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Comments On Contemporary African Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Paulin J. Hountondji
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Dedicated to my son.

“There are two ways of losing oneself: by isolation walled into the individual, or by dilution in the ‘universal’."

Aimé Césaire (Letter to Maurice Thorez 1956)

I term a group of texts “African philosophy”: to be precise, the group of texts written by Africans and defined as “philosophic” by the authors themselves.

This definition, let us note, involves no “petitio principii.” The sense of the adjective “philosophic” need not be reckoned with here, and even less the cogency of the adjective. All that matters is the fact of the adjective itself, the deliberate recourse to the word “philosophy” whatever, by the way, the sense or meaninglessness of the word may be. In other words, all that concerns us is the philosophic intention of the authors, not the extent (hard to evaluate) of its effective realisation.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 18 , Issue 71 , September 1970 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Here, by way of an indication, is a minimal bibliography:

Alioune Diop, NIAM M'PAYA ou de la fin que dévorent les moyens (preface to La Philosophie Bantoue by R. P. Placide Tempels (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1949);

Alexis Kagame, La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l'être (Brussels, 1956);

A. Makarakisa, La dialectique des Barundi (Brussels, 1959)

W. Abraham, The Mind of Africa (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962);

Léopold Sédar Senghor, Nation et voie africaine du socialisme (Paris, Pré sence Africaine, 1961); Liberté, I; Négritude et humanisme (Paris, Seuil, 1964);

Lufuluabo, Vers une théodicée bantoue (1962); La notion luba-bantoue de l'être (1964);

Kwame N'Krumah, Consciencism (London, Heinemann Publishers, 1964);

Vincent Mulago, Un visage africain du christianisme (Paris, Présence Afri caine, 1965);

Allassane N'Daw, "Peut-on parler d'une pensée africaine?," in Présence Africaine, No. 58, 1966, p. 32-46;

Basile-Juléat Fouda, La Philosophie africaine de l'existence (Lille, Faculté des lettres, 1967: thesis for Ph. D.);

Jean-Calvin Bahoken, Clairières métaphysiques africaines (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1967);

Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, "Le Bantou problématique," in Présence Afri caine, No. 66, 1968;

Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme (Paris, édit. Réclame, 1950, reedited by Présence Africaine);

Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris, Seuil, 1952); Les damnés de la Terre (Paris, Maspero, 1961).

The reader may also include this article in the list, and other of our texts which have preceded it, if he wishes to amuse himself at the little game of "groups which include themselves," notably:

"Charabia et mauvaise conscience: psychologie du langage chez les intel lectuels colonisés," in Présence Africaine, No. 61, 1967, p. 11-31;

"Un philosophe africain dans l'Allemagne du XVIIIème siècle: Antoine-Guillaume Amo," in Les Etudes Philosophiques, No. 1, 1970;

"Pourquoi la théorie?," in Bulletin de liaison de la Commission inter africane de philosophie, Societé Africaine de Culture, No. 3, 1969;

"Le problème actuel de la philosophie africaine," to appear in the 4th. vol. of Contemporary Philosophy, published by the International Philosoph ical Institute, 1970.

Comments.

We are here quoting only African authors, according to our definition of African philosophy. Thus non-African "Africanists" are not included in this list. It may be judged, on a reading of what follows, how well founded this exclusion is.

On the other hand, we include Antillaians like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon: these are Africans of the diaspora. And, although they are not them selves philosophers (that is to say they have no pretensions so to be), they nevertheless provide us with the wherewithal to conduct a productive political criticism of a particular form of philosophy.

To be thorough one should add to the list all the theses for doctorates or for diplomas of further education, or master's degrees, or, in short, all university work done by students and African researchers in philosophy, even if they bear upon the most classical European authors. Since they really are philosophical works, and they were produced by Africans, what reason would one have to exclude them? Our term "naive," which covers all the texts of African philosophy, enables us to note the dissonances which are in ternal to this literature, accurately set apart between tragic parentheses, which pertain to Africa on one hand, and on the other hand to the narrow impri sonment in an "Africanist" ideology which is not itself of African origin. Thus if we refer to none of this first category of texts, it is only on account of not having been able to make an exhaustive inventory, or even a represen tative selection.

Finally, North African literature is only omitted here for material reasons. It, also, is an integral part of African literature in general, of course, although it constitutes an autonomous sub-group, in the same way as Black African lite rature, with which we concern ourselves here, does. It would be a useful task some day to lay bare the problem of the real unity of the two literatures systematically, over and above their obvious differences.

2 R. P. Placide Tempels, La Philosophie Bantoue, original version in Flemish, French version, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1949. This work is in its 3rd edition, which says a lot!

3 Op. cit., p. 17: "A better understanding of Bantu thought is quite as indispensable for all who are called to live among the natives. Thus this con cerns all colonialists, but more particularly those who are called to lead and judge the negroes, all those who are concerned about the favourable evolution of clan rights, in short, all who wish to civilise, educate, raise, the Bantus. But if it concerns all well-wishing colonials, it is particularly aimed at missio naries."

4 On the whole this is probably the radical fault of ethnology in general (and not only of ethno-philosophy). Lévy-Bruhl's work at least had one merit: that of laying bare without disguise, and without craft, the dependence which is native to ethnological argument in relation to an ethnocentric attitude, itself dictated by a concrete historic situation (so-called "primitive" societies always being, in fact, societies controlled by imperialism). From this point of view, the belated self-criticism in Lévy-Bruhl's Carnets is far from being as radical as is sometimes maintained, since it upholds a notion as ideological as the "primitiveness" idea, and anyway does not succeed in explaining away the earlier contempt.

The intention of more recent ethnologists, who claim to have created an ethnology which is neutral, free from value-judgments and all forms of racism or ethnocentricity, is perhaps laudable in itself, but it does not prevent the fact that ethnology, being a kind of argument, still depends, today as much as it ever did, upon an ideological basis. Ethnology (or however else one calls it, anthropology or what you will) always presupposes what is to be shown: the real distinction between its object and that of sociology in general, is the different nature of "primitive" societies (or of "archaic" ones, or what you will) compared with other societies. However, it claims to make a real abstraction of the meeting of forces of these societies and the others, at the same time; that is to say, quite simply, of imperialism.

Be that as it may, it is not difficult to see that societies which are examined by anthropology are always, in fact, societies under domination, and that the knowledgeable arguments of the anthropologist only make sense within a scientific debate in which those people take no part, but which always has its origin elsewhere: in the dominant classes of the dominant societies themselves… Of course a more detailed analysis would be needed here.

5 La Philosophie Bantoue, Présence Africaine, p. 45.

6 Discours sur le colonialisme, Présence Africaine, p. 45.

7 That is, of course, nothing but a dominant current. A glance at the bibliography suggested earlier suffices to show that this current has unceasingly given rise to disputes within the bosom of African philosophy (or philos ophical literature) and that it co-exists with other currents which one may term "minor."

8 Alexis Kagame, La Philosophie Bantu-rwandaise de l'être, Brussels 1955.

9 Ibid., p. 8.

10 Ibid., pp. 17 and 23.

11 Kagame's analysis is indeed expressed above all as a comment on the particular structures of one language, the "Kinyarwanda." These structures sketch, as it were, an articulation of reality, being, so to speak, the bars between which the Rwandaian perceives the world. From this comes the idea of setting up a table of Bantu ontological categories, effecting an ope ration on Kinyarwanda which Aristotle had achieved, in fact, according to Kagame, on the Greek language. The results of the investigation are not without charm. Kagame proposes 4 Bantu metaphysical categories, which he makes into a correspondence with Aristotle's, according to the following table:

This table provokes certain comments.

  1. 1.

    1. The first two categories break the unity of the Aristotelian conception of substance, which is made to look irremediably equivocal. Man and objects are not in the same category, but set up two radically different genres. More precisely, man is the original category in relation to which things are thinkable: these are by definition non-men: ibintu, beings deprived of intelligence (a category which includes, let us note, minerals and vegetables as much as the animals themselves).

  2. 2.

    2. The concept of man, in so far as it is the original concept, could not be defined in anything but a tautological manner. Man is the unique species of a unique genus. This is why Kagame can write: "Some Europeans have laughed at the expense of the ‘naïveté' of our Bantus, when these men had to answer the question: Umuntu ni iki? What is a man? Put in the position of having to give the definition of that being which has intelligence, our Bantu, after much difficulty, would reply: Umuntu ni umuntu, nyine! Man is man, exactly! Something like this: ‘In formulating the question, you have yourself given the answer, and there is no way of explaining it better! You have, in fact, declared the genus unique and the species unique! What would you answer if you were asked this question: ‘What is the reasoning animal (that is to say, man)?"' (op. cit., p. 118).

