices associated with them in such societies are best described as traditions because they are not subject to challenge or change.  The intellectual character of traditional African cultures resonates with authoritarian governance because criticism and original thinking are not encouraged.  According to Horton, this kind of understanding is best described as "consensual" because everyone is conditioned to endorse it.

Contemporary African philosophers who advocate consensus governance defend a notion of the African intellect and persona that is diametrically opposed to that associated with the authoritarian chief or Horton's unchanging beliefs and practices.  Their views of pre-colonial and postcolonial African societies are that they were/are grounded on the independent thinking and the individual agency of their members, qualities that are fundamental to and definitive of them.  Consensus is therefore represented as arising from intentional, negotiated, rational exchanges that are taken as a conventional part of everyday life.  Elaborating and commenting on this revisionist view of indigenous African societies therefore is a priority.  But, even at this initial stage, it seems clear that two very different meanings of "consensus" are being used to characterize Africa's societies and cultures.

Exponents of the alternative interpretation of consensus in the indigenous African context begin from the nature of community.  Those involved maintain that it is important to have a correct appreciation of the communitarian character of African societies in order to appreciate the pertinence of consensual democracy.  The idea of the ‘tribe' may have evoked a certain image of community.  But tribal governance, as described in the quote above, became misleadingly typified by the stereotypes of the passive population that was subordinate to the chief whose authority was absolute.  Today African philosophers who advocate consensual democracy are challenging that image as misrepresentative.  Being a member of an African community, in precolonial times or today, did/does not mean that one was/is part of an authoritarian organic whole in which behaviour and thought were regimented.

This substantially revised view of the nature of community in the African context generally has been termed communitarianism.  To elaborate on it, I am going to draw primarily on the writings of one of Africa's most distinguished philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu.  In his writings, Wiredu makes an even finer distinction between communitarianism and what he refers to as "communalism."  By "communalism" he means the kind of social order typical of Africa in precolonial times.  By "communitarianism" he refers to a social and political philosophy that encompasses carry-overs from precolonial times as well as an agenda for today.  Wiredu grounds his discussions of communitarianism on hard data derived from firsthand experience of his native Akan culture as well as published historical sources.  On that basis he endorses a social and political order that he believes, in point of fact and principle, is better suited to the nation-states of sub-Saharan Africa than the so-called ‘liberal' democratic form of government they were ‘persuaded' to adopt at the time of independence.

Here is a synopsis of Wiredu's argumentation on African communitarianism: "Community" in the African sense involves much more than the Western notion of a "body of people living in the same locality."  For Wiredu, "a person is social not only because he or she lives in a community, . . . but also because, by his [or her] original constitution, a human being is part of a social whole."  One wants more specifics as to what this actually involves.  Wiredu is willing to go into greater detail, as long as he can source his own Akan culture, which he believes to be generally representative of sub-Saharan Africa.  Here are some of the more specific things he has to say:

1.  The underlying or foundational notion of the Akan community is linked to a particular view of morality.  Being moral in a communal setting is what transforms a human being into an authentic person.  Being a person "means that an individual's image will depend rather crucially upon the extent to which his or her actions benefit others than himself [or herself] . . . by design. . . . an individual who remained content with self-regarding successes would be viewed as so circumscribed in outlook as not to merit the title of a real person."  Becoming and being recognized as a person, rather than merely human, therefore involves a moral dimension as importantly as a social one.

2.  "Family" in the African context is what is sometimes referred to as the "extended family."  Whether defined by the male or female line, family may encompass one's grandfather/grandmother and all his/her children and grandchildren, as well as the grandfather's/grandmother's brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren.  This is not to say that all these people live in the same household.  But these are the people who constitute one's immediate relations and kin, and who constitute the basic components of an individual's moral upbringing.

 

For the dissemination of moral education or the reinforcement of the will to virtue. . . . The theater of moral upbringing is the home, at parents' feet and within range of kinsmen's inputs.  The mechanism is precept, example and correction.  The temporal span of the process is lifelong, for, although upbringing belongs to the beginning of our earthly careers, the need for correction is an unending contingency in the lives of mortals.

 

3.  Two other moral considerations relevant to achieving personhood are as follows:

  • Morality is not regarded as a purely intellectual undertaking. Passions and feelings may be involved in any moral conflict and therefore goodwill as well as duty becomes involved. This is something Wiredu specifically remarks on as generally true of African societies. By goodwill he means some form of "human sympathy" or "sentimentality" that goes beyond mere duty, or of goodwill as merely a function of duty. As he puts it: "There will always be something unlovable about correctness of conduct bereft of passion. . . . the ultimate moral inadequacy consists in that lack of feeling which is the root of selfishness."
  • Personhood-being recognized as a morally enlightened and responsible member of the community-is the ultimate moral accolade. But this would never be attributed to an individual whose motives were primarily selfish and self-interested. Relationships with and responsibilities to kith and kin are meant to make moral isolation difficult. This means that some everyday actions are deliberately meant to better others rather than oneself. Indeed the typical Akan is conscious of and scrupulous to protect his or her personhood status throughout their lifetime.

4.  According to Wiredu and in connection with goodwill, the African view of humanity finds the sometimes rigid Western conceptual and philosophical dichotomy between the rational and the emotional in human beings unacceptable when formulating a systematic basis for moral values and moral acts that resonates with human beings.  This is because the notion of "duty," as expressed by an exclusively or purely rational moral sense of responsibility, is neither a sufficient nor satisfactory basis for moral principles.  This emotional element will be developed further when he introduces the notion of "sympathetic impartiality," which he will maintain is the moral principle most fundamental to any human society.

5.  Wiredu then progresses to a more general overview of morality as it must occur in any society.  He now views it as a universal phenomenon manifesting certain structurally foundational principles or rules that every community or society must strive to implement if that community or society is to survive.  How is one to reconcile this universality with the claim that African societies are distinctively communal by comparison with, for example, their Western counterparts?  The argument here seems to have three major components:

  • There are moral universals. "One is therefore entitled to ask if there is a principle of conduct such that without its recognition the survival of human society in a tolerable condition would be inconceivable." Here Wiredu introduces what he calls "the principle of sympathetic impartiality." This may be expressed by the imperative "Let your conduct at all times manifest a due concern for others." It may seem reminiscent of the Golden Rule. But the reasoning used to justify its foundational character is as follows: "It takes little imagination to foresee that life in any society in which everyone openly avowed the contrary of this principle and acted accordingly would inevitably be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish', and probably short."
  • If this principle is supposedly "a human universal transcending cultures," then how is one to reconcile its universal status with the apparent significant moral differences found in societies that are said to evidence, for example, an individualistic rather than an communal orientation? To answer this question, let's imagine that there is a moral tool available that amounts to a kind of sliding scale. At one end of this scale let's place communities that are said to be decidedly communal in nature and, at the other end, those that are said to be decidedly individualistic in character. The scale does not allow for 100% communal or individualistic societies. Communal societies must allow for a degree of individuality, and societies that are individualistic must allow for a degree of communality. But the mixture of or the ratio between the two for any society can be measured by sliding the cursor to the appropriate point on the scale.

The distinction between . . . [communitarianism] and individualism is one of degree only; for a considerable value may be attached to communality in individualistic societies just as individuality is not necessarily trivialized within . . . [communitarianism].

[HELP ME TO REMOVE THIS LINE - I DO NOT KNOW HOW!!]

  • This does not mean that two societies that happen to be measured as equal in terms of their communal and invidualistic characters would be completely identical. But the differences that distinguish them, and that might strike the uninformed observer as significant, should be seen as relatively superficial things that can be described as "customs" and "lifestyles." They can be of ethnographic interest for highlighting the diversity of ways in which the universal moral principle of sympathetic impartiality is complemented in apparently different cultures. But he insists that customs and lifestyles "are distinct from morality in the strict sense." This would mean that people who exaggerate the differences between moral values in different cultures are probably mistakenly exaggerating the relatively superficial anomalies generated by their differences in customs and lifestyles (rather than foundational moral principles). He describes customs as "contingent norms of life" and argues that they might include "usages, traditions, manners, conventions, grammars, vocabularies, etiquette, fashions, aesthetic standards, observances, taboos, rituals, folkways, [and] mores."

Given the gradations allowed by the sliding scale, one might think Wiredu would say that the influence of the principle of sympathetic impartiality increases as societies become more communal in character and decreases as societies become more individualistic in character.  But that does not seem to be the case.  The principle of sympathetic impartiality is a constant that applies at any point along the scale.  A society that did not endorse it would not endure.  Where his argument does lead is that the moral values supposedly foundational to African societies have been misrepresented.  The model that has been created of precolonial African societies as communal, as in the case of the tribe and its authoritarian chief, is wrong.  Obvious and easily observable differences in customs and lifestyles have been given moral and political status far in excess of what they deserve.  (It seems he might say the same for the model of individualistic societies.)  "Aside from the difference in the manner of viewing the adjustment of interests required by morality, the real difference between communalism and individualism has to do with custom and lifestyle rather than anything else."

This argument is important to Wiredu, so it is important to understand something of the strategy informing it.  Over the course of his career Wiredu has consistently and subtly argued against those who portray the African intellect or the cultures of Africa as qualitatively distinct.  In fact the African intellect has always reasoned in a manner that is comparable to rational thought anywhere.  It does not do so fundamentally on the basis of idiosyncratic poetic-symbolic and/or emotional forms of expression.  He introduces us to African ideas and practices about community, the family, and the person so that we can relate to the population of Africa as part of ‘us' rather than as the ‘Other'.  The principle of sympathetic impartiality is then introduced as something we all share in common.  His aim is to reorient comparative philosophy and cross-cultural studies where Africa is concerned so that everyone is on the same level playing field.  No one is so different as to inhabit a different universe.  No one is so different as to be essentially superior or inferior on the basis of that difference.

It appears Wiredu first remarked on consensus as a potential political plus in a 1977 address to the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences:

A much commended trait of our traditional culture is its infinite capacity for the pursuit of consensus and reconciliation.  An urgent task facing us today is to find ways of translating this virtue into institutional forms in our national life.  In view of the changes and chances of our recent past [e.g., European colonialism], this is a task to which all of us should address ourselves.  Our culture may yet save us.

            But he does not begin to develop its political dimension in a systematic manner until the 1990's, in a series of essays articulating what has become known as consensual democracy.  He begins by telling us that "decision-making in traditional African life and governance was, as a rule, by consensus."  The phrasing, "in traditional African life," is significant because Wiredu wants to claim that:

reliance on consensus [in the African context] is not a peculiarly political phenomenon.  Where consensus characterizes political decison-making in Africa it is a manifestation of an immanent approach to social interaction.  Generally, in interpersonal relations between adults, consensus as a basis of joint action was taken as axiomatic.

Interpersonal relationships in African societies have always generally-on any level-prioritized consensus.  Substantive dialogue between divergent individuals in a family or parties in a community enables everyone who is contending "to feel that adequate account has been taken of their points of view," and serves to promote "a willing suspension of disagreement, making possible agreed actions without necessarily agreed notions."  This rather complex turn of phrase means that, to arrive at a consensus with regard to a specific idea and/or a specific course of action, other more general beliefs of the contending individuals or parties do not have to change.  All those involved have to do is endorse some more specific form of compromise to resolve the situation.  Reaching a compromise means that different views have influenced and informed it.  That one "suspends disagreement" with the outcome when one's views have not completely won out enables a final resolution to be reached.  "In a consensus system the voluntary acquiescence of the minority with respect to a given issue would normally be necessary for the adoption of a decision."

            By means of this argument, which is meant to be empirically grounded, Wiredu is discarding the model of ‘tribal' society as organic, and of ‘tribal' governance as authoritarian.  Whether centralized with a king or chief or decentralized with limited formal governmental structure, African societies functioned on the basis of consensus.  Kings and chiefs or nomads did not live in splendid isolation.  They lived on the basis of consultation and compromise.

            My argument will be that consensual governance in our tradition was essentially democratic; that the majoritarian form of democracy seen in the multiparty systems in Britain and the USA is drastically antithetic to both our own traditions of democracy and the complexities of our contemporary situation and that, although the kinship basis of our political systems of old cannot be re-invoked in this day and age, it is still a practical proposition to try to fashion out a contemporary non-party form of government based on the principle of consensus.  In this way perhaps we can hope to restore the lost continuity between the state and civil society in Africa.

Much of the literature related to the governance of contemporary African nation states takes the liberal democratic model for granted.  But the African thinkers who defend consensual democracy argue that the efforts to install liberal democracies in African countries have had disastrous consequences.  That model of government does not fit the indigenous consensual social and moral dispositions of African societies and, as a result, that incompatibility is largely responsible for the failings and failures of African nation-states-for the corruption, the recurrent ethnic animosities, the ineffectiveness or eventual collapse of central governments.

Liberal democracy, in practice, does not promote or sustain continuous participation in governance on the part of the individual citizen.  It introduces events called "elections," which only happen very occasionally.  But those are the only occasions when citizens can exercise what is referred to as their "vote."  Liberal democracy, in practice, encourages the formation of political parties that contest for overall control of government.  In African countries, which are often composed of a multiplicity of ethnic groups, the different political parties become identified with specific ethnic groups.  Since those parties then contest for control of the state, this exacerbates ethnic rivalries and unrest.  The liberal democratic model is identified with the principle of majority rule.  But this ‘winner take all' attitude implicitly tends to disenfranchise minorities from playing a significant role in the governing process.  "Any element of majoritarianism is a loss of consensus."

Wiredu asks for help from colleagues in working out the mechanics of consensual governance for the modern nation-state: "At this historical juncture, there is an urgent need for African intellectuals, including historians, philosophers, political scientists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, constitutional scholars, jurists, journalists and other leaders of opinion, to put their heads together to explore the history, rationale, conceptual basis and constitutional framework for a non-party system of politics based on consensus."  He himself has endeavored to expand upon the ramifications of consensus in subsequent published essays (1999, 2001, 2007, 2008) that are meant to provide us with some general guidelines.  "The polity we have in mind . . . is completely party-less and motivated by a quite radical commitment to consensus."

In a consensual democracy, there will be no political parties.  Candidates will not run for office on the basis of their party affiliations.  As individuals they will run for office on the basis of their qualifications for the office.

            A less unwelcome use of majorities might occur in the election of representatives.  Here choice may have to be determined by superior numbers in terms of votes.  But even here the representatives will be under obligation to consult with all the tendencies of opinions in their constituencies and work out, as much as possible, a consensual basis of representation."

            Elected (Selected?) representatives would not participate in something like Town Hall meetings where they are there to listen to the people they represent.  They will have meetings with constituents where they participate in discussions about diverse ideas relevant to a particular issue and thereby arrive at a consensus that they can then carry with them to the next level of government once at that level of government.

            Consensus as a political decision-making procedure requires in principle that each representative should be persuaded, if not of the optimality of each decision, at least of its practical necessity, all things considered.  If discussion has been even moderately rational and the spirit has been one of respectful accommodation on all sides, surviving reservations on the part of a momentary minority will not prevent the recognition that, if the community is to go forward, a particular line of action must be taken . . . . without the constraints of membership in parties relentlessly dedicated to wresting power or retaining it, representatives will be more likely to be actuated by the objective merits of given proposals than by ulterior considerations.  In such an environment willingness to compromise, and with it the prospect of consensus, will be enhanced.

            Wiredu has had his critics.  Some colleagues in African philosophy find his claims of an African heritage of consensus inadequate on empirical grounds.  "The concepts of unanimity, community, solidarity, consensus and the like, through which African societies have been theorized by African writers, are thoroughly mythological, in that they project into a pre-colonial past an Africa without history, without fissures or conflicts, eternalised in a blissful social harmony."  What this colleague characterizes as "the myth of a primordial African community" is endorsed by another African philosopher who suggests that "what we need from Wiredu is a more adequate reconstruction of the origins and the basis of traditional consensual democracy."

            Although they may question the historical status of consensus, in the absence of empirical evidence to support their own position they are not actually able to disprove it-they can only challenge it.  So an important consideration becomes, how much evidence is there in the literature in support of something like consensus in indigenous African societies?  Some measure of reassurance can be gained from the importance accorded another term that seems to qualify as a synonym for "consensus" but to which Wiredu himself never makes specific reference: the Portuguese-derived "palaver."

Even if somewhat abused over the course of time and cultures, in sociological and anthropological monographs "palaver" is used to describe traditional exercises promoting consensus in the cultures of Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (UNESCO 1979).  In these places it "has the positive sense of organized and open debates on various issues in which everybody, regardless of age or sex, is encouraged to participate, with a view to reaching consensus and keeping the community closely linked."  One of these sources also notes that:

            In regard to the term "palaver," it might be interesting to add that a relatively wide review of literature on African social and political organizations revealed that palaver had not hitherto been utilized either as an analytical or conceptual tool in these areas.

            Other critics have suggested that even if, in times past, consensual governance did distinguish Africa, it was enacted at the level of the individual ethnic group.  The typical African nation-state today is composed of a multiplicity of such groups.  How are their sometimes irreconcilable competing interests to be reconciled so that all can contribute meaningfully to a consensual government of national unity?  Even in the absence of political parties, why should it be presumed that consensual governance would not face the same ‘tribalism' problem that has troubled African liberal democracies?  It is not enough to say that, with the appropriate adjustments to the machinery of consensual governance, consensus would carry over and these groups would relate to one another as do members of a single ethnic group.  The context is not the same.

            Wiredu could respond that, given the absence of political parties, this would be less of a problem in his version of the nation-state.  Presumably elected/selected representatives would be expected to sublimate their ethnic identities in the name of national consensus ("One Nigeria!").  But could this be better facilitated on both ideological and practical levels?  To help Wiredu out here perhaps it would be possible to tweak and transplant the ideal of overlapping consensus that was introduced by John Rawls in a 1987 essay with that as its title.

Wiredu's strategy is to extrapolate the model of consensual governance from his native Akan culture and then promote it as a model for governance of the African nation-state.  But if that nation-state is composed of competing ethnic groups, how can they all be persuaded to participate in a national government committed to consensus?  In this essay, Rawls is concerned with enabling justice, what he calls political justice, in a society where there is a plurality of real differences involving things like ethics, aesthetics, and religion.  He suggests that this kind of diversity could be accommodated as long as there is agreement on the part of its members to a foundational political structure:

            We can live together in harmony despite conflicting ideals of the good human being, of worthwhile living, of love and friendship, of ethical conduct, and the like, so long as we know that we share a moral commitment to our society's basic structure . . . . Rawls calls such a conception of justice-one that is not dependent on a more comprehensive worldview, but acceptable to adherents of diverse worldviews-a political conception of justice.

            Political justice reframed as political consensus would overlap cultural differences.  Rawls may have meant for this to apply to the conventional liberal democratic form of government, but why could it not also be incorporated into consensual democracy?  Different ethnic groups-or rather the citizens of which they are composed-commit to the consensual nation-state as a mutually beneficial platform to promote their interests despite differences arising from ethnic identities.

Consensual democracy has also become a topic of interest and importance in contemporary Western liberal democratic theory, where it is said to offer an improvement that would give electorates a more direct role in social and political decision-making processes.  The recommended changes are not the same as those proposed by Wiredu, but it is understandable there is some theoretical overlap or use of the term "consensual" on the part of both parties would be inappropriate.  Nevertheless, apart from a terminological coincidence involving the phrase "consensual democracy" and the similarities arising from generalized notions of consensus, I am unable as of this point to find evidence in relevant sources that indicate Wiredu's direct or indirect influence on them or theirs on him.  I do find passages in Wiredu's writings where he explicitly acknowledges elements of consensual governance in some Western countries, e.g. Switzerland and the Netherlands.  But I think this is a consequence of his formidable powers of observation and analysis.  I say this because he relates consensus to the cultures of Africa on such strong empirical and historical grounds that suggesting he was inspired by Western political theory does not make sense.  In any case, why should it not be a matter of international concern, as far as liberal democracy generally is concerned, that electorates' participation in their own political processes is found to be inadequate and undemocratic.

Wiredu's argumentation for consensual governance appears to be astute.  Empirical challenges to the status of consensus in traditional African societies can be answered.  Perhaps consensus as an alternative form of governance for the African nation-state again deserves to be taken seriously.


 

Bibliography

Armstrong, Robert G. 1979. "The Public Meeting as a Means of Participation in Political and Social Activities." In Socio-Political Aspects of the Palaver in Some African Countries. Paris, France: UNESCO, pp. 11-26.

Busia, K.A. 1967. Africa in Search of Democracy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Eze, Emmanuel C. 1997. "Democracy or Consensus? A Response to Wiredu." In Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, ed. by Emmanuel Eze. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 313-23.

Gyekye, Kwame. 1987. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Horton, Robin. 1993. Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jacques, T. Carlos. 2012. "Alterity in the Discourse of African Philosophy: A Forgotten Absence." In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities Through African Perspectives, ed. by Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho. Legon, Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers, pp. 1017-1030.

Karanja-Diejomaoh, Bi W. M. 1979. "The Palaver in Kenya." In Socio-Political Aspects of the Palaver in Some African Countries. Paris, France: UNESCO, pp. 41-60.

Kaunda, Kenneth. 1966. A Humanist in Africa. London: Longman.

Lijphart, A. 2001. "The pros and cons-but mainly pros-of consensus democracy," Acta Politica 36/2: 129-39.

Ninsin, Kwame A. 2012. "Ghana Since the Mid-Twentieth Century: Tribe or Nation." In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities Through African Perspectives, ed. by Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho. Legon, Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers, pp. 1116-1141.

Nyerere, Julius K. 1968. Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Peil, Margaret. 1977. Consensus and Conflict in African Societies. London: Longman Group Ltd.

Pogge, Thomas W. 2007. John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ramose, Mogobe. 2004. "In Search of an African Philosophy of Education," South African Journal of Higher Education 18/3: 138-60.

Rawls, John. 1987. "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7/1 (Spring): 1-25.

Scott, John and Gordon Marshall, eds. 2005. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

UNESCO. 1979. Socio-Political Aspects of the Palaver in Some African Countries. Paris, France.

Wiredu, Kwasi. 1992. "Moral Foundations of an African Culture." In Person and Community, Ghanaian Philosophical Studies I, ed. by Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. Washington, DC: The Council for Research and Values in Philosophy, pp. 193-206.

------------------. 1996a. "Are There Cultural Universals?" In Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 21-33.

------------------. 1996b. "Custom and Morality: A Comparative Analysis of Some African and Western Conceptions of Morals." Also in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, pp. 61-78.

------------------. 1996c. "The Need for Conceptual Decolonization in African Philosophy." Also in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, pp. 136-44.

----------------- . 1996d. "An Akan Perspective on Human Rights." Also in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, pp. 157-71.

------------------. 1996e. "Philosophy and the Political Problem of Human Rights." Also in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, pp. 172-81.

------------------. 1996f. "Democracy and Consensus: A Plea for a Non-Party Polity." Also in Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective, pp. 182-90.

------------------. 1998. "The State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa," Quest: An International Journal of Philosophy XII/1 (June): 241-52.

------------------. 1999. "Society and Democracy in Africa," New Political Science 21/1: 33-44.

------------------. 2001. "Tradition, Democracy and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Africa." In Rewriting Africa: Toward Renaissance or Collapse?, ed. by Eisei Kurimoto. Japan Centre for Area Studies, JCAS Symposium Series n. 14. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 161-72.

------------------. 2007. "Democracy by Consensus: Some Conceptual Considerations," Socialism and Democracy 21/3: 155-70.

------------------. 2008. "Social Philosophy in Postcolonial Africa: Some Preliminaries Concerning Communalism and Communitarianism," South African Journal of Philosophy 27/4: 332-39.

------------------. 2012. "State, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa." In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities Through African Perspectives, ed. by Helen Lauer and Kofi Anyidoho. Legon, Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers, pp. 1055-1066 (republication of Wiredu 1998).

Barry Hallen is of the Southern Crossroads Academic, 7192 N. Leewynn Drive, Sarasota, FL 34240, United States of America.

  

 

2019 "be-ing and being ramose," in The Tenacity of Truthfulness, edited by Helen Lauer and Helen Yitah. Pretoria, South Africa: ERA and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota Publisher, 13-20.

2018 "The Journey of African Philosophy," in Method, Substance, and the Future of African Philosophy, edited by Edwin Etieyibo, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 35-52.

2016 “Some Comments on Africanising a Philosophy Curriculum,” in South African Journal of Philosophy 35/4, 1-3 (republished 2018 in Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum, Edwin Etieyibo ed. London: Routledge, 191-201).  

2017 "Can a Nation Be a Community?," in Disentangling Consciencism: Essays on Kwame Nkrumah’s Philosophy, edited by Martin Ajei, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

2016  Ifa: Sixteen Odu, Sixteen Questions,” in Ifa Divination, Knowledge, Power, and Performance, edited by J. K. Olupona and Rowland Abiodun, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 91-99. 



"IFÁ: SIXTEEN ODÙ, SIXTEEN QUESTIONS"

 

Barry Hallen

 

Although over the course of my career I have had occasion to write several papers about Ifá, I have made a point of concentrating on methodological issues.  My sixteen questions also are primarily methodologically oriented.

 

1.         Is someone, myself included, privileged to speak knowledgeably about so complex and, to some, foreign a system of knowledge as Ifá if they have not been in some sense formally initiated into it?

 

2.         If you do not have such firsthand experience and knowledge of Ifá, is it a safe or hazardous undertaking for you to set about reducing it to or analyzing it in discursive terms?

 

3.         We are all familiar with a variety of supposedly standardized, cross-cultural, methodological approaches to the study of non-Western systems of thought: structural-functionalism, structuralism, symbolism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, conceptual analysis, and so forth.  Has any single specific methodology either been identified as the one that can do justice to the Ifá system?  I suspect that the consensus, even if tacit, regarding the answer to this question is "No."  No other methodological key than Ifá itself has as yet been found.  What might this mean and how then should we proceed?

 

4.         I become concerned when I note the regularity with which scholars must resort to metaphor, to analogy, to ambiguous comparisons ("It's an African I-Ching."), to excessively technical and therefore even more confusing methodological terminology ("metadiscursive unpacking"), as a basis for providing informative insights into the Ifá system of knowledge.  Is this something about which we should be concerned?

 

5.         Yet Ifá in its inimitable way persists, indeed some might even say it is flourishing, in places in our world where, only decades ago, it was unknown or minimally acknowledged as some form of exotic foreign ‘cult'.  How and why does it continue to be of such persistent international appeal?

 

6.         Ifá persists in a physical, geographical fashion as well as in an intellectual one.  If that is the case, is it relevant to ask about the location of its ‘control center', its hub or nub?  Is a place like Ife today primarily a symbolic but now essentially historic home of Ifá?  A place of pilgrimmage perhaps but not the heart of a functioning infrastructure?

 

7.         Since the Yoruba scholars of Ifá with whom I am familiar have always stressed the tolerance, the flexibility, the adaptability, the creativity of the Ifá system as well as its stability, how could it be possible to reconcile what might become contradictory tendencies?  What might be the consequences for the Ifá corpus if the ẹsẹ Ifá in Cuba or Trinidad, differ from the ẹsẹ Ifá in places like Ife or Oyo?  Does this mean that Ifá will or does accommodate ẹsẹ Ifá that are of local origin and therefore not part of the ‘original' corpus?  If so, what become the consequences for Ifá as an international movement?  Does it become somewhat denominational (to use an inadequate Western-derived term) in that the corpus in one place may not replicate the corpus in another?  To repeat, what then would be the consequences for Ifá as a truly international movement?

 

(8)        In order to facilitate the academic exegesis of the Ifá corpus, by which I mean the Odù Ifá oral texts, does this mean the whole corpus would first have to be transcribed into written form?  Does it also mean that it would have to be translated into one of the so-called ‘world' languages, such as English?  What would be the consequences for the Ifá corpus as a vibrant, flexible system and expression of knowledge if it becomes reduced to the more or less permanent format of the printed page in what is supposedly either a definitive Yoruba edition and/or a definitive English-language translation?

 

(9)        Could this perhaps be a groundbreaking opportunity for a long-term process of study of an African system of knowledge being carried out and expressed by scholars who themselves also write their analyses in Yoruba as well, thereby doing greater justice to tonal nuances, word play, and the like?  If there was a demand for such studies to be communicated to a wider international audience, they could then be selectively translated into one of the so-called world languages, such as English, including the relevant ẹsẹ of course, perhaps as a form of text and commentary.

 

(10)      Ifá divination as a whole is a process, as well as containing a corpus of oral texts or verses.  What could be the negative consequences of sundering or extracting the corpus from the divination process and subjecting it to independent analysis?  Do the ẹsẹ Ifá derive part of their meaning from and during the actual divination process in which they play a part?  How might their academic exegesis then come to terms with giving due consideration to the divination process as a whole?

 

(11)      In 1977 Professor Wande Abimbola and I gave a joint presentation at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Baltimore, USA on the role of secrecy in Ifá divination.  Our presentation was entitled "Secrecy and Objectivity in the Methodology and Literature of Ifá Divination."  That presentation was later published in 1993 as a coauthored chapter in a book entitled Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals.  My concern is to bring your attention to the following excerpt from that paper:

 

Awo [secrecy] is the collective term for various classes of secret information in Yoruba culture. . . .

That awo is important in Ifá is clear from a number of key terms that incorporate the word.  Most obvious is babaláwo: AThe Yoruba word for an Ifa priest [diviner] is babaláwo, which can roughly be translated into English as >father of secrets= (Abimbola 1975, 5).@  The Babaláwo Olódù "are full Ifá priests who have been initiated into the secrets of Odù, the mythical wife of Ifá (Abimbola 1976, 13)."  In addition there are Ọmọ Awo, "an Ifá apprentice . . . known as a child of secrets (Bascom 1969b, 83)"; Awo Egan: AThe lowest grade of practicing Ifa diviners are known as . . . ‘secret of egan' [a special type of medicines] (Bascom 1969b, 81)"; and Olúwo, a word meaning "master of secrets" or "chief of secrets" (olú awo), and referring to any of the three highest grades of diviners (Bascom 1969b, 83).

Secrecy . . . . is a safeguard against the indiscriminate use of power.  The awo of which one is said to be a child, father, or master is knowledge peculiar to the Ifá system, and is arranged in a hierarchy of grades of increasing complexity and power.  Entry into each grade (as well as into the Ifá cult itself) is rigorously selective, and is controlled by a series of initiation ceremonies.  To advance a grade (which one may do both at one=s superiors= invitation and by personal application), one must have demonstrated one=s professional competence on the preceding level, and have proven that one can exercise power responsibly and with discretion.  Awo, then, both prevents the uninitiated layman from acquiring and misusing the power of Ifá, and acts within the profession to situate the Ifá priest at the level of expertise for which his own personal talents and abilities equip him (Abimbola and Hallen 1993, 217-218).

 

            My concern and question is, if Ifá is becoming as dispersed and possibly internationally diverse as might seem to be the case, is there an infrastructure in place to maintain the same level of quality control among babaláwo as was the case in the Yoruba heartland when Professor Abimbola and I wrote about this positive sanction provided by secrecy in 1977?  Or is the role of secrecy as a positive methodological element being significantly eroded?

            A few weeks ago, when I Googled "Ifa+divination," I got 20,000 hits.  I brought material from just two of those 20,000 with me here today to share with you.  One concerns a very substantial volume (591 pages) selling for $50 entitled Practical Ifá Divination: Ifá Reference Manual for the Beginner and Professional.  To be fair to the author (who himself seems to be a properly initiated babaláwo), he makes in clear in the opening pages that "nothing in this book qualifies anyone to become a Babaláwo," and that "No one can become a Babaláwo unless he is initiated according to Ifa injunction," etc.  But for me the implication of this substantially detailed text entitled PRACTICAL Ifá Divination, that is explicitly said to be for "the Beginner," evokes memories of books along the lines of Rowlands' Teach Yourself Yoruba, and so forth.  Because this is a guide that is sufficiently detailed so that it could enable one to literally practice Ifa divination.  As the blurbs on the back cover indicate: "the message of Ifá is clearly given (i.e., discursive interpretations of various ese taken from the first of the 16 principal Odù, the Èjì Ogbè) the sacrifice materials are stated while how to perform the necessary rituals and sacrifices are explained."  Furthermore, a reviewer of this volume on Amazon.com says the following: "Though this volume is labeled Volume 3, it is the first published of a proposed eighteen volume series."

            My further concern is that if the existent infrastructure of Ifá as an international phenomenon is not adequate, who knows what varieties of unqualified babaláwo may be out there, claiming to be initiates without that really being the case, and in turn furthering their own interests by falsely initiating other babaláwo who will as well not be legitimate representatives of Ifá?

            A second Xerox I circulate as evidence of a possibly analogous troubling phenomenon [names have been edited out to protect the innocent] is from a website where another ‘Babaláwo' tells his potential clients that:

 

It is highly recommended that one be present to sit on the mat with the diviner during the divination.  Baring [sic.] that possibility a person may send their contribution and a hand written letter, including their name, date of birth, questions, phone number, mailing address or email address to _______________.  The priest will respond by collect telephone call, mail or email, whichever is your preference.  Email your request to ___________ or mail it to ______________.

 

That, as you can see, is followed by the phrase: "$50 Contribution (all services are tax deductible)."

 

            Why do I draw your attention to this?  Well, it is a pretty clear indication that, among other things, Ifá divination has come to the internet.  And it would seem to me there is a further question here that requires resolution:  Is it a legitimate alternative for a client to consult a babaláwo whom he or she never meets in person, whose professional qualifications may be total fabrications, on the basis of an internet advertisement and email correspondence?  Actually I am asking two questions here:  one is whether Ifá divination can make the transition to the internet and still be regarded as genuine; the second is how to control unscrupulous fraudulent individuals who claim to be babaláwo via internet web sites but may simply see this as a way to line their own pockets by telling people what they want to hear?

 

(12)      One eminent Yoruba academic, babaláwo, and official emissary of Ifá to the world who has expressed his concerns about many of these points I have raised is here today.  Namely, Professor Wande Abimbola, the Àwíşẹ Awo Àgbáyé , a title which indicates that his domain encompasses the entire planet.  In his recently published  book, Ifá Will Mend Our Broken World, he states explicitly that one of his missions is to stop Ifá from being prostituted in the diaspora via false initiations, babaláwo who are not really babaláwo, etc.  As a further step toward ‘regularizing' Ifá, he has organized three World Òrìşà Conferences that have taken place in both Nigeria and Brazil.  But I wonder whether these measures are enough to bring the situation under control, and I hoped to ask Professor Abimbola that very question here today.  For one thing, he is only one man and the diaspora with which he is trying to come to terms is vast.  And although the World Òrìşà Conferences may bring together certain strata of Ifá professionals, I'm wondering about their ‘trickle-down' conseqeuences.  In other words, if many of the Ifá practitioners who are in fact unqualified would make a point of avoiding such venues, how do you then come to terms with them, how do you shut them down, or shut them up for that matter?  For what could result is that a faction of, in effect apostates (a term used with apologies to both Ifá and Christianity), will eventually have the audacity to declare themselves as legitimate in their own right, regardless of what a truly legitimate authority like Professor Abimbola might have to say?

 

(13)      Earlier on I referred to the possible importance of formal initiation into Ifá as a prerequisite to a more profound understanding of the Odù Ifá or literary corpus.  But if part of the initiation into Ifá also involves a vow of or commitment to a degree of secrecy (awo) about divulging what one has learned, then I wonder whether a certain catch-22 situation might not arise.  In other words, would such a vow of secrecy about certain information fundamental to understanding Ifá not interfere with the exegesis of the corpus by an Ifá initiate or priest, because they then might be prohibited from passing on their understanding of Ifá in a publication meant for a popular (including academic) but uninitiated audience?

 

(14)      There is a virtually endless stream of second-order publications discussing how the Odù Ifá and their constituent ẹsẹ might be interpolated and rendered into discursive form, so that the knowledge contained by the Ifá system might be made more explicit.  Henry Louis Gates has drawn interesting parallels between the paradoxes and ambiguities found in Ifá and in African American literature that he is convinced are not coincidental.  But, to my knowledge, no one has yet to claim to have identified a ‘key' of some sort that will solve this ‘puzzle'?  My question, then, is whether this is a ‘puzzle' that is in fact insoluble, or at least a convincing indication that the knowledge expressed by the Ifá corpus cannot be rendered into a discursive format?  If so, would we then have to conclude that this is a new, or at least, relatively rare form of discourse by which knowledge can be expressed?

Many of these publications make reference to some form of hermeneutics as a promising interpretative instrument or tool.  But was it not Martin Heidegger (pardon the intrusion of Western philosophy), one of the ‘fathers' of hermeneutics, who ultimately gave up on any form of discursive writing as adequate to expressing new forms of knowledge, new insights into the nature of existence, and turned to poetry or verse as the most overlooked but rich source of them?  The point would be not to relegate the Ifá corpus to some lesser form of literary expression.  The point would be to elevate the poetic into a higher form of epistemic expression.

            Or can we solve the puzzle by simply inverting the entire process of interpolation and exegesis by suggesting that there was a deliberate hermeneutical intent on the part of the original creators of the ẹsẹ Ifá.  In other words it is the creators of the Odù who are themselves deliberately concerned to fashion a rhetorical format that will withstand the ages and yet still provide a substantive basis for the corpus' providing relevant and meaningful interpretations or renderings, in principle, for the indefinite future.  In which case the ẹsẹ Ifá have been hermeneutical in character since the time of their composition, and this then becomes the most responsible generalization that can be made regarding a ‘key' to their interpretation.  Even if it is another question that cannot be answered due to vows of secrecy, it would be interesting to know what a babaláwo is taught about how to create and compose new ẹsẹ Ifá.

 

(15)      When I Googled "Ifa+divination+philosophy," I got over 3,000 hits, but apart from repetitive references to William Bascom's well-known study I found nothing distinctly ‘philosophical' about the web sites to which I was referred.  And as far as Bascom's book is concerned, apart from one chapter entitled "Professional Ethics" (of the babaláwo) and another that discusses Ifá as a "System of Beliefs," I could not identify a single passage where he explicitly introduces the word "philosophy" with reference to Ifá.  I had more success with the Widener Library catalogue here at Harvard, where I located a 1999 publication entitled Yoruba Ethics and Metaphysics: Being Basic Philosophy Underlying the Ifá System of Thought of the Yoruba.  I have asked Widener to retrieve this volume from its Depository for me, but note that this title refers to Ifá only as "a system of thought" rather than as "philosophy" per se.

            I don't mean to appear as if I am an employee of Abimbola, Inc., but the volume I did finally turn to for a philosophical exploration of the whole of Ifá divination is Kola Abimbola's 2006 text: Yoruba Culture: A Philosophical Account.  I was attracted to this book by statements such as the following, which occur in the opening pages of the "Preface":

 

            (a) "The book. . . . is simply a theoretical account of the philosophical ideas that underlie the world-view of traditional Yoruba societies (xv; note the plural)."

 

            (b) "The Odù Ifá are (relatively) fixed and given, but there is considerable room for different critical reflective appraisal of them when Ifá priests and priestesses make use of the Odù Ifá as heuristic action-guiding principles on the basis of which they counsel and advise people. . . . appropriately, in making use of the Odù Ifá as the basis of my account of Yoruba culture, I will be critical and reflective (xix)."

 

            (c) "If you are interested in Western philosophy disguised as Yoruba philosophy, this book is not for you (xvi)."

 

            Discussions of the philosophical significance of Ifá constitute a substantial portion of Kola Abimbola's book, but I was most attracted or intrigued by his analyses of the relationship between religion and ethics in Yoruba culture (87), and by his discussions of ethics as it relates to an individual's ìwà, or character.  Those of us who have labored long in the area of African philosophy are more than familiar with the tendency to treat Western viewpoints upon ethics as paradigms or models that are then conventionally used as a basis for the exposition of non-Western systems of values.  In Yoruba studies this had led, for example, to a fundamental disagreement as to whether the system of moral values enunciated by Yoruba culture, as Kola Abimbola puts it, "derives its validity from religion (87)."  Or whether, to quote Kola again, "morality is primarily a this-worldly affair in which [the primary] . . . focus [is] on issues of [correct and incorrect] co-operation, actions, emotions, character, etc. vis-à-vis relationships with . . . [other human] beings (88)."  In other words, the issue is whether morality in Yoruba culture is most importantly divinely inspired or is it most fundamentally human in origin, in that it enunciates values created by human beings (rather than a god or gods) who were anxious to establish communities that would promote human welfare?  Currently the balance of opinion, at least among philosophers of Africa, seems to favor this latter possibility of human or naturalistic origin.  I am thinking here of people like Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Segun Gbadegesin and, unfortunately at least to some degree, myself. 

Kola Abimbola trumps this disjunctive conundrum by, in effect, embracing both alternatives and I believe he successfully justifies his position as not involving a contradiction.  But the questions I am most concerned to ask, finally, are two.  First, is this a situation where Western philosophical naturalism, which favors dispensing with the spiritual altogether and insisting that systems of values must be justified purely on reasonable (this-worldly) grounds exclusively, is having a negative influence on the exposition of a non-Western culture and thereby causing unnecessary confusion and complications in communicating both its meanings and significance?  Secondly, what philosophical approach has Kola Abimbola, himself a Ph.D. in philosophy, found most useful for interpolating the Ifá corpus, so that he does arrive at such, in Western terms, unconventional conclusions?

 

(16)      This question also arises from a statement in Kola Abimbola's book.  It reads as follows: "the Yoruba person who explicitly claims to be a Christian, a Muslim, or an atheist, but who consults the oníşẹgùn [traditional healer] for medical treatment (and who uses/takes the herbal prescriptions in conjunction with the spiritual prescriptions) is implicitly subscribing to the Yoruba spiritual view of the world (91)."  What intrigues me about this sentence is the use of the word "implicitly."  I suppose the scenario I am about to outline could take place in Yorubaland, but I would prefer to relate to other non-Yoruba geographical venues where Ifá is also in vogue-places in the Western hemisphere, for instance.  Rather than speaking of the oníşẹgùn let us speak of the babaláwo and of Ifá divination.  What exactly would be the status of an Ifá divination session in which the client was so committed a Christian, Muslim, or even atheist that they could never explicitly agree to the spiritual reality of the Yoruba divinities?  I suspect that such situations do arise, where consulting Ifá is regarded as equivalent to going to a fortune teller, and I wonder what the status of the divination prescription becomes in such situations.  Are we saying that, in effect, unless one undergoes an explicit process of religious conversion to the Yoruba deities, Ifá can have no effective relationship to a person's life?  On the other hand, could it be possible that a person who was not initially spiritually committed to Ifá, perhaps even outspokenly skeptical about its status as a system of knowledge, would be so impressed by the positive results of a divination session that that experience itself became an instrument for spiritual conversion to the Yoruba divinities?  Finally, is there any form of obligation upon the babaláwo to introduce the non-Yoruba, Western client who comes to consult Ifá to the spiritual beliefs and values which Ifá takes as foundational?

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Abimbola, Kola. 2006. Yoruba Culture: A Philosophical Account. Birmingham, UK: Iroko Academic Publishers.

Abimbola, Wande. 1997. Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World. Roxbury, MA: Aim Books.

--------------------. 1975. Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa. Niamey, Niger: UNESCO.

--------------------. 1976. Ifa: An Exposition of the Ifa Literary Corpus. Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press.

--------------------. 2000. "Continuity and Change in the Verbal, Artistic, Ritualistic, and Performance Traditions of Ifa Divination." In Insight and Artistry in African Divination, edited by John Pemberton III, 175-181. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Abimbola, Wande and Barry Hallen. 1993. "Secrecy and Objectivity in the Methodology and Literature of Ifa Divination." In Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals, edited by Polly Nooter, 213-222. New York: The Museum for African Art and Munich: Prestel.

Abiodun, Rowland, Ulli Beier, and John Pemberton III. 2004. Cloth Only Wears to Shreds. Amherst, MA: Mead Art Museum.

Ajayi, Bade. 1996. Ifa Divination: Its Practice Among the Yoruba of Nigeria. Ilorin, Nigeria: UNILORIN Press.

Akintola, Akinbowale. 1999. Yoruba Ethics and Metaphysics: Being Basic Philosophy Underlying the Ifa System of Thought of the Yoruba. Ibadan, Nigeria: Valour Publishing Ventures Ltd.

Barber, Karin and P. F. de Moraes Farias, eds. 1989. Discourse and Its Disguises: The Interpretation of African Oral Texts. Birmingham, UK: Centre of West African Studies.

Bascom, William. 1969. Ifa Divination. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gleason, Judith. 1973. A Recitation of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba. New York: Grossman Publishers.

Hallen, Barry. 1997. "African Meanings, Western Words," African Studies Review 40/1 (April): 1-11.

--------------------. 2000. "Variations on a Theme: Ritual, Performance, Intellect." In Insight and Artistry in African Divination, edited by John Pemberton III, 168-174. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

--------------------. 2000. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2002. A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2004. "Cosmology: African Cosmologies," Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones, MacMillan Reference, USA.

---------------------. 2005. "African Ethics?" Chapter 41 in A Companion to Religious Ethics, edited by W. Schweiker, 406-412. Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

--------------------. 2005. "Heidegger, Hermeneutics and African Philosophy," in Africa e Mediterraneo 53 (December): 46-53.

--------------------. 2006. African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey.

Hallen, Barry and J. Olubi Sodipo. 1997. Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft:  Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (with a "Foreword" by W. V. O. Quine), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Ibie, C. Osamaro. 1992. Ifism: Complete Works of Orunmila, Vol. II. Lagos, Nigeria: Efehi Ltd.

--------------------. n.d. Ifism: Complete Works of Orunmila, Vol. III. Lagos, Nigeria.

--------------------. 1993. Ifism: Complete Works of Orunmila, Vol. IV. Lagos, Nigeria: Consolidated Paper Mill Ltd.

--------------------. 1993. Ifism: Complete Works of Orunmila, Vol. V. Lagos, Nigeria: Consolidated Paper Mill Ltd.

Jenkins, Ulysses Duke. 1978. Ancient African Religion and the African American Church. North Carolina: Flame International.

Oluwole, Sophie. 1996. "African Philosophy as Illustrated in Ifa Corpus," Imodoye: A Journal of African Philosophy 2/2: 1-20.

Peek, Philip, ed. 1991. African Divination Systems. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Peek, Philip and Michael Winkelman, eds. 2004. Divination and Healing. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Salami, Ayo. 2002. Ifa: A Complete Divination. Lagos, Nigeria: NIDD Publishing.


 

2015 “Personhood in a Communitarian Context,” in Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK), Vol. 7, No. 2 n.s. (December), Department of Philosophy, University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1-10.

 2015 “Translation, Interpretation, and Alternative Epistemologies,” in Comparative Philosophy without Borders, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 55-68.

2014  “Select Issues and Controversies in Contemporary African Philosophy,” in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements: Philosophical Traditions, Vol. 74 (July). Edited by Anthony O’Hear, London: Royal Institute of Philosophy and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 109-122.

2014  Revised entry on “African Aesthetics” (5,000 words) for the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 2nd ed. Edited by Michael Kelly, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2013 “More Than the Sum of Its Parts: ‘Holism’ in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Onyechere Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe,” in A Holistic Approach to Human Existence and Development, edited by Kolawole A. Olu-Owolabi and Adebola B. Ekanola.  Ibadan, Nigeria: Hope Publications, 3-14.

2013 “African Philosophy” in the New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2012-2013: Ethics and Philosophy, edited by Robert Fastiggi and Joseph Kosterski. Gale-Cenage Learning: Farmington Michigan, 48-50.

2012 Acerca de la filosofia Africana” [“On African Philosophy”], coauthored with V. Y. Mudimbe.  La Filosofia: En Nuestro Tiempo Historico [Philosophy: In Our Historical Time].  Volume published in the Spanish-language series, Cuadernos de Pensamiento Critico: Filosofia hoy [Notebooks on Critical Thinking: Philosophy Today], ed. Felix Valdes and Yahanka Leon, Instituto Cubano del Libro.  Los Cristales, Panama: Ruth Casa Editorial, 19-62.

2012 “The House of the ‘Inu’: Keys to the Structure of a Yoruba Theory of the Self,” coauthored with J. Olubi Sodipo, in Beyond the Lines: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, A Philosophical Practice, edited by Lidia Procesi and Kasereka Kavwahirehi, Munich, Germany: LINCOM, 241-258.

2011 “African Philosophy,” for the Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy, edited by Stephen Ferguson, Oxford University Press, 471-481.

2010 “‘Ethnophilosophy’ Redefined?” in Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK), Vol. 2, No. 1 n.s. (June), Department of Philosophy, University of Nairobi, Kenya, 73-85.

 

 

 

"ETHNOPHILOSOPHY" REDEFINED?

 

 

            The term "ethnophilosophy" has had its most significant influence in the area of African philosophy.  It is a curious word, in that its meaning over the past decades has varied from originally being a term of abuse, virtually an invective, to now a normative term that could in principle be applied to what is labeled "philosophy" in any culture.

            It appeared in a most dramatic fashion in 1970 in an essay published by Paulin Hountondji, a philosopher from the Republic of Benin, entitled "Comments on Contemporary African Philosophy."  Hountondji uses the term to both chastise and categorize the work of a number of Africanists who were some of the first to link the word "philosophy" to the cultures of Africa in their published works (Tempels 1959; Griaule 1965; Mbiti 1969).  He objects to the way these scholars link the word "philosophy" to the African intellectual heritage because they implicitly observe a double-standard regarding its meaning, a double-standard that is demeaning to the intellectual integrity of Africa generally.

 

A forerunner of ‘African philosophy': Tempels.  This Belgian missionary's Bantu Philosophy still passes today, in the eyes of some, for a classic of ‘African philosophy'.  In fact, it is an ethnological work with philosophical pretensions, or more simply, if I may coin the word, a work of ‘ethnophilosophy'. . .

            Indeed, Bantu Philosophy did open the floodgates to a deluge of essays which aimed to reconstruct a particular Weltanschauung, a specific world-view commonly attributed to all Africans, abstracted from history and change and, moreover, philosophical, through an interpretation of the customs and traditions, proverbs and institutions - in short, various data - concerning the cultural life of African peoples. . .

            Africans are, as usual, excluded from the discussion, and Bantu philosophy is a mere pretext for learned disquisitions among Europeans.  The black man continues to be the very opposite of an interlocutor; he remains a topic, a voiceless face under private investigation, an object to be defined and not the subject of a possible discourse (Hountondji 1970, 122).

 

            Some of the distinctive characteristics of this offensive African ethnophilosophy are as follows: (1) It presents itself as a philosophy of peoples rather than of individuals.  In Africa one is therefore given the impression that there can be no equivalents to a Socrates or a Kant.  Ethnophilosophy speaks only of Bantu philosophy, Dogon philosophy, Akan philosophy; as such its scope is collective (or ‘tribal'), of the world-view variety; (2) Its sources are in the past, in what is described as authentic, traditional African culture of the pre-colonial variety, of the Africa prior to ‘modernity'.  These can be found in cultural byproducts that were primarily oral: parables, proverbs, poetry, songs, myths - oral literature generally.  Obviously, since such sources do not present their ‘philosophies' in any conventionally discursive or technical format, it is the academic scholars who interpret or analyze them (rather than African peoples) who are the creators of what they thereafter present as the systematized ‘philosophy' of an entire African culture; (3) From a methodological point of view ethnophilosophy therefore tends to present the beliefs that constitute this ‘philosophy' as things that do not change, that are somehow timeless.  African traditional systems of thought are therefore portrayed as placing minimal emphasis upon rigorous argumentation and criticism in a search for truth that provides for discarding the old and creating the new.  Tradition somehow becomes antithetical to innovation.  Disputes between academic ethnophilosophers arise primarily over how to arrive at a correct interpretation of a static body of oral literature and oral traditions.

            If this material is presented as cultural anthropology or as straightforward ethnography, Hountondji would have no objection to it.  But when it is introduced as philosophy, as African philosophy, a demeaning and subversive double-standard is introduced that excuses African philosophy from having critical, reflective (it becomes, in effect, prereflective), rational, scientific, and progressive content in any significantly cross-culturally comparative sense.  Hountondji does not hold the perpetrators of this unauthentic African philosophy personally responsible for their crimes.  In their day in their own intellectual circles they believed they were doing something revolutionary, something genuinely radical and progressive, by daring to link the word "philosophy" directly to African systems of thought.

            The responses to Hountondji's clarion call to stop intellectually crucifying Africa in this manner have been profound.  Virtually no one at that point in time wanted to risk being labeled an "ethnophilosopher," and there is no doubt that his critique led, in part, to the extensive period of soul-searching in the 70's and early 80's on the part of African philosophers over how philosophy in the African context should be construed.  For the term "ethnophilosophy" had, for many, become a euphemism for false and anti-African African philosophy.

            An African philosopher who disagreed almost immediately with what he perceived as certain unfounded claims and implications of Hountondji's critique was H. Odera Oruka of Kenya.  Oruka insisted and set out to prove, empirically, that Africa's cultures had always had their own philosophers, sometimes designated as ‘wise men' or, by Oruka, as sages.  And that their most distinctive attribute was not that they acted as passive repositories of rote-memorized, communally orthodox oral literature and traditions, but that they critically analyzed and evaluated the beliefs and practices of their cultures, and frequently disagreed with them on a rational basis.  This Oruka succeeded in documenting via a series of fieldwork recordings, principally in the Luo-speaking areas of his native Kenya.

 

            Some sages . . . attain a philosophic capacity.  As sages, they are versed in the beliefs and wisdoms of their people.  However, as thinkers, they are rationally critical and they opt for or recommend only those aspects of the beliefs and wisdoms which satisfy their rational scrutiny.  In this respect, they are potentially or contemporarily in clash with the die-hard adherents of the prevailing common beliefs.  Such sages are also capable of conceiving and rationally recommending ideas offering alternatives to the commonly accepted opinions and practices (Oruka 1990, 44).

 

Oruka also objected to other elements of Hountondji's argument which suggested that something truly akin to serious philosophical thinking was more likely to develop when Africa's cultures became predominantly literate rather than oral in character.  Hountondji suggested that orality tended to reinforce the status of beliefs as communal, while literacy encouraged more diverse and independent trains of thought.  That Oruka had succeeded in identifying individual, non-literate sages whose thinking about such philosophical fundamentals as God, religion, body and mind, virtue, good and evil, truth and falsehood, happiness, life and death, justice, freedom, equality, law, human suffering, punishment, ethnicity and communalism clearly was original was more than sufficient, Oruka argued, to prove that this further claim of Hountondji's also was false.

            Another response to Hountondji's critique was that formulated by J. Olubi Sodipo and Barry Hallen at the University of Ife, Nigeria.  Hallen and Sodipo chose to experiment with the more conventionally academic ordinary language approach to analytic philosophy (Austin 1961) in the African context, which focuses upon how people in a particular society use certain words in their natural language in everyday life, in order to precisely monitor their meanings and the criteria that govern their proper usage.  But, rather than treating individual concepts in isolation, the point was to place them in their relevant "fields of discourse" - the network of other concepts with which they were interrelated since all were somehow concerned with the same subject-matter.  For example, the network of concepts used to rate information as more or less reliable - a topic of obvious relevance to epistemology or the theory of knowledge.  In their Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy they set out to demonstrate that the Yoruba-language vocabulary and criteria used to classify information as more or less reliable differed fundamentally from those derived from English-language usage and treated as paradigmatic by (Western) academic philosophical epistemology.

 

            African philosophy, insofar as it may come to deal with the analysis of African languages (or meanings) and evaluation of the beliefs of African cultures, will not even be in a position to begin until such things have been correctly understood and translated in a determinate manner. . .

            For something has happened.  A category of information that was supposed to be ‘knowledge' no longer is.  People who were supposed to be ‘witches' no longer are.  From a cross-cultural point-of-view we therefore believe that this book introduces a new dimension into philosophy (not just into African philosophy) by demonstrating that the criteria governing the application of certain concepts in radically different language systems may be of genuine philosophical significance (Hallen and Sodipo 1986, 124).

 

            While Oruka concentrates on Luo ‘wise men' or sages for their diverse and critical opinions, Hallen and Sodipo choose to target Yoruba (southwestern Nigeria) traditional healers or masters of medicine as reliable sources for the correct usage of a selection of terms that would correspond to, and hopefully make for meaningful comparisons with, the results of similar exercises carried out by orthodox academic philosophers who targeted English-language ordinary, everyday usage.

            What is noteworthy about both of these responses to Hountondji's critique is that neither succeeded, at least initially, in escaping being typed by their peers (as well as Hountondji himself) as further manifestations of ethnophilosophy.  Oruka's research was criticized for being philosophically simplistic and superficial: "For it is one thing to show that there are men capable of philosophical dialogue in Africa and another to show that there are African philosophers [my italics] in the sense of those who have engaged in organized systematic reflections on the thoughts, beliefs, and practices of their people (Bodunrin 1981, 170)."

            The key point to Bodunrin's criticism seems to be that being critical of certain beliefs and practices in one's culture is not enough to qualify anyone in any society as a professional philosopher.  In Hallen's and Sodipo's case, the fact that they turn to traditional healers as their preferred sources of information about ordinary language usage has been interpreted as assigning them a status comparable to Oruka's sages.  To a limited extent this analogy is justified, in that the local population did regard them as those members of their community most knowledgeable of the culture generally.  But the fact that Hallen and Sodipo - guided by the tenets of ordinary language philosophy - were using these men as arbiters for the correct usage of ordinary, everyday, spoken language rather than as sources of rational but idiosyncratic beliefs indicates a very different methodological approach to philosophy in the African context than what Oruka was concerned to develop with the school of thought he eventually designated as philosophical sagacity.

            Many other African philosophers have contributed to what remained a vigorous debate over the proper role of oral traditions in African philosophy (Appiah 1992; Imbo 2002; Masolo 1994; Mudimbe 1988; Serequeberhan 1991, Wiredu 1980).  But, beginning roughly from the early 90's a kind of consensus was emerging that, although basing African philosophy exclusively on such material might not be the best way to proceed, it most certainly was entitled to a place in the writings of African philosophers who regarded it as in some sense formative or even foundational.  In part this was a response to an increasingly global Western cultural imperialism.  In part it was either an implicit or sometimes explicit acknowledgement that philosophers in the African context felt free to chart their own methodological pathways if necessary so as to accommodate the distinctive nature of Africa's intellectual heritage.

            One example of such a refined approach may be found in the work of the Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Gyekye.  In his Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience, Gyekye makes a clear distinction between the methodology he embraces and the results of that methodology when applied to elements of his native Akan culture.  The forthright phrasing of the opening statement of this book, meant to summarize its aims, is characteristic:

 

[1] to stress the fact of the universal character of the intellectual activity called philosophy - of the propensity of some individuals in all human cultures to reflect deeply and critically about fundamental questions of human experience; [2] to point out that philosophy is essentially a cultural phenomenon; [3] to argue the legitimacy or appropriateness of the idea of African philosophy and attempt a definition of (modern) African philosophy; [4] and to demonstrate that there were sages or thinkers in Africa's cultural past who gave reflective attention to matters of human existence at the fundamental level, and, as part of the demonstration, to critically explore the philosophical ideas of the Akan traditional thinkers (of Ghana) (1997, 9).

 

            In his An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (1995), Gyekye's approach to Akan philosophy is significantly conceptual.  He identifies terminology in Akan (Twi) discourse that is of philosophical significance.  But he also emphasizes the intellectual importance of proverbs in that culture, as analogous to philosophical ‘nuggets' that contain highly condensed, judicious insights and wisdom, characteristic of an oral culture that could not have recourse to extensive written tracts.  At the same time he rejects, categorically, a purely, technically philosophical, linguistic or conceptualist approach to these materials (1995, 64-5).  He does this because their function, most importantly, is not merely to express or to record wisdom - it is to also serve as practical guides to life and human experience.

            To research their practical consequences in Akan culture, Gyekye has undertaken what he unabashedly refers to as "fieldwork" - seeking out "sages" in traditional Ghanaian society who can explain this dimension to the concepts and proverbs he finds of interest (in effect, they illuminate the relationship between theory and practice).  But rather than remain with sets of random concepts and proverbs and the isolated, individuated meanings or insights they express, Gyekye sets out to weave them together (1995, 16) so that they can then be seen to express more systematic philosophical viewpoints on such topics as God, causality, free-will, and ethics or morality  "By ‘connection to the traditional', I . . . [am] only calling for some analytic attention to be paid also to the traditional thought categories, values, outlooks, and so on, as a way of affirming an existing African philosophical tradition, some features or elements of which may be considered worthy of further philosophical pursuit (1995, xi-xii)."

            Hountondji also has recently (2002) clarified his position on what he now prefers to term "African traditions of thought."  When explicitly assessed from a critical philosophical standpoint they have every right to constitute an important dimension of African philosophy.  But this would constitute a very different approach to their significance than when previously used to promote ‘fairy-tale', tribal African philosophies manufactured in an ad hoc manner from random proverbs and myths.

            Gyekye further maintains that this philosophical substratum of Akan proverbs will turn out in many cases to replicate the proverbial wisdom of other African cultures.  This is a thesis he explores in greater detail in a later book, African Cultural Values (1996).  For example, in a chapter on "Moral Values" he favorably compares specific humanistic values expressed by the Akan with similar virtues affirmed by the Yoruba ethnic group of Nigeria in West Africa and the Swahili language and culture of East Africa.  Yet at the same time he wants to maintain that it would be a serious error to infer from this that there is such a thing as a unique - in the sense that it contains ideas not found anywhere else in the world - African (traditional) philosophy shared by all the subcontinent's peoples (1995, xvi).  He is equally reluctant to argue that there is a unique Akan cultural philosophy.  What one does find in every culture in the world are certain common philosophical concerns and questions to which different answers (destiny versus free-will, for example) in different formats (proverbs versus deductive arguments, for example) have been proposed.  The particular combination or interrelation of formats and answers to these concerns or questions found in a particular culture may somehow be distinctive, but this is of a very different order from their being literally unique to that culture.

            Gyekye argues that philosophy is a historical as well as cultural enterprise.  By this he means that the issues which concerned African philosophers in precolonial or ‘traditional' times may not be the same as those that concern African philosophers in modern or contemporary times (1995, xi-xii).  But this does not imply that there should be no connection between the two.  He is prepared to be flexible about what exactly that connection should be.  From the standpoint of the history of philosophy in Africa, all viewpoints relevant to ‘traditional' philosophy would become important.  But since the philosophical priorities and concerns of every society change over time, this would mean that, from the standpoint of modern or contemporary African philosophy, some ‘traditional' themes may prove of less interest or relevance than others.

 

For a long time in academic philosophy in sub-Saharan Africa, much controversy over the embattled concept of ethnophilosophy appeared to pit indigenous African knowledge systems against philosophy as a specialized category of knowledge.  The assumption in much of that literature, and in the work of some diehard critics of the idea of African philosophy to date, is that an idea cannot be both indigenous and philosophical at the same time (Masolo 2003, 26).

 

            The most recent and comparatively ‘radical' metamorphosis of the meaning of the term "ethnophilosophy" could be seen as a logical consequence of the history already recounted.  "Ethnophilosophy" began its conceptual life as an appellation used to stigmatize what was said to be a distinctively dysfunctional form of African philosophy.  It was then ‘liberated', insofar as it was then used to legitimize the inclusion of distinctively African cultural elements in a scholarly discipline that could be considered African-oriented yet philosophically scrupulous as far as professional or academic standards were concerned (Gyekye 1997, 235-241).  Most recently it has been elevated to a kind of transcendent status in that, if this kind of approach is acceptable for African philosophy then, in effect, it might also all along have been true of whatever was and is termed "philosophy" in any culture -Western or non-Western.

            This would mean that the priorities (the ‘problems' of philosophy) that distinguish it as a discipline in Western cultures are themselves culturally generated, as are the priorities that distinguish it in Asian cultures, and so forth.  If indigenous content is legitimized, the whole of philosophy becomes effectively, respectably ‘tribalized'.  In effect, then, every manifestation of even academic philosophy, wherever it occurs, might be said to represent a form of ethnophilosophy.  But what the West almost succeeded in doing was persuading the rest of the world that its culturally-generated ‘views' of philosophy - its ethnophilosophy - should be regarded as culturally universal, as forms of thought and knowledge that all other cultures were compelled to imitate if they wished to be admitted as members of that exclusive club known as ‘academic' philosophy.

 

            The African ethnophilosophy controversy rekindles and contextualizes the opposition between local and universal perceptions of knowledge . . . Thus, the emergence of the social-construction-of-knowledge movement ("ethno-knowledge") clearly erodes its [‘science' when presented as an exclusively Western paradigm of universality, for example] force by questioning its foundational status.  In opposition to that which is alien, foreign, or extraneous, the postulation of the adjective indigenous before the characterization or name of any knowledge is to claim for the adjective the desirability of autochthonomy (autochthony), self-representation, and self-preservation (Masolo 2003, 25)

 

            The overriding, critical issue for orthodox or establishment (Western) philosophy, of course, will be to what extent this indigenization of knowledge and of philosophy opens the door to relativism.  For if knowledge and thereby truth were to become culturally or linguistically defined and thereby potentially relativized, Western orthodoxy would view the discipline of philosophy as entering into the mode of self-destruct.  But, as the intellectual fashions associated with multiculturalism and postcolonialism have demonstrated (Mudimbe 1988), and as a Western-generated postmodernism has highlighted, epistemological standards and priorities also are cultural byproducts (Harding 1997).  This would make the door referred to above disappear entirely, because now non-Western, indigenous systems of knowledge should have prima facie integrity and thereby equal representation and status in the global intellectual marketplace.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Appiah, K. Anthony. 1992. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Austin, J. L. 1961. Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bodunrin, P. O. 1981. "The Question of African Philosophy," Philosophy 56/216: 161-179.

Gyekye, Kwame. 1995. An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

--------------------. 1996. African Cultural Values. Philadelphia and Accra, Ghana: Sankofa Publishing Company.

--------------------. 1997. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.

Griaule, Marcel. 1965. Conversations with Ogotemmeli. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hallen, Barry. 2000. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2006. African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.

--------------------. 2009. A Short History of African Philosophy. 2nd rev. ed. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Hallen, Barry and J. Olubi Sodipo. 1986. Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy. London: Ethnographica Ltd. (Revised edition 1997, Stanford University Press).

Harding, Sandra. 1997. "Is Modern Science an Ethnoscience? Rethinking Epistemological Assumptions." In Postcolonial African Philosophy, edited by E. Eze, 45-70. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Hountondji, Paulin.1970. "Comments on Contemporary African Philosophy," Diogenes 71: 120-140. Paris: UNESCO.

--------------------. 1996. African Philosophy. Rev. ed. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2002. The Struggle for Meaning. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies.

Imbo, Sam Oluoch. 2002. Oral Traditions as Philosophy: Okot p'Bitek's Legacy for African Philosophy. Lanham, MD and Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

Janz, Bruce B. 2009. Philosophy in an African Place. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Masolo, D. A. 1994. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2003. "Philosophy and Indigenous Knowledge: An African Perspective," Africa Today 50/2 (Fall/Winter): 21-38.

--------------------. 2010. Self and Community in a Changing World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Masolo, D. A. and Ivan Karp, eds. African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Mbiti, John. 1970. African Religions and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday.

Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Oruka, H. Odera. (ed.) 1990. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Serequeberhan, Tsenay. (ed.) African Philosophy: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House.

Tempels, Placide. 1959. Bantu Philosophy. Paris: Presence Africaine.

Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

 

 

BARRY HALLEN

MOREHOUSE COLLEGE

W. E. B. DU BOIS INSTITUTE FOR AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN RESEARCH, HARVARD, UNIVERSITY 

 

2010 Entry on Imo (Knowledge),” for the Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by F. Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo, Oxford University Press, Vol. I, 481-483.

2010 Entry onJ. Olubi Sodipo” for the Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by F. Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo, Oxford University Press, Vol. II, 349-350.

2009 A Short History of African Philosophy, 2nd rev. ed., Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.

2008 “Yoruba Moral Epistemology as the Basis for a Cross-Cultural Ethics,” in Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture, edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 222-229.

2006 “Postscript: ‘The Philosophical Humanism of J. Olubi Sodipo’,” in The Humanities, Nationalism and Democracy, edited by Sola Akinrinade, Dipo Fashina, and David O. Ogungbile, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 346-362.

2006 “Review of Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa, by Sanya Osha, in African Studies Review 49/3 (December), 175-176.

2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey.

2005 “Heidegger, Hermeneutics and African Philosophy,” in Africa e Mediterraneo, edited by Ivan Bargna, Bologna, Italy (December), 46-53.

 

 

 

HEIDEGGER, HERMENEUTICS, AND AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

 

 

by Barry Hallen

 

 

 

            Martin Heidegger's influence on the phenomenological approach to African philosophy, particularly with regard to hermeneutics, has been profound.  African philosophers are, of course, familiar with his well-known and deservedly well-denounced pejorative accounts of the primitive Dasein (1962, 76-77), which he elsewhere makes explicitly representative of indigenous African modes-of-thought.1  Despite these offensive personal prejudices, numerous methodological insights and techniques derived from his writings on phenomenology-hermeneutics have been fruitfully adapted by philosophers in and of Africa.  Today this body of work effectively constitutes a canon within Africana philosophy arising from phenomenological-hermeneutical inspiration.

            Before discussing the writings of several exemplary hermeneutical African philosophers in detail, I begin by mentioning several general insights, ultimately derived from the Heideggerean corpus, that have proved particularly influential in the African context.  The first is an emphasis on historicity - the notion that every culture and every historical age of a culture may be characterized by certain distinctive essential structures, paradigmatic ideas (articulated or unarticulated), etc. that distinguish it from others.  The role of the hermeneutical philosopher is to become sensitive to, to ‘uncover', a deeper level of meanings (that may go far beyond what that culture's ordinary, everyday members take as being conventionally ‘true') that are fundamental to how it constitutes the nature of ‘reality' (the world, nature, human beings, philosophy, knowledge, etc.).  Given the added presumption, more explicitly enunciated by Heidegger's disciple Hans-Georg Gadamer, that each culture and its epochs are entitled prima facie to intellectual integrity in their own right, such an approach effectively disconnects Western philosophy and culture from serving as paradigms against which all others must be matched and measured - a recurrent manifestation of the Western cultural imperialism that for long obstructed the introduction of non-Western philosophies into academia.  The effect of this methodological axiom has been to effectively liberate African hermeneutical philosophers to explore and to (re)value the distinctive heritages and characters of their native cultural contexts, free of the inhibitions imposed by false universal standards that enunciate implicitly yet exclusively Western paradigms.

            A second important dimension to hermeneutic philosophy in the African context has to be the renunciation of many standardized, supposedly ‘objective' studies of Africa's cultures.  So many of Africa's ‘meanings' had been imposed by misleading, prejudicial and downright false non-African scholarship, scholarship which in some cases Africans themselves had been conditioned to regard as accurate and objective.  These false renderings need to be both denounced2 and deconstructed (in the literal sense) in order to foment a renaissance of authentic African voices that have the presence of both mind and spirit to reconnect, to resurrect, to rediscover more insightful accounts of their cultures - past, present and future.

            Third, the importance Heidegger attached to non-discursive literature and thought - to verse, poetry, myth and song - has inspired a number of African scholars as well as philosophers to take renewed interest in the oral literature and traditions that speak ‘for' their native cultures.  That such literature could be the source of or inspiration for serious ideas, ideals and insights into the nature or constitution of reality - even if not literally philosophy3 - has influenced a number of African hermeneutical philosophers to ‘mine' the orature of their cultures for insights and stimuli that had been written off as nothing more than emotive, expressive - but ultimately intellectually insignificant - rhetoric.

 

If we content ourselves with what the poem directly says, the interpretation is at an end.  Actually it has just begun.  The actual interpretation must show what does not stand in the world and is nevertheless said (Heidegger 1959, 162).

 

            Fourth, and finally, the hermeneutic approach, again as refined by Heidegger's disciple Hans-Georg Gadamer (most prominently in his Truth and Method) promotes an even more focused and insightful framework for the problems and tasks involved in uncovering, deciphering, and detailing the essential structures, the deeper meanings, of a particular culture in a particular historical period.  Gadamer's work provides a more systematic understanding of how one is a product of, comes to terms with, and liberates oneself from, the social, political, historical, etc. contexts by and in which one's consciousness is formed and functions.

            In what follows I will attempt to illustrate how these four major themes are exemplified in the writings of the Nigerian philosopher Theophilus Okere, the Congolese philosopher Okonda Okolo, and the Eritrean philosopher Tsenay Serequeberhan.  I shall then hazard several probably contentious observations about possibilities for the application of phenomenology as hermeneutics to Africa by comparison with the contemporary analytic tradition, which is too frequently assumed to be hostile to or disinterested in anything to do with a phenomenological-hermeneutical approach.  And I shall then conclude by reviewing several of the ongoing consequences of hermeneutics for philosophy in the African context.

            Theophilus Okere, a Nigerian philosopher, is one of the earlier advocates of a hermeneutical approach to African philosophy.  A starting point he shares in common with most hermeneutical philosophers in and of African generally is the conviction that European imperialism and colonialism violently and profoundly disrupted Africa's social, cultural and political continuity and integrity.  One benefit of a hermeneutic approach, therefore, is that the fabric of African societies - that sometimes mix the indigenous and the European, the ‘traditional' and the ‘modern', in an unfortunate or unpromising manner - can be interpreted so as to single out what aspects to or elements of the melange are to be valued and reaffirmed as a sound basis for a progressive African social, political and cultural heritage that will be a worthy tribute to that remarkable continent.

            In his African Philosophy: A Historico-Hermeneutical Investigation of the Conditions of Its Possibility (1983) Okere outlines a program for how such a hermeneutic approach might be implemented.  The first major issue he addresses is what should be the proper relationship between such a hermeneutic philosophy and Africa's cultural heritage.  He dismisses the work of the so-called "ethnophilosophers"4 as not worthy of the label "philosophy."  At the most these scholars, who link the word "philosophy" to essentially ethnographic collections of myths, proverbs, and ‘world-views' (all said to be static and unchanging ("traditional")), qualify as cultural anthropologists, as recorders of cultural beliefs and practices (and, as we shall see below with regard to ‘word-views', sometimes authors).  But it is on such materials that hermeneutic philosophers might labor so as to render them philosophical by interpreting them - distilling and assessing their potentially unique approaches to the constitution of realty, their meaning(s), their true significance(s), and their value(s) to and for Africa's cultural past, present and future.

            Okere pays specific attention to Heidegger in Chapter 3 of this work ("Philosophy is Hermeneutics: A Study of Martin Heidegger").  This chapter is essentially a synopsis of the "Introduction" to Being and Time so as to formally introduce a Heideggerean framework into the African philosophical context.  His main point is to emphasize the relativity that is definitive of the question or notion of Being (ontology), depending upon the culture involved.  For this, of course, will open the door to the possibility of alternative African ontologies - that are of a radically different nature than what is taken as conventional by the (Western) academy.  It will also affirm the right of every human culture to define philosophy in its own terms, again even if that happens to differ radically from what is taken as conventional by the (Western) academy.

 

            This is certainly for philosophy the most revolutionary result of the hermeneutical movement. . . . it becomes the Magna Charta of all those cultures who aim to build up a philosophical tradition which will be more than a mere footnote on the pages of Greek and Western philosophy (1983, 54).

 

            Okere is open-minded when it comes to the question of whether Africa has always had or has its own indigenous philosophy and philosophers:

 

Whether there is some black African philosophy or not, can be decided only after an exhaustive examination of every individual in the culture concerned.  We have to allow for illiterate and unrecorded lovers of wisdom.  More practically, we have on examination of the current philosophy literature objected not so much to the fact that they claimed the existence of philosophy in Africa as to what5 they claimed to be philosophy (1983, 114).

 

Injecting African philosophy with a hermeneutical dimension would apparently introduce something new - methodologically and intellectually - into the African context.  For certainly Africa has always had its culture(s), and hermeneutically mining them for their progressive elements is something of which he clearly approves:

 

Here philosophy is really a manufacturing from raw materials.  It is a forging out of thought from the materials of culture.  It is an act of intellectual creation where the new creation is a meaning born from the melting of one's total experience (1983, xiv).

 

            Although appreciative of the Western philosophical tradition that traces its roots to the Greeks, it is most certainly not something Okere would like to see literally transferred or transplanted into the African context.  Except insofar as it would be taught and studied as an alien philosophical tradition, like Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, and so forth.  He embraces Gadamer's notions of the relativity of cultural and social contexts ("all philosophical discourse is first and foremost an answer to problems and questions raised within a questioning horizon which means always, a culture (1983, 64).").  In other words, to be genuinely African, Africa's philosophers and philosophy must arise from and relate directly to the particular culture(s) in which they are sited.  And these cultures are sufficiently distinctive, in their own right, so that it would be a reductive injustice to claim or to conclude that they are somehow the ‘same' as their Western counterpart(s).  Clearly this places Okere on the side of historical and cultural relativism when it comes to the nature of philosophical ‘truths' and principles:

 

The possibility of an African philosophy raises the question of the validity and universality of truth and of the communicability of cultures and their respective philosophies.  Is truth relative?  It seems this conclusion is inevitable.  The historicity and relativity of truth - and this always means truth as we can and do attain it - is one of the main insights of the hermeneutical revolution in philosophy and it is on it that this thesis hangs (1983, 124).

 

In the final chapter of his text Okere identifies any number of ‘symbolic' elements and practices in his native Igbo culture that he suggests could contribute to a positive basis for a philosophy arising from that culture consequent to hermeneutical interpretation, such as the role of the "Chi" as guardian spirit and symbol of destiny, the practice of polygamy, and the nature and role of the extended family (1983, 115)

            The Congolese philosopher Okonda Okolo applauds (1991, 201) the hermeneutical approach to African philosophy outlined by Theophilus Okere.  In his Pour une Philosophie de la Culture et du Developpement: Recherches d'hermeneutique et de praxis africaines6 (1986) Okolo discusses at length the significance of oral literature - most specifically of proverbs - for African philosophy (1986, 1-23).  He introduces this discourse on the basis of yet another critique of ethnophilosophy and ethnophilosophers.  He particularly condemns the penchant of such texts to produce comprehensive ‘world-views' of African peoples - systematic and coherent ‘visions' of the supernatural and natural worlds (including the human, of course) - when in fact Africa's cultures do not espouse them in a similar form (1986, 16; 48; 52).  What Africa's cultures do espouse is a diverse variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are expressed by oral literature, that frequently are neither coherent nor systematic.  This only serves to underline the fictitious nature of the African ‘world-views' fabricated by ethnophilosophy.

            But proverbs are espoused by Africa's cultures and, even if not truly philosophical in their own right (most amount to unconditional if idiomatic moral or factual maxims, while the essence of the philosophical is a ceaseless questioning), via hermeneutics African philosophers can ‘uncover' the underlying concepts and ideas that will provide better insight into the historicity of Africa's cultures.  Yet it would be absurd to treat the body of proverbs in any African culture as the basis for a coherent and unified ‘philosophy'.  For proverbs in themselves do not think - they make people think.  Therefore they can provide a basis for African hermeneutical philosophers to work from (1986, 22).  However, what such studies reveal is that particular proverbs represent the views and interests of a particular class, social group, or individual rather than some fictitious, organic ‘tribe'.  Therefore their hermeneutical exegesis may reveal conflicting, indeed opposing, ideologies.  In that sense, says Okolo, there are no ‘innocent' proverbs (1986, 16).7

            By applying hermeneutics, philosophers in and of Africa can use proverbs to allow us to appreciate the thoughts implicit to the social struggles that were taking place in a particular society.  We will then be in a better position to appreciate the opposing ideologies in which they played a part, and perhaps from there proceed to recover particularized philosophical views.  The task of the African hermeneutic philosopher, therefore, is to recover such philosophy rather than, as in the case of ethnophilosophy, to invent it.  Such a hermeneutical approach must begin from the interpretation of particular African cultures and societies, rather than from the presumption that there is some form of transcendent, universal ‘African' philosophy (1986, 16).  And, working within a particular cultural tradition, hermeneutic philosophers must do far more than simply identify the relevant (oral) texts.  They must also uncover the ways in which they may be read and reappropriated over time (see his discussion of Tradition below).  In this regard, hermeneutical African philosophy will involve critically extending and completing such texts in the sense of decomposing and recomposing them so that they become re-created as constituted in the past, as reconstituted in the present, and as oriented toward the future (1986, 56).

            To further such development he proposes to provide African-oriented hermeneutical interpretations of two notions of fundamental importance to Africa's indigenous cultures - Tradition and Destiny.  His decision to concentrate on them is not accidental or haphazard.  Apart from their genuine importance to Africa's cultures, it also is motivated by his conviction that Western Africanists - as ethnocentric products of their own cultural backgrounds - have managed to analyze and evaluate them in ways that are both derogatory and false.

            In Western anthropology, a culture based on Tradition is frequently pictured as one devoid of change or development because also devoid of critical or reflective thinking.  Beliefs and practices inherited from the ‘ancestors' are said to be preserved unchanged in the present, and then handed on to the next generation with the understanding they will be preserved and observed in a similar manner.  Knowledge therefore does not progress, and those who dare to challenge established Traditions put their own welfare at risk.  The belief in Destiny is portrayed as encouraging a rather severe manifestation of determinism, according to which it is believed that what will be, will be.  This too is said to inhibit the development of independent or individual initiative.

            Invoking the hermeneutic tradition arising from the work of Paul Ricoeur, Heidegger and Gadamer, Okolo proposes to reinterpret and reappraise each of these notions, and to do so as an African (rather than a Westerner) who can philosophize from within an African cultural and historical context.  For example, he disagrees fundamentally with the image of Tradition involving unchanging beliefs and practices that are handed on from generation to generation.  Tradition does involve a sense of transmission and of reception (1991, 202), but in a context where the meanings of any particular tradition are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted - and therefore always changing - by different individuals and in different historical contexts over the passage of time.

            Tradition therefore does not inhibit invention or change, as new interpretations are made as a natural and normal part of making ‘Tradition' meaningful to the people who ‘inherit' it.  And because of this those societies will inevitably either amend or eliminate traditions as time passes and/or reinterpret them so that they again become newly relevant to the present generation.

 

            The tradition, essentially defined as transmission, constitutes a hermeneutic concatenation of interpretations and reinterpretations.  To read our tradition is nothing like climbing the whole chain of interpretations all the way back to its originative starting point; rather, it is to properly recreate the chain in actualizing it (1991, 204-5).

 

            Destiny, from the vantage point of African hermeneutics, is not a symbol of determinism, where everything that happens is seen as inevitable.  Destiny involves a people's "vision of the world" and as such represents the history of a people, of a culture, in the world.  It represents that people's past, present and future, and whatever sense of identity they create and then recreate for themselves on the basis of reinterpreting and reinventing Tradition(s) over the passage of time.

 

We will have to, no doubt, explode the idea of destiny and recharge it anew starting from our hermeneutical situation.  This hermeneutical situation is that of the formerly colonized, the oppressed, that of the underdeveloped, struggling for more justice and equality (1991, 208).

 

Reinterpreting a sense of African Destiny must be linked to Africans' regaining the sense of being in control of their own societies, including the right to understand those societies in their own terms.  These elements must constitute essential parts of the framework that will define African hermeneutics - reinterpreting the nature of the African identity as expressed by and through African culture.

            The Eritrean philosopher, Tsenay Serequeberhan,8 is explicit about the linkage between hermeneutical philosophy in the African context and the work of Heidegger and Gadamer:

 

            Within the discourse of contemporary philosophy, this ["the interpretative character of human existence as such"] is the basic direction and sensibility of thought opened up by Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) and further explored and propounded by Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960) - the two most important figures and documents of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics (1994, 1-2).

 

But, as has already been indicated, he is as explicit in his denunciations of elements of Heidegger's thought as he is in his affirmations of others.  A further example of this is his castigation of Heidegger for assertions of Western cultural chauvinism such as the following: "the West and Europe and only these are, in the innermost course of their history, originally ‘philosophical' (Serequeberhan 2000, 47 and 51; the quote within the quote is from Heidegger 1956, 31)."

            Here the primary focus will be on Serequeberhan's The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy (1994), which presents itself as a kind of ‘manifesto' for what the role of hermeneutical philosophy in Africa should be.  Serequeberhan identifies Gadamer as "the father of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics (1994, 16)" which, he says, unlike ‘orthodox' phenomenology is always explicitly and self-consciously sited in a specific historico-cultural context (1994, 3).  Indeed, as far as Serequeberhan is concerned, all philosophy - not just the hermeneutical - must be so situated and, no matter how meticulously neutral and universal it pretends to be, must also have a political dimension (1994, 4).  He therefore castigates the Western philosophical establishment for playing along with the intellectual and political issues involved in the portrayal of Africa as irrational and primitive, especially when viewed against the background of European colonialism.  Western civilization (philosophy included) was indeed propagandized as a cultural paradigm, and most things African were viewed as negations of that ideal.

            Serequeberhan is an African philosopher who explicitly confronts the potential problem posed by the fact that hermeneutics itself is a methodology of European origin (1994, 10-11).  In other words, how can it avoid being certified as just one more example of a European mentality that therefore cannot authentically apply to the African cultural context?  His response to this potentially serious challenge is twofold.  Firstly, the hermeneutical approach to philosophy already has been adapted, filtered, and amended by the work within and on it by non-Western thinkers such as Frantz Fanon (1967a; 1967b) and Amilcar Cabral (1970; 1979).  Other non-Western intellectuals whose work is relevant to its political renovation (remember that for Serequeberhan all philosophizing has political ramifications) are Aime Cesaire (1969) and Cornelius Castoriadis (1991).  At the same time Serequeberhan does not hesitate to condemn Western icons like Heidegger, Marx, Hegel, Hume and Kant for the racist content to their writings (1994, 60-61; 2000, Chpts. 3 and 6).

            Secondly, it would be hypocrisy for contemporary African intellectuals, philosophers included, to pretend they remain unaffected by the colonial experience and the Western elements introduced thereby into Africa's own intellectual heritage.  It makes more sense for Africans to come to terms with all of this in a deliberate and forthright manner.  If that also involves the adaptation of an approach like hermeneutics to the African context, then that may be all well and good, provided it is done in a positive, progressive manner - a manner that will benefit Africa rather than demean it.

 

Thus, in terms of contemporary concerns - political, economic, scientific, cultural, etc. - the hermeneutics of African philosophy must engage in situated reflections aimed at the pragmatic and practical aim of enhancing the lived actuality of post-colonial Africa.  It is only in this way that African philosophy, as the reflexive hermeneutics of its own historicalness, can grow and cultivate itself as a concrete contemporary philosophic discourse (1994, 114).

 

Serequeberhan also rebukes the so-called ‘ethnophilosophers' for introducing themselves to the international community (and Africa) as a kind of ‘new wave'.  They may argue that Africa's cultures have always contained a philosophical dimension, but it still took them to identify, codify and somehow, in the end, take the professional credit for developing it.9

            An African hermeneutics, if developed and applied in a sensitive manner, can make a positive contribution to Africa's social, cultural and political restoration.  The priorities he assigns to this hermeneutics are at least two.  Firstly, to contribute to the true liberation of a continent that is still not truly independent, that still suffers the humiliating and destructive consequences of colonialism - neocolonialism (and all of the profound but negative factors that involves) and economic, political and intellectual insecurity, instability and underdevelopment.  Secondly, to promote a rediscovery and reevaluation of the authentic African past in every sense of the phrase - intellectual, social, political, etc.  This does not mean that everything - every belief, practice, or social institution certified as (‘once upon a time') authentic will be resuscitated.  But it does mean that Africans will be able to get on with the business of determining what really was and is their history, their culture(s), what they really want their rights and privileges to be, and how best to position themselves for the future.

 

            From this point on, ancient/ossified customs and traditions are not merely discarded out of hand . . . nor are they desperately held on to . . .  Rather, their preservation loses its inertia and becomes a process by which society is historically reinstituted out of the needs of the present mediated by the struggle (1994, 100).

 

            In this regard identifying and re-examining Africa's indigenous ‘traditions', with a view to determining which deserve to be preserved and promoted (1994, 6), obviously will be a priority of African hermeneutics.  With regard to the issue of whether there was philosophy in so-called ‘traditional' or precolonial Africa, because Serequeberhan is so insistent upon every people's and culture's right to define itself, clearly he is open to the idea that Africa's cultures are entitled to claim their own philosophical heritage, even if manifested in a substantially different form from that taken as conventional by other societies:

 

the foundational wondering and musing of traditional African sages have - in their continuous critical and safeguarding relation to the traditions (i.e., the ethnic world-views) they inhabit - a hermeneutic and philosophic function.  To this extent, it has to be conceded in principle that their reflections and intellectual productions are products of philosophic effort (1994, 126 en. 11).

 

            In his most recent publication, Our Heritage: The Past in the Present of African-American and African Existence (2000) Serequeberhan again affirms, even more explicitly, the right of peoples of African descent to define their own priorities:

 

We are, at the close of the twentieth century, at a point in time when the dominance of the universe of European singularity is being encompassed or engulfed by the multiverse of our shared humanity.  The colonizer, self-deified imperial Europe, is dead (52-53)!

 

And that the philosophical orientation that can best contribute to this ongoing process of liberation, on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot derive from any universal tradition of philosophical thought, and so he continues to insist on an African(a) hermeneutics (he regards ‘universalist' claims as a covert strategy for the reassertion of Western paradigms):

 

African philosophic practice has to engage in the systematic and critical exploration of indigenous forms of knowledge: practical and theoretic. . . . It must be done by sifting through our legacies: retaining that which is alive, casting off that which is lethargic, and critically fusing the heritage of the past with modern scientific conceptions (55).

 

            Political independence (as the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, US civil rights legislation, and the end of European colonialism have demonstrated) is one thing.  But achieving and securing intellectual independence is something else entirely.  It is this second dimension to the liberation struggle to which a philosophical hermeneutics can make an indispensable contribution.  And in this latest text Serequeberhan explores critically the ideas and arguments of various Western philosophers (Hegel, Kant) and thinkers of Africa and the diaspora (Fanon, Du Bois, Appiah) with a view to making progress in that regard.

            Heidegger's influence upon philosophers in and of Africa who are analytically minded may be minimal.  Still, I think that something needs to be said about this and venture to do so on the basis of my own experience since, early on, I published an essay in the Nigerian-based philosophical journal Second Order entitled "Phenomenology and the Exposition of African Traditional Thought" (1976).  In it I sought to recast Heidegger's flexibility with regards to the constitution of different social and historical contexts as the basis for a form of philosophical relativism that could provide for genuinely autochthonous hermeneutical explorations of Africa's cultures.  But the more I pondered the consequences of my applying hermeneutics to Africa's cultures, the more skeptical I became about my being able to do so in a fruitful and professional manner.

            Perhaps I was and am doing hermeneutics generally an injustice, but it seemed to me at the time that it would be much harder for me, as an expatriate American who was not born and bred in any African cultural context, to undertake the hermeneutical interpretation of such a context.  I was afraid that, since in effect my native culture had been European-American, my hermeneutical understanding would, in effect, amount to little more than how I imagined someone who was the product of an African cultural context must constitute their experience.  It seemed to me that hermeneutics could best or certainly better be applied in a reliable manner by someone who was truly native to the culture which was being studied.  No matter how much of an expert on any African culture I might become on empirical grounds, my understanding of it at a most fundamental level would always be tainted by my own alien upbringing.  Hence my concerns about producing a hermeneutics that would effectively be what a European-American imagined African forms of life to be, which certainly would not be in the best interests of African philosophy (even if of ethnocentric interest in its own right, as Mudimbe (1988) amply demonstrates).  This then became one of the reasons why I thereafter shifted to an analytic approach in my subsequent writings on African philosophy.  On purely instrumental grounds it seemed (and I emphasize the significance of that verb) less susceptible to such subjective concerns.

            As I hope the above account indicates, African hermeneutical philosophy already encompasses a substantive body of work.  All three of the philosophers mentioned are at least open-minded with regard to the philosophical character of precolonial, indigenous African cultures.  Equally importantly, all three think it is through processes of hermeneutical interpretation that contemporary philosophers will be best enabled to be more precise about the nature of that philosophical character.

            There also is unanimity concerning the damaging effects of colonialism and neocolonialism on the societies and cultures of Africa.  This extends to a clear condemnation of non-African scholarship for giving rise to pejorative and demeaning characterizations that resulted in Africa's being relegated to a place that was, in many respects, ‘off the map' when it came to the intrinsic achievements of the subcontinent in comparison to other so-called ‘civilizations'.

            Hermeneutical African philosophy is therefore seen as both a liberating and progressive force.  It will disprove many of the stereotypes that have been unfairly imposed upon these cultures.  It will replace them with authentic African voices, better attuned to the nuances of societies that are frequently much more complex and sophisticated than they have been made to seem.  And as importantly they can provide a new, African-generated foundation of understanding that Africans can then refer to when planning for the future.

            From both a transcultural and philosophical point-of-view, what is perhaps most interesting about all of this is the reorientation it seeks to introduce into philosophy as both a cultural, intellectual and academic enterprise.  For here we have a school of thought that is more than willing to aggressively engage the Western tradition (including the Western hermeneutical tradition) about its philosophical ethnocentrism and attendant ideological pretensions.  For African hermeneutics represents an independent philosophical tradition that is actively engaging in dialogues with and deconstructive critiques of Western culture and philosophy.

            It is this train of thought that has persuaded some African philosophers to suggest that, in the end, it is philosophy in the African context that will be more open-minded about and tolerant of the predispositions and peculiarities of other cultures' philosophical traditions.  For, on the basis of sometimes bitter experience and hard-won political and intellectual independence, it is Africa that will be in a more informed position to appreciate the importance of every culture's inalienable right to intellectual integrity.

 

Department of Philosophy & Religion

Morehouse College

 

W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Harvard University

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

Bernasconi, Robert. 1997. "African Philosophy's Challenge to Continental Philosophy." In Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Reader, edited by E.C. Eze, pp. 183-196. Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Cabral, Amilcar. 1970. "National Liberation and Culture." The Program of East African Studies, Occasional Paper No. 57. Syracuse: Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Reprinted in Cabral 1979, 138-154.

--------------------. 1979. Unity and Struggle. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1991. "Intellectuals and History." In Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, edited by David Ames Curtis, pp. 3-12. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cesaire, Aime. 1969. Return to My Native Land. New York: Penguin Books.

Fanon, Frantz. 1967a. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

--------------------. 1967b. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1975. Truth and Method. Translated by W. Glen-Doepel. London: Sheed & Ward.

Hallen, Barry. 1976. "Phenomenology and the Exposition of African Traditional Thought," Second Order 5, no. 2 (July): 45-65. (Reprinted 1980 in Claude Sumer (ed.), African Philosophy, pp. 56-80. Addis Ababa: Chamber Printing House and Addis Ababa University.)

--------------------. 1997. Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

--------------------. 2000. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2002. A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 2005. African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach. Trenton: Africa World Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 1956. What is Philosophy? New Haven: College and University Press Publishers.

--------------------. 1959. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press.

--------------------. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row.

Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La Philosophie Bantou-Rwandaise de l'etre. 8 vols. Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, n.s. 12, no. 1.

Mbiti, John. 1970. African Religions and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday.

Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

--------------------. 1991. Parables & Fables. Madson, Wis. and London: The University of Wisconsin Press.

--------------------. 1994. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press and London: James Currey.

Nkrumah, Kwame. 1970. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization. New York: Monthly Review Press. Originally published 1964.

Okere, Theophilus. 1983. African Philosophy: A Historico-Hermeneutical Investigation of the Conditions of Its Possibility. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.

--------------------, ed. 1996. Identity and Change: Nigerian Philosophical Studies I. Washington, D.C.: Council for Research and Values in Philosophy

Okolo, Okonda w'oleko. 1986. Pour une Philosophie de la Culture et du Developpement: Recherches d'hermeneutique et de praxis africaines. Kinshasa: Presses Universitaires du Zaire.

--------------------. 1991. "Tradition and Destiny: Horizons of an African Philosophical Hermeneutics." In African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, edited by Tsenay Serequeberhan and translated by Kango Lare-Lantone, pp. 201-210. New York: Paragon House.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1974. The Conflict of Interpretations. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Senghor, Leopold Sedar. 1956. "The Spirit of Civilization or the Laws of African Negro Culture," Presence Africaine nos. 8-10: 51-65.

--------------------. 1971. The Foundations of "Africanite" or "Negritude" and "Arabite". Paris: Presence Africaine.

Serequeberhan, Tsenay. 1991a. "The African Liberation Struggle: A Hermeneutic Exploration of an African Historico-Political Horizon," Ultimate Reality and Meaning 14, no. 1: 46-52.

--------------------, ed. 1991. African Philosophy: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House.

--------------------. 1994. The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy. London: Routledge.

--------------------. 1997. "The Critique of Eurocentrism and the Practice of African Philosophy." In Postcolonial African Philosophy, 141-161.

--------------------. "Philosophy and Post-Colonial Africa." In African Philosophy: An Anthology, edited by E.C. Eze, pp. 9-22. Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

--------------------. 2000. Our Heritage. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.

Tempels, Placide. La Philosophie bantoue. Paris: Presence Africaine.

--------------------. 1959. Bantu Philosophy. Paris: Presence Africaine.

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1 Bernasconi 1997, 185; Eze 1998, 218.  See Serequeberhan 1994, 4 for a scathingly candid evaluation of Heidegger as a worthy source for methodological inspiration despite the elements of his personal life and beliefs that infected his ideas about the cultures to which that methodology might be relevant.

2 V.Y. Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa has proved to be an enduring and incisive critique of such scholarship, both African and non-African.

3 "It is relatively uninteresting, and often entirely vacuous, to believe that Heidegger and hermeneutics urge us to try to extract philosophical theses from poetry, literature and the figurative arts (Vattimo 1997, 71)."

4 He specifically mentions Placide Tempels (Bantu Philosophy), Alexis Kagame (La Philosophie Bantou-Rwandaise de l'etre) and John Mbiti (African Religions and Philosophy) by name.  Although suspicious of analytic philosophers' attempts to mine African languages for philosophical insights, he does not absolutely rule this out as a possibility: "Our scepticism does not, of course, refuse all validity to the thesis of linguists who have drawn attention to the close relationship between language and thought.  According to the best researches, language seems to affect culture and thought at some level but there is not enough material yet to help determine precisely how (1983, 9)."

5 A further indictment of ethnophilosophy, no doubt.

6 Which might be translated as: Toward a Philosophy of Culture and of Development: Inquiries into Hermeneutics and African Praxis.  I am extremely grateful to Carla de Benedetti for her help in translating this text.

7 A point analogous to the claim of the Eritrean philosopher, Tsenay Serequeberhan, that all philosophy is also political (see below).

8 Which can be phonetically rendered as "Sen (as in the English-language "den") -eye Sera-kway-burr-an."

9 Serequeberhan also mounts severe critiques of Kwame Nkrumah's "consciencism" (for its neo-Marxist ‘scientific' pretensions), and Leopold Senghor's theory of Negritude (for its racism arising from the special ‘traits' associated with being African). 

 

 

 

Thus, in terms of contemporary concerns - political, economic, scientific, cultural, etc. - the hermeneutics of African philosophy must engage in situated reflections aimed at the pragmatic and practical aim of enhancing the lived actuality of post-colonial Africa.  It is only in this way that African philosophy, as the reflexive hermeneutics of its own historicalness, can grow and cultivate itself as a concrete contemporary philosophic discourse (1994, 114).

 

Serequeberhan also rebukes the so-called ‘ethnophilosophers' for introducing themselves to the international community (and Africa) as a kind of ‘new wave'.  They may argue that Africa's cultures have always contained a philosophical dimension, but it still took them to identify, codify and somehow, in the end, take the professional credit for developing it.9

            An African hermeneutics, if developed and applied in a sensitive manner, can make a positive contribution to Africa's social, cultural and political restoration.  The priorities he assigns to this hermeneutics are at least two.  Firstly, to contribute to the true liberation of a continent that is still not truly independent, that still suffers the humiliating and destructive consequences of colonialism - neocolonialism (and all of the profound but negative factors that involves) and economic, political and intellectual insecurity, instability and underdevelopment.  Secondly, to promote a rediscovery and reevaluation of the authentic African past in every sense of the phrase - intellectual, social, political, etc.  This does not mean that everything - every belief, practice, or social institution certified as (‘once upon a time') authentic will be resuscitated.  But it does mean that Africans will be able to get on with the business of determining what really was and is their history, their culture(s), what they really want their rights and privileges to be, and how best to position themselves for the future.

 

            From this point on, ancient/ossified customs and traditions are not merely discarded out of hand . . . nor are they desperately held on to . . .  Rather, their preservation loses its inertia and becomes a process by which society is historically reinstituted out of the needs of the present mediated by the struggle (1994, 100).

 

            In this regard identifying and re-examining Africa's indigenous ‘traditions', with a view to determining which deserve to be preserved and promoted (1994, 6), obviously will be a priority of African hermeneutics.  With regard to the issue of whether there was philosophy in so-called ‘traditional' or precolonial Africa, because Serequeberhan is so insistent upon every people's and culture's right to define itself, clearly he is open to the idea that Africa's cultures are entitled to claim their own philosophical heritage, even if manifested in a substantially different form from that taken as conventional by other societies:

 

the foundational wondering and musing of traditional African sages have - in their continuous critical and safeguarding relation to the traditions (i.e., the ethnic world-views) they inhabit - a hermeneutic and philosophic function.  To this extent, it has to be conceded in principle that their reflections and intellectual productions are products of philosophic effort (1994, 126 en. 11).

 

            In his most recent publication, Our Heritage: The Past in the Present of African-American and African Existence (2000) Serequeberhan again affirms, even more explicitly, the right of peoples of African descent to define their own priorities:

 

We are, at the close of the twentieth century, at a point in time when the dominance of the universe of European singularity is being encompassed or engulfed by the multiverse of our shared humanity.  The colonizer, self-deified imperial Europe, is dead (52-53)!

 

And that the philosophical orientation that can best contribute to this ongoing process of liberation, on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot derive from any universal tradition of philosophical thought, and so he continues to insist on an African(a) hermeneutics (he regards ‘universalist' claims as a covert strategy for the reassertion of Western paradigms):

 

African philosophic practice has to engage in the systematic and critical exploration of indigenous forms of knowledge: practical and theoretic. . . . It must be done by sifting through our legacies: retaining that which is alive, casting off that which is lethargic, and critically fusing the heritage of the past with modern scientific conceptions (55).

 

            Political independence (as the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, US civil rights legislation, and the end of European colonialism have demonstrated) is one thing.  But achieving and securing intellectual independence is something else entirely.  It is this second dimension to the liberation struggle to which a philosophical hermeneutics can make an indispensable contribution.  And in this latest text Serequeberhan explores critically the ideas and arguments of various Western philosophers (Hegel, Kant) and thinkers of Africa and the diaspora (Fanon, Du Bois, Appiah) with a view to making progress in that regard.

            Heidegger's influence upon philosophers in and of Africa who are analytically minded may be minimal.  Still, I think that something needs to be said about this and venture to do so on the basis of my own experience since, early on, I published an essay in the Nigerian-based philosophical journal Second Order entitled "Phenomenology and the Exposition of African Traditional Thought" (1976).  In it I sought to recast Heidegger's flexibility with regards to the constitution of different social and historical contexts as the basis for a form of philosophical relativism that could provide for genuinely autochthonous hermeneutical explorations of Africa's cultures.  But the more I pondered the consequences of my applying hermeneutics to Africa's cultures, the more skeptical I became about my being able to do so in a fruitful and professional manner.

            Perhaps I was and am doing hermeneutics generally an injustice, but it seemed to me at the time that it would be much harder for me, as an expatriate American who was not born and bred in any African cultural context, to undertake the hermeneutical interpretation of such a context.  I was afraid that, since in effect my native culture had been European-American, my hermeneutical understanding would, in effect, amount to little more than how I imagined someone who was the product of an African cultural context must constitute their experience.  It seemed to me that hermeneutics could best or certainly better be applied in a reliable manner by someone who was truly native to the culture which was being studied.  No matter how much of an expert on any African culture I might become on empirical grounds, my understanding of it at a most fundamental level would always be tainted by my own alien upbringing.  Hence my concerns about producing a hermeneutics that would effectively be what a European-American imagined African forms of life to be, which certainly would not be in the best interests of African philosophy (even if of ethnocentric interest in its own right, as Mudimbe (1988) amply demonstrates).  This then became one of the reasons why I thereafter shifted to an analytic approach in my subsequent writings on African philosophy.  On purely instrumental grounds it seemed (and I emphasize the significance of that verb) less susceptible to such subjective concerns.

            As I hope the above account indicates, African hermeneutical philosophy already encompasses a substantive body of work.  All three of the philosophers mentioned are at least open-minded with regard to the philosophical character of precolonial, indigenous African cultures.  Equally importantly, all three think it is through processes of hermeneutical interpretation that contemporary philosophers will be best enabled to be more precise about the nature of that philosophical character.

            There also is unanimity concerning the damaging effects of colonialism and neocolonialism on the societies and cultures of Africa.  This extends to a clear condemnation of non-African scholarship for giving rise to pejorative and demeaning characterizations that resulted in Africa's being relegated to a place that was, in many respects, ‘off the map' when it came to the intrinsic achievements of the subcontinent in comparison to other so-called ‘civilizations'.

            Hermeneutical African philosophy is therefore seen as both a liberating and progressive force.  It will disprove many of the stereotypes that have been unfairly imposed upon these cultures.  It will replace them with authentic African voices, better attuned to the nuances of societies that are frequently much more complex and sophisticated than they have been made to seem.  And as importantly they can provide a new, African-generated foundation of understanding that Africans can then refer to when planning for the future.

            From both a transcultural and philosophical point-of-view, what is perhaps most interesting about all of this is the reorientation it seeks to introduce into philosophy as both a cultural, intellectual and academic enterprise.  For here we have a school of thought that is more than willing to aggressively engage the Western tradition (including the Western hermeneutical tradition) about its philosophical ethnocentrism and attendant ideological pretensions.  For African hermeneutics represents an independent philosophical tradition that is actively engaging in dialogues with and deconstructive critiques of Western culture and philosophy.

            It is this train of thought that has persuaded some African philosophers to suggest that, in the end, it is philosophy in the African context that will be more open-minded about and tolerant of the predispositions and peculiarities of other cultures' philosophical traditions.  For, on the basis of sometimes bitter experience and hard-won political and intellectual independence, it is Africa that will be in a more informed position to appreciate the importance of every culture's inalienable right to intellectual integrity.

 

Department of Philosophy & Religion

Morehouse College

 

W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Harvard University

 

 



 

 

2004 “Cosmology: African Cosmologies” (3,200 words), Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones, MacMillan Reference, USA.

2004 “Contemporary Anglophone African Philosophy: A Survey,” Chapter 6 in A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by Kwasi Wiredu, Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing, 99-148.

2004 “Yoruba Moral Epistemology,” Chapter 21 in A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by Kwasi Wiredu, Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing, 296-303.

2003 “Not a House Divided,” in Journal On African Philosophy 2, 1-15 (http://www.africanphilosophy.com/issue2/hallen.html).




NOT A HOUSE DIVIDED

by Barry Hallen

Many who work in the domain of academic philosophy have come to take it for granted that there is a de facto division between professionals who align themselves with analytic philosophy and those who prefer a phenomenological or hermeneutical approach.  That this ‘division' also impairs communication between these schools of thought is evidenced by such familiar refrains as, "I can't understand what you're saying," or "But what do you really mean by that?"  In consequence analytic philosophers often only communicate with those of a similar philosophical persuasion, and the same seems to apply to those who opt for a phenomenological or hermeneutical approach.  Panel presentations at conferences are divided along what, in some cases, become virtually ideological lines, and an analogous condition can affect professional journals, texts, and even whole departments.  The divisions have become so ingrained that those involved sometimes relate as if aliens from different planets who have tried and failed to communicate. In the earlier days of African academic philosophy there simply were not enough professionals doing it to entertain the possibility of such divisions.  That perhaps explains why some of its memorable moments consisted of exchanges between the likes of Paulin Hountondji (influenced by Althusser's Marxism and well-known for his critique of "ethnophilosophy," which also can apply to analytic philosophy - language as a shared, a la ‘tribal', source of meanings of philosophical significance), Kwasi Wiredu (a rationalist of transcultural but analytic persuasion), the late H. Odera Oruka (who, with his original theory of philosophical sagacity, would on occasion damn everyone else), the late Peter Bodunrin (who wondered whether ‘traditional' thought was sufficiently critical in character to provide a solid basis for a form of philosophy that would essentially be analytic), and Theophile Okere (who advocates a specifically African form of hermeneutics).  To be sure mutual understanding was not always achieved, but such syncretic palavers did produce some provocative and productive exchanges. Recently I have had occasion to review much of this early literature, as well as the writings of the newer generations of philosophers in and of Africa (Hallen 2002).  And what I think I am finding evidence of worries me, perhaps needlessly, perhaps not needlessly, in one respect.  This is that I see a division similar to what has occurred in the Western academy growing between African philosophers who prefer an analytic approach and those who prefer phenomenology or hermeneutics.  Some may feel that this is natural, normal, to be expected, even healthy.  But when I think of the future of the discipline coming to be known as Africana Philosophy, I cannot help but wonder whether those involved would be well-advised at this point to make more serious efforts to discuss their similarities and differences before continuing to go their separate ways.  I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea that, for example, Tsenay Serequeberhan's The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy will be dismissed out of hand by analytic colleagues as empirically meaningless verbiage, or that Kwasi Wiredu's most recent Cultural Universals and Particulars may be summarily typed by hermeneutical colleagues as too much talk about language in a pseudo-scientific guise. Therefore my point in this brief essay will be to explore several topics or themes with reference to which I think analytic and phenomenological or hermeneutical thinkers may share some common concerns that could promote fruitful philosophical exchanges.  These will include: (1) exploring the overlaps between the methods underlying analysis and phenomenologically or hermeneutically ‘describing' or ‘interpreting' a subject; (2) exploring what each of these approaches has to say about the relationship between language and philosophy; (3) exploring their contrasting views on the status of universals as compared with the status of the contextual (or, as in Wiredu's title, the ‘particular-ized'); (4) exploring what relativism may or may not mean to each of these schools of thought. I have always believed there were common priorities shared by the idea(l)s involved in "analyzing" something and by what phenomenologists refer to as "description," or what hermeneutic philosophers refer to as "interpretation."  None of the three schools intend that these activities would most importantly be carried out on some relatively superficial level.  All involve in some sense ‘digging' or ‘penetrating' beneath the surface of a topic or phenomenon and discovering a deeper level of understanding, meaning or truth.  In phenomenological terms this involves the so-called "reductions" or "bracketing" that take the philosopher beyond the level of everyday experience.  In hermeneutical terms it involves a more profound appreciation of the underlying social and cultural ‘traditions' formative of human understanding in a particular historical context ("historicity").  In analytic discourse it involves the notions of ‘clarification' and ‘justification', which also are intended to provide a deeper and more profound understanding of the issue or problem under consideration.  And coming to terms with this deeper level of understanding can, on all three approaches, somehow involve clarification and new insights by identifying or defining its component elements or dimensions. These limited introductory similarities, arising from what I am characterizing as shared methodological priorities, might be challenged by members of these respective schools as themselves superficial because they ignore the radically different frameworks or world-views (for lack of a better word) within which these approaches to philosophy operate.  The one side (phenomenology and hermeneutics) might argue that analytic philosophy is nothing more than the contemporary metamorphosis of classic British empiricism with all of its scientistic or positivist trimmings.  One evolutionary difference between its previous and contemporary manifestations is that the former claimed to be analyzing ‘experience' while the latter targets ‘language'.  But this does not mitigate the basic fact that its most fundamental orientation still is to be empirical (whether focusing on shared experiences or shared languages), and therefore fatally constrained within a view of philosophy and the world that places a distorting emphasis on some form of public verifiability and purported objectivity. The other side (analytic philosophy) might argue that phenomenology or hermeneutics are, analogously, contemporary manifestations of (European) Continental philosophy's longtime obsession with introspection, supposedly methodologically sanitized by various cognitive measures that are designed to promote intersubjectivity (sharing via dialogue, etc.).  Still, since subjectivity by definition is said to lack the ‘objective' constraints supposedly guaranteed by a more empirically-minded approach, the levels of understanding claimed by phenomenology or hermeneutics are regarded as difficult to attain or sustain with anything approaching the intersubjective certainty to be derived from shared, public experience. Before turning to the topic of language, I would ask you to reflect on the flavor of the rhetoric of these last two paragraphs in which I have tried to characterize the supposedly ‘opposing' world-views of these three schools of thought.  There is a latent, implicit, simmering hostility to it.  And a further explanation for this is the fact that they have, in effect, now been ‘opposed' to one another in their current forms for much of the past century.  It is the longevity of this tradition of hostility that adds a further element of legitimacy, of convention, of business as usual, to the contesting sides' respective pronouncements about not being able to ‘understand' what the other is saying. Analytic philosophers who favor a universalist approach argue that there are indeed a body of fundamental truths that characterize all forms of human understanding which may be characterized by the controversial term "rational."  But this foundational claim is not really very different from  phenomenology's assertion that there are fundamental structures common to all human experience.  What the two sides disagree about is how narrowly or expansively the category of relevant ‘experience' is to be delimited.  Nevertheless rationality itself is acknowledged by orthodox phenomenology as a perfectly respectable form of consciousness.  This would indicate, at the least, that these two ‘sides' might benefit from exchanging their viewpoints on what are the distinguishing attributes of the rational, and why or why not other forms of thought/consciousness are  philosophically significant.  In the domain of African philosophy it is difficult to identify figures of substance who align themselves in a straightforward manner with orthodox, mainstream phenomenology as practiced by Husserl and company.  One reason for this is probably that philosophers in the African context were wary of another European-generated approach to human understanding that focused in such an emphatic manner on elements that were said to be universal to human understanding because of concerns that such an overview could underrate or ignore elements to African cognition that were distinctive or perhaps even somehow unique.  Other less technical considerations, such as Husserl's idealization of Greece as a philosophical fountainhead and his own pejorative remarks about people of ‘color'(1), no doubt played a role as well.  It possibly was and is considerations such as these that help to explain why most African philosophers of a phenomenological persuasion have opted for a hermeneutical approach (see below).  Nevertheless, even orthodox phenomenological characterizations of the rational do form a basis for potentially enlightening and provocative exchanges between mainstream phenomenology and such comparatively universalist analytic African philosophers as Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Sam Oluoch Imbo, and ‘Segun Gbadegesin. There is no question that analytic philosophy does attach a higher priority to language as the target of its analyses than is the case with phenomenology or hermeneutics.  Nevertheless it is certainly not the case that hermeneutics, in particular, ignores language as a topic of philosophical interest and significance.  This is why it is important to appreciate the implications of the hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer's ideas (1975) concerning the relationship between philosophy and language as a further step toward exploring overlapping concerns that may be shared by these two schools of thought.  As intellectual descendants of the Anglophone tradition of (British) empiricism, manifested most notably by the sciences, analytic philosophers who concern themselves with language, concepts, or certain ‘problems' of philosophy do appear to relate to these things as if they were stable and static ‘things' existing in a (culturally and historically) neutral environment that makes it possible to perform various definitive experiments and tests with and upon them that other philosophers may thereafter verify and confirm.  I am not saying this attitude is articulated in an explicit manner, but I am suggesting it is implied by the ways in which the techniques of analysis are employed.  Furthermore, the writings of analytic philosophers often do give the impression that the more important problems, topics and questions of philosophy - on a purely ‘rational' basis - transcend any particular historical or cultural context.  If time is assigned a role in the search for philosophical truth(s), it is that an essential cluster of those truths will be timeless - universally applicable to all of humankind. The idea of analyzing language, in isolation from the particular social and historical contexts in which human beings employ it, is something Gadamer cannot accept and therefore rejects as fundamentally flawed.  To Gadamer language, as well as the world it is used to ‘talk' about, are both living things - in process and constantly adapting or being adapted to express and accommodate old and new ideas and forms of understanding - rather than ‘things' situated in an independent ‘reality' that can be regarded as if on display in a museum case (1975, 345).  Language and the world cannot be isolated from human life (as ‘subject' over against ‘object') because they are so fundamental to being human.  Language therefore is essential, indeed inseparable, from the activity of constituting both human life and the world (more about this below):
The language that lives in speech, which takes in all understanding, including that of the textual interpreter, is so much bound up with thinking and interpretation that we have too little left if we ignore the actual content of what languages hands down to us and seek to consider only language as form (1975, 366).
As a shared vehicle of understanding and communication language, as evidenced in conversation and dialogue, ensures that understanding is intersubjective rather than private.  But since natural languages do differ from one another ("to see languages as views of the world (1975, 364)"), and since social and historical contexts also differ as well as change, Gadamer's orientation would obviously be more compatible overall with a relativistic appreciation of human understanding.  In other words, he would regard it as culturally chauvinistic or ethnocentric for philosophy to anoint one particular natural language (English, Bantu) as some sort of paradigm, or one particular approach to defining ‘rationality' (Western, Yoruba), for example, at some point in time as a basis with which to assess the merits of others. If the preceding does not do Gadamer's extensive writings on this subject an injustice, I cannot help but wonder whether the genuine differences between (a) analytic philosophers who embrace relativism and (b) hermeneutic approaches to the study of language are so fundamental as to make these two traditions irreconcilable.  By "relativism" in the present context I mean those analytic philosophers in and of Africa who argue that there may be unique and variable elements to the language of any culture at different points in its history that somehow set its forms of understanding apart from any other.  Certainly African analytic philosophers of a relativist persuasion, who argue that social, cultural, and cognitive contexts are subject to change, and who do not privilege those of any one culture or historical period as providing a rational paradigm for others to imitate or emulate, would seem to demonstrate a more flexible approach to human understanding that shares something fundamentally in common with their African hermeneutical colleagues. Hermeneutical philosophy is explicitly context-oriented, by which is meant that it stresses the fact that human cognition always takes place in a particular historical, cultural and intellectual era, and is informed by the paradigms and priorities distinctive of that era (Serequeberhan 1994; Okolo 1986; 1991).  As such the hermeneutical approach takes a fairly radically relativistic view of ‘knowledge'.  The responsibility of philosophers is to come to terms with their historicity by acknowledging it, and by achieving a degree of reflective/reflexive understanding of the characteristics that distinguish their era while at the same time being situated in it.  This would seem to indicate that the hermeneutical philosopher would be rather wary of philosophical ‘talk' that presumes the existence of cognitive, etc. universals that are said to underlie or to be formative of understanding in all historical eras.  Claims about the existence of such ‘universals' would likely be treated as intellectually ethnocentric and false reifications of the paradigms of one particular era as somehow essential to all. Although it might be possible to complain that the hermenutical claim about historicity is itself a kind of universal truth, this would be a ‘cheap shot' if the implication were that this then constitutes a methodological inconsistency.  For that hermeneutical philosophers assert (or should the verb be "claim") this is simply a bare fact, a given, about the human predicament - that we have no choice but to be historically situated - than a form of triumphal discovery (although it too obviously constitutes an important hermeneutical insight).  As, analogously, some analytic philosophers react to the idea of posing the question, "Why be rational?" The mutually beneficial dialogue between the American analytic philosopher Donald Davidson and the German hermeneutical philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (Hahn 1997, 421-435) about the manner in which language constitutes ‘reality', rather than merely describes ‘reality', is one example of the kind of positive convergence of interests and insights I have in mind.  Both Davidson and Gadamer reject the conventional epistemological model of the ‘subject' facing a ‘world' which must then be described with words that re-present it in a sensible (‘objective') manner.  They suggest that since "thought itself depends upon language, [therefore it is] ‘the medium of language which would allow the [very notion of the] object to come into words' (Davidson 1997, 431; the quote within the quote is from Gadamer 1975, 350)."  For, as Davidson then goes on to say:
it . . . seems wrong to me to say agreement concerning an object demands that a common language first be worked out. . . . it is only in the presence of shared objects that understanding can come about.  Coming to an agreement about an object and coming to understand each other's speech are not independent moments but part of the same interpersonal process of triangulating the world (1997, 432).
In the domain of African philosophy a similar sentiment seems to underlie Helen Verran's recent Science and an African Logic when she suggests:
If we are to be convincing in asserting that mathematical objects have been constructed by people as they went about their living as social beings, more than the conditions of their production must be demonstrated.  We must be able to show what people have used to accomplish the construction of these objects in their interactions with each other and the material world, and how they have used them (2001, 260, fn. 2).
Analytic philosophers in and of Africa whom I would suggest favor a relativist approach to understanding or cognition are people like Anthony Appiah, myself (as well as the late Olubi Sodipo), and Godwin Sogolo.  Hermeneutic African philosophers, whom I think evidence at least some sympathy for relativism, are people like Theophile Okere, Okonda Okolo, and Tsenay Serequeberhan.  African analytic philosophers of a relativist persuasion are perhaps more common than is the case in the ‘mainstream' Western tradition.  This is probably a consequence of a supposition on the part of such scholars and intellectuals that African cultures may be different from those of the West in important ways that deserve to be highlighted, and that would therefore be misrepresented by beginning from a presumption that cognition in Africa and the West are essentially the same.  If the issue is cognition, of course the key question becomes just how different it has to be in order to be rated as qualitatively distinct.  And then there is the further consideration that, in the past, supposed ‘differences' in African cognition were sometimes used as evidence that Africa's indigenous intellectual heritage was thereby inferior to or less advanced than that of the West.  This is one important reason why African analytic and hermeneutic philosophers of a relativist persuasion have devoted so much time and effort to clarifying what they believe to be the accurate depiction of cognition in the African context.  But, again, one reason for highlighting the similarities between them in this way is to show there is a consensus on certain issues that transcends methodological commitments and thereby provides a basis for dialogue and discussion between hermeneutical philosophers and analytical relativists because of a common commitment to cognition's being somehow distinctive to social and cultural contexts. Obviously one point of this essay is to call for more occasions for dialogue and debate between these schools of thought in the African context.  Obviously it would then be somehow disturbing if there continues to be a growing consensus, even if tacit, that the absence of such dialogue and debate is not even an issue in the contemporary African philosophy scene.  But one can still persist in asking the question - "Why shouldn't it be?" If such exchanges of viewpoints were to become more of a priority in Africana philosophy, there might be at least two further positive stimuli for it: (1) There are a variety of relatively new discussions taking place within the domain of African philosophy, mainly of a normative character, that both analytical and hermeneutical philosophers should have somethings to say about.  One rather obvious example is the renewed debate about what beliefs and practices within Africa's cultures should be preserved and developed and those that should be minimalized or discarded.  On the analytic side this is exemplified by Kwame Gyekye's Tradition and Modernity.  On the hermeneutic side it is evidenced by Tsenay Serequeberhan's also recently published Our Heritage.  Both of these texts discuss essentially the same issues so, if that is the case, why can't they also dialogue about them with one another? (2) The across-the-board assaults of deconstruction and postmodernism that challenge both analytic philosophy and hermeneutics equally for what are said to be their arbitrary conceptions of and approaches to knowledge might be regarded as a further stimulus.  One consequence of this ‘new wave' of criticism, of treating philosophy as just one more genre of (fictional) literature, could be to compel all philosophers in and of African to rethink their basic methodological priorities and commitments, and this might provide an incentive for dialogue between these  schools to be enhanced. To repeat one final time: the important thing, as far as Africa's overall philosophical future is concerned, is for analytic and phenomenological or hermeneutical philosophers to interact regularly in order to stimulate dialogue on the professional or intellectual level.  In the Western academy this is not the case and the split between them is sometimes viewed as irreparable.  But as the above synopsis hopefully indicates, with reference to Africa there are shared common concerns and interests and these should be explored, hopefully to their mutual benefit.

Notes
1.  It is tragically ironic that Edmund Husserl, who was to be persecuted for his own Jewish heritage, confounds his supposedly "presuppositionless" point of view with such observations as "according to the old familiar definition, man is the rational animal, and in this broad sense even the Papuan is a man and not a beast (1970, 290)."

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An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (revised edition 1995).--------------------. 1988. The Unexamined Life: Philosophy and the African Experience. Accra: Ghana Universities Press.--------------------. 1996. African Cultural Values: An Introduction. Philadelphia and Accra, Ghana: Sankofa Publishing Company.---------------------. 1997a. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.--------------------. 1997b. "Philosophy, Culture, and Technology in the Postcolonial" also in Eze (ed.) Postcolonial African Philosophy, pp. 25-44.Hahn, Lewis Edwin, ed. 1997. The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court.Hallen, Barry. 2000. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.--------------------. 2002. A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Hountondji, Paulin. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Translated by Henri Evans with the collaboration of Jonathan Ree and with an Introduction by Abiola Irele. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.--------------------. 2002. The Struggle for Meaning. Translated by John Conteh-Morgan and with a Foreword by K. Anthony Appiah. Athens: Ohio University Press.Husserl, Edmund. 1931. Ideas. A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. London: Allen and Unwin.--------------------. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Imbo, Samuel Oluoch. 1998. An Introduction to African Philosophy. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.--------------------. 2002. Oral Traditions as Philosophy: Okot p'Bitek's Legacy for African Philosophy. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.--------------------. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press and London: James Currey.--------------------. (ed.) 1992. The Surreptitious Speech: Presence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness 1947-1982. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Okere, Theophilus. 1983. African Philosophy: A Historico-Hermeneutical Investigation of the Conditions of Its Possibility. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.--------------------. (ed.) 1996. Identity and Change: Nigerian Philosophical Studies I. Washington, D.C.: Council for Research and Values in Philosophy.Okolo, Okonda w'oleko. 1986. Pour une Philosophie de la Culture et du Developpement: Recherches d'hermeneutique et de praxis africaines. Kinshasa: Presses Universitaires du Zaire.--------------------.1991. "Tradition and Destiny: Horizons of an African Philosophical Hermeneutics," in T. Serequeberhan (ed.) African Philosophy: The Essential Readings.Oruka, H. Odera. 1975. "The Fundamental Principles in the Question of ‘African Philosophy', I," Second Order 4: 44-55.--------------------. 1981. "Four Trends in African Philosophy," in Alwin Diemer (ed.) Philosophy in the Present Situation of Africa. Weisbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Erlagh.-------------------- (ed.) 1990a. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and the Modern Debate on African Philosophy. Leiden: E.J. Brill.--------------------. 1990b. "Cultural Fundamentals in Philosophy," Quest: Philosophical Discussions 4/2: 20-37.--------------------. 1997. Practical Philosophy. Nairobi and Kampala: East African Educational Publishers.Oruka, H.O. and Masolo, D.A. (eds.) 1983. Philosophy and Cultures. Nairobi: Bookwise Publishers.Serequeberhan, Tsenay. 1989. "The Idea of Colonialism in Hegel's Philosophy of Right," International Philosophical Quarterly 29/3: 301-318.--------------------. 1991a. "The African Liberation Struggle: A Hermeneutic Exploration of an African Historico-Political Horizon," Ultimate Reality and Meaning 14/1: 46-52.--------------------. (ed.) 1991b. African Philosophy: The Essential Readings. New York: Paragon House.--------------------. 1991c. "African Philosophy: The Point in Question," in T. Serequeberhan (ed.) African Philosophy; The Essential Readings, pp. 3-28.--------------------. 1994. The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy. London: Routledge.--------------------. 1997. "The Critique of Eurocentrism and the Practice of African Philosophy," also in Eze (ed.) Postcolonial African Philosophy, pp. 141-161.--------------------. 2000. Our Heritage. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.Verran, Helen. 2002. Science and an African Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Wheeler, Samuel C., III. 2000. Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Wiredu, Kwasi. 1980. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.--------------------. 1992. "Formulating Modern Thought in African Languages: Some Theoretical Considerations," in V.Y. Mudimbe (ed.) The Surreptitious Speech: Presence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness 1947-1987. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 301-332.--------------------. 1996. Cultural Universals and Particulars: an African Perspective. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Wiredu, Kwasi and Gyekye, Kwame. (eds.) 1992. Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I. New York: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

 

 

2003 “Review of Helen Verran’s, Science and an African Logic in African Studies Review 45/3 (December), 160-162.

2003 “Ethical Knowledge in an African Philosophy” (2,500 words), for the Journal of the Florida Philosophical Review III/1 (Summer) Florida Philosophical Association, edited by Nancy Stanlick and Shelly Park, 6-13.

2002 “Review of Helen Verran’s, Science and an African Logic,” in The International Journal of African Historical Studies 35/1 (Fall), 188-189.

2002. “Modes of Thought, Ordinary Language, and Cognitive Diversity,” in Perspectives in African Philosophy, edited by Claude Sumner and Samuel Wolde Yohannes, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa University Press, 214-222.

2002 A Short History of African Philosophy, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

2002 “Review of Elias Bongmba’s, African Witchcraft and Otherness: A Philosophical and Theological Critique of Intersubjective Relations,” in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 36/1, 139-140.

2001 “‘Witches’ as Superior Intellects: Challenging a Cross-Cultural Superstition,” for Dialogues of Witchcraft: Anthropology, Philosophy, and the Possibilities of Discovery, edited by Diane Ciekawy and George C. Bond, Athens, Ohio University Press, 80-100 (revised and republished as Chpt. 11, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 201-213).



‘WITCHES' AS SUPERIOR INTELLECTS:CHALLENGING A CROSS-CULTURAL SUPERSTITION
by Barry Hallen
I confess that, when I was first invited to contribute to this new volume on witchcraft in Africa, my feeling was one of dismay.  Given there are many subjects and issues fundamental to a better appreciation of Africa's cultural heritage that have scarcely been touched upon by scholarship, why should witchcraft return as a central topic for discussion?  Of what intrinsic merit can it now be, especially given the innumerable past occasions when it was used to type Africa's cultures as backward?  I think some of the concerns expressed by African scholars, which for some time were responsible for witchcraft's being relegated to a back-burner, are worth repeating. Is it acceptable to presume that ‘witchcraft' is a culturally universal phenomenon, so that what the word was used to mean and to refer to in the West is substantially the same as what this English-language term is used to refer to in Africa today?  And the reverse, of course. Is witchcraft wherever it occurs essentially a superstition?  By this I mean that it is better regarded as a belief expressive of what Kwasi Wiredu has termed ‘folk philosophy' - beliefs arrived at and defended on the basis of less than satisfactory reasoning and empirical evidence, and therefore best not singled out as typical of any culture's intellectual heritage?  In short given the above, what possible defense can be made for devoting time and energy to a renewal of the discussion of African ‘witchcraft'? Presumably there are new insights, hypotheses or data that will lead to a more profound understanding of ‘it'.  Indeed there had better be, or anthologies such as this would amount to nothing more than further elaborations of a belief that has already been labeled little more than a superstition by much of Western scholarship.  But if certain African beliefs that, for lack of a more precise term, scholarship has termed "witchcraft" do amount to something other or more than mere superstition, is it then fair or representative to bundle them together and translate them into the English language by this term, since it is so fundamentally associated with the category of "superstition?" These introductory misgivings articulated, I would like to begin by sharing some memories from the time when I attempted to make ‘the witchcraft phenomenon in African scholarship' the topic of a course in African Philosophy that I taught to third- or junior-year students at the then University of Ife, Nigeria.  The students themselves were the first to complain.  How could this be a ‘philosophical' topic, they wondered?  As a popular and stereotypical belief or superstition it could be summarized in fairly straightforward fashion.  But how could it be made any more theoretical or reflective than that, they asked?  I suggested that one way would be to demonstrate that approaching the topic from the standpoint of different scholarly disciplines resulted in very different explanations of it.  And immediately proceeded to recruit some of my more senior Nigerian colleagues in other departments or faculties to come and lecture us on this apparently theoretically banal subject. Our first guest lecturer was the Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the Faculty of Social Sciences.  This professor was and is a recognized authority on Yoruba culture, and in his presentation he more or less elaborated upon the theme that the individuals a society identified as ‘witches' were those who had already transgressed or been assigned the role of social outcasts, deviants and/or eccentrics and therefore did not ‘fit' models of conventional human behavior.  As such his approach seemed to parallel that of Mary Douglas in her Purity and Danger, although I do not in the least mean to suggest that was the source from which this colleague derived inspiration for his approach to the topic. Our second guest lecturer was the Head of Religious Studies in the Faculty of Arts.  He spoke to the students eloquently, at times in a sermon-like manner, of witchcraft as a universally subversive and evil fraternity headed by the Devil, and dedicated to making life as miserable as possible for as many human beings as possible.  But he wound up on a very positive note by maintaining that his Christian faith and God were more than enough ‘protection' so that he personally remained fearless. The third guest lecturer was the then Acting Head of the Department of Medicine and Mental Health in the Faculty of Medicine.  Also a serious student of Yoruba culture, this colleague was and is a practicing psychiatrist.  He portrayed confessed ‘witches' as mentally ill because they were suffering from a form of acute depression that compelled them at a certain point to break-down and confess to any number of heinous but manifestly empirically impossible crimes against humanity. The students' predictable initial reaction to these three compelling but apparently irreconcilable scenario's was to ask ‘who or which one is right'?  And when I reminded them that this was a question each of them individually, as students of philosophy, would have to resolve to their own satisfaction, they groaned aloud, observing that the dependable trademark of philosophy always was more questions rather than more answers. This isn't quite the end of the story.  For it just so happened that our External Examiner to the Philosophy Department that year was a professor from Ghana.  (For those who may not be familiar with the past of the Nigerian educational system, an External Examiner was a recognized scholar in the relevant discipline who visited at the end of the academic year to look-over the departmental teaching syllabus and a sampling of the final exams written by students with the aim of confirming or improving, rather than reproving, the department's educational program generally.)  As it turned out this professor did have a special concern about my course on witchcraft and diplomatically, as always, at one point took me aside to express it.  His concern he said, was whether one could treat this topic in a genuinely philosophical manner if students in the course already really believed in it?  But I believe his concern was somewhat mollified when I told him that the students themselves had asked me a question similar to his at the beginning of the course, and when I for good measure added the account of the three guest lecturers that I have just shared with you. This trip down ‘memory lane' is meant to have some scholarly consequence as well.  For in the course of those labors, along with my late colleague, coauthor and friend J. Olubi Sodipo, I was striving to arrive at my own ‘revisionist' approach to the subject of witchcraft in Yoruba society and culture.  And I would like to continue by saying something about the manner in which I now better understand how I arrived at that approach, as well as some of my deliberately tentative suggestions (rather than conclusions) relating to African ‘witchcraft' as a topic for scholarship.  I am stressing this point about the manner in which I arrived at these suggestions because today, with hindsight, I hope that I have a better appreciation of how profoundly a scholar's approach to a topic may be formed or channeled by the discipline of which they are a product.  It may seem trivially true to say that an anthropologist's findings will be informed by her anthropological background, an art historian's by his art historical antecedents, and the philosopher's by philosophy.  But the point I'm trying to get across is perhaps a bit more subtle than this. It's not just that we're guided.  It's also that we think we're right.  There is a feeling of conviction that creeps in at some point during the process of analysis that influences if not impels us to feel that our insights have hit some ‘bulls-eye' and that we really have got at the truth about whatever phenomenon has been the target of our research.  For example, my discipline - philosophy - places a premium upon the importance of mind or intellect and their role in human cognition or understanding.  Is it any great surprise, therefore, that my own approach to the philosophical study or analysis of ‘witchcraft' in Yoruba culture has focused primarily on the supposed intellectual dispositions and cognitive attributes of ‘witches' as contrasted with other recognized personality-types in Yoruba culture?  I would therefore suggest we take a look at the supposed ‘witch' personality in Yoruba culture from such a deliberately cognitive perspective. The term in Yoruba discourse that has conventionally been translated into English as "witch" is the word "aje".  As should become evident, the philosophical approach being applied to Yoruba discourse in this essay is that of ordinary language analysis.  Research on terminological usage in Yoruba discourse was carried out through discussions with approximately a dozen herbalists or alternative-medicine doctors (onisegun), on an individual basis, in the same village in the Ekiti region of Nigeria.  With reference to language usage or discourse relevant to the present text, the onisegun were expressly requested to provide (correct and incorrect) examples of everyday usage of relevant terms.  My first substantial published work arising from this research, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy argues at length against the summary reduction of the aje phenomenon to being essentially the same as that of English-language culture's ‘witch', and against Western scholars using African cultures as testing grounds for their theories about Western witchcraft.  I cannot help but refer interested readers to that discussion as a useful background to what follows. What the present narrative can try to do is to be more precise about the behavioral dispositions the Yoruba  associate with the aje as a personality-type.  Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft suggests that there is a popularized stereotype of the aje phenomenon in Yoruba society itself.  In much of the literature that discusses the ‘witchcraft' phenomenon in Africa it is this stereotype, a polyglot mixture of African and Western (via the influence of Christian missionaries) superstitions, that predominates--for example Geoffrey Parrinder's Witchcraft: European and African.  Some of the false distortions worked upon the Yoruba aje as a personality-type by this misguided stereotype are as follows: aje generally are presumed to be supernaturally 'evil'; always immoral; aje always are women; aje tend to be identified with Halloweenish trappings of Western witchcraft (pacts with the 'Devil', flying off at night to meet with their coven, etc.). Let me proceed to challenge this stereotype on the basis of the discussions with the onisegun, step by step.  First, that the aje are not supernatural beings:
(1) They are human beings (eniyan), just like you and me. Secondly, the herbalists (onisegun) made it clear that there are male aje as well as female:(2) I: Is it true that aje is more common among the women? O: This is not true.  We call aje the ‘mother of children (iya awon omode)', but this is just because of fear [it is an euphemism that provides a discreet way to refer to a potentially dangerous person].  We do not say the ‘father of children' because that is not how we refer [not the phrasing of the conventional idiom] to the aje.(3) And they [women] have aje more than men.(4) The same [proportion are men are aje as are women].  But there may be many among men. (5) Only the supreme deity (Olorun) knows that [whether more aje are women or men].Next, that the aje personality can be eminently moral:(6) Aje are [can be] good persons (eniyan rere).  Not all the aje are bad persons (eniyan buruku).  There are some good ones.  Since they do not talk (soro)[about it], that is why we cannot differentiate (mo soto) whether this aje is good or whether this aje is bad.  If you and I are going out in [wearing] the same clothing, people will think that I am someone who ‘knows book' [can read] because they see us ‘in the eye' [together].  They will not know (mo) that I do not know book.  That is the case of aje.
(7) Not all of them [aje] are bad persons (eniyan buruku).  There are some of them . . . who do not say any cruel (ika) thing.  If he or she sees a person who wants to be cruel, he or she will warn them not to do so [i.e., warn off another aje who is a bad or immoral person (eniyan buruku)].  And he or she may tell other persons that the people of that place are bad--to not go there.  There are some good aje who may want to warn people, but the listeners will say that, ‘Do not mind him or her', that ‘He or she wants a favor from you'.  They may say that he or she is saying that [giving the warning] because he or she wants palm wine.  And some may say he or she is drunk, whereas he or she wants to say the truth (ooto).  But it may be that this person does not have many things ‘in hand' [i.e., that he or she is not important and so others don't take his or her warnings seriously].  There are some people who have something ‘in hand' [i.e., who are well-off] who have aje.  There is nothing which can spoil their things; they can predict how a matter will be in a day and it will happen.(8) There are some [aje] who do good things.  Aje is not meant to be used in bad ways.  Aje is created so that the world may progress.(9) The aje behaves according to how its 'self' (emi) is.  Not all of them do bad things.  There are some of them who use their own [intelligence and ability] to develop life.(10) A good aje (aje rere) who does not do bad things--he or she doesn't kill children.  He or she doesn't create fear in the minds of children . . . . They can say he or she is a good aje.  A good aje (aje rere) cannot do anything bad.  He or she will be looking for good things.(11) There are some [aje] who behave well, if they have chosen to be so from 'heaven' (orun).  This type of aje will not associate themselves with others [aje] who are known to be bad.(12) There are some aje whose moral character (iwa) is good.(13) Sometimes they do good things.The point of introducing so many quotations to refute this notion is that, if there can be both bad and good aje, this means that there can be both immoral and moral persons who have whatever is this extraordinary ability. In Yoruba discourse one way in which extraordinary human beings are said to be distinguished from ordinary human beings is by the number of ‘selves' (emi/inu) they possess.  Why choose this form of expression to express extraordinary intelligence and ability?  Reasoning in terms of a more personalized causal model, it would make good sense and certainly be consistent to express the remarkable attributes of unusually gifted individuals as the consequences of additives to the base rate of the intelligence and ability attributed to the ordinary person.  How do people express analogous meanings in Western vernacular?  Someone has more brain cells?  A high forehead?  A higher I.Q.? The form of diagrammatic representation suggested is that of an inverted pyramid, with ordinary persons, described as having one ‘self' (oni inu/emi), at the bottom and the most extraordinary, described as having seven ‘selves', at the top.  With reference to this inverted pyramid, aje generally rates on the level just above ordinary human beings in that they are said to have two ‘selves' (emi):
(14) These are the people who we can refer to as having two 'selves' (emi)--aje.(15) Aje has two selves (emi).This implies that their 'powers' for good or ill are rated as roughly twice those of the ordinary person.  But such 'powers' are clearly linked to superior intelligence and ability:(16) There are some persons [who], whenever they say something, it is true.  And whenever they behave, they behave in a very correct way.  There are some people like this who themselves are not aware of it.  Other people recognize [them].  People may call them . . . aje, and it is possible that they are . . . [not].  There are some aje who recognize themselves as such and [other] people know that they are aje.  There are some people who receive great profit from whatever they do.  These [people] may not be aje or any of these [other special types of] people.(17) This [oju inu] is [pertains to] the thought (ero) of the mind (okan).  This is what we call ‘oginrinringinrin' [not in the standard dictionary but can be equated with ‘insight' and ‘predictive ability'].  When all these small things combine to the knowledge of someone, they call that kind of person ‘aje' because he or she always says the truth.  His or her words never miss.(18) There are some people who are not aje, but they behave (huwa) like aje.  The supreme deity (Olorun) has given some people intelligence (oye), even more than the aje.  Some people are not aje, but they have supporters who are aje.  These are the kinds of things which make it difficult to recognize aje.  Some aje reveal secrets and things that will happen [in future] to other persons (eniyan).  They give warnings to other persons (eniyan) that they will deal with them if they do not behave in the way they like.  It is very easy for aje to deal with other persons who are not aje. . . . This shows how powerful they are.  It is very difficult to know [distinguish] an aje from an ordinary person (oni inu).(19) As some people are more powerful (lagbara ju) than others, so also their intuitive insight (oju inu) is more powerful.  There will be two [eyes] outside and two inside.  We call them ‘aje'.  You see (ri) that he or she will be more powerful than someone with [only] two [two eyes, not two emi!].  Some people can sit down here and may know what is happening down there [on the other side of the town].  Some people may open their eyes now [speaking of aje and referring to their ‘physical', normal eyes]--they have gone.  Their intuitive insight (oju inu) may be seeing other places.  We call them ‘aje'. At this point I would like to elaborate another thesis intimated in Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft  (115-116).  All of the onisegun concurred that the superior intelligence and ability associated with the aje cannot be taught.  It is inborn, pertaining to what in English-language culture is sometimes referred to as ‘native' intelligence.  It is a fact of life that human beings do differ, sometimes markedly, from one another in terms of their native intelligence or I.Q.  It is perhaps in part to account for these differences that the Yoruba attribute such disparities to a person's destiny (ori inu):(20) These [aje] are also persons (eniyan).  But the aje [ability] has been created with them when they were coming from 'heaven' (orun).  They chose this as a [destiny] because they liked it.This makes perfect sense as a way to explain how two different persons or ‘selves' (emi) who, in principle, should be somehow equal simply by virtue of being persons or ‘selves' (emi), can turn out in the course of a single lifetime to display very different levels of inborn or native intelligence, with all the consequences that may entail.  That such differences may be attributed to their respective destinies in one lifetime is certainly a way of accounting for and representing intelligence as inborn.  In a belief system where every individual is said to undergo an indefinite series of reincarnations, who would want to be faced with the prospect of being a less intelligent person throughout them all?  Hence each choice of a new destiny also gives the 'self' a chance to improve upon its 'native' intelligence and abilities. If the foregoing serves to rehabilitate the aje as a general, if exceptional, personality-type, I can now proceed to detail the more specific types of immoral and moral behavior associated with it.  What should distinguish such behavior is its scale or degree, in that the aje is capable of doing greater good or greater bad than the ordinary person.  It has already been established that the aje's talents may be applied to advance positive moral interests.  So first let us take a look at some examples of immoral behavior that the onisegun associated with the aje. Although it may seem redundant to some, the first point to establish is that the aje personality can be associated with a morally bad person (eniyan buruku):(21) The aje may also be an immoral person (eniyan buruku).(22) The aje do bad things because they don't like people (eniyan).(23) The difference between them is that the aje behaves badly to other persons without any cause at all, while the ordinary person will have a reason for their behavior.With all that implies about having to conceal themselves from moral persons:(24) Aje are just like thieves, because no one who is a thief would tell others that he was.  So also aje will not reveal their identity to any person.(25) Yes, but there are some people [who are aje] who appear dull (go: ‘stupid', ‘dull', ‘foolish').(26) It is very difficult to know [distinguish] an aje for [from] an ordinary person (oni inu).Consequently the bad or immoral aje become very difficult to identify:(27) They spoil the work of other people, but people cannot see them because they follow the path of darkness.(28) It is very difficult to recognize aje . . . because we don't know what their thought is [what they're thinking ‘inside']. Another relevant topic that was raised in Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft is why it must be the case that moral persons who are ‘blessed' with these superior abilities also apparently must conceal themselves from the general public.  For it certainly is the case that people do not go about in conventional Yoruba society introducing themselves as aje!  The explanation suggested for this then was as follows: Extraordinary ability also demands extraordinary responsibility.  The good aje recognizes that ordinary people cannot be expected to understand or to accomplish as much as he or she can.  For this reason he or she cannot expect that, if he or she were to reveal his or her knowledge to them, they would use it responsibily and at the same time honour him or her as the intellectual and spiritual leader he or she would deserve to be.  More likely, because the basis for his or her special abilities is something that cannot be shared or taught [i.e. is the product of inborn or native intelligence], ordinary people would come to fear him or her and take whatever steps they could to control or restrain him or her.  So, even the good aje must conceal him or herself.  He or she may still exercise his or her powers for the benefit of the community, but only in a deliberately indirect manner (116).Supplementary remarks made by the onisegun seem to support this interpretation:(29) But it is the aje who knows the ones that are not good (ko dara) [who can recognize other immoral aje], but they cannot say it openly.  If he or she says it openly, people will say that he or she is ‘prophesying' (ka; behaving in a potentially dangerous manner).Even if, as we shall see shortly, there are certain firsthand manifestations of good moral character (iwa rere) that may be attributed to the aje. Certain forms of immoral behavior can be associated with the aje as a personality-type:(30) They will behave like aje.  For instance, if people complain that aje are troubling them, rather than sympathizing with them the aje will say they are not concerned, that no aje could come to them, that they are free from all aje.And of moral behaviour:(31) If he or she sees a person who wants to be cruel, he or she will warn them not to do so [i.e., warn another aje who is a bad or immoral person (eniyan buruku)].  And he or she may tell other persons that the people of that place are bad--to not go there.  There are some good aje who may want to warn people.(32) Some aje reveal secrets and things that will happen [in future] to other persons (eniyan).  They [also] give warnings to other persons (eniyan), that they will deal with them if they do not behave in the way they like. I anticipate that this attempt to rehabilitate the intellectual and social standing of what has commonly been interpreted as the ‘witchcraft' phenomenon in Yoruba culture, the aje, will be received with grave reservations by scholars who are persuaded by the more orthodox portrayals of the literally aje as the "witch."  I would remind them that the onisegun with whom I was privileged to hold these discussions were themselves stigmatized with the title "witchdoctors," with all of the intellectual scorn that term implied.  If use of that term has been suspended because of a better appreciation of their genuine abilities, why should not the same be the case with the use of "witches" as a name for the persons (reflecting the personalized causal model) associated with important or momentous events during an individual's lifetime? It was Jack Goody (1977) who posed the topical question: "Intellectuals in Primitive Societies?"  His response on the basis of, as always, literacy was not very positive.  And perhaps because the title "intellectual" is so directly associated with literacy and the ‘book' in Western culture, this particular term does not provide a comfortable cross-cultural frame of reference.  Yet if "intellect" as a term is also used to refer to cognition, to the power(s) of human understanding, certainly the aje exercise these in a superior manner--with all that implies about ‘knowing' and ‘believing'--in comparison to ordinary persons.  In which case perhaps it is the connotations that have come to be attached to use of the term "intellectual" in Western culture that must be chastened, so that its meaning can extend to oral cultures and to persons like the aje.  I have searched my Thesaurus for alternatives and intermediaries that fall anywhere between "smart" and "genius," but I have not found any other that expresses optimal cognition in a more suitable manner.
Footnotes

 

 

2000 Review Essay: “African Philosophy in a New Key,” African Studies Review 43/3 (December), 131-134.

2000 The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

2000 "Variations on a Theme: Ritual, Performance, Intellect," for Insight and Artistry: A Cross-Cultural Study of Art and Divination in Central and West Africa, edited by John Pemberton, , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 168-174 (revised and republished as Chpt. 10, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 187-200).

1999 Review of The Art of Thinking: Chats on Logic in The African Book Publishing Record, ????

1999 “‘Handsome Is as Handsome Does’: Interrelations of the Epistemic, the Moral, and the Aesthetic in an African Culture,” Invited Panel on Intercultural Perspectives in Aesthetics, The Proceedings of the 20th World Congress of Philosophy, Vol. IV, “Philosophies of Religion, Art, and Creativity,” Kevin Stoehr (ed.). Bowling Green State University, KY: Philosophical Documentation Center, 187-96 (revised and republished as Chpt. 13, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 237-248).

"HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES":

INTERRELATIONS OF THE EPISTEMIC, THE MORAL,

AND THE AESTHETIC IN AN AFRICAN CULTURE

 

 

by Barry Hallen

 

          African art historians were among the first to elaborate the close connection between aesthetic and moral values in African cultures.  The depth of that relationship has perhaps most succinctly and eloquently been summed-up by the aphorism that Rowland Abiodun,  the Chairman of this panel, has made the cornerstone of his Yoruba aesthetics: "iwa l'ewa," which is sometimes rendered into English as ‘good moral character is beauty'.

          What I would like to illustrate with my presentation today is that philosophers, working in conjunction and collaboration with their art historical colleagues, can deepen and strengthen such insights by exploring their roots in or consequences for other dimensions of our discipline.  Epistemology or the theory of knowledge is one such dimension.  It is concerned, amongst other things, with the criteria recommended for distinguishing more from less reliable information.  The more reliable is what people usually regard as ‘knowledge'.  The less as ‘belief' or, at worst, information that fails to satisfy even minimal criteria and is therefore labelled ‘untrue' or ‘false'.

          The approach to philosophy in and of Africa that I happen to favor is best known as Ordinary Language Philosophy.  It suggests that if we study the way people in a given language culture use the words or terms in which we as philosophers happen to be particularly interested, we will be able to identify the criteria that govern their usage and, by extrapolation from those criteria, their consequences for certain philosophical topics or problems.  This became a fairly popular, even conventional approach to the exegesis of philosophical topics and problems in English-language culture at the mid-point of the Twentieth Century.  But for some reason, as a methodological approach, it was never extended to non-Western languages by philosophers in a systematic manner.

          In 1986 I published a little book, with my colleague Olubi Sodipo as coauthor, entitled Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy.  (Permit me to take advantage of this semi-captive audience by mentioning that it's been reissued in a revised edition by Stanford University Press.)  In it we attempted to outline the criteria governing usage of the terms in the Yoruba language conventionally translated into English as "knowledge" and "belief."  What became clear from our analyses was that the meanings of these terms, the criteria that defined their correct usage in Yoruba, were not the same as their supposed English-language equivalents.

          The biggest difference stemmed from the fact that ‘knowledge', in Yoruba, was conventionally restricted to information arising from firsthand experience.  This would mean that on the level of everyday experience the only things of which a person is entitled to be certain are things they have seen or witnessed for themselves.  Information that is received in a secondhand manner -- via testimony, the media, etc. -- is placed in another category approximating to the English-language ‘belief', and therefore is regarded as something that is not, strictly speaking, true.  In this presentation I am going to suggest that it may be helpful to use these Yoruba epistemological priorities as a wedge or key or vantage point from which to better appreciate the reasons why Yoruba discourse places a high premium upon certain moral and associated aesthetic values.


          When Yoruba discourse describes a person as "truthful" a good deal more is involved than merely the assessment of moral character.  Describing a person in this way means that the statements made, the information conveyed, by that person to others can be relied upon and used as if ‘true', for whatever essential or mundane purposes it may be needed.

          Some scholars have used orality to ‘type' a particular kind of mentality, which generally compares less favorably in analytic intellectual terms with its literate Western equivalents.  The present discussion seeks to circumvent that increasingly controversial debate.  The claim that, in ‘traditional' Yoruba culture propositional knowledge  preponderantly comes out of mouths is here an empirical observation rather than a theoretically weighted premise.

          In a social context where printed books and written script may not be taken for granted, the most obvious alternative is for them to issue from someone's mouth.  And if this is the case, it is understandable that passing judgement upon propositions' reliability or their likelihood of being ‘true', purely on instrumental or pragmatic grounds, involves assessing the moral character of persons who are their source, whose mouths they issue out of.  For the information that comes out of those persons' mouths may then be shared-out and used by others who are trying to solve problems or to arrive at an understanding that is more than personal.

          In a significantly oral culture, one might therefore expect that special importance would be attached to the accuracy of how well people 'hear' and the perspicuity underlying what people 'say'.  Certainly elocution and phrasing one's remarks in an intelligible manner are matters of importance to the Yoruba.  But that is not sufficient to explain the emphasis placed upon speaking well and hearing well as values.

          People in Western societies have become concerned about exercising control over the media.  In a significantly oral culture the media are mouths.  Doing these things well involves setting 'broadcasting standards' for those mouths.  'Speaking well' and 'hearing well' may be euphemistically popularized as not to 'tell lies'.  But not to 'tell lies' means to tell the truth about what you really do have firsthand experience of, what you have only heard about secondhand, and what you have no information about at all.  'Speaking well' and 'hearing well' are not, then moral values in any conventional sense.  They are as much epistemological virtues because of their instrumental value for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of information.

          ‘Hearing well' in fact means being a careful observer, with the emphasis decidedly upon cognition, upon understanding what really is going on, rather than simply maintaining an attentive demeanor.  ‘Speaking well' means that one should reflect thoroughly about a problem or situation before opening your mouth.  This is what is important rather than merely elocution.

          With this ‘linking' of the epistemological and the moral in Yoruba discourse, we move a step closer to value theory.  If what a statement means and is taken to mean by others also depends upon whose mouth it is coming out of, then a speaker's reputation, their moral character as defined by others, becomes one prominent consideration to the epistemological rating of their propositional knowledge. Reciprocally the reliability of the statements made by an individual, in principle on any subject, may become firsthand evidence of their moral character.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the liar.  Imagine what the life of a person might become if no information he or she vouchsafed would be received as reliable.  A person's credibility as both talker and actor, as witness and reporter, of his or her own or other's experience, would become suspect.

          The emphasis placed by the Yoruba upon patience as a value was, I believe, first commented upon in Western scholarship by Robert Farris Thompson.  Thompson linked the importance of patience to a person's being 'cool' in his account of a Yoruba aesthetic.  One reason for the cool being an important value in Yoruba culture was said to be its connection with dignity and kingliness.  "Yoruba, in brief, assume that someone who embodies command, coolness, and character is someone extremely beautiful and like unto a god (Thompson 1971: P/5)."

          But a patient demeanor or appearance should arise from a patience that is grounded in cognition.  This suggests that its importance as a behavioural criterion is as much epistemic as it is aesthetic.  A 'cool' temperament, the patient person, is far more likely to listen to and observe carefully what is happening, and to speak with apperception and aplomb.  In other words, that patience is perceived as a moral or aesthetic value associated with certain forms of appearance is grounded upon the objective benefits that derive from it as an epistemic virtue.  A mind distinguished by patience, especially in difficult or problematic situations, informs a consciousness that maintains self-control and optimal communication with its environment.

          If it is indeed the case that in Yoruba discourse certain epistemic values underlie and inform certain ethical values in an impressively systematic and coherent manner, then this may be seen to compliment the manner in which a similar relationship seems to hold between moral and aesthetic values.  For the transition between the ‘true' and the ‘good' then becomes analogous to that between the ‘good' and the ‘beautiful'.

          From an empirical or behavioral rather than an introspective point-of-view, one consequence of the importance attached to firsthand experience is that a person's (verbal and non-verbal) behavior -- what they ‘say' and what they ‘do' in your presence -- is regarded as firsthand evidence of their moral character: ‘Handsome Is as Handsome Does'.  The extreme caution and care with which secondhand information about what a person is supposed to have said or done (which, after all, includes even ‘gossip') is received and evaluated is a testament to Yoruba prudence about human fallibility.

          The Yoruba term most frequently rendered into English as "handsome" or as "beauty" is "ewa."  Its most common usage is with regards to persons, to human beings.  However ewa or beauty as purely physical is rated superficial and relatively unimportant by comparison with ewa as good character, as moral  beauty.  To complete the circle, having a reputation for ugly or bad behaviour (on an aesthetic basis) is linked to a person's being irresponsible (on a moral basis) and therefore not a source of reliable information (on an epistemological basis).

          Given the very extensive scholarship that has already been devoted to the subject of Yoruba aesthetics, I have only a few peripheral observations to make about it in this brief presentation.  One is to observe that the disproportionate attention that has been devoted to Yoruba aesthetics as a result of the interest in African art does not do justice to the bulk of ordinary discourse about aesthetic values in that culture.  One unfortunate consequence of this could be to skew non-Yoruba perception of the culture so that it is seen as overtly and overly art-historically oriented when it comes to aesthetic concerns.

          As has already been mentioned, the most common usage of ewa or beauty is, as one might expect, with reference to human beings.  As we have also seen in this context its most significant meaning is with reference to a person's moral character.

          With regards to the natural world, an object's purely external or physical beauty can be recognized and named as something to be appreciated - as in the case of a chicken with remarkably colored feathers or a tree that is perfectly formed.  What is perhaps worth noting is that that chicken or tree can also be said to have iwa or character as well as beauty if, in addition, it is a superior layer of eggs or in the case of the tree also produces succulent fruit.  Here iwa seems predicated primarily upon a thing's being somehow useful in a practical manner to humankind.

          When it comes to (hu)man-made rather than natural objects, a similar system of valuation obtains.  A piece of cloth may appear beautiful, a new chair may look good, but it is only when the cloth also proves durable or the chair comfortable that they would be said to have ‘character' or iwa as well as a ‘beautiful' appearance.  For it is only then that they become truly useful and thereby valuable to their owners.

          Finally, with reference to the more canonically art-historical analyses of aesthetics in Yoruba culture, I suppose the work of Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, and Robert Farris Thompson may be taken as exemplary.  When I compare their findings on an analytic basis I do not find any explicit contradictions.  Their methodologies are diverse and this seems sufficient, in each case, to account for any discrepancies between their overall findings.  To concentrate on the positive results of their research when viewed as cumulative, perhaps the happiest form of resolution would be to suggest that Yoruba studies may now be in a position to demonstrate that: (a) when the culture is approached on the basis of plural subject-matters - whether aesthetic, epistemological, moral or ontological, or (b) when the culture is analyzed on the basis of different methodologies - whether anthropological, art historical, or philosophical - select values and concerns become prominent as well as interrelated and may therefore be hypothesized as fundamental.

  

 

1998 “Academic Philosophy and African Intellectual Liberation,” African Philosophy 11/2 (November), 93-97.

1998 Entry on “African Aesthetics” (4,000 words) for the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1998 Entry on “Aesthetics, African” (3,000 words) for the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. Craig and K.A. Appiah, London: Routledge.

1998 Entry on “Yoruba Epistemology” (1,000 words) for the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. Craig and K.A. Appiah, London: Routledge.

1998 “Moral Epistemology: When Propositions Come Out of Mouths,”  International Philosophical Quarterly 38/2 (June), 187-204 (revised and republished as “Moral Values and Epistemological Virtues in an African Philosophy,” Chpt. 9, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 173-186).

1997 “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” a republication of my 1994 paper in the Special Tenth Anniversary Issue of Selected Papers in SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin 10/2, 91-108.

 Published 1995 in Philosophy 70/273, 377-93.

 

INDETERMINACY,

ETHNOPHILOSOPHY,

LINGUISTIC  PHILOSOPHY,

AFRICAN  PHILOSOPHY1

 

Barry Hallen

 

 

Introduction

 

    This is a paper about philosophical methodology or, better, methodologies.  Most of the material that has been published to date under the rubric of African philosophy has been methodological in character.  One reason for this is the conflicts that sometimes arise when philosophers in Africa attempt to reconcile their relationships with both academic philosophy and so-called African 'traditional' systems of thought.  A further complication is that the studies of traditional African thought systems that become involved in these conflicts are themselves products of academia -- of disciplinary methodologies.

    Because of the emphasis placed upon these methodological ruminations, many of the methodological approaches to African philosophy that have been proposed have remained hypothetical or speculative -- they have yet to be applied.  One relevant difference about the methodology that is discussed in this paper is that it has been 'tried and tested'.  Whether it has also been proved 'true' is a subject still very much under discussion, and likely to remain so for some time.

 

INDETERMINACY

 

    The Indeterminacy Thesis (IT) was first proposed by W.V.O. Quine in 1960.2  Over the years it has remained one of the more fiercely debated major-minor issues of contemporary philosophy.  Its critics are numerous, and the critical interpretations and attempted refutations it has engendered comprise a substantial body of literature.3  Today its controversial status endures, in no small part because of Quine's sustained efforts over the years to elaborate the thesis in a continuing dialogue with his critics.

    Recasting the technical philosophical arguments of the IT into severely shortened, summary form can become a very masochistic undertaking.  As the existent literature demonstrates, amply, this kind of strategy promotes caricature.  The issues involved become more simplistic than is the case, and this tends to dramatize disproportionately some of the paradoxical, counterintuitive consequences of the thesis.4

    What I would prefer to do in this paper is to concentrate upon some of Quine's formative insights about the nature of language, the nature of meaning, and the relationships between languages, that arise from the IT.5  They too are controversial and at best I hope to persuade you to 'try them on' as alternatives to our more conventional views of language, and then to consider some of the interesting consequences that might follow for the translation of African 'beliefs' and abstract ideas.

 

    1.         Let us begin by regarding each natural language (English, Chinese, Yoruba, etc.) as a unique human creation that has its own intricate conceptual network(s) -- ontological, epistemological, aesthetic, etc. -- with distinctive semantic predispositions.  Our immediate experience of the world is not self-explanatory or neatly categorized.  It is humankind, by means of its creative genius, that invents languages and imposes empirical and theoretical order on that experience.

    2.         Let us also suspend our tendency to assume that in their heart of hearts all of our languages share in common a group of universal meanings or propositions.  By 'universal propositions' Quine refers to the belief that, while the word for "destiny" may be different in Yoruba from what it is in English, the underlying meaning is the same.  Quine's view is not, specifically, a defense of relativism.  It is a critique of the idea that we have any direct 'experience' of universal meanings.6

    3.         A belief in the universality of meanings may be of empathic value to someone who is a stranger to another language-culture, or of heuristic value to the lexicographer devising a bilingual dictionary, but it tends to negate the possibility of uniqueness that we began with.  It can also be said to promote a form of ethnocentrism, in that a translator who believes in universal propositions, or does translation between two languages as if there are universal propositions, will likely favour the meanings of their own natural language -- English, for example -- effectively universalizing them into propositions, and then proceed to impose English meanings upon other languages via the process of translation.

    4.         Let us also suspend our conventional notion of "meaning."  When an English-language translator sets out to communicate with an alien, the psychological predispositions of his own language may subliminally persuade him to conceive of the 'inner' alien person as a mind, as a consciousness inhabiting a body.  They may also persuade him to presume that consciousness contains the meanings which he needs to 'reach' and to 'study' in order to formulate accurate translations of the alien language.  Worse still, he may be deceived into thinking that the translations of alien meanings that he eventually does propose derive their accuracy from the fact that they really do correspond to 'meanings' in the alien mind.

    In fact we never have direct access to another consciousness.  What we do have direct access to are alien words coming out of alien mouths.  Strictly from a methodological point-of-view, therefore, it is deceptive for the translator to operate in anything other than a behaviouristic universe.7

    5.         Familiarity with an alien language on the relatively empirical level is not sufficient to enable us to predict the nature of alien theoretical or abstract beliefs.  The gap between the accidental spilling of salt and the beliefs that interpret it as bad luck is vast.

    6.         The hopes for objectivity, for proof of accuracy in translation, differ substantially between the relatively empirical ("It is raining.") and the abstract ("Truth is beauty.").  Translations of empirical statements are susceptible to a degree of public, verifiable testing of meaning.  Theoretical abstractions are relatively immaterial in character.  Translation on the abstract level is accordingly much more difficult to control or to verify.

    7.         The translator who is bilingual is not excepted from these problems.  He may be perfectly fluent in each of the languages that are targeted by a particular bilingual translation.  But when he begins to affirm that a certain term 'extracted' from one of the languages means precisely the same as a certain term in the other language, he still is imposing the meanings of the one language's conceptual network upon the other in hypothetical fashion.

    8.         Any extended translation process between two languages as found, for example, in a work of cultural anthropology or a bilingual dictionary, is an elaborate, interrelated network constructed of innumerable hypotheses that stipulate the meanings of English-language words as equivalent to alien-language words.  Each definition of an alien word becomes, in effect, an interpretation rather than a translation, a working hypothesis, a rendering based upon a network of other translated renderings.  Looking at things from this perspective the approximate nature of the entire process is made manifest.  As well as the possibility that another translator could come along who would disagree with the schema worked out by his predecessor and introduce an alternative schema, an alternative interpretation, that differed in important respects, and therefore would produce a different version of the 'African beliefs' in translation.

    9.         What objective criteria can one appeal to in order to determine which alternative translation is determinate -- is closest to the 'true' (alien) meanings?  There are none that would be sufficient.  This, admittedly in castrated form, is the point of the IT.

 

    Quine is not advocating a ban on translation, nor is he implying that published studies of African abstract beliefs that are based upon translations of African languages are false.  Quine is advocating a degree of scepticism about purportedly rigorous, objective, detailed analyses of alien abstract ideas in translation.  Once one recognizes the weakness of the empirical constraints placed upon the communication of meanings between two languages that may historically have no cause to share a single cognate in common, what exactly is the objective basis upon which we assign virtually literal accuracy to theoretical translations?

    From the standpoint of indeterminacy, studies of African abstract meanings in translation are built upon a more fragile basis of interpretation than their rhetoric implies.  This needs to be recognized more widely than it is.  Especially when such studies serve as an empirical basis for attributing oddities in reasoning and/or theoretical understanding to an African conceptual system.  A prelogical mentality could be the creation of a prelogical translation.  One who is persuaded by the possibility of indeterminacy would prefer that we be more flexible, more open to the possibilities of misrepresentation, approximation by translation, especially on the level of abstract thought.  On this level there may be no such thing as literal translation.  Everything becomes free translation, interpretation.

    In the absence of secure objective criteria for determining which translation schema is more accurate, Quine proposes several translation guidelines that he thinks may at least reduce the risks of producing translations of African meanings that are offensive as well as indeterminate.8

    Some consequences of these alternative criteria would be as follows.  One would become suspicious of translations of African meanings that propose to assign a plurality of meanings to the same term in an African conceptual system.  A translator might justify this by saying that these are dependent upon the circumstances or the context in which the term is used.

    Given indeterminacy an alternative reason could be that translators have tactical recourse to context-dependent meanings because they -- perhaps unwittingly/unknowingly -- have been unsuccessful in coming up with a determinate meaning.  In effect, then, the translator attributes his/her own confusion to the alien conceptual system.  This makes the aliens appear somehow exotic or bizarre when in fact the real culprit is the translation.

    Suspicion should also be focused upon cases in which the African is made to mean something empirically bizarre and inappropriate to a situation's common-sense circumstances.  This may indicate a situation in which inadequate translation results in Africans apparently affirming transparently false statements and therefore becoming less than rational.  Given indeterminacy an alternative explanation could be that there are problems in the conceptual translation network that cause African meanings to take on apparent absurdity in the language of translation.

    To conclude:  Quine is not saying that people are always rational.  His scepticism about the entire process of translating the meanings from one language into another moves him to caution us that we have as good reason to suspect our systems of translation as we do to suspect the African of being responsible for apparently exotic, bizarre or irrational statements in any given context.

 

ETHNOPHILOSOPHY

 

    "Ethnophilosophy" is a four-letter word, an intellectual's invective.  I don't know of anyone in African philosophy today who voluntarily identifies themselves as an "ethnophilosopher."  It is a category invoked by a critic when he wants to express disapproval of the work of someone in African philosophy.

    The term was originally coined in 1970 by Paulin Hountondji, a philosopher from the Republic of Bénin.9  He uses it to characterize the work of people like Placide Tempels,10 Alexis Kagamé,11 Léopold Sédar Senghor,12 Marcel Griaule13 and Germain Dieterlen.14  His intention is to condemn the intellectual injustice that he believes to be enshrined in publications purporting to be African philosophy when they display the following characteristics:

 

    (1)      ethnophilosophy presents itself as a philosophy of peoples rather than of individuals.  In Africa one is therefore given the impression that there can be no equivalents to Socratic philosophy or Kantian philosophy.  Ethnophilosophy speaks only of Bantu philosophy, Dogon philosophy, Yoruba philosophy; as such its scope is collective, of the world-view variety.

    (2)       ethnophilosophy's sources are in the past, in what is described as authentic, traditional African culture of the pre-colonial variety, of the Africa prior to 'modernity'.  These can be found primarily in products of language: parables, proverbs, poetry, songs, myths -- oral literature generally.

    (3)       from a methodological point-of-view ethnophilosophy therefore tends to present African beliefs as things that do not change, that are somehow timeless.  Disputes between ethnophilosophers arise primarily over how to arrive at a correct interpretation15 of historical traditions.  African systems of thought are portrayed as placing minimal emphasis upon rigorous argumentation and criticism in a search for truth that provides for discarding the old and creating the new.  Tradition somehow becomes antithetical to innovation.

 

    If this material had been presented as cultural anthropology or as ethnology Hountondji would have no objection to it.  But when it is introduced as philosophy, as African philosophy, a demeaning and subversive double-standard is introduced that excuses African philosophy from having critical, reflective (it becomes, in effect, prereflective), rational, scientific, and progressive content in any significantly cross-culturally comparative sense.

    Hountondji does not hold these perpetrators of an unauthentic African philosophy personally responsible for their crimes.  In their day in their own intellectual circles they believed they were doing something revolutionary, something genuinely radical and progressive, by daring to link the word "philosophy" directly to African systems of thought.

    Also, Hountondji appreciates the difficult circumstances of Africa's intellectual history during the colonial period.  Academic philosophers -- African or expatriate -- were a rare species.  The principal initiatives for serious scholarly studies of African cultures came from ethnography and anthropology.  Given the holistic parameters of the social sciences, it is understandable -- if still not ideologically acceptable -- that these early ethnophilosophers began to approach the subject of African philosophy on such a collectivized, tribalized scale.16

 

 

 

 

 

LINGUISTIC  PHILOSOPHY

 

    As an academic philosopher who had become interested in the translation of abstract African meanings, my attention was naturally drawn to some of the promising work that has been done this century in the philosophy of language.  Since a good deal of philosophy is devoted to the study of problems for which no standardized solution has been found, the philosophical perspectives on problems of translation are diverse.  Quine's IT is only one example of this diversity.

    There is a cluster of philosophers and of philosophical 'movements' in 20th century academic philosophy that, by prescription or example, place a premium on description.17  Although many of these philosophers preferred the terms "analysis" or "analytic philosophy" for describing their efforts, in effect that meant a form of minute, painstaking description.  For some it was the description of language usage (as in the cases of the later Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin).  For others it was the beliefs and the conceptual contents of common-sense (Gilbert Ryle).  These efforts were approaching a kind of intellectual crescendo in 1959 with the publication of Sir Peter Strawson's book, Individuals.18  This was said to be an exercise in "descriptive metaphysics", which meant something like detailed analyses of the meanings of primordial concepts in the English language, such as "bodies" and "persons."

    It is possibly unfair to characterize these traditions in contemporary philosophy as a Western species of ethnophilosophy -- if for nothing else because of the very specific terms of reference Hountondji has in mind for his criticisms.  But the emphasis placed upon 'mere description' as an alternative to critical argumentation, and the concentration upon language (as assimilated by written rather than oral cultures) as used and everyday meanings and beliefs indicate that certain essential attributes are shared in common.

 

* * * * *

 

    My primary concerns were methodological, instrumental.  I was in need of practical techniques for the study of concepts or abstract meanings.  The most important criterion for adoption was that they might be useful in the African context.

    I was not concerned -- at this initial stage -- to become involved in the more profound disputes over the nature of language, of meaning, of reference, or of language's role in the posing of philosophical problems.  Given the disrepute of ethnophilosophy and the general lack of technical philosophical content in anthropological literature,19 there was an obvious need for some first-order work -- collection, analysis, and systematization of African conceptual meanings -- by scholars with philosophical sensitivities.

    In the course of my methodological borrowings, in a thoroughly eclectic manner, I intermixed insights and techniques from different 'schools' of thought that are normally not regarded as compatible -- from positivism (Quine) and from ordinary-language philosophy (J.L. Austin) for example.  I found some of Austin's procedures20 for the collection and analysis of meanings plausibly practical for the African context.  Deliberately adapted rather than merely adopted, and as amended, they may be summarized as follows:

 

                (1)       Select a field of discourse in an African language to concentrate analysis upon, preferably one that is related to the concerns of academic philosophy.

                (2)       Collect all vocabulary that may be relevant to this subject-area.

                (3)       For collecting such information it is better to work with a group of indigenees, more or less as colleagues, rather than as an independent researcher:

                            -- this is particularly helpful when dealing with a culture that is significantly oral;

                            -- it is also helpful to any principal researcher who is targeting a language that is not their own first language.

                (4)       The different members of the group must somehow all agree to accept the same general methodological approach to the research.

                (5)       Collect and/or construct 'paradigm cases' or examples of situations where this vocabulary is used in the correct way.

                (6)       Also pay attention to examples of wrong usage -- where the terms should not apply.

                (7)       Again with reference to the examples of usage, amplify the meanings of key terms on the basis of extensive discussions with one's indigenous colleagues (this point might pain Austin).

                (8)       As much as possible, pay special attention to the empirical conditions, criteria and content of each term.  In some cases these may be sufficient to make one alternative translation of a theoretical term preferable to another (even if, according to Quine, this 'preferable' translation ultimately also remains indeterminate).

                (9)       Do library research on what other scholars (philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, ethnologists) may have had to say about this specific field of discourse in whatever African language you have chosen.  Also enquire about directly comparable studies in the same or some other natural language.

                (10)     Resist wholesale importation of academic philosophical theories as vehicles for the explication of African meanings.  Careless application of a technical vocabulary can skew sensibilities and create confusion.21

 

    I suppose a good deal of this might seem carelessly informal to the trained professional linguist.  The most I can say to justify this approach is that it seems to have produced some interesting results.  For example in working with Yoruba-language translations, one area of discourse that proved of interest was what in academic philosophy corresponds to epistemology or theory of knowledge.22  In plain talk this would encompass the vocabulary and the criteria used by the Yoruba to evaluate and to grade any type of information -- as from less to more credible.

 

AFRICAN  PHILOSOPHY

 

    In 1975 no philosophy department syllabus in Nigeria listed a course in African philosophy.  At the University of Ife the department did lecture a course in African Traditional Thought.  This nomenclature -- "traditional thought" rather than "philosophy" -- reflects the indirect but fundamental influence that anthropology for long exerted upon the relationship between academic philosophy and Africa.

    My aim is neither to criticize nor to censure my ethnographic colleagues.  It was never a part of anthropology's brief to suppress African philosophy.  Nevertheless the assessments made of African 'modes of thought' in anthropological studies did not encourage the interest of academic philosophers in their theoretical intellectual potential.  Characteristics such as non-critical, prereflective (associated with being 'traditional'), non-reasoned (associated with being 'emotive', 'symbolic'), non-individualized (associated with being 'tribal') are symptomatic.  This assessment was a further formative influence upon ethnophilosophy.  The reported relative absence of an articulate and analytically reflective intellectual tradition in African systems of thought inclined those in search of African philosophy to seek it in alternative sources, such as myths and proverbs.

    The stereotype of the African intellect that arose from these anthropological studies created serious problems for linking a philosophy syllabus to Africa's indigenous cultural base.  For Africa was not introduced to academic philosophy as an unknown -- the problem was not simply a lack of information about African traditional modes of thought.  The problem was that the subcontinent's indigenous intellectual attributes appeared to be virtually diametrically opposed to critical thought as defined by academic philosophical tradition.23

    Some African philosophers have responded to this apparent dilemma by arguing, astutely, that it was based upon an unfair comparison between widespread popular beliefs (so-called 'folk philosophy') in Africa and theories that were the product of deliberately intense and highly sophisticated research (science, philosophy) in the West.  Western cultures were gradually coming to terms with negative elements of their own folk philosophies (superstitions, etc.) on the basis of reasoned assessments and consensus.  The more practical course for Africa would be for her peoples to deal with their popular beliefs in an analogous fashion.24  The problem with this response is that it does not effectively counter the claim,25 supposedly itself scientific, that on a more primordial level than popular beliefs Africa's intellectual predispositions -- including those underlying the conceptual networks used to articulate African abstract or theoretical ideas -- are quintessentially symbolic, emotive, and prereflective in nature.

    When my colleague, Olubi Sodipo and I agreed to join forces for a philosophical investigation of Yoruba epistemological discourse, using the IT as a foil, we anticipated complaints from our colleagues in both anthropology and philosophy.  We expected them to accuse us of behaving too much like anthropologists -- doing something very like fieldwork -- when professionally we were only qualified as academic philosophers.

    What we did not anticipate was that, because of our extensive efforts to re-present Yoruba meanings in analytic, systematic and somewhat determinate form, they would be characterized by several critics as 'mere description' or 'merely descriptive' and thus branded a further example of ethnophilosophy.26

    Such labelling is misguided, and only made possible by yanking the Yoruba material out of its wider context and treating it in isolation from the discussion about meaning and problems of translation.  For the point of the entire Hallen-Sodipo translation exercise is to test Quine's IT by exploring the limits of determinate translation (into English) with reference to a cluster of reasonably abstract concepts (from Yoruba) that are relevant to the theory of knowledge.

    When viewed from such a perspective, the exercise is certainly of philosophical substance.  It is also crucial to the entire enterprise of African philosophy.  For African philosophy, insofar as it may deal with the analysis of African languages (or meanings) and the evaluation of African beliefs expressed in these languages, will not even be in a position to begin until we are assured that such meanings can be correctly understood and translated in a reasonably determinate manner.

    A second argued consequence of this translation enterprise concerns the challenge posed to the evidential status of that troublesome stereotype of traditional African systems of thought that has been inherited via ethnography, and that has for long obstructed the academic philosopher's dialogue with African cognitive systems.  I can only summarize here in a most unsatisfactory manner, but the first published results of the Hallen-Sodipo approach27 began from the knowledge-belief distinction as portrayed in English-language philosophical analysis and explicitly set out to investigate whether there was anything with which to compare it in Yoruba discourse.  Initiating our topical study of Yoruba discourse from this special interest of Western epistemology was deliberate.  The characterisation of traditional discourse, as defined by the West, effectively portrays it as lacking critical epistemological content.  Yet the conceptual network that emerges from our analyses of Yoruba meanings is by comparison markedly critical, sceptical and empirical in character.  In fact, it proved so out of line with what one was led to expect by the stereotype of 'traditional thought' that initially we queried our own conclusions and searched anew for possible underlying mis-translations, mis-representations.  That there do indeed prove to be a selection of subtle, different, yet interestingly comparable Yoruba epistemic criteria introduces a viable way of doing analytic philosophy into Africa.

    Quine's remonstrances about re-fashioning alien thought systems according to one's own cultural 'images' was one source of caution here.  The Western academic philosopher has been schooled in very specific traditions of 'rationalism' and, at the same time, conditioned to place a high value upon aspects of empirical testing and verification.  The two combined could influence him to inflate approximate references in Yoruba discourse to anything resembling either far beyond their true significance.

    Indeed it was a continuing awareness of the pit-falls of indeterminacy and possible mis-interpretations that persuaded us not to treat our English-language translations of Yoruba meanings immediately as reliably representative.  We made a published appeal for corrective criticisms from other Yoruba scholars.28  It seemed advisable to do this before consolidating them into a further false orthodoxy that would further mislead people about the nature of African 'thought'.

    I now think that sufficient time has passed so that we can be assured of a reasonable consensus.  Our model of the conceptual network has passed somekind of test.  The general structure remains intact.29  It is time to move on.

    To what, one may ask?  The task embraced by academic philosophy is two-fold:  to understand (let it serve here as another expression for 'to describe') and to assess.  Philosophy is not a science and the solutions it offers may not be so convincing that a targeted problem is finally resolved.  But that does not absolve the academic philosopher from a responsibility to consider the evidence and argumentation in favour of each of the various alternative systems of understanding -- for example, of each of the  conceptual networks constitutive of the various natural languages in our world -- and then try to determine which among them are the better instruments for understanding, the more empirically convincing or (to put it most imposingly) true.

    Another alternative would be to opt for relativism -- the relativity of truth -- and argue that what the Yoruba find true may not be what the English find true so there are many truths and there the matter rests.  Accurate descriptions or the cataloguing of the various systems of conceptual understanding in the world would then become all that is required.  This might also seem to be a consequence of indeterminacy but, as the thesis is presented here, it does not follow.  The problems in capturing the meanings of one conceptual system with the meanings of another need not imply that both may be true.

    Judging the truth of the conceptual systems of the world's various natural languages in terms of any absolute criterion (which itself would have to be expressed in language) might seem a preposterous enterprise.30  But if reduced to more manageable proportions -- such as, for example, the relative merits and demerits of different systems of epistemological concepts and criteria when judged as instrumental tools -- it does not seem so impossible.31

    At this point I would opt for, as a further step towards responsible cross-cultural comparative research in African philosophy, aiming at a better understanding of why a specific conceptual network with its peculiar (possibly unique) conceptual components may be suited to a particular African cultural context.  The conceptual network of any natural language does not explain or justify itself in the didactic argumentative manner that has become conventional to academic philosophy.  Such reasons must be educed from a language by siting it32 in its wider cultural and social contexts.  Some may object that this sounds more like the sociology of language than philosophy, but it is another facet of that comprehensive understanding academic philosophers are obliged to attempt before they pass comparative judgements.33

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

    I appreciate that many of the suggestions and admonitions I have expressed may already be incorporated into the methodologies and research activities of other disciplines involved with African studies.  Nevertheless, one role of the IT in African philosophy can be to sensitivize those committed to dealing with the translation and assessment of abstract ideas on the basis of cross-cultural comparisons to the limitations of conceptual networks generally for the representation and analysis of alien meanings.  And this caution should extend as much to African interpretations of Western meanings, as to Western interpretations of African meanings.

    One of Hountondji's complaints about ethnophilosophy is that its focus is collective, tribalized rather than defined in terms of the views of individual African thinkers.  Adapting linguistic philosophy as a methodological basis for African philosophy should qualify it as an exception to this proscription.  Linguistic philosophy is concerned with the study of languages, and languages function as means of communication on the basis of shared meanings.

    The technical, philosophical analysis of African conceptual networks can hopefully be of a more rigorous methodological order than the classic studies that somehow 'extract' a so-called 'traditional system of thought' from the oral literature of an African culture.  Whether, interior to an African language, there is a special vocabulary, a unique form of conceptual network, or a particular form of discourse that is somehow peculiar to whatever is defined as the "traditional" is a possibility that invites further -- what else? -- philosophical analysis.

 

 

 



1  The author is grateful to K. Anthony Appiah, Dorothy Emmet, Valentin Mudimbe, W.V.O. Quine, Robin Horton and Olabiyi Yai for their comments on this paper in draft form.  Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the "Perspectives on African Cultures" Conference of the Joint Berkeley-Stanford Center for African Studies, and at a Baraza (Seminar) of The Center for African Studies, University of Gainesville, Florida.

 

2  Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press), Chpt. 2 ("Translation and Meaning").

3  A comprehensive bibliography of major interpretations, criticisms, elaborations and defenses of the IT is to be found in Robert Kirk, Translation Determined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 259-265.  A much-quoted 'informal' discussion of the IT by many of the principals involved (including Quine), remarkable for its plain talk about complex philosophical issues, is to be found in "First General Discussion Session, Conference on Intentionality, Language and Translation," Synthese, 27 (July/August 1974), pp. 467-508.

4  Those who are interested in a more detailed examination of the IT, with specific reference to possible consequences for African philosophy, are referred to B. Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (London: Ethnographica Publishers, 1986), Chapter 1 ("Indeterminacy and the Translation of Alien Behaviour").

5  In the literature of African philosophy, the earliest reference to the IT that I have been able to identify occurs in a footnote to Henri Maurier, "Do We Have an African Philosophy?" in the 2nd edition of African Philosophy: An Introduction, Richard Wright, ed. (Washington, D.C.: University Press, 1979).  Interestingly the footnote is editorial, i.e. added by Wright himself.  It contains an explicit recommendation that the issues raised by the IT should warrant the special interest of African philosophers.

                On a more generalized level, one of the earliest African analytic philosophers to recognize and enunciate clearly the theoretical potential of African languages for African philosophy, a position he has continued to refine up to the presentday, is Kwasi Wiredu.  See his "On an African Orientation in Philosophy," Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy, 1/2 (1972), p. 11.

                I am indebted to Robin Horton for first drawing my attention to Quine's IT, and for many invaluable conversations about translation.  His collected thoughts on the subject, which should by no means be treated as his final word, are newly available in Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Essays on Magic, Religion and Science (Cambridge: University Press, 1993).

                There was substantial discussion of the IT in the philosophy of the social sciences and in anthropology before it became an issue for African philosophy.  A particularly informative interdisciplinary collection is to be found in Rationality and Relativism, Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).

6  J.J. Katz compares the effects of Quine's critique of meaning to those of Hume's sceptical analysis of causality in "The Refutation of Indeterminacy," The Journal of Philosophy LXXXV, 6 (May 1988): 227-252.

 

7  For purposes of this discussion it is enough to say that the form of behaviourism being introduced is methodological rather than the reductive psychological species enunciated by Skinner and Co.  Quine is not denying the existence of the conscious 'mental' self, of personal feelings, or of introspection.  But these experiences are private to each individual rather than public.

 

8  Quine pp. 73-79; Hallen and Sodipo pp. 30-34.

 

9  "Remarques sur la philosophie africaine contemporaine," Diogne, 71 (1970); revised, translated and reprinted in African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (London: Hutchinson, 1983), Chpt. 1 ("An Alienated Literature").

 

10  Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959).

 

11  La Philosophie Bantou-Rwandaise de l'etre (Brussels: Memoire in 8̊ de Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1956), N.S. Vol. XII/1.

 

12  Liberté I: Négritude et humanisme (Paris: Seuil, 1964).

 

13  Conversations with OgotemmLli (Oxford: University Press, 1965).

 

14  Essai sur la réligion bambara (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951).

 

15  There is anticipation of indeterminacy in the following edited quote from Hountondji, in which he derides the usually unspecified methods used by these ethnophilosophers to educe African philosophy from oral literature:  "The discourse of ethnophilosophers, be they European or African, offers us the baffling spectacle of an imaginary interpretation with no textual support, of a genuinely 'free' interpretation, inebriated and entirely at the mercy of the interpreter, a dizzy and unconscious freedom which takes itself to be translating a text which does not actually exist and which is therefore unaware of its own creativity.  By this action the interpreter disqualifies himself from reaching any truth whatsoever, since truth requires that freedom be limited, that it bow to an order that is not purely imaginary and that it be aware both of this order and of its own margin of creativity."  ("An Alienated Literature," p. 189, fn. 16; his italics.)

 

16  For a postmodernistic defense of ethnophilosophy see G. Salemohamed, "African Philosophy" in Philosophy, 58 (1983): 535-538.  For a more recent, comparatively strident condemnation of virtually the whole of 'African philosophy' as non-philosophy, as too culturally specific and descriptive (in other words, as ethnophilosophy yet again), see Carol Pearce, "African Philosophy and the Sociological Thesis" in Journal of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 22/4 (December 1992): 440-460.

 

17  Most prominently by the phenomenological movement, even if not discussed here.  For a discussion of phenomenological description and African philosophy see Hallen, "Phenomeonology and the Exposition of African Traditional Thought," Second Order, 5/2 (1976): 45-65.

 

18  Routledge: London.

 

19  Anthony Appiah makes a similar observation about anthropology in In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: University Press, 1992), p. 94; Robin Horton is of course one distinguished exception.

 

20  As more technically reconstructed by J.O. Urmson, "A Symposium on Austin's Method, I" in Symposium on Austin, K.T. Fann, ed. (London: Routledge, 1969): 76-85.

 

21  Appiah gives an example of this with reference to Cartesian dualism, a theoretical parallel frequently drawn in contemporary African philosophy (1992: 100).

 

22   See Hallen and Sodipo, Chpt. 2.

 

23  An opinion that unfortunately is still all too common.  This same sentiment is echoed by Appiah in the following:  ". . . that African philosophy just is ethnophilosophy has been largely assumed by those who have thought about what African philosophers should study (1992: 94)."

 

24  The original debate about this issue may be found in Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science I & II," Africa, 37 (1967); reprinted in Horton 1993; Kwasi Wiredu, "How Not to Compare African Traditional Thought with Western Thought," Philosophy and an African Culture, (Cambridge: University Press, 1980).  Also see Hallen, "Robin Horton on Critical Philosophy and Traditional Thought," Second Order 6/1 (1977): 81-92, and Appiah 1992, Chpt. 6 ("Old Gods, New Worlds").

 

25  "The real difficulty encountered in the understanding of primitive thought is not as some philosophers suppose, that its 'supernatural' beliefs are refractory to rational understanding, but that symbolism is linguistically untranslatable and its ideas encapsulated in action, ritual, and social institutions; that is, they exist at a sub-verbal level." (C.R. Hallpike, The Foundations of Primitive Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 485)  Also see D.E. McClean, "Afrocentrism as a Humanism -- Difficulties of Popular Afrocentrism," in APA Newsletters 93/1 (Spring 1994): 13-15.

 

26  Peter Bodunrin, in an article that remains controversial among both friends and foes of African philosophy, was the first to criticize my work for its ethnophilosophical tendencies.  But as this early criticism was made of a paper entitled, with deliberate precaution, "A Philosophers Approach to Traditional Culture" (rather than "Traditional Philosophy"), I think it was premature (but valuable nonetheless).  See P.O. Bodunrin, "The Question of African Philosophy," Philosophy, 56 (1981): 161-179; reprinted in Richard Wright ed., 1984: 1-23; B. Hallen, "A Philosopher's Approach to Traditional Culture," Theoria to Theory, 9 (1975): 259-272.

                Hallen and Sodipo, individually and collectively, are explicitly associated with ethnophilosophy in the following:  A.G.A. Bello, "Review of Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft.," Journal of African Philosophy and Studies, I/1-2 (1988): 93-98; H. Odera Oruka, "Philosophic Sagacity in African Philosophy" in Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy, H.O. Oruka, ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990): 41-52; A.S. Oseghare, "Sagacity and African Philosophy," International Philosophical Quarterly, 32/1 (1992): 95-103.

                Four reviews which discuss the wider philosophical horizons (Quine, indeterminacy, translation, etc.) of Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft  in a comprehensive manner are: P. Byrne, Religion Today 14/3 (1987): 6-7; J.M. Cordwell, African Arts 20/2 (1987): 76-78; P. Jorion, L'Homme: revue française d'anthropologie 27/101 (1987): 160-162; V. Mudimbe, Canadian Philosophical Reviews 7/5 (1987): 200-202.

 

27  Hallen and Sodipo, Chpt. 2.  For example, oral tradition generally is not classified as true (bótó).  Its status is hypothetical.

 

28  "We would be pleased if the response to this chapter generates information about additional empirical content that may lead to even more determinate translations (Hallen and Sodipo: 83)."

 

29  The 1986 review of Hallen and Sodipo by A.G.A. Bello makes a number of suggestions for revisions of our Yoruba translations, which have been noted.

 

30  A great deal has been done in this regard with artificial languages, but the connection between artificial and natural languages is still subject to dispute.  For an early but still seminal analysis of this debate, see J. Katz and J. Fodor, "What's Wrong with the Philosophy of Language?" in Inquiry, 5/3 (1962): 197-237.

 

31  Rodney Needham discusses the limitations of the English-language concept "belief" as a vehicle for cross-cultural translations in Belief, Language, and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972).

 

32  Possibly imaginatively, as Quine does in the radical translation experiment used to introduce the IT.

 

33  J.T. Bedu-Addo's, "Sense-Experience and Recollection in Plato's Meno," American Journal of Philology, 104 (1983) makes a perceptive cross-cultural comparison of the significance of knowledge via direct experience (what has become known as 'knowledge by acquaintance' in academic philosophy) and its roots in orality in the Greek, Akan, Yoruba and Latin languages, pp. 232-3 and especially fn 13, p. 232.  Also see Appiah (1992: 98).

 

 

1997 “Reflections on Rorty,” a republication of my 1994 paper in the Special Tenth Anniversary Issue of Selected Papers in SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin 10/2, 429-433.

1997 Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft:  Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (coauthored with J. Olubi Sodipo; a revised edition of the 1986 text, incorporating my 1995 Philosophy paper and a new “Foreword” by W. V. O. Quine), Stanford University Press, USA.

1997 “African Meanings, Western Words,” African Studies Review 40/1 (April), The African Studies Association (ASA), 1-11 (revised and republished as Chpt. 15, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 263-274).

AFRICAN  MEANINGS, WESTERN  WORDS:

 

'Common  Denominators' and/or 'The Insiders' View'

 

 

Barry  Hallen

 

 

            It was in the early 70's that I first developed a 'philosophical' interest in African art history.  I was lecturing at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and was uncomfortable with the low level of African cultural content in the departmental syllabus.  Besides giving the impression that academic philosophy was exclusively Western, a further if tacit implication was that indigenous, African forms of cognition and culture had little in common with or to contribute to philosophy.

            Several people who are here in this auditorium today happened to pass through Lagos, always individually, some periodically, enroute to doing fieldwork.  More often than not I first met them by chance, socially.  I confess I had not been particularly interested in your discipline, African art history, before.  But when some of you began to explain to me what you were about -- in particular to elicit and to articulate meanings that were emphatically symbolic or abstract in character from certain types of objects produced by African cultures -- I was intrigued.  If they can do that with objects, I thought to myself, then why cannot we philosophers do something comparable with concepts and beliefs?

            By the way, with these remarks I do not in the least mean to cast myself in the role of a white knight who led a solitary crusade for the cause of African philosophy in Nigeria.  I had Nigerian colleagues in every philosophy department in the country, Lagos included, who were as or even more concerned by cultural bias.  But our common concern was what technical, methodological measures to apply to solve the problem.  Material from African cultures had somehow to be integrated with philosophical perspectives using philosophical methodologies.

            In the Nigerian context -- more particularly in the Anglophone-African academic context -- with reference to the identification and analysis of abstract ideas the concepts and beliefs stratum was already a preoccupation of anthropology.  When I approached anthropological colleagues for their reactions to a new subject-area like African philosophy, to be oriented so as to arise from the subcontinent's indigenous cultures, I was distressed by the fact that generally they were sceptical.  They began to discuss the nature of something called "traditional thought," which seemed to be defined by attributes that made it diametrically opposed to the kind of thinking considered essential to philosophy.

            At first, like the proverbial well-intentioned but professionally unschooled 'soft-eyed' liberal, I resented this.  But I continued to read anthropological studies of African 'thought-systems' and 'world-views' (because there really was very little else in print) and eventually came to appreciate that, given the holistic parameters of the social sciences, it was understandable that anthropology approached cognition on a collectivized, social scale.1  Philosophy's preferred perspective is, by comparison, to begin from individual thinkers and to then study the relations between their meanings, justifications and beliefs and those of language or culture generally.

            It was this qualitative difference between the methodological perspectives of anthropology and philosophy, enhanced by what I found to be a growing conviction-commitment on the part of African art historians I met who seemed determined to go after individual artists and to deal with entire genres of art as the products of particular persons (rather than the reverse) that persuaded me to continue to monitor developments in African art historical circles.2

            Those of you I met at that time also had your laments: (1) that you were too few in number; (2) that you weren't sure of securing a university position when your fieldwork was completed; (3) that you felt isolated and discriminated against within the discipline of art history.3  But I saw you as fortunate.  I felt the poor relation by comparison.  At the very least you came from universities that had Ph.D. programs in your subject.  You had a journal of international repute that served as an intellectual forum where you were able to exchange your research findings and interests.  Indeed what was it about African cultures that gave their art so influential a role in understanding them, I wondered?  So far as I knew, there was no university in the world offering a graduate degree in African philosophy.  I was in an African university system where there still was no single course being taught in the subject, at any level.

            Now, twenty years on, our sometimes parallel lines of professional development have begun to intersect.  African philosophy has come alive academically, is being taught in a number of countries, and has begun to develop a specialized subdiscipline of aesthetics.  And in publications, African art historians today discuss issues related to epistemology, ontology and logic.  More interestingly, they sometimes set out to expound and to analyze what are explicitly described as "philosophies" -- certainly these involve aesthetic matters, but also any number of concepts and topics that relate to more general philosophical perspectives.

            So it was while reading a hopefully representative selection of your publications these past months that I was struck by a number of expressed problems and concerns that have been and are becoming common to us -- to African art history and to African philosophy.  And I thought that what I might do today is to reflect upon some of these as expressed by you from the standpoint of my discipline in the hope that some of our insights may overlap, coalesce and perhaps even prove mutually beneficial.

            I suppose the 'worst-case' scenario for the future of our respective disciplines would have been for professionals to conclude that, in indigenous, 'traditional' African cultures, there was nothing to compare with "art" or "philosophy" as defined in Western intellectual terms.  In fact something like this was suggested by those who saw Africa as a place, essentially, where aesthetic sensitivities or powers of theoretical reflection remained comparatively undeveloped or 'primitive'.4

            As time passed more fruitfully comparative studies did interrelate art and philosophy, if only on a collectivized or tribal scale.  In my discipline this resulted in what came to be labelled "ethnophilosophy."  A corpus of beliefs is mysteriously extrapolated from diverse social practices and literary sources and then presented as 'the philosophy' of an African 'tribe'.  In your field it led to the identification of stylistic, formal criteria which were stipulated as definitive of an ethnic group5 and presented as paradigmatic.6

            Perhaps somekind of parallel, as well, may be drawn between your controversial distinction between "art" and "artifact" and our controversial distinction between "philosophy" and "world-views."  In both cases the former ('art' and 'philosophy') were arrived at via somekind of Western cultural transformation of the latter ('artifacts' and 'world-views').  I have in mind the underlying implications that Africans themselves were incapable of such theoretically sophisticated appreciations, articulations and abstractions.  If "artifact" may be defined as merely something 'made', bereft of the "fine" in fine arts,7 then certainly a comparable status was assigned to the intellectual status of the African proverb, parable, and even more obscurantist divination verse as constitutive of a world-view.  Initially it was argued that the anonymous corpus of African oral literature was insufficiently abstract or critical in character to serve as a source of philosophy.8

            In my discipline this rather unusual, collectivized use of the term "philosophy" as applicable to world-views provoked vigorous protests, primarily from Africans who were themselves academic philosophers.  It was said to be based on a derogatory double-standard that denied African conceptual systems a comparable rational, personalized, critical quality by comparison with their Western counterparts.  In my discipline this kind of approach has become past history.

            In your discipline comparable debate seems to have come later or perhaps was more prolonged, or perhaps both.  The 'one tribe, one style' discussion, based upon the frequent references made to it in recent publications, seems to have marked somekind of watershed in the direction of future research.  It has effectively concretized the alternative of approaching the study of African art as products of individuals as well as diverse interests and ethnic groups.  This new emphasis on the viewpoint of the African artist, etc. has been conjoined by a movement to specify and to analyze the substance and significance of art and aesthetics from African points-of-view.

