The African Philosophy Reader

P.H. Coetzee, A.P.J. Roux, P.H. Coetzee, A.P.J. Roux

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135884185
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

1
DISCOURSES ON AFRICA

INTRODUCTION
The struggle for reason in Africa

MOGOBE B.RAMOSE

For centuries, discourses on Africa have been dominated by non-Africans. Many reasons account for this state of affairs and, not least, the unjustified violence of colonization. Since colonization, Africans have had almost an infinity of spokespersons. These claimed unilaterally the right to speak on behalf of the Africans and to define the meaning of experience and truth for them. Thus Africans were reduced to silence even about themselves. On the face of it, decolonization removed this problem. However, on closer analysis it is clear that decolonization was an important catalyst in the breaking of the silence about the Africans. It is still necessary to assert and uphold the right of Africans to define the meaning of experience and truth in their own right. In order to achieve this, one of the requirements is that Africans should take the opportunity to speak for and about themselves and in that way construct an authentic and truly African discourse about Africa. In this introduction, focus is placed first upon some of the main reasons why Africa was reduced to silence. This is followed by the speech, the discourse, of Africans about the meaning of experience and truth for them. The essays contained in this section constitute this discourse. We now turn to consider some of the principal reasons why colonization considered itself justified in silencing and enslaving Africa.

‘MAN IS A RATIONAL ANIMAL’

One of the bases of colonization was that the belief ‘man is a rational animal’ was not spoken of the African, the Amerindian, and the Australasian. Aristotle, the father of this definition of ‘man’, did not incur the wrath of women then as they were probably astounded by the fact that for him the existence of his mother appeared to be insignificant. It was only much later in history, namely at the rise of feminist thought and action, that the benign forgiveness of Aristotle by the women of his time came to be called into question.¹ Little did Aristotle realize that his definition of ‘man’ laid down the foun-dation for the struggle for reason—not only between men and women but also between the colonialists and the Africans,² the Amerindians,³ and the Australasians.

Aristotle’s definition of man was deeply inscribed in the social ethos of those communities and societies that undertook the so-called voyages of discovery—apparently driven by innocent curiosity. But it is well known that these voyages changed into violent colonial incursions. These incursions, unjustifiable under all the principles of the theory of the just war, have had consequences that are still with us today. It seems then that the entire process of decolonization has, among others, upheld and not jettisoned the questionable belief that ‘man is a rational animal’ excludes the African, the Amerindian, and the Australasian. In our time, the struggle for reason is rearing its head again around the globe, especially in the West, under the familiar face of resilient racism.

For example, the term ‘African philosophy’ renders the idea that history repeats itself easy to believe. More often than not the term tends to revive innate scepticism on the one hand, and to stimulate ingrained condescension on the other. The sceptic, unswervingly committed to the will to remain ignorant, is simply dismissive of any possibility, let alone the probability, of African philosophy. Impelled by the will to dominate, the condescendor—who is invariably the posterity of the colonizer—is often ready to entertain the probability of African philosophy provided the judgement pertaining to the experience, knowledge, and truth about African philosophy is recognized as the sole and exclusive right of the condescendor. Of course, this imaginary right, supported by material power designed to defend and sustain the superstition that Africa is incapable of producing knowledge, has farreaching practical consequences for the construction of knowledge in Africa. The self-appointed heirs to the right to reason have thus established themselves as the producers of all knowledge and the only holders of the truth. In these circumstances, the right to knowledge in relation to the African is measured and determined by passive as well as uncritical assimilation,⁴ coupled with faithful implementation of knowledge defined and produced from outside Africa. The condescendor currently manifests the will to dominate through the imposition of ‘democratization’, ‘globalization’, and ‘human rights’. Such imposition is far from credible if one considers, for example, the fact that democracy became inadvertently the route towards the inhumanity as well as the irrationality of the holocaust.

Historically, the unjust wars of colonization resulted in the forcible expropriation of land from its rightful owners: the Africans. At the same time, the land expropriation meant loss of sovereignty by the Africans.⁵ The close connection between land and life⁶ meant also that by losing land to the conqueror, the African thereby lost a vital resource to life. This loss was aggravated by the fact that, by virtue of the so-called right of conquest, the African was compelled to enter into the money economy. Thus the so-called right of conquest introduced an abrupt and radical change in the life of the African. From the condition of relative peace and reasonable certainty to satisfy the basic necessities of life, the African was suddenly plunged into poverty. There was no longer the reasonable certainty to meet the basic necessities of life unless money was available. Having been thus rendered poor by the stroke of the pen backed by the use of armed force, the African was compelled to find money to assure not only individual survival but also to pay tax for owning a hut, for example. In this way, the African’s right to life—the inalienable right to subsistence—was violated. Since all other rights revolve around the recognition, protection, and respect of the right to life, talk about human rights based upon the continual violation of this right can hardly be meaningful to the African. To be meaningful, human rights discourse must restore material and practical recognition, protection, and respect for the African’s inalienable right to subsistence.

