Hello and welcome to the OHP African and South Asian music series.
Please join us to let everyone think is right about the bodies of these African
and South Asian recipes and the values and education of our government.
The ones in 10 to 11 May 2021, together,
we as students begin to acquire our traditions and studied engineering your in this institutions
by investigating institutions and the way our traditions present these philosophies and beyond,
we intend to participate ameliorating deficits in representation and resources required to transform our lives.
Obsession was snatched at ethically. Hi, I'm Scarlett.
A future Afghan study student here at the University of Oxford.
And today I'm joined by my co-host, Cate, who's a fan of philosophy graduate.
And our two guests, said Honourable C. and Professor Frederick A. Jan Hamblin.
So this episode is here to introduce listeners to some of the themes of our book on the philosophy.
And also to prepare them for engagement with Oxford public philosophies second time.
So as an introduction to the discipline,
we first want to raise and ultimately dispel some common metaphor philosophical concerns about Afrikaner discourses.
And also consider some epistemic differences between the African and the European traditions.
And then diving into some approaches to particular philosophical traditions.
Professor Ochieng talks to us about Kenyan philosopher. Two Ruka.
So that's his concept of philosophic sagacity and also his broader aim of developing a truly authentic national culture,
which he saw as operating to protect Kenya from harmful foreign practises and ideas.
And to unpack this idea of authentic national culture, we then bring a report into conversation with cultural philosopher Amica Bro.
So Cabral rudely endorsed an empty essentialist, historic sized conception of culture, and he saw cultural liberation.
I'm very much in terms of cultural autonomy as opposed to the preservation of indigenous cultures.
That provides us with a really useful distinction between cultural influence and cultural domination,
which we then apply to some common discussions about tradition and also cultural development in Africa.
I'd like to thank Ziad and Professor Ochieng for joining us today, and I hope you enjoy.
So Frederick and Z, could each of you introduce yourselves, please?
All right. If I may go first. All right. So I'm a Kenyan by ancestry, born a couple of years before Kenya gained its political independence.
I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Nairobi in Kenya,
having undertaken research and written a thesis in the area of African philosophy with focus on philosophic sagacity.
Now, the main supervisor of my thesis was Professor Henry Ordera Roca,
a renowned scholar in African philosophy and considered to be the father of sage philosophy.
I was employed as a graduate assistant in the Department of Philosophy,
University of Nairobi in 1985 and rose through the ranks of a tutorial, fellow lecturer,
senior lecturer in the same institution in the year 2010, or I relocated to the southern African nation of Lesotho,
joining the Department of Philosophy there at the National University of Listento.
In 20 03, I moved over to the Caribbean island of Barbados and joined the Department of History and Philosophy at the Kenyan campus,
the University of the West Indies in 20 or nine.
I was appointed head of the department, a position I held until 2015.
I served as deputy dean planning in 2015, 2016 and 2016 2017 academic year.
Currently, the dean of the faculty, having been appointed in 2019.
Now, besides African philosophy, my other research interests include social and moral philosophy, as well as logic.
These are areas in which I have numerous publications, which consist of texts, essays, book chapters and book reviews.
I think that more or less captures who I am. Ziad, yeah, so I just want to begin by thanking us, thanking you for inviting us,
and it's a great honour to be on the same panel with professor watching.
And obviously, I don't have the illustrious pedigree that professor I think has.
So I'm a student working on modern African philosophy at Cornell University in the Department of Africana Studies.
So my main areas of interest are the history of modern African philosophy.
Specifically, I'm interested in philosophy of culture and also questions about the place of science and wonder in African cultures.
I'm also interested in the place of North African philosophy in African philosophy because I'm originally from Egypt,
so I have a personal interest in that and obviously also an ancient Egyptian
philosophy and the way it gets deployed in and we can call modern African philosophy.
Yeah, yeah. So I think that suffices as well. Thank you.
Thank you. It is a pleasure to be with you. Before I hand over to Scarlett,
I wonder if watching could you give us a short introduction into the sort of
movements of African philosophy as this trio that often comes up ethno philosophy,
professional and philosophic sagacity? And then maybe Z, I might ask you to give us a short introduction on Kabras work because in a way or Cheng,
you're partly representing or they're a Ruka, and that you are representing Kimbrough, though you're both philosophers in your own right.
Yes, all right, thank you. Right? Oh, actually, no.
In the area of African philosophy, I think Professor Henry de Rocha, who, as I said, was my main supervisor of my thesis, right?
Sometime in the 1970s, late seventies actually identified four trends or if you like four approaches to African philosophy and these were,
if not philosophy, nationalist ideological philosophy, professional philosophy and then philosophic sagacity.
In his view, he said that any discourse in African philosophy could locate in either one of those four categories.
What now? Of course, prior to that, the debate had been whether African philosophy exists or not, right?
Prior to that, I think right up to. Well, one can say right up to 1945,
the publication of Placid Tempo's book Born to Philosophy is the one which changed the whole
scenario because he came up and said that there is what you may call African philosophy.
It exists, right? So therefore, after 1945, several scholars started interrogating what temple's that said,
all right and out of that interrogation, emerge the school of if no philosophy.
All right. Well, it's Paulinho and Tunji, another professional African philosopher who in a way popularised the terminology of ethical philosophy.
Some people credit for having coined it,
but it's not really true because Kwame Nkrumah actually in the 1940s and 50s, had used that term ethical philosophy.
Right. So in essence, the philosophy of the position is that African philosophy is a lived philosophy.
It is a communal philosophy. It's a philosophy of everyone.
What a professional school does not quite agree with that right for them, for anything to pass as philosophy, whether African or oriental or western.
It must be critical. It must involve critical, independent, objective analysis.
So they do not think highly of the philosophy.
All right. And then there are those who saw philosophy from the political standpoint.
So hence the nationalist ideological philosophy.
All right. So here you have, you know, the founding fathers, political fathers of Africa, right?
Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, etc., etc.
Look it very well in that trend now.
The basic essence of that trend is that Africa.
Liberation of the African nation state will not be truly rehabilitated unless they revert back to the communal spirit of traditional Africa.
All right, word for them was the route which one would take, though of course there are differences amongst themselves.
Kwame Nkrumah in your area, there are differences, but generally that was the position.
And then there was philosophic sagacity, which is generally attributed to Adero Ruka.
His position was that you see the professional school, for instance,
seem to ignore traditional Africa because for them, the rubbish, so to speak, if not philosophy and traditional Africa.
They thought that traditional Africa was too communal stick.
It could not be philosophical, but daring.
Is transit, not even in traditional Africa.
We have these sages, right, who are capable of critical independent thinking, despite the fact that they are not schooled in the Western tradition,
despite the fact that they are not professionally trained philosophers,
but they are just as critical in the report as the professionally trained philosophers.
So those were the four approaches which Odetta identified, and according to him, all of them fall within African philosophy.
So if so, you can approach Africa in philosophy as philosophically through sage philosophy,
through nationalist ideological philosophy or through professional philosophy.
So in other words, he did not discriminate. All right. You said all those are approaches which one could approach the study of African philosophy.
So with respect to spectacle, so to to to connect it to the kind of taxonomy that Professor Cheng has just provided, stroke is sometimes subsumed,
subsumed under the category of nationalist ideological philosophy because of course he is, you know, a political figure.
So to give people a kind of brief overview of the girls life.
So Amilcar Cabral was born in 1924 and he was assassinated in 1973.
He was the leader of the liberation struggle,
which culminated in the overthrow of Portuguese colonialism and the independence and unification of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde,
which were Portuguese colonies. So Cabral was was a key figure in founding the IGC,
the party which which led the liberation struggle in 1956 and essentially led this
party until his assassination by agents associate with the Portuguese colonial state.
Sukumaran This is interesting precisely because if you look at the context of the Portuguese colonies, the Portuguese colonies.
The struggle for independence takes place fairly late,
so there is a sense in which people like Amilcar Cabral are reacting to what they think to be the limitations of earlier independence struggle.
So Cabral has this speech, for example, in the aftermath of the overthrow of the overthrowing of communism in 1965.
Cabral gives the speech what he tries to sort of analyse, OK, or what's that to this?
What led to this development? And he he seems to think that it has to do with a problem of ideological inadequacy or underdevelopment.
And obviously, Cabral never thought of himself as a professional philosopher.
So that's really important. I mean, he never calls himself a philosopher, but it doesn't follow from this that we cannot extract as a word,
you know, a clear philosophical orientation in his writing, which is sort of what I've been trying to do.
And the other thing to note is with respect to the question of communalism.
Cabral, for example, unlike Julius Nyerere, he interned in Tanzania or unlike Leopold single or coming across as well.
He he he was sort of, you don't really see him make references to communalism, so he's interesting and differing in that manner.
When Cabral, one characteristic think about his thought is that he was sort of averse to being labelled.
You know, there is definitely a clear, for example, Marxist influence on his writings.
But yet he does not really call himself a Marxist, so he's obviously influenced by Kwame Nkrumah.
And even when he criticises, you don't see.
So he sometimes indirectly criticises people like saying he never mentions them by name because he's also a diplomat or he needs.
He needs support, and he doesn't want to antagonise people unnecessarily.
And one of the things that Cabral is really interested in thinking about is what kind of cultural
elements contribute to the success of the liberation struggle and to the building of just,
you know, post-colonial society, independent post-colonial society.
So I leave it at the. Thank you.
I'd like to pass over to Scarlett, sort of raise and dispel some concerns about whether African philosophy is an oxymoron.
Or rather tell us why it is now. Hello. Thank you so much, guys, for being here.
And as Cage said, we're almost going backwards a little now.
This podcast series is supposed to be an introduction to the Philosophy Journal.
Oxford Public Philosophy. And then you issue coming out.
So lots of people listening to this podcast might necessarily not necessarily know that much about African philosophy,
and that's what we want to meet them where they are at right now.
So I am just starting my academic journey.
I'm doing a master's in African Studies at Oxford next year, and all my tutors talked about undergrad was the danger of a centralising Africa.
They slammed it down our throats.
And this is, I think, led to the potentially rather crude metal philosophical question of whether we can even talk about an Afrikaner philosophy.
I've watched lots of other podcasts and tends to be the question which is up first.
And the concern, I guess, is, you know,
are there enough similarities between the philosophical ideas that have just been spelled out in your great productions and enough
similarities between these cultural practises across the continent to meaningfully talk about distinctly African philosophy?
And obviously had this concern dispelled in quite a few different ways.
But I was wondering how you two would go about it and thought maybe we could start with Professor Young broadly,
you know, why are we generally concerned about this centralisation of Africa?
Why is that a concern that we have and how do we stop this concern leading us into questioning the existence of an African philosophy itself?
All right, thank you. Thank you. That's really broad.
OK, but I'll try my best and address it. All right.
So a quick word about essentialism right now.
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set.
Of attributes that are necessary. For the identity, in other words, it is the view that some properties of objects are essential to them, right?
So the concept of an essential property is closely related to the concept of necessity.
Seems to assert that a property is essential to an object is to say that the object necessarily holds that property.
The property is essential in a way.
Properties of an object that are not essential in this sense are said to be accidental.
No, the question of essentials in Africa has been a dominant theme in the Western anthropological circles, though not unique to those circles.
You say Africa has been portrayed as a different other, not just other, but a different other Western philosophy or European philosophy.
According to historian,
he was a historian from Democratic Republic of Congo by the name of one by de Wamba
argued that you see European philosophy essentially theorises that a difference,
right? But not a positive, either.
But Africa is seen as a different either.
It is seen as a target coloniser with target.
All right. So according to one idea, one by European philosophy.
From that point of view has been a philosophy of peripheral vision that is terminology.
And according to him, that has been the tragedy.
It has been most unfortunate. No. In response to that, right?
Some Africans and African scholars also have ended up essentially using Africa.
All right. Ironically, right, they've ended up socialising Africa.
We ended up portraying Africa as having some essential attribute that are unique to it and punctuates it from Europe.
This was basically a position that was advanced by the ethnological, if not philosophical, approach to African philosophy.
All right. The professional school that is the professional trend in African philosophy was actually opposed to ethno philosophical standpoint.
The professional school is basically against Assange, essentially saying Africa.
They do not want to draw a deep and clear line of divide between European philosophy and African philosophy.
The difference between the two philosophies, according to them, is accidental is not essential.
So essential ization of Africa has in a way led to the view or given the impression
that Africa is unitary in terms of its cultural and political practises.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Some would say Africa is actually a land of diversity.
In fact, in some quarters, Africa is arguably regarded as the most diverse continent in the world,
not just in terms of topography, but also linguistically, culturally and even politically.
So, and in fact, even recent studies also have it that the African continent has the highest level of genetic diversity in the world right now.
However, despite the diversity, there is something I think which runs through Africa, at least in traditional Africa.
This, in my view, is often argued, is the communal spirit or reflection most practises in traditional Africa.
Cultural, political, economic could be explained in terms of the communal spirit.
They are a reflection, one would say, of the communal spirit.
This is, for instance, what is called Oborne two in southern Africa or two in Kiswahili in central East Africa.
John Beattie condenses the communal spirit very admirably well in a catch phrase.
He says the underpinning of it is I am because we are unseen since we are.
Therefore, I am saying now that it is the we which gives meaning to the I.
All right.
So some scholars have decried the fact that the communal spirit rampant in traditional Africa seemed to have given very little consideration.
Given very little consideration in modern Africa, you know, that modern Africa has embraced,
you know, the individualistic spirit I've experienced of the criminalistics spirit.
So when you read professor of African philosophers like quasi well-to-do and Polycarp Equiano, that is the position they take.
No, despite what I'm saying about colonialism in traditional Africa, I never wish to be seen as essentially in Africa.
But the communal spirit isn't that the communal spirit is essential and a unique characteristic to Africa and Africa alone.
No. In fact, there are some good pieces writings which made efforts to ensure that some African practises,
even in traditional Africa, were not communistic, right?
So, for example, that explains the true faces, so to speak of the faults in, for instance, Kwame Nkrumah or Julius Nyerere, right?
At some point, they realise that no communalism is not a unique characteristic of Africa.
In fact, there is also another call I think the name is Henry.
Maria actually argues the same, but no, no actually flushes of individualism, even in traditional Africa.
So I always try to move away. Despite the fact that I emphasise on the communal spirit in Africa, I never want to see it as uniquely Africa.
That traditional Africa is all and all.
There are places or individuals. I'll stop there for Ziad to add or subtract.
Thank you so much. Yeah. Do you have any additions to that?
Would you say that this kind of communal spirit is allows us to talk about an kind philosophy?
Is that something which, you know, runs across all these different philosophical traditions?
Yes. Thank you so much. So to follow up on what Professor Cheng was saying, so I think, yeah,
the point I'll reiterate is I think he drew a very important distinction between the
question of the existence of an African philosophy and the question of uniqueness,
because I think that's really important.
And you see people who who really emphasise this, like the Ghanaian philosopher who was close to Nkrumah William Abraham.
Who who writes, I think, you know this this sort of also captures what a professor was saying.
You know, the question of the existence of an African philosophy is there's not a uniqueness question because
you could think even if one takes communalism to be predominant element in African philosophy,
we could also think of examples in other parts of the world, or communalism is very significant.
So you could think of, you know, maybe. And I don't know. I don't know about this context.
But just to give an example in sort of Thailand or any any other place, right?
That could be that. Again, communalism is significant there.
And the question I'm interested in is,
how do we because professor watching me the really important point about how do we identify this as a significant trend while also understanding
that we don't we don't mean to essentially and I think one way to do this is to look at the conditions which know the kind of historical,
social, political and economic conditions. Would you give rise to communalism as a kind of intellectual orientation and to see how what sort of
changes in these conditions lead to changes in the philosophical orientations of different peoples?
Because obviously, if we look at Professor Cheng was just talking about the diversity of the African continent,
we could also note, you know, the the the kind of diversity at the level of history.
Even so, according to to to some economic and social historians, if you look at.
The sort of big West African empires in the mediaeval period, so Mali and so on.
There were processes there and this is something that Gabriel hadn't. Hence, you know,
the kind of village community was subjected to tremendous pressure because there
was this sort of tributary state power that was imposing certain pressures on it,
which led to a process of change and transformation. So I think we have to also look at different social dynamics that would be a way,
I think that allows us to identify certain properties while also keeping in mind the history and the fact that there are these social processes.
And to return to very quickly about Scarlett's point, about, OK, so why are we worrying about the question of the sense essentialism?
Because I think if you look at that from a political standpoint,
and this was the clear motivation as well and the kind of the critique of the professor in the school of ethno philosophers,
especially in parliament, on this critical, he had political bodies, he said.
Look, if you see, having this sort of views is necessary, for example, to be an African philosopher,
then you can see how this could be used to sort of pressure different people to prevent them from expressing their views and so on.
I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you so much, both of you.
That was, um yeah, I think,
a really nice introduction to some of the problems and really grounded in the kind of things you want to be speaking about.
Yeah. So obviously we started off there talking a little bit about how essentialism has been utilised against against the continent.
And a rather interesting parallel that I saw in NZ paper on the Lotus is the question of another question of kind of isolationism.
So on the one hand, we have essentialism. We have this kind of tool saying Africans are all the same.
And the other hand, you have this seemingly contradictory at all,
saying African nations are all very different and all have a distinctive national culture.
And so therefore can't meaningfully support each other. And this has been another tool kind of supported by by the West against Africa and NZ paper.
See you talk about this understanding of nationalism as internationalism,
so to be to belong to a particular African nation is to stand is to stand in solidarity with the oppressed peoples.
And I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about this and maybe speculate on how it is that the the West is so well managed
to use these two very contradictory perspectives so well to kind of fight down the political insurgence and stuff in African states.
Yes. Very briefly, I actually think that the question of difference is related to the question of othering of the African continent,
because think of the way, for example, the discourse of tribalism was used.
So the discourse of tribalism was used precisely to to sort of posit these divisions make it seem as if, you know,
creating a sort of independent state would be difficult, would lead to a civil war and so on,
but also that the different states would not support each other.
But I mean, really, if this is sort of a critique that was developed by a lot of people, but specifically by asking the Fiji.
Who, who who wrote about the ideology of tribalism in a critical week critiquing Western anthropological thinking along these lines.
Because many of many of the traits that Western anthropologists have been using to refer to specific tribes,
for instance, could also, you know, we could describe them in terms of the nation, right?
So nobody talks about Belgium, for example, having different tribes, they talk,
you know, I kind of that is a kind of French speaking national population.
If we're thinking of language as a sort of the designated and then there is the Flemish or the Dutch speaking element,
but nobody will talk about sort of, you know, tribalism in Belgium.
So there is a sense in which this othering of the African continent has led to the utilisation of this discourse,
where instead of talking about nations, people talk about tribes.
And if you talk about nations, then a lot of these problems,
they don't seem so intractable because almost every state in the world is a multinational state.
I mean, that's just what it is to build a modern state. This is to build a multinational state.
Yes. So with respect to notice, very, very briefly, I mean, what I found, and obviously I have to see that, you know,
I'm only speaking about very specific intellectuals who contributed to Lotus who were contributing in
this moment of the development of Afro-Asian ism in the aftermath of the Bandung Conference in 1955.
So I don't want to, you know, generalise it. But you are people African intellectuals like Joseph Kaiser, Alex Oligomer.
People who are really interested in thinking, OK, this is all nationalism, a form of chauvinism,
because that's the question I was interested in and I found in the thought of those people that they were thinking of nationalism,
not in terms of, you know, a kind of chauvinist blood and soil discourse, but really as to be a kind of nationalist in this context.
And this particular historical moment is to participate in a kind of progressive political project.
That's that's the that's really the kind of necessary condition on some of them thought it was sufficient,
even if it didn't really matter if you were born somewhere else and move to that state.
So, so I'll stop there because I don't want to speak for too long. But that's an excellent question.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you very much.
Yes, so I think we're going to move on a little bit now to another kind of matter philosophical question,
which got touched on a little bit earlier by by professor.
Kind of. So a common kind of layman criticism of much Western philosophy is that it's
very divorced from reality and not very applicable at the practical level.
And obviously, as Professor Jiang said earlier, it's often been African.
African philosophy has often been conceived of something which is much more interested in practise kind of embedded in practise.
And this criticism, I was reading broadly across some of professor publications,
and it reminds me of some discussions about different conceptions of reason and in Singapore.
And so the claim is that in the pursuit of knowledge,
the European tradition kind of alienates itself from the object of knowledge and treats it as another.
And so the subject theory, the European is then free to kind of conquer the object and use the object of knowledge to its own interests.
And conversely, says single, in the African tradition, reason is most emphatic.
It's not antagonistic. The goal is to, he says, to intermingle with the object, with the hope that it kind of discloses its being.
And I was just wondering if you think this is a useful way of conceptualising some of the problems with
Western philosophical methodology and highlighting the benefits of a more practical approach to philosophy?
And you know, whether you think that we should be speaking about African philosophy as this more practical approach?
Yes. So that brings us to the question of the nature or philosophy.
What philosophy is? Well, of course you see, we are often told and I am also guilty of that.