    One wonders, however, how much of the Bantu's difficulty is attributable to the intrinsic difficulty of the question asked (the most diffcult question there is, in fact). An average European would certainly have experienced the same difficulty, and would have replied no less "naively," although his language does give him the ability to spread out the concept of Man into simpler categories.

    But the most serious difficulty, perhaps, concerns the interpretation which Kagame gives to Aristotle's project, which he imitates. The fact that the Greek philosopher's ontology has, in fact, remained a prisoner of the gram matical structure of the Greek language, does not, in our opinion, justify an erroneous reading of the original meaning of his work, which aimed, at the outset, not so much to explore the actual structures in the Greek language, but on the contrary, to go beyond all artificiality of this kind in founding the language upon a vital and universal order.

12 Op. cit., p. 39.

13 Ibid., p. 27.

14 Ibid., cf. notably pp. 64-70.

15 Op. cit., pp. 121-122.

16 This is the translated title of a work by P. Ricoeur, Le conflit des inter prétations (Seuil, 1969). There is nothing surprising in this since the problem of African "philosophy" sends us back to the more general problem of hermeneutics, quite obviously. In fact, the ethno-philosophers' arguments, whether European or African, present us with the baffling spectacle of an imaginary thesis quite unsupported by texts; it is a "free" interpretation in the true sense of the word, drunken, given over to the caprices of herme neutics alone, and to the dizziness of a freedom which does not know itself. It does not know itself because it thinks to translate a non-existent text, and does not recognise in this its own function of creation. At the same time it inhibits itself from achieving any sort of truth a priori, since truth rests on the supposition that freedom should be subjected to order, and should give way before an order which is not simply imaginary; and that it should remain aware both of the order and of its own margin of creativity. Truth cannot be attained unless the interpreter's freedom accomodates itself to the nature of the text to be interpreted; it presupposes that the text and the interpreter's argument stay rigorously within the same genre; that is to say that they be consonant one with the other. Aristotle, with his doctrine of the "orders of being" only wanted to express this idea.

17 Cf. other works by Kagame, notably: La Poésie dynastique au Rwanda (Brussels, 1951); Le Code des institutions politiques du Rwanda précolonial (Brussels, 1952); Les organisations socio-familiales de l'ancien Rwanda (Brussels, 1954).

18 European ethno-philosophy is still going strong, quoting Tempels as the authority. It is not really relevant to include a bibliography here. It is not surprising, when one knows the appreciation that a philosopher of Bachelard's standing felt the need to express about a book as controversial as La Philo sophie Bantoue (cf. Présence Africaine, No. 7, 1949: Témoignages sur la Philosophie Bantoue du père Tempels), as did his fellow countrymen Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Chombard de Lauwe, etc… Is there, then, no way of breaking the vicious circle of these ethnocentric prejudices, except by indi stinctly appreciating anything — I mean: the first work which attempts, by means of equivocal argument, to rehabilitate the negro in a problematic fashion? The most serious thing, as far as the European philosophers are concerned (the real ones), is that they thus embarked on a flagrant contradiction of the theoretical implications of their own philosophical method, since it presumes, quite obviously, a responsible line of thought, a theoretical effort over an individual subject, and excludes, by this fact, any reduction of philosophy to a system of collective thinking.

The healthiest European reaction we know, of recent date, to Tempels' work is still that of Franz Crahay: "Conceptual Take-off: Conditions for a Bantu Philosophy," in Diogenes, No. 52, Winter 1965. We will come back to it later, to show its limits.

But complete, more thorough, and anyway exemplary for its lucidity, is, in our eyes, the work of the Cameroon Fabien Eboussi-Boulaga, in "Le Bantou problématique," in Présence Africaine, No. 66, 1968.

It is, perhaps, worth adding that our criticism of Tempels, no less than the article of Eboussi's that I quote, has no intention of attacking the man, but only the work, or more precisely, a certain view of philosophy which has unfortunately made progress since then, and is in danger of stifling all African creativity in the philosophical sphere, in the egg, if one did not put a definite period to it. So, all we wish to do, is to clear the ground for a philosophical method which would be worthy of that name, and linked with a more general practical theory. We wish to undertake a new reading of existing African philosophical theory at the same time, and to see, in freeing it of its ethno-philosophic illusions, that this theoretical method has already begun, and that it only remains for it to free itself, in order to become aware of itself in its due autonomy, and in its possible function in an Africa which needs to be made anew.

19 It would, of course, be quite different, if Kagame could have supplied philosophical texts of African sages, or could have reproduced their words. Then his interpretation would have been founded upon effective philosophical discus sions which were universally accessible, and qualifiable.

Perhaps this is an urgent task for present African philosophers: the tran scription of everything which may be perceived of our ancestors' thought, and of our living sages and wise men, in a systematic manner.

But here again, our meaning must be clear; one wise African's thought, even if he claims to be the spokesman of a group, is not necessarily that of all the individuals in the group, and still less that of all Africans in general. On the other hand, if these discussions must be recorded, it is not only so that they can be put forward for the possible admiration of a non-African public, but first, but above all, to be submitted to the appreciation, or the criticism, and the transcendance of Africans of today—of all the Africans of today.

One must be grateful to Marcel Griaule, in any case, because he has so faithfully reported the words of an Ogotemmeli (cf. Marcel Griaule, Dieu d'eau: Entretiens avec Ogotemmeli, Editions du Chêne, 1948). A transcription of this kind is worth infinitely more from a European ethnologist, than all the arbitrary constructions of other "Africanists" who write from the European side about the African soul, the Bantu world-view, or all the impressionistic categories of the "Dogon wisdom," the "Diola philosophy" etc… etc…

As far as our study is concerned, we are keeping to the subject of Bantus only for a simple reason: it is the Bantu culture which has produced the most extensive African ethno-philosophic or philosophic literature, that we know of, to date. And it is in this kind of explicit discussion that one may seek African philosophy. Elsewhere, one finds nothing but the mirages of one's wishes, the shadows of one's regrets and nostalgias.

20 The reader will have understood the discriminating usage (or conceptual usage) of the following terms:

  1. —

    — philosophy, without inverted commas, means the corpus of texts and discussions which have an explicitly "philosophic" intention;

  2. —

    — "philosophy " in the improper sense, emphasized by inverted commas: the hypothetical world-view of a given group of people;

  3. —

    — "ethno-philosophy," research which partly rests on these assumptions: an attempt to reconstruct a hypothetical collective "philosophy."

21 All these are not being brought into question, of course. Some of the authors referred to are still particularly instructive, and Africans would profit by reading them. Our criticism of them, is not negative, but naturally, one demands more of those who have already given something, because one knows that they could do better.

22 Lévy-Bruhl's work has no other meaning: cf. La mentalité primitive, and other works in the same style; also cf. all the ideological discussions collected by Césaire in that brilliant collection of foolishness which is his Discours sur le colonialisme.

23 F. Eboussi-Boulaga, "Le Bantou problématique," an article quoted in Pré sence Africaine, No. 66, 1968.

24 The expressions "rendez-vous du donner et du recevoir," "civilisation de l'universel " etc…, are favourite expressions of Senghor's.

25 Here one can see the inadequacy of Franz Crahay's analysis in the article quoted earlier: "Conceptual Take-off: Conditions for a Bantu Philosophy," Diogenes, No. 52, Winter 1965. In fact, a conceptual take-off is always already accomplished. All men think in concepts, under all skies, in all civilisations, even if they integrate mythological sequences in their discussions (as Parme nides, Plato, Confucius, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kagame, etc. do) or even if the discussion rests entirely (as is almost always the case) upon fragile ideological foundations, from which a scientific scrupulousness must constantly free it. From this point of view, African civilisations are no exception to the rule.

On the other hand, the real problem which F. Crahay fails to see is that of the interlocutor's choice, of the destination of the discussion. Whether the language be mythical or ideological, it is always brought to improve itself and pass, by successive stages, through degrees of rigour and precision, by virtue of the social experience of discussion. So it remains, above all, to throw it into this social situation in Africa, where it may develop its own history, thanks to the written word, and, a necessary complement, political democracy.

26 Here, of course, it is not a question of science considered from the point of view of its results (and as a system of established truths), but from the point of view of its process, insofar as it is effective research; insofar as it is a project which takes its form from the society, and which always goes beyond its temporary results.