PHENOMENOLOGY/ EXISTENTIALISM AND HERMENEUTICS SUMMARY

PHENOMENOLOGY/EXISTENTIALISM AND HERMENEUTICS EXAM WAHALA

Q. 1  Identify and discuss five important themes in ‘existentialism’, paying particular attention to their provenance, respective exponents, and philosophical relevance.

Ans: What unites the existentialists are the themes and concerns that tend to show up in their work. Here are the five important themes that recur again and again in existential philosophy, as wel as in art, literature, movies, and any other number of other fields.

·         Absurdity

·         Angst

·         Bad Fate or Fallenness

·         Subjectivity

·         Ethical Individualism

Absurdity: An important component of existentialist philosophy is the portrayal of existence as being fundamentally irrational in nature. Existentialist philosophers focused upon the subjective, irrational character of human existence.

Human beings, forced to rely upon themselves for their values rather than any fixed human nature, must make choices, decisions, and commitments in the absence of absolute and objective guides. In the end, this means that certain fundamental choices are made independent of reason — and that, existentialists argue, means that all of our choices are ultimately independent of reason.

According to atheist existentialist, Camus, the “absurdity” of human existence is the necessary result of our attempts to live a life of meaning and purpose in an indifferent, uncaring universe. There is no God, so there is no perfect and absolute vantage point from which human actions or choices can be said to be rational.

Christian existentialists don’t go quite so far because of course they don’t reject the existence of God. They do, however, accept the notion of the “absurd” and the irrationality of human life because they agree that humans are caught in a web of subjectivity from which they cannot escape. As Kierkegaard argued, in the end we must all make choices which are not based upon fixed, rational standards — choices which are just as likely to be wrong as right.

This is what Kierkegaard termed a “leap of faith” — it’s an irrational choice, but ultimately a necessary one if a person is to lead a full, authentic human existence. The absurdity of our lives is never actually overcome, but it is embraced in the hope that by making the best choices one will finally achieve a union with the infinite, absolute God.

Once we get past that the idea that we should try to “solve” the absurdity of life we are able to rebel, not against a non-existent god, but instead against our fate to die. Here, “to rebel” means to reject the idea that death must have any hold over us. Yes, we will die, but we shouldn’t allow that fact to inform or constrain all of our actions or decisions. We must be willing to live in spite of death, create meaning in spite of objective meaninglessness, and find value in spite of the tragic, even comic, absurdity of what goes on around us.

Angst: As a general principle, existentialist philosophers have emphasized the importance of psychologically critical moments where basic truths about human nature and existence come crashing down upon us, upsetting our preconceptions and shocking us into a new awareness about life. These “existential moments” of crisis then lead to more generalized feelings of dread, anxiety, or fear.

This fear or dread is usually not regarded by existentialists as being necessarily directed at any specific object — it’s just there, a consequence of the meaninglessness of human existence or the emptiness of the universe. However it is conceived, it is treated as a universal condition of human existence, underlying everything about us.

Kierkegaard used the term “dread” to describe the general apprehension and anxiety in human life. According to Kierkegaard, dread is built into us as a means for God to call us to make a commitment of a moral and spiritual way of life despite the void of meaninglessness before us.

He interpreted this void in terms of original sin, but other existentialists used different categories.

Angst is a German word which means simply anxiety or fear, but in existential philosophy it has acquired the more specific sense of having anxiety or fear as a result of the paradoxical implications of human freedom. We face an uncertain future, and we must fill our lives with our own choices. The dual problems of constant choices and the responsibility for those choices can produce angst in us.

We are taught to expect certain things about life, and for the most part we are able to go about our lives as if those expectations were valid.

At some point, however, the rationalized categories we rely upon will somehow fail us and we’ll understand that the universe just isn’t the way we assumed. This produces an existential crisis which forces us to re-evaluate everything we believed. There are no easy, universal answers to what’s going on in our lives, no magic bullets to solve our problems.

The only way things will get done and the only way we will have meaning or value is through our own choices and actions — if, that is, we are willing to make them and to take responsibility for them. This is what makes us uniquely human, what makes us stand out from the rest of existence around us.

Bad Faith and Fallenness

Jean-Paul Sartre’s conception of existentialist philosophy focused upon the radical freedom that faces every human being. In the absence of any fixed human nature or absolute, external standards, we must all become responsible for whatever choices we make. Sartre recognized, however, that such freedom was too much for people to always handle. A common response, he argued, was to use their freedom to deny the existence of freedom — a tactic he called Bad Faith (mauvaise foi).

When Sartre used the phrase “bad faith,” it was to refer to any sort of self-deception which denied the existence of human freedom. According to Sartre, bad faith occurs when someone tries to rationalize our existence or actions through religion, science, or some other belief system which imposes meaning or coherence on human existence.

Bad faith in an attempt to avoid the angst which accompanies the realization that our existence has no coherence except for what we ourselves create. Thus, bad faith comes from within us and is itself a choice — a way that a person uses their freedom in order to avoid dealing with the consequences of that freedom because of the radial responsibility that those consequences entail.

Subjectivity:

One of the vital animating principles of existentialist philosophy has always been the importance of subjectivity over objectivity. This subjectivity extends over a wide range of issues: morality, values, truth, commitment, faith, and so forth. Indeed, most of the basic themes of existentialism can’t be fully understood without appreciating the importance of subjectivity.

Kierkegaard, regarded by most as the father of existentialist philosophy, spent a great deal of time writing about subjectivity and its importance in living. This subjectivity is not, as one might assume, so much the denial of truth or an outside reality as it is the insistence that no truly objective perspective is available to a living person.

For existentialists the most important part of life is actually living it, and whatever the situation, the perspective of a living person actually involved is superior to any detached, uninterested, and impersonal perspective.

This is not to say that the only perspective possible is one which is wholly consumed by emotion and passion. When possible, some measure of rational clarity is preferable — and such clarity can be seen in the writings of existentialist philosophers. Existentialists are not irrationalists, after all, who deny that reason and rationality have any use or validity in any situation.

The problem is, the most important decisions in our lives are not those where perfect rational clarity is possible — and moreover, where neither reason nor science are always very helpful. There is the additional factor that the rigid concepts and categories which serve to define a “system” frequently fail to really describe the fullness of human reality and the decisions which face us.

As Kierkegaard wrote, “the task of the subjective thinker is to transform himself into an instrument that clearly and definitely expresses in existence whatever is essentially human.” This “essential self” is something that can only be known subjectively — there is no objective “access” to it because it only exists as part of the subjective existence of an individual human being.

Ethical Individualism:

Existentialist ethics is characterized by the emphasis on moral individualism. Rather than seeking a “highest good” that would be universal, existentialists have sought means for each individual to find the highest good for them, regardless of whether it might ever apply to anyone else at any other time.

Existentialist ethics is concerned with the development of a philosophical system and that is contrary to the most fundamental roots of existentialist philosophy. Systems are by their very nature abstract, generally failing to take into account the unique features of individual lives and individual situations.

Existentialists have always focused upon the subjective, personal lives of individual human beings. There is no basic and given “human nature” that is common to all people, argue existentialists, and so each person must define what humanity means to them and what values or purpose will dominate in their lives.

An important consequence of this is that there can’t be any single set of moral standards that will apply to all people at all times. People must make their own commitments and be responsible for their own choices in the absence of universal standards to guide them — even Christian existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard have emphasized this. If there are no objective moral standards or even any rational means for deciding upon moral standards, then there can be no ethical system that applies to all human beings at all times and in all situations.

If Christian existentialists have accepted this consequence of basic existentialist principles, atheistic existentialists have pushed it much further. Friedrich Nietzsche, even though he probably would not have accepted the existentialist label for himself, is a prime example of this. A predominant theme in his works was the idea that the absence of God and belief in absolute standards means that we are all free to reevaluate our values, leading to the possibility of a new and “life-affirming” morality that could replace the traditional and “decrepit” Christian morality which continued to dominate European society.

None of this is to say, however, that one person’s ethical choices are made independently of other people’s ethical choices and situations. Because we are all necessarily part of social groups, all choices we make — ethical or otherwise — will have an impact upon others. While it may not be the case that people should base their ethical decisions on some “highest good,” it is the case that when they make choices they are responsible not only for the consequences to them, but also the consequences to others — including, at times, others’ choices to emulate those decisions.

What this means is that even though our choices cannot be constrained by any absolute standards that apply to all people, we should take into consideration the possibility that others will act in a manner similar to us. This is similar to Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which we should only choose those actions which we would have everyone else do in exactly the same situation as us. For existentialists this isn’t an external constraint, but it is a consideration.

Q. 2 Attempt a discussion and application of the methodological assumptions of Hermeneutic to ideal life-situation

The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret a text; rather, it stresses that the meaning of a text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context.

Friedrich Schleiermacher's approach to interpretation focuses on the importance of the interpreter understanding the text as a necessary stage to interpreting it. Understanding involved repeated circular movements between the parts and the whole. Hence the idea of an interpretive or hermeneutic circle. Understanding the meaning of a text is not about decoding the author's intentions. It is about establishing real relationships between reader, text, and context. Even reading a sentence involves these repeated circular movements through a hierarchy of parts–whole relationships.

Wilhelm Dilthey used the example of understanding a sentence as an example of the circular course of hermeneutic understanding. He particularly stressed that meaning and meaningfulness were always contextual. Thus the meaning of any sentence cannot be fully interpreted unless we know the historical circumstances of its utterance. And this means that interpretation is always linked to the situation of the interpreter, because one can only construct a history from the particular set of circumstances in which one currently exists. Thus Dilthey says: "Meaningfulness fundamentally grows out of a relation of part to whole that is grounded in the nature of living experience." For Dilthey, "Meaning is not subjective; it is not projection of thought or thinking onto the object; it is a perception of a real relationship within a nexus prior to the subject-object separation in thought."

Martin Heidegger developed the concept of the hermeneutic circle to envision a whole in terms of a reality that was situated in the detailed experience of everyday existence by an individual (the parts). So understanding was developed on the basis of "fore-structures" of understanding that allow external phenomena to be interpreted in a preliminary way.

Hans-Georg Gadamer further developed this concept, leading to what is recognized as a break with previous hermeneutic traditions. While Heidegger saw the hermeneutic process as cycles of self-reference that situated our understanding in a priori prejudices, Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence. Gadamer viewed understanding as linguistically mediated, through conversations with others in which reality is explored and an agreement is reached that represents a new understanding. The centrality of conversation to the hermeneutic circle is developed by Donald Schön (1983), who characterizes design as a hermeneutic circle that is developed by means of "a conversation with the situation."

For postmodernists, the hermeneutic circle is especially problematic. Not only do they believe one can only know the world through the words one uses to describe it, but also that "whenever people try to establish a certain reading of a text or expression, they allege other readings as the ground for their reading". For postmodernists, in other words, "All meaning systems are open-ended systems of signs referring to signs referring to signs. No concept can therefore have an ultimate, unequivocal meaning".

Hermeneutics can help us understand the original intent of the Scripture, give us a proper interpretation, allow us to understand it more deeply and thus, apply it to our everyday lives.  There are idiosyncrasies to the Greek and Hebrew language just like there are today in English, Spanish, French, and the many worldwide languages.  There is also the historical context in which Scriptures were written that must be considered and may not be applicable to the 21st Century. 

Q. 3. What does the putative novelty of existentialism consist in. as a modern literary and critical theory?

Existentialism is by far one of the most influential philosophical efforts in twentieth century. It has profoundly influenced the intellectual culture of the European man. Its legacy to philosophy is that thought is not necessarily superior to action, that thinking and acting are coordinate perspectives and that philosophy should address the concrete problems of human existence. More importantly, existentialism has shown that the irrational cannot be ignored in philosophy.

One of the main innovations of existentialism in contemporary thought is the rejection of all inclusive systems. All inclusive system refers to man’s tendency towards totalization. Organized religions such as Christianity and any system of thought that arrogates a rational grasp of the totality of experiences to itself such as Platonism and Hegelianism are eloquent examples of all-inclusive systems. In his orchestrated blast upon Christendom, Kierkegaard argues that organized Christianity, by its system of dogmas and liturgy, has made it impossible for the individual human being to become a genuine Christian. For Kierkegaard, to become a genuine Christian one has to accept the absurd – that God came became a historical individual (i.e. Christ) lived among men and died in humiliation.

Another way we can grasp the novelty of existentialism is to contrast it with some of the basic tenets of traditional philosophy. The central point of difference between traditional philosophy and existentialism is concerns the issue of “essence” and “existence”. Whereas the Philosophers of the older tradition are concerned with essence, existentialists are principally interested in existence. These Philosophers of the older tradition have tried to determine the essence or substance of things with a view to distinguishing the “real” from the “unreal” so that human knowledge could be founded on a sound basis. To say that things have essences is to say that there is some substratum underlying the appearance of things.

Existentialist however reject the view that things have hidden essences. They denied that the distinction made by the traditional philosophers, between appearance and reality, can legitimately be made. As Sartre puts it “the being of an existent is exactly what it appears – what it is, it is absolutely, for it reveals itself and it is.” In other words, the appearance of a thing is partly the reality of that thing.

Traditional philosophers often make a sharp distinction between subject and object, between the knower and what is known. Such distinction, it claimed, enables the inquirer to study entities objectively and impersonally. But existentialist argue that such view of epistemic subject and object and the external world is entirely mistaken. The external world is there, real and needs no proof at all. Similarly, both the object and subject are real and are very closely related. Although objects in the world have independent “existence” (i.e they are whether we think about them or not, it would not make any sense to talk about them without the knowing subject, the being of man). In the same way, for the being of man to be conscious at all, it has to be conscious of something, an object in the world.  Hence, what is known must bear a direct relationship with the knower.

Furthermore, existentialists have criticized traditional philosophers who were preoccupied with fashioning out systems, over-all schemes for guiding social, economic and political actions. Existentialists argued that reality cannot be systematize, or neatly packaged in concepts. Kierkegaard argues that we cannot think existence, because we abrogate existence the moment we think it. He further argues that while a logical system is possible, an existential system is not possible. If we say P implies q, for example, we must assert q whenever we sate P. Hence a logical system is possible. But in issues concerning concrete existence, systematization would fail us.  Hunger, for example is the casue of eating. But hunger cannot put food into your mouth. You could be hungry and yet refuse to eat.

Finally, while traditional philosophers emphasise human reason, existentialists point to human affects. Existential analysis of the being of man shows that man is largely a sentient being with numerous outlets for cathartic expression. Existentialists therefore wonder why man is defined as a rational rather than as a sentient being. if reason plays part in philosophy, feeling also plays a role. A philosophy which emphasizes reason and shuns feeling misses the whole man. The whole man, the integrated person is a man of reason and affects.

HISTORY EXAMINATION

Q. 1. The role of environment in the formation of people.

Ans:  Environmentalism is the doctrine that explains historical changes as produced by the environment in which people are living. There are two varieties of this doctrine: the doctrine of physical or geographical environmentalism and the doctrine of social or cultural environmentalism. The former doctrine asserts that the essential features of a people's civilization are brought about by geographical factors. The physical, geological, and climatic conditions and the flora and fauna of a region determine the thoughts and the actions of its inhabitants. In the most radical formulation of their thesis, anthropogeographical authors are eager to trace back all differences between races, nations, and civilizations to the operation of man's natural environment.

The inherent misconception of this interpretation is that it looks upon geography as an active and upon human action as a passive factor. However, the geographical environment is only one of the components of the situation in which man is placed by his birth, which makes him feel uneasy and causes him to employ his reason and his bodily forces to get rid of this uneasiness as best he may. Geography (nature) provides on the one hand a provocation to act and on the other hand both means that can be utilized in acting and insurmountable limits imposed upon the human striving for betterment. It provides a stimulus but not the response. Geography sets a task, but man has to solve it. Man lives in a definite geographical environment and is forced to adjust his action to the conditions of this environment. But the way in which he adjusts himself, the methods of his social, technological, and moral adaptation, are not determined by the external physical factors. The North American continent produced neither the civilization of the Indian aborigines nor that of the Americans of European extraction.

Human action is conscious reaction to the stimulus offered by the conditions under which man lives. As some of the components of the situation in which he lives and is called upon to act vary in different parts of the globe, there are also geographical differences in civilization. The wooden shoes of the Dutch fishermen would not be useful to the mountaineers of Switzerland. Fur coats are practical in Canada but less so in Tahiti.

The doctrine of social and cultural environmentalism merely stresses the fact that there is — necessarily — continuity in human civilization. The rising generation does not create a new civilization from the grass roots. It enters into the social and cultural milieu that the preceding generations have created. The individual is born at a definite date in history into a definite situation determined by geography, history, social institutions, mores, and ideologies. He has daily to face the alteration in the structure of this traditional surrounding effected by the actions of his contemporaries. He does not simply live in the world. He lives in a circumscribed spot. He is both furthered and hampered in his acting by all that is peculiar to this spot. But he is not determined by it.

The truth contained in environmentalism is the cognition that every individual lives at a definite epoch in a definite geographical space and acts under the conditions determined by this environment. The environment determines the situation but not the response. To the same situation different modes of reacting are thinkable and feasible. Which one the actors choose depends on their individuality.

Q. 2. What is History?

Ans: History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past, particularly how it relates to humans. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.

History can also refer to the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and analyse a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect that determine them. Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present.

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends, because they do not show the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history. Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian is considered within the Western tradition to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing.

Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in university studies.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in his work the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and looked at cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine intervention. In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of the actions of human beings. Greek historians also viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.

In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study of history, and he often referred to it as his "new science". His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history, and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography" or the "father of the philosophy of history".

In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or great men, to more objective and complex analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the 20th century was a tendency to treat history more as a social science rather than as an art, which traditionally had been the case. Some of the leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included Fernand Braudel, E. H. Carr, Fritz Fischer, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bruce Trigger, Marc Bloch, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Peter Gay, Robert Fogel, Lucien Febvre and Lawrence Stone. Many of the advocates of history as a social science were or are noted for their multi-disciplinary approach. Braudel combined history with geography, Bracher history with political science, Fogel history with economics, Gay history with psychology, Trigger history with archaeology while Wehler, Bloch, Fischer, Stone, Febvre and Le Roy Ladurie have in varying and differing ways amalgamated history with sociology, geography, anthropology, and economics. More recently, the field of digital history has begun to address ways of using computer technology to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital scholarship.

In opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, John Lukacs, Donald Creighton, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Gerhard Ritter argued that the key to the historians' work was the power of the imagination, and hence contended that history should be understood as an art. French historians associated with the Annales School introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history. Intellectual historians such as Herbert Butterfield, Ernst Nolte and George Mosse have argued for the significance of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socio-economic groups. Martin Broszat, Ian Kershaw and Detlev Peukert sought to examine what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany, especially in the Nazi period.

Q. 3. The Independent Struggle

Ans: During the reign of Shongai empire in the 16th century, Islamic art and culture was widely spread throughout the whole land. But their fall in 1591 created political instability, making many states fall apart and causing the rise of war and conflicts between other empires and kingdoms. After the Napoleon war, the British tried to expand their colonial rule in Africa and began to establish trade tides with Nigeria in 1898. Before 1898, the scramble for Africa by European countries led to the partition of Africa after the Berlin conference of 1884-85. In the year 1901, Nigeria officially became a part of the huge British Empire. In May 1906, Lagos colony and the southern protectorate were joined together and had a different name, the colony and protectorate of Southern Nigeria. In the same atmosphere, Lord Fredrick Lugard in 1914 amalgamated the the Lagos colony and Southern Nigeria with Northern protectorate to form a single colony called protectorate of Nigeria. It was said that the wife of lord Lugard formed the name Nigeria from the river Niger that flowed through the country. Britain therefore governed Nigeria by the means of a system popularly known as ‘Indirect rule’. Britain claimed that the system involved not govering the people directly, but through their traditional rulers and chiefs. And this was one of the factors that fuelled nationalism among the Nigerians.

Nigerian nationalism asserts that Nigerians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Nigerians. Nigerian nationalism is a territorial nationalism, emphasizing a cultural connection of the people to the land — in particular the Niger and Benue rivers. It first emerged in the 1920s under the influence of Herbert Macaulay who is considered the founder of Nigerian nationalism. It was founded because of the belief in the necessity for the people living in the British colony of Nigeria of multiple backgrounds to unite as one people in order to be able to resist colonialism.

Herbert Macaulay became a very public figure in Nigeria, and on June 24, 1923, he founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), the first Nigerian political party. The NNDP won all the seats in the elections of 1923, 1928 and 1933. In the 1930s, Macaulay took part in organizing Nigerian nationalist militant attacks on the British colonial government in Nigeria. The Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) founded in 1933 by Professor Eyo Itawas joined in 1936 by Nnamdi Azikiwe that sought support from all Nigerians regardless of cultural background, and quickly grew to be a powerful political movement.^[11] In 1944, Macaulay and NYM leader Azikiwe agreed to form the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) (a part of Cameroon was incorporated into the British colony of Nigeria). Azikiwe increasingly became the dominant Nigerian nationalist leader, he supportedpan-Africanism and a pan-Nigerian based nationalist movement.

However Nigerian nationalism by the 1940s was already facing regional and ethnic problems to its goal of promoting a united, pan-Nigerian nationalism. Nigerian nationalism and its movements were geographically significant and important in southern Nigeria while a comparable Nigerian nationalist organization did not arrive in northern Nigeria until the 1940s. This regional division in the development and significance of Nigerian nationalism also had political implications for ethnic divide - southern Nigeria faced strong ethnic divisions between the Igbo and the Yoruba while northern Nigeria did not have strong internal divisions, this meant northern Nigeria that is demographically dominated by the Hausa was politically stronger due to its greater internal unity than that of southern Nigeria that was internally disunified. The south that was ethnically divided between the Igbo and the Yoruba, though the region most in favour of Nigerian nationalism; faced the north that was suspicious of the politics of the south, creating the North-South regional cleavage that has remained an important issue in Nigerian politics.

In the later years, the whole of Nigeria later join hands together to fight for the independence of the country. Each region was granted self-governance [Northern region- 1959, Western region- 1956 and Mid Western region- 1963 (post independence)] and then, all together gained independence on the 1st of October, 1960 when the Nigerian flag which was designed by Taiwo Akinkunmi (1960) replaced the British flag and was raised. In 1960, Nnamdi Azikiwe became the first President of Nigeria.

EPISTEMOLOGY EXAMS 2016

Q. 1. What is justification and why does it matter in epistemology? Discuss any three theories of epistemic justification, showing how relevant they might be to ideal life-situation.

ANS:

The theory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Justification, according to the tripartite theory of knowledge, is the difference between merely believing something that is true, and knowing it. To have knowledge, on this account, we must have justification, and to have justification about our beliefs is to have good reasons to think that they are true. Justification is one that is important in our evaluation of our beliefs qua beliefs, a methodic speech act wherein the epistemist offers reasons in defence of one’s propositional attitude.

However, how beliefs are justified is among the central questions of epistemology. Justification could also be done in repudiation of a given claim. In this case, the epistemologist tends to distinguish deontological and non-deontological justification.  

Deontological justification has to do with offering reasons in defence of one’s knowledge claims, purely out of a sense of epistemic duty, in other words, justificatory activity is purely perfunctory. It is represented as follows:    

i.                    S is justified in believing that p, if

ii.                  S believes that p

iii.                S is obliged not to refrain from believing that p  

Non-deontological justification claims that probabilification and deontological justification can diverge: it is possible for a belief to be deontologically justified without being properly probabilified. So for a belief to be justified, it has to instantiate the property of proper probabilification. It can be represented logically as:

i.                    S is justified in believing that p, if

ii.                  S believes that p

iii.                S believe that p in a properly probabilified manner.

However, following the tripartite account of knowledge, justification has to be methodic, well thought out, and well-articulated. To justify our claims, we have to be systematic, coherent, compelling, consistent and convincing.

Why does justification matter in epistemology?

William Alston had claimed that justification is of no importance. In his work, Concept of Epistemic Justification argues for the importance and superiority of reliabilist warrant over and above justification. Alston’s argument is that one is more likely to attain truth by believing the warranted proposition than the justified propositions; since believes that could be reached by a method that is in fact reliable is likely to be true. For him, truth conduciveness should be the standard for evaluating believes. Contrary to this view, Matthew Weiner, in his work, Why Justification Matters, argues that justification is an important epistemic property. According to him, the criteria for epistemological importance is effectiveness and knowability. This view claims that epistemological importance does not only require truth-conduciveness, as measure by effectiveness, but also dependent on experience, as measure by knowability.

Justification helps to distinguish knowledge from mere belief; as the third account in the tripartite account of knowledge, justification serves as an intermediary between doxa (opinion) and episteme (knowledge). Certainly an opinion remains an intangible claim unless it is justified. In a similar fashion, justification ensures certainty in our claims to knowledge. It is that epistemic property that qualifies any potential candidate (beliefs/claims) as knowledge.

Justification also helps to distinguish lucky guess and fact. Here, though it is properly experience dependent, justification provides us with facts to strengthen our arguments as against lucky guess. In all, justification distinguishes between reasonable and possible doubts, where reasonableness is the yardstick for justification.

Theories of Justification

Foundationalism: this is a position that all beliefs are of two kinds: basic beliefs which are self-justifying and non-basic beliefs that needs to be justified by their inferential relationship to the basic beliefs. Foundationalism, as a theory of justification posits that some believes are incorrigible and infallible, hence do not need to be justified; these beliefs are said to be self-evident or derived from intuitions. The claim that some beliefs are infallible and self-evident is fundamental to the arguments of the foundationalists.

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, is known to be one of the major proponents of this school.  They argue further that other beliefs (i.e. the non-basic beliefs), can only be justified, if and only if they are inferentially related to the self-evident ones which they call the fundamental beliefs. This way of conceiving beliefs by the foundationalists has created an architectural model in the minds of people. Drawing inspiration from the Cartesian metaphor, the foundationalists conceive beliefs as a superstructure with the basic baliiefs servingas the foundation, while non-basic beliefs represent the structure itself. The foundationnalists believe that the survival of the non-basic beliefs rest on the support supplied by the foundational beliefs. In essence, the justification of the non-basic beliefs depends on the strength of the basic believes.

Coherentism: this position, as an alternative to foundationalism, holds that a belief is justified or justifiably held, if it coheres with a set of beliefs, and by this they reject the notion of any foundational beliefs. So, knowledge and justified beliefs does not in any way rest on foundations of non-inferential justified beliefs. Beliefs rae justified, therefore, to the extent they cohere with other beliefs in a given system of beliefs. The more our belief fit into our already existing system of beliefs, the better that belief is justified, and this reduces justification to a question of relationship.

Contextualism: this position claims that whatever we know is in a context. Context here is seen in relation to certain features, such as intentions and presumptions of members of a conversational situation. However this theory does not support the objectivity of knowledge, since one context differs from another, and the presupposition of members of a conversation implies relativizing knowledge, since they accept that standard of knowledge varies from context to context.

Q. 2. Discuss the Gettier Problem, and attempt a philosophical critique of the counter-examples presented in Edmund Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”

Edmund Gettier’s problem consist in his epistemic concern regarding what conditions are individually necessary and collectively sufficient for a claim to count as epistemic one. Thus, the expression “Gettier problem” refers to a problem in modern epistemology or first order logic issuing from counter-examples to the definition of knowledge as “Justified True Belief” (JTB), dealing extensively with the concept of JTB, the scope of the concept as well as the attacks upon JTB which Gettier’s examples introduced.

In opposition to the criteria for knowledge found in the Theatetus’ tripartite account of knowledge as “Justified True Belief”, Edmund Gettier in his article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge”, offered counter examples to the three criteria proposes in the Theatetus in a bid to show that Justified true belief is not sufficient for one’s having knowledge, hence the need for the forth criteria. He painted systematic scenario whereb ywhereby beliefs were both true and justified, but for reasons unrelated to the justification. The problem Gettier saw there is: since such beliefs are not based on the right kind of justification, should we intuitively claim to have knowledge as such?

For Gettier, while justified belief in a proposition is a necessary condition for knowing, it is not sufficient. In fact, in some circumstances, even when all traditional conditions for knowledge are met, one might still fail to have knowledge. Thus, it is possible to mistake as knowledge, a true belief whose justification is based on epistemic guessor luck, rather than good evidence. Such would then constitute a defective justification of a true belief. There is therefore need for a forth condition which would render any form of gettierization impossible.

Philosophical critique of the counter examples

 As J. T. Ekong intimated in his article “A Critique of Edmund Gettier’s Account of Knowledge”, responses to Gettier’s counter-examples can be grouped into three: the first group are those who try to offer  a fourth condition for knowledge, the second group are those who attempt to strengthen the traditional JTB account of knowledge so that it becomes Gettier-resistant, and finally, the third group are those who consider the entire argument of Gettier as defective, on the ground that they rely on a false principle namely; that false proposition can justify one’s belief in another proposition. Thus, the falsity of the principle on which the counter-example depends, they said, invariably, entails the falsity of the counter-examples.