The 1994 Kampala conference on reparations to Africa is a pertinent example of Africa’s demand for the material and practical restoration of her inalienable right to subsistence. Reparations, though not technically due to the conquered, is in this case morally and legally appropriate. It proceeds from the premise that there is a historical and conceptual link between colonization, racism, and slavery. It was therefore demanded that these items be included in the agenda of the United Nations conference on racism to be held in the city of Durban, South Africa in August 2001. The necessity to include this demand prompted the United States of America to threaten to boycott the conference. It must be emphasized in favour of the United States and, with particular reference to hostile sentiment towards Israel or the world Jewry, that it is ethically imperative to oppose vigorously anyone who contemplates a repeat of the irrationality and the inhumanity of Hitler’s holocaust. However, it is the United States which undermined her own ethically laudable position by insisting on the exclusion from the United Nations agenda deliberations on restitution arising from the injustice of colonization and slavery. Surely, these experiences of humanity were also by every test both irrational and inhuman? There is no hierarchy in measuring the value of one human life over another. Thus the question persists: why is it that the African’s right to life continues to be denied, derecognized, and remains practically unprotected by the beneficiaries of the violence, irrationality, and the inhumanity of colonization? The United States and Israel sent an official delegation to the Durban conference. Israel and the United States later on withdrew their delegations from the conference. The majority of the Western countries present at the conference insisted that the prevailing inhumanity of the global structural violence and poverty should be maintained. This they did by ensuring that the conference would adopt resolutions that would absolve them from both the moral and the legal guilt of the violence of colonization and the inhumanity of racism. That Africa relented in the name of compromise clearly underlines the urgent need for authentic African philosophy aimed towards the liberation of Africa. Thus the struggle for reason is not only from outside but also from within Africa.

‘ALL MEN ARE RATIONAL ANIMALS’

The struggle for reason—who is and who is not a rational animal—is the foundation of racism. Despite democracy and the culture of human rights in our time, the foundation of the struggle for reason remains unshaken. Biological accidents like blue eyes, skin colour, short hair, or an oval cranium are all little pieces of poor evidence to prove the untenable claim that only a particular segment of humanity is rational. This conventionally valid but no less scientifically untenable proof was used to justify both colonization and the christianization of the colonized. This imaginary justification proved unsustainable because of a basic contradiction in the internal logic, as well as the intent of both colonization and christianization. If the colonized are by definition without reason, then it may be justified to turn them into slaves. But they must be seen as slaves of a particular kind, namely sub-human beings who, because of lack of reason, can have no will of their own and therefore no freedom either. To teach them anything that human beings can understand and do by virtue of their rationality would be a contradiction in terms. It would be tantamount to redeeming them from the status of sub-human beings and to elevate them to parity with human beings. This is precisely why the ensuing stalemate in the christianization of the colonized was overcome when the Papal bull, Sublimis Deus, gave in to the law of logic and removed the contradiction by unreservedly declaring that ‘all men are rational animals’.⁷ The Papal declaration, together with the defeat of scientific racism, do however have great and fundamental significance. Both may be seen as the triumph of reason in the affirmation that all human beings are rational animals. On this basis, it is clear that there is indeed only one race, the human race.

The Papal declaration, just like the defeat of scientific racism by science itself, failed to eradi-cate and erase the struggle for reason from the social consciousness of successive generations of the former colonizers: be they in the colonizing mother countries or in the former colonies. The will and determination to wish away Sublimis Deus and the victory over scientific racism is no more than a sustained endeavour to enliven and sustain the myth that only a particular segment of humanity has a prior, exclusive, and superior right to rationality. According to this reasoning, the myth that within the species homo sapiens there are humans proper and sub-humans means that there cannot be one human race. In our complex global village of today, biology through the reproductive route shall eventually vindicate the reality that the human race is one. Children shall continue to be born from mothers and fathers with accidental biological differences and different cultural backgrounds. Provided humanity does not sink into the ultimate irrationality of self-annihilation through an unwinnable nuclear war, human reproductive power shall in the distant future of evolution march inexorably towards the defeat of the myth that the human race is not and cannot be one.

Why did the teaching of Western philosophy in African universities fail for so long to address the concrete experience of racism in the continent in the light of philosophical racism? For too long the teaching of Western philosophy in Africa was decontextualized precisely because both its inspiration and the questions it attempted to answer were not necessarily based upon the living experience of being-an-African in Africa. Yet, the Western philosophers that the teaching of philosophy in Africa emulated always drew their questions from the lived experience of their time and place. Such questioning included the upkeep and refinement of an established philosophical tradition. In this sense, Western philosophy has always been contextual. But this cannot be said without reservation about the teaching of Western philosophy in Africa since it was—and still is—decontextualized to the extent that it systematically and persistently ignored and excluded the experience of being-an-African in Africa. The mimetic and the decontextualized character of the teaching of Western philosophy in Africa calls for a radical overhaul of the whole epistemological paradigm underlying the current educational system. To evade this duty is to condone racism—which is a form of injustice. The injustice is apparent in the recognition that there is neither a moral basis nor pedagogical justification for the Western epistemological paradigm to retain primacy and dominance in decolonized Africa. The independent ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1. DISCOURSES ON AFRICA
• 2. TRENDS IN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
• 3. METAPHYSICAL THINKING IN AFRICA
• 4. EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE TRADITION IN AFRICA
• 5. MORALITY IN AFRICAN THOUGHT
• 6. RACE AND GENDER
• 7. JUSTICE AND RESTITUTION IN AFRICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT
• 8. AFRICA IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT