THE STATUS OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

THE STATUS OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY

            Emmanuel C. Eze in his article African Philosophy and the Analytic Tradition, argues that our current philosophical studies of the cultures and traditions of Africa, of race, of class and gender, and of ethnicity, can have as salutary and profound an effect upon our consciousness and our disciplines just as Vico’s turn to Italian tradition exerted a pool of influence on the intellectual climate of his time which yielded theories that had implications beyond the Italian traditions, and transformed contemporary ideas about scientific method and knowledge.

Eze substantiates his point based on the topic of his article and is guided by the questions: in what ways does African philosophy fit into the categories of the analytic tradition? And why, indeed, might one even choose to speak of ‘African Philosophy and the Analytic Tradition’? In this line, Eze describes four positions regarding the nature of philosophy and the status of African thought as philosophy. There are principled philosophical reasons for the reluctance of some analytic philosophers to speak about ‘African philosophy’. The first group, the ultra-faithful, believes, for example, that philosophy is universal, that it cannot be narrowed, circumscribed or contextualized by modifiers such as African, Indian, German, and so on. While one may practice philosophy of these ethnic or national cultures, philosophy itself cannot be reduced by ethnic or cultural limitations. The essence of philosophy in the analytic tradition is just that of analysis. Although the impetus for philosophizing may arise from particular countries and even from diverse cultural and social contexts within one country, philosophy itself transcends divisions of culture, nation, or country. Thus, the strictest adherents to the analytic tradition would immediately discountenance and anathematize the view that philosophical analysis may, in certain contexts, also be carried out ethnographically.

Another group wishes not to speak about African philosophy out of caution. According to this group of critics, African philosophy, or the development of modern philosophy in Africa, is so young, that we must not inadvertently discourage its emergence by defining the field too narrowly, or in ways that send the wrong message to ourselves and to others. One of such wrong message is: ‘We already have philosophy in African cultures and traditions; so all we need to do is rediscover or uncover these philosophies hidden in our ancient cultures and traditions and, voila!, there is African philosophy.’ Thus, the discipline or field of African philosophy has yet to be constituted, and until it is firmly established we must not speak and write as though the discipline already exists.

Aside the ultra-faithful and cautious groups as said above, there is a second attitude which according to Eze is compatible with a third position, namely, the anti-import position. These philosophers disagree with the classical, so-called Universalist, posture and refuse to think of theory and method as non-African products to be imported into Africa if Africa is to render itself philosophically comprehensible. Theories, therefore, can apply cross-culturally or across traditions. And this means that cross-culturality or the interdisciplinarity, in principle, need not be one-way or, as has usually been the case, from European or American capitals to Africa and India and Asia. In which case, cross-culturality and interdisciplinarity need not imply a unilateral exporting of the ‘analytic’ tradition to ‘African’ philosophy. Theories, instead, should be able to flow from one place to another precisely because no one culture or tradition of inquiry has a monopoly on the production of knowledge. According to Eze, the proponents of this view are the true universalists, because, they consider the free pursuit of knowledge, wherever knowledge may be found, more important than academic comfort or the complacent enjoyment of narrow departmental power.

Furthermore, Eze on his own proposes a novel approach to the question of African philosophy and the claims to analytical universalism which he calls the ‘Historical Approach.’ According to him, apparently, traditions, including philosophical traditions, always develop in historical contexts. The traditions of modern styles of philosophizing, for example, would have been unthinkable outside the context of scientific development. What then makes the current state of some traditions of African philosophy appear unattractive is the lack of historical distance. Thus, further substantiating the thrust of his argument which we set out above in the first paragraph, Eze asseverates that in principle, philosophy’s relationship to the historical or the political would not diminish its intellectual seriousness or academic rigor; nor should philosophy’s relationship to the histories of neglected or politically abused peoples of Africa diminish philosophy’s claim to universality. African issues are, first and above all, human issues.

Ward Jones’ article ‘Belonging to the Ultra-faithful: A response to Eze’ assumes a revisionary course. A course that attempts to see the historical perspective proposal of Eze as belonging to the realm of the ultra-faithful position, and the ultra-faithful position, if it takes into account the submissions of the historical approach of Eze, as a fulfillment of the tenets of philosophy. Jones in this question asks two questions: What would African thought have to be like were it to be philosophy? An answer to this requires giving an account of the nature of philosophy. The second asks: Why is it important that there be an established tradition of African philosophy? This is because for Jones, other philosophical traditions, including the analytic tradition, can benefit from paying attention to work from a mature African philosophy.

In sections 1 and 2 of Jones’ article, he proposes a combination of the ultra-faithful and anti-import positions. According to Jones, the ultra-faithful maintain that philosophical claims are necessarily characterized by their universal scope. Thus philosophy cannot be constricted by modifiers such as African, German, Indian and so on. But then, according to Jones, as a tradition in philosophy, say the ultra-faithful, the concerns of the proponents of German philosophy are necessarily universal insofar as they confer a philosophical character on speculations by concerning themselves with all human beings. Although in Eze’s thoughts, the ultra-faithful position maintain the cross-cultural transcendence character of philosophy. Jones affirms this but maintains that although philosophy by its nature transcends division between persons because it is about all persons, philosophers themselves are incapable of transcending these divisions. Philosophers are both human beings, and members of sub-groups of human beings. And there are characteristics that flow from being both human beings and members of that sub-group. Philosophical claims, for Jones, are therefore universal claims made about all persons by persons who are necessarily members of some subgroups of persons.

And for this reason, the availability of work by philosophers of different sub-groups, and ability to engage with these thinkers will surely help us obliterate the threats of bias and limitation that are inherent in universalizing as thoroughly situated persons.  It is on this note, that the ultra-faithful should respect the anti-importing position and thus, embrace philosophy in Africa for the epistemic reason of the two-way traffic that will necessarily emerge.

In the section 3 of his article, Jones argues that Eze’s historicist position which opines that philosophers should work in full awareness that their concerns, methods of defense, and ultimately their claims, all derive from a contingent past, would be totally in disagreement with the ultra-faithful position. But for Jones, the ultra-faithful should disagree about what lesson we should take home from this realization, because, for Jones, Eze’s historicist position aims at narrowing, weakening or otherwise tempering one’s claims. On the alternative for Jones, the better understanding is that the realization of our historical origin is itself a universal claim. As such, insofar as a project generates claims about the nature of human beings, then it could be thought of as philosophy. If the ultra-faithful embraces the fact that philosophy is undertaken by people who necessarily have contingent and particular backgrounds, then they will embrace as a philosophical claim to be explored and developed in the ultra-faithful tradition. While this claim may have effects on how philosophy is done, these effects, for Jones, will not include the abandonment of bold and a priori universalization about the nature of human beings.