            Both African art history and philosophy have had to come to terms with anthropology.9  The very positive aspect of those relationships that I will comment upon, briefly, is the innovation of undertaking fieldwork.10  By fieldwork I mean serious, face-to-face experiences with African cultures in situ, rather than dealing only with art objects or, in my case, somekind of text, in museum or university isolation.

            Given the holistic parameters of the social sciences to which I've already made reference, our varieties of fieldwork do not seek to undercut that of our anthropological colleagues.  Our perspectives are different, more personalized, epitomized by a more pronounced emphasis on "dialogue."11  I am not sure of how revolutionary a change this option of doing fieldwork represents in art historical circles generally, but in philosophy it produced a reaction verging on astonishment.  I think we both see the possibility, the opportunity -- in disciplinary terms -- of being able to take advantage of this kind of learning about another culture as living, as active rather than passive, historical or dead, as essential and exceptional.  And when it has been demonstrated that this kind of approach can be integrated with orthodox philosophical problems and analytic techniques, it has begun to win grudging acceptance.

            What I find remarkable about the role of fieldwork in your discipline is that, while many African art historians agree that it is an invaluable and indispensable part of their professional training, others complain that the viewpoints of the Africans themselves on their art go under-reported, and are not given the attention they deserve.  This leads me to wonder precisely what it is that the African art historian is doing during the course of fieldwork, if not learning about an African point-of-view?

            I confess that I am unable to identify a consensus about this issue in your current publications.  Perhaps this is where my status as an outsider gets in the way.  Or perhaps it is because, as of now, no such consensus has been arrived at within your discipline, and a number of alternatives are being debated.

            To come to terms with this question, of what else it may be that African art historians have been doing during the course of their fieldwork if not learning how to appreciate African points-of-view, I suppose one relevant consideration is the methodological techniques that determine how one proceeds with fieldwork, how one approaches, connects-with African cultures.  And here again, the initial preponderant influence of how-to-do fieldwork as defined by the social sciences has probably played a part.12

            It seems that this African-inspired complaint can only be explicitly epitomized/summarized if we introduce an adjectival qualifier.  It is not just the 'African point-of-view' that is said to be under-represented.  It is the conscious, articulated points-of-view of relevant members of the culture concerned that are said to be underrated, underestimated, under-represented.

            I am aware of the seminal work in this regard by scholars like Victor Turner.  But it is still the case that the social sciences' concern with meanings and modes of thought that transcend any individual consciousness do tend to divert attention from the artistic or philosophical consciousness as individualized.  As African philosophy has struggled to establish some sort of methodological self-identity and distinctive subject-matter, it too has been concerned with distinguishing itself from anthropology.  One important tactic in this process has been a progressive disengagement from or disconnection with much of anthropology's theoretical superstructure.  Anthropology's theoretical domain -- and here I don't think it matters whether one is more specifically concerned with functionalism, structuralism, poetic-symbolism, or post-structuralism -- is populated by a variety of conceptual entities that, deliberately and perfectly understandably, 'load' the dice so that certain generalized perspectives on cognition are favoured.

            We had to embrace a methodological scepticism that explicitly distanced itself from approaches to African cognition and conceptual schemes: that treat rules as substitutes for reasons, and reasons as rationalizations; that take cross-cultural semantic symbolization patterns, binary or otherwise, as basic; that type modes-of-thought according to articulated expressions for thinking about thinking.

            One consequence of suspending so much of this theoretical superstructure was the removal of specific presumptions about the African intellectual as somekind of a qualitative 'other'.13  The query that immediately comes to mind is, in the absence of such characterizations of African intellectual attitudes or modes-of-thought, what takes their place?  One such alternative that philosophy can offer is what I would epitomize as a 'common denominator' approach.  By this I mean that we have experimented with beginning from initial presumptions that there are no prima facie fundamental differences in meanings, that common-sense is common, and that African  beliefs and social practices may overlap more substantially with 'our' own than many methodological approaches allow for.  When I use the phrase 'our own' here, I have in mind the inevitable problems involved in expressing African viewpoints with Western concepts, in Western languages that may not share a single cognate in common with their African counterparts.

            I anticipate that the reaction of some professionals to this kind of proposal may be: 'How naive can you get?'  But I hasten to say that the philosophical justification for this line of thought is meant to be a bit more subtle than first impressions may suggest.  It most certainly is not humanitarian.  It is not grounded upon some sort of moral appeal to natural rights -- that all peoples are created equal, etc.

            It is methodological, and the underlying justification may be summarized here, in an admittedly approximate manner, as follows.  If African art historical fieldworkers attempt to divest themselves of established, sometimes controversial, sometimes restrictive, preconceptions about African attitudes towards art and artistic creation that are implicit in certain methodological approaches, how then are they initially to approach these cultures?  What 'image' of the African attitudes towards these cultural processes is to substitute?

            The philosopher can suggest that, in this fieldwork scenario, too much -- in fact almost exclusive -- attention is being directed to the African half of cultural dialogue.  Western fieldworkers bring to the situation of artistic interpolation a good deal of their own cultural intellectual baggage as well.  To contain this intellectual 'baggage', normally at this point some notion of objectivity is invoked.  This means, among other things, that fieldworkers have been professionally trained to be sensitive to the dangers inherent in thoughtlessly confusing their native cultural standards with those of the Africans, of what has come to be labelled ethnocentrism.

            In this postmodern age disciplinary standards of objectivity are under attack for privileging certain cultures and discriminating against others.  But I would prefer to avoid this kind of postmodern critique in my argument.14  I would prefer to say that the whole point of being objective is to be careful -- to not misinterpret or misrepresent African meanings and attitudes.

            In understanding, interpreting, and in analyzing African meanings African art historians who come from a Western cultural background have to begin from something.  Their minds cannot be the proverbial 'blank tablet', sensitive exclusively to distortion-free recordings of African meanings.  Then why not allow them to begin from their own cultural background with reference to the arts and art history -- which in some sense they must do anyway simply to use these terms meaningfully -- and experiment with situationally-relevant professional perspectives and terms as provisional bridges or translation factors on the basis of which to approach potential African counterparts?

            Does this amount to nothing more than a verbose and rather garbled recycling of ethnocentrism?  Yes, and no.  The argument is not advocating that the most careful way to interpret African meanings with reference to the arts is to impose Western ones on them.  The argument is suggesting that, if we cannot presume some sort of overlap between Western and African meanings, it is difficult to foresee how we will ever be able to express the one by means of the other.15  It is suggesting that, in the present predicament in which African art history and philosophy find themselves, there is no agreed upon 'objective', independent theoretical model of the character of African art and aesthetic meanings.  In the absence of such a model, and in the absence of somekind of articulated, precise methodology which will presumably lead to the development of such a model,16 why not embrace, as an obvious alternative, experimenting with the semantic relevance of selected elements of one's own culture's art historical meanings in a self-reflexive manner?

            I introduce the term "self-reflexive" because, as dialogue proceeds, of course differences between the Western and African have already emerged and will continue to do so, as well as to be refined in translation.  But they emerge because in specific artistic contexts African verbal and non-verbal behaviour cannot be reconciled with their Western counterparts.  But then an important measure towards understanding, towards appreciating such purportedly different behaviour, will be to specify the ways in which it differs from the fieldworker's own cultural background.

            Perhaps it is possible to see some evidence of the influence of a 'common denominator' attitude in some of your more recent publications.  Those of you who advocate a stronger interdisciplinary17 emphasis in African art historical work -- and make specific reference to the fundamental relevance of fields like philosophy, psychology, and literary criticism to understanding African cultures -- are thereby proposing new perspectives upon the constitution and composition of African meanings and beliefs that move them closer to their Western counterparts.  Those of you who are now emphasizing research themes that involve: individual creativity, innovation/invention, change, the names of artists and workshops, the dating of works, informants as collaborators,18 certain aspects of performance studies -- I see one important ramification of all of these as shifting the perspectives upon African art towards (not to!) a 'common denominator' perspective.

            Another dimension of research in your field that is currently being emphasized, and which at first impression might seem to clash with the cross-cultural pretensions of a 'common denominator' approach, is sometimes epitomized as the 'like-they-see-it' or 'the insiders' view'.  From its inception this has been an obsession of African philosophy, and we have come to appreciate the limits as well as the benefits to be derived from this as a methodological priority.

            I again stress the place of the methodological because what both unites and distinguishes the academic professionals attending this Triennial, apart from a common commitment to African studies, is the scholarship formalized by our disciplinary methodologies.  To me this means that 'letting-African-cultures-speak-for-themselves' about things artistic or philosophical is a matter of relative emphasis, an ideal, that can only happen subject to the application of a disciplinary methodology.

            To introduce an African viewpoint into philosophy, one must arrive at it on the basis of the application of techniques derived from a specific, technical philosophical tradition.  One favoured approach in this regard, that our two disciplines have come to share, is known to philosophers as conceptual analysis.  This involves identifying concepts internal to an African language that appear to be of philosophical or aesthetic prepossession and then, on the basis of literary contexts in which they occur, attempting to specify the criteria which govern their usage.

            Even if acquisition of the requisite language fluency has proved a daunting professional qualification for many who have an increasingly limited time in which to conduct their fieldwork, as a generalized approach this has produced important results.  The work of scholars who are fully conversant with African languages certainly has taken significant strides towards revealing the profundity of African sensitivities.

            I don't mean to tout my own discipline's patrimony in this regard, but conceptual analysis is something that philosophers of diverse backgrounds have been involved with for several millennia.  However in African philosophy this kind of approach has begun to run into some of the same problems that it has engendered in the classical philosophical corpus.  Namely, conflicting interpretations of the same concept produced by different scholars.

            In other words, to understand the meaning of a particular concept in an African language it is very rarely sufficient just to quote the original passage in which it occurs.  That passage must itself be analyzed, and more specific meanings thereby attached to the concept.  Again, all of this involves interpretation via the application of a disciplinary methodology.  And when different scholars who analyze the same concept arrive at interpretations of its meaning which differ in important respects, how is the matter to be resolved?

            How I wish I could provide you with the answer to this question!  Unfortunately all I can do is to point out that I could virtually fill this auditorium -- wall to wall and floor to ceiling -- with the cumulative ruminations of academic philosophy about the 'meaning' of a single concept like, for example, "beauty."  Admittedly many of these studies are deliberately speculative in character -- they propose and advocate a novel theory about what beauty should mean.  But a distressing number also purport to be reporting what "beauty" has 'meant' all along, from the beginning.  And a more distressing but still substantial minority of these claim to be explaining precisely what speakers of the English language mean whenever they use this word.

            So we can anticipate that, within the framework of African philosophy and, more specifically, of African-oriented aesthetics, similar differing interpretations of a single concept may arise, if they have not done so already.  One remedial measure that people in African philosophy have adopted when this happens is to study relevant African discourse more carefully.  By "discourse" I mean talk, conversation, language usage.19  For exclusive reliance upon conceptual analysis tends to treat individual concepts in relative isolation from other terms.  Or at best you end up with a kind of list or inventory of criteria.  With greater emphasis on discourse it is easier to discern relationships between concepts or criteria, so that a kind of network begins to emerge.

            To conclude, I would like to go back to that potential methodological antipathy between the cross-cultural character of a 'common denominator' approach and the more culturally specific 'insiders' view' as forms of interpretation.  Of course another important consideration that is involved in all such intercultural processes of understanding is translation -- whether the meanings of one language may be adequately expressed by those of another.

            As part of the lengthy process of reciprocal understanding between different cultures, one cannot help but notice the conceptual somersaults and contortions that languages are made to perform and undergo.  What once was or was not labelled with the English-language terms "philosophy" or "art" in African societies is sometimes very different from the referents those terms bear today.  The history of the dialogue between African and Western cultures sometimes suggests to me the analogue of a conversation between two total strangers from the same culture who are meeting for the first time.  Both are likely to be confused by certain aspects of the other's behaviour.  Both are likely to find that the other uses certain linguistic expressions in an unusual or even bizarre manner.  Both may become suspicious about or even hostile to certain meanings or intentions they mistakenly attribute to the other.  But as the conversation evolves, both come to understand the reasons and similarities underlying one another's peculiarities better, and discover in the end that they share a good deal more in common than at first seemed to be the case.

            With this in mind, I don't think we need to agonize endlessly about the universality of the word "art" -- and here I mean quite specifically that term as it will continue to exist in and to be used by the English language.  Indeed, if African languages are to survive and to retain their roles as vital vehicles of cultural expression, it is probably better that this word not be refashioned into a cultural universal.  I would prefer to remain with the notion of overlapping meanings between languages as a basis to work with and from.  We cannot erase the linguistic and cultural backgrounds that are so fundamentally formative of our intellects.  Harking back to Evans-Pritchard's musings about anthropology as more art than science, rather than trying to transcend our origins via somekind of methodology that purports to introduce us to a new level of understanding, I think that it is dialogue based upon language fluency that will best enable us to see where our concepts overlap and where they diverge.

            I acknowledge that lost somewhere in the midst of all my verbiage are the art objects which are your primary concern.  But alas, besides looking and feeling we human beings also talk, and this is where the problems I am concerned with arise.  That many of these problems are explicitly acknowledged by you is evidenced by your recent publications.  Without intending in the least to curry favour, this needs to be mentioned as well.  You deserve to be complimented on the remarkably high level of professional self-criticism, of frank concern about your own limitations, that is expressed in them.20  I therefore appreciate that some of the alternatives I am proposing may already be familiar to you, but I mention them here and now because I have found them to be, in my own work with African philosophy, of pragmatic, instrumental value.

 

 

 



     1

  "In its search for the norm and for structure, anthropology has tended to ignore the impact and importance of individuals in creating art and culture (Drewal, 1990: 36)."

 

     2

  Even if, in sympathy with the aphorism that 'No general statement is true (including this one),' one must give select anthropologists their due in this regard as well: "Despite this general disciplinary tendency (towards norms and structures, as in fn. 1 above) anthropologists in our field (African art studies) were in fact among the first to consider the issue of creativity and individual artists (Drewal, 1990: 36)."

 

     3

  The following are relevant: (1) "art history per se, that is, the tracing of constancy and change in the form, style and meaning of art objects, an approach that is only just beginning in our field (Drewal, 1990: 39)"; (2) "the nitty-gritty issues of art history -- style identification, dating, function, context, and meaning (Blier, 1990: 99)"; (3) "Although art historians now out number those who are not art historians in the field of African art scholarship, they are still outsiders in their discipline (Blier, 1990: 92)."

 

     4

  "Although the term primitive art was eradicated from thoughtful anthropological enquiry forty years ago, it is still very much a part of contemporary art historical writing and thinking (Blier, 1990: 95)."

 

     5

  "we have moved decisively beyond the initial efforts to identify African art with ethnicity (Drewal, 1990: 33)."

 

     6

  The peculiarities of African cultures, epitomized by describing them as 'traditional', was also responsible for the de-emphasis upon 'history' in a discipline that named itself 'African art history'.  'Traditional' cultures and art were both somehow a-historical.  To quote Drewal: "our field lacks concerted or systematic studies of the history of Art in Africa . .. . our aversion to historical thinking; I believe, derives . . . from our affinity and alignment with anthropological thinking (1990: 38)."  Or Blier: "we (African art historians) have often been too quick to fall into the myth that the arts have changed little over time (1990: 96)."

 

     7

  "the acceptance of African art within the discipline of art history -- that is, the acceptance of African works as art rather than as artifact -- is rare (Blier, 1990: 94)."

 

     8

  This last rather direct analogy is now being challenged by those interpreters of oral literature who argue that the triviality now attached to the proverb in Western culture as a form of expression has been unceremoniously and unjustifiably transferred to the African context without due consideration of their alternative intellectual content and function.  Form has been allowed to humble content.

 

     9

  "art historians now far outnumber anthropologists among the younger generation of African art scholars (Blier, 1990: 91-2)."

 

     10

  "Despite the challenges and difficulties of the fieldwork enterprise, I know of no better way of both getting at the richness of art and culture and critically examining variant theoretical forms and methodologies (Blier, 1993: 157)."

 

     11

  "the West is moving towards a greater equality between the researcher and the researched -- a dialogue of equals in its fieldwork (Ottenberg, 1990: 120/6?)."

 

     12

  "those who dominated the field (of African art studies) up to 1960 were anthropologists interested in art.  This heritage . . . is clearly evident in the writing of the last twenty years.  It is particularly evident in the trend toward contextual studies, which have been the norm.  Anthropology provided the theoretical models as well as the field methods for the vast majority of studies on African art . . . (Drewal, 1990: 33)."

 

     13

  "in African art discourse it is Islam that is the 'othered' religion par excellence.

            ". . . . Stated simply, African art is held to signify a lack, and accordingly is widely believed to lack: artists (at least those who are truly capable of making innovative changes and having intellectual insights); an interest in foreign cultures and universality; a concept of art apart from social setting; a perception of art outside of nature and the material world; and a valuation of history (and a 'real' understanding of historical primacy) (Blier, 1993: 148-149)."

 

     14

  "At base, many such studies, however insightful and well intentioned, represent a new type of cultural hierarchy where self (the colonizer, the collector, the researcher, the writer) is again accorded the principal, privileged, and exclusive voice (Blier, 1993: 157)."

 

     15

  Such a presumed semantic overlap is therefore a necessary prerequisite to any technical translation exercise between African and Western languages.  "To 'succeed' in this research it is encumbent upon us to translate the very foreignness we see into something familiar (if only because we must write in our own language and describe or analyze what we see and hear in a form in some way comprehensible to both our own and the 'other' culture (Blier, 1993: 152)."

 

     16

  "As we think more about the future of African art, we also need to think more about methodology.  In the past our methodology has been drawn from anthropology, but I think this practice needs to be reexamined (Blier, 1990: 103)."

 

     17

  The adjective "stronger" is deliberate because anthropology itself tends to be interdisciplinary in nature.  See Blier, 1990: 103.

 

     18

  Drewal 1990: 48; Blier, 1990: 103.

 

     19

  "To what extent are practicing Yoruba artists conscious of the critical and creative principles and classificatory terms delineated by Abiodun (Smith Omari, 1990: 120)?"

 

     20

  See, for example, Drewal 1990: 49-50.

  

 

1997 “What's It Mean?: ‘Analytic’ African Philosophy,” in Quest: Philosophical Discussions X/2 (December), 66-77 (revised and republished as Chpt.6, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 133-152).

1996 “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse About Values in Yoruba Culture,” in SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin IX/3, 43-168 (an early working-draft of my 2000 book published by Indiana University Press).

1996 “Does It Matter Whether Linguistic Philosophy Intersects Ethnophilosophy?” in “APA (American Philosophical Association) Newsletter on Philosophy and International Cooperation” in APA Newsletters 96/1 (Fall), 136-140.

1996 “Analytic Philosophy and Traditional Thought: A Critique of Robin Horton,” for African Philosophy: A Classical Approach, edited by P. English and K. M. Kalumba, Prentice Hall, USA, 216-228 (revised and republished as Chpt. 2, 2006 as “Analytic Philosophy and ‘Traditional Thought’: A Critique of Social Anthropology” in African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 13-26).

1995 “‘Philosophy’ Doesn't Translate: Richard Rorty and Multiculturalism, Parts I & II,” in SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin VIII/3 (July-December), 1-42 (Part I revised and republished as Chpt. 2, 2006 in African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 27-62; Part II revised and republished as Chpt. 3, “The Return of the ‘Closed’ Society: A Critique of Richard Rorty” 2006 in African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 63-104).

1995 “‘My Mercedes Has Four Legs!’ ‘Traditional’ as an Attribute of African Equestrian ‘Culture’,” (Illustrations by Carla de Benedetti), in Horsemen of Africa: History, Iconography, Symbolism, ed. by G. Pezzoli, Centro Studi Archeologia Africana, Milan, Italy, 49-64 (revised and republished as Chpt. 16, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 275-298).

1995 “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” Philosophy 70, No. 273 (July), The Royal Institute of Philosophy, UK, 377‑393.

1995 “Is the ‘Aje’ Really a ‘Witch’?,” in African Philosophy: Selected Readings, ed. by Albert G. Mosley, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA (a selection from Chapter 3 of my 1986 book, coauthored with J. Olubi Sodipo).

1995 “Some Observations About Philosophy, Postmodernism, and Art in African Studies,” The African Studies Review 38/1 (April), The African Studies Association (ASA), USA, 69-80 (revised and republished as Chpt. 14, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, 249-262).

1994 “Reflections on Rorty,” in the SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin V/2 (July-December), 11-13.

1994 “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” in the SAPINA (Society for African Philosophy in North America) Bulletin V/2 (July‑December), 20-36 (an earlier conference-version of the paper published in the journal Philosophy in 1995).

1994 “The House of the ‘Inu’:  Keys to the Structure of a Yoruba Theory of the ‘Self’” (coauthored with J. Olubi Sodipo), in Quest: Philosophical Discussions VIII/1 (June), 3-23 (a publication of the 1991 paper originally accepted by the journal Second Order after publication was suspended due to financial constraints; republished in Beyond the Lines: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga: a Philosophical Practice, ed. Lidia Procesi and Kasereka Kavwahirehi, pp. 241-258).

1993 “Secrecy (‘Awo’) and Objectivity in the Methodology and Literature of Ifa Divination” (coauthored with 'Wande Abimbola), in SECRECY: African Art that Conceals and Reveals (ed. by M. Nooter), The Museum for African Art, New York City, USA, 212-221 (revised and republished as Chpt. 7, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 153-164).

(1991 “The House of the ‘Inu’ . . .,” Second Order; see entry under 1994 above.)

1989 “‘Eniyan’:  A Critical Analysis of the Yoruba Concept of Person,” Chapter 14, in The Substance of African Philosophy (ed. C.S. Momoh), African Philosophy Projects’ Publications, Auchi, Nigeria, 328-354 (2nd edition 2000, 288-307).

1988 “Afro-Brazilian Mosques in West Africa,” Mimar: Architecture in Development 29: 16-23.

1986 Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft:  Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (coauthored with J. Olubi Sodipo), Ethnographica Publishers Ltd., London, UK.

1986 “A Comparison of the Western ‘Witch’ with the Yoruba ‘Aje’:  Spiritual Powers or Personality Types?” (coauthored with J.Olubi. Sodipo), Ife: Annals of the Institute of Cultural Studies 1, 1 -7.

1985 “Review of African Philosophy:  Myth or Reality (by L. Apostel and E. Story),” Journal of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15/1 (March), 109-111.

1981 “The Open Texture of Oral Tradition,” Theoria to Theory XIV/3, 327-332 (revised and republished as Chpt. 8, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 165-174).

1979 “The Art Historian as Conceptual Analyst,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXXVII/3, 303-313 (revised and republished as “The African Art Historian as Conceptual Analyst,” Chpt. 12, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 217-236).

1977 “Robin Horton on Critical Philosophy and Traditional Thought,” Second Order 6/1, 81-92.

1977 “Comment:  Robert Lithown on Traditional Thought,” Theoria to Theory IX/4, 213-215.

1976 “Phenomenology and the Exposition of African Traditional Thought,” Second Order 5/2, 45 -65 (republished in African Philosophy, ed. Claude Sumner, Chamber Printing House, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1980/1997, 56 80; also republished in Readings in African Philosophy, ed. Sophie B. Oluwole. Lagos, Nigeria: Mass-tech Publishers).

1975 “A Philosopher's Approach to Traditional Culture,” Theoria to Theory IX/4, 259-272 (revised and republished as Chpt. 5, in 2006 African Philosophy: The Analytic Approach, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, pp. 119-132).

1971 “Review of ‘Prospectus’ for Encyclopedia of Human Ideas on Ultimate Reality and Meaning” (coauthored with P. Hallen), Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5/4 (June), 585-586.

1970 (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis:) “Boldness and Caution in the Methodology and Social Philosophy of Karl Popper” (Supervisors: Professors Michael L. Martin and Robert Cohen, Boston University).

 

 

b.  SUBMITTED.

 

 

 See "forthcoming" under IN PRESS/PUBLISHED.

 

 

c.  MANUSCRIPTS  IN  PREPARATION  OR  SOLICITED.

 

 "Yoruba Tradition," in Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art, edited by James Harold. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

5. CONFERENCES RECENTLY ATTENDED (* with paper presentations).

 



 The Third Biennial African Philosophy World Conference, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, College of Humanities, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, October 28-30, 2019.

Conference on "African Philosophy and Development, 25th Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi, July 9-10, 2019.

African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, December 1-3, 2016.  

*African Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 19-22, 2015.

*African Philosophy: Past, Present, and Future, Keynote Address, University of Witwaterstrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, September 9-11, 2015.

*Rawls in Africa, Conference in Honor of Professor Ifeanyi Menkiti, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, May 10, 2014.

*A Holistic Approach to Human Existence and Development, Keynote Address, conference sponsored by the Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, November 20-22, 2013.

American Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, December 2012.

African Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, November 29-December 1, 2012.

*Invited Lecture: “Select Issues and Controversies in Contemporary African Philosophy,” Royal Institute of Philosophy, London, UK, November 23, 2012.

*“Witchcraft-belief and Its Impact on Development,” Cotonou, Republic of Benin, October 11-13, 2012.

Conference on “Reconciliation in Post-Colonial, Post-Conflict and Multi-Ethnic Africa,” XIXth Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), The University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, April 16-18, 2012.

*Colloquium on Culture as a Site for Contest: Destroyed Past, Truncated Present, Dubious Future, Brooklyn College CUNY, March 2-4, 2012.

*Conference on Articulating Africana Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, November 3-5, 2011.

“Violence in Africa,” XVIIth Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), Ohio State University, USA, April 17-21, 2010.

*Keynote Speaker: International Conference on A Holistic Approach to Human Existence and Development, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, November 20-24, 2010.

American Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting, New York City, December 27-30, 2009.

*Reason, Culture, Humanism: The Philosophy of Kwasi Wiredu, University of Louisville, Kentucky, October 31-November 1, 2008.

*American Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, April 16-19, 2008.

*Conference on “Political Unity and Sustainable Development in Africa: The Intellectual Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah,” XIVth Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS),” The University of Cape Coast, Ghana, March 31-April 4, 2008.

*“Sacred Knowledge, Sacred Power and Performance: Ifa Divination in West Africa and the African Diaspora,” Harvard University, March 14-16, 2008.

American Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 2006.

*Conference on “Human Rights: Africana and Multi-Cultural Perspectives,” XIIth Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), University of Leicester, England, April 20-23, 2006.

African Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., November 17-20, 2005.

“Democracy: Challenges for the 21st Century,” International Political Science Association Research Committee on Political Philosophy, Atlanta, Georgia, April 29-30, 2005.

*Special Seminar on African Philosophy, University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine, March 24, 2005.

*“Philosophy, Ideology, and Civil Society,” XIth Annual Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS) and Society for African Philosophy in North America (SAPINA), Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria, March 10-12, 2005.

*The Humanities, Nationalism and Democracy: International Conference in Honour of the Late J. Olubi Sodipo, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, March 7-10, 2005 (Keynote Speaker).

*African Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 11-14, 2004.

*”Philosophy Globalisation and Justice,” Xth Annual Conference International Society for African Philosophy & Studies (ISAPS) and Society for African Philosophy in North America (SAPINA), University of the West Indies, Jamaica, April 2-4, 2004.

14th Triennial Symposium on African Art (ACASA), Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 31-April 1, 2004.

*Princeton Workshop in the History of Science: Science Across Cultures, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, February 13, 2004.

 

 

6.  FOREIGN LANGUAGES.

 

 

French (impoverished); Italian (anche); Yoruba (proficiency certificate for reading of).

 

 

7. EDITORIAL APPOINTMENTS, ELECTED OFFICES, INVITED CONSULTANCIES, MEMBERSHIP OF PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND AWARDS.

 

 

a.  EDITORIAL.

 

<phil.papers.com>, African Philosophy editor

 Journal of Contemporary African Philosophy (Editorial Board)

Journal on African Philosophy (Editorial Board)

 Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy (Editorial Advisory Board)

 

 

b.  ELECTED OFFICES.

 

President, International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), 2006-2010

President, International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), 2004-06

General Secretary, Society for African Philosophy in North America (SAPINA), 2002-2006

 

 

c.  INVITED CONSULTANCIES

 

Member, 2006-2007, 2007-2008, Peer Review Committees, Fulbright Visiting Scholars, Fulbright African Research Scholar Program, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, United States Department of State, Washington, D.C.

 

External Examiner, M.A. programme in philosophy.  The University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston 7, Jamaica, 2006-2009.

 

 

d.  PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS.

 

African Studies Association (ASA)

American Philosophical Association (APA)

American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

International Society for African Philosophy & Studies (ISAPS)

PEN

 

 

e.  AWARDS.

 

Fulbright West African Research Grant, July-September 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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