I used to tell my first year students, you know, that philosophy is a discipline where human reason is at its highest RFI.
You know where you you are critical of everything.
You don't take anything for granted. You don't assume you ask questions, right?
When you see something, you ask questions, keep asking questions.
You're supposed to be critical. In other words, it's worth thinking of is at its highest.
And perhaps that's why they call this highest degree a degree in philosophy,
partly because they believe that you know you've identified a problem in whichever area it is,
whether it's medicine, law, whatever you've identified, a problem you've undertaken research or throw it at and arrive at a conclusion at a thesis.
So they give you a degree in philosophy. Ph.D.
Right. So in other words, the emphasis is on thinking, you know.
And I've often argued that because of that emphasis, you know, I think philosophers, at least some seem to have lost their way.
They tend to think for the sake of thinking.
So in other words, they are more focussed on this criticality, you know, thinking critically being logical, right?
So that you see your conclusion should follow from the premises you give premises which lead to the conclusion.
In other words, in philosophy, emphasis for some of us seem to be on the validity of your reasoning of your argument rather than the sound miss.
Right? So in other words, the concern is not that whether the conclusion is actually true, all right,
but that concerned with the hypothetical truth that if the premises are true, if not that they are true, if they are true, then they would lead.
The conclusion would also be true. So the emphasis is on validity, rather on soundness.
And you see, that's why I've often said, I don't know if any of you have encountered it.
Usually at times when I introduce myself and say I teach philosophy, no look at me and say,
Well, you are different, you don't because they see philosophers as troublemakers, right?
You can't say anything. When you say anything, you start questioning, you start asking you and you see, that's how some of us operate.
You know, whenever somebody says anything, you ask. So they see you as a troublemaker, you know, and people who live in an ivory tower,
you know, people who are very theoretical, not concerned with the practical,
pragmatic aspect of things, which is really unfortunate because in truth,
as Odetta emphasises in this book, In truth, philosophy should be about life.
Good living, not just you shouldn't just leave it up to a theoretical level.
And you see, that's why in a sense, therefore, given his the notion of philosophic sagacity,
you know, he's he's emphasising more on the practicality of reasoning, the wisdom part of it.
You don't just a reason for the sake of reasoning, but it should be focussed towards some kind of utility.
And you see, essentially that's what even single. Phase one is making that distinction.
But you see. In Western philosophy, the thinking is, you know, you distinguish yourself, you separate yourself the subject from the object, right?
And then you put it at a distance and dissect it, cutting it whatnot as a way of understanding it.
All right. There's a distance as opposed to the African worldview.
Well, the subject is part and parcel of the object.
The subject does not tie himself away from the object. So the subject actually gets to understand the object, not by dissecting it,
not by putting a distance between him or her and the object and dissecting it as a wolf, understanding it.
But since you are part and parcel of everything, you get to know it through feeling it, through touching it.
You know, that's how cognition takes place, because that distinction is not.
So there's some element of practical utility to it, but as opposed to those of us who,
you know, theorise too much and operate at a real fight level, which is very unfortunate.
And you see, that's generally what the lay person thinks of a philosopher.
That's when you stop any at all. That person is a philosopher.
They see you as somebody different is the thinking is is a bit different from the way other people think.
All right. I'll talk about that. Can add.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, in terms of this distinction of the practical and the theoretical.
Yes, I mean, I think there is also the the specific historical context because if you look at,
you know, and professor watching knows much more about this than I do,
but I'll just mention if you look at sort of the historical context of the emergence of
if you want to call it modern professional academic philosophy on the African continent,
it's obviously taking place in the context of either the post-independence struggles, you know,
a kind of development, development programmes and debates about the best path to development and all of that.
So there was also a demand on not just philosophers, but on intellectuals in general to show to people,
OK, this is why this is relevant, which which which isn't, which isn't something that we can describe.
But I think there's good and bad independent of context,
because obviously under some circumstances it could be used to to to stifle certain lines of thinking.
The other thing is, I mean, I think it's interesting that when we do this comparative analysis of Western and African philosophy,
I think it's important that we don't also um, that we also question the self-image of Western philosophy as well, right?
We don't take it as something free given that's already there because obviously you had this,
you have historical processes that explain canon formation.
So you also have, you know, tremendous diversity right in Western philosophy.
So think of like and I'm going to do very crude things,
but but just to to to illustrate the point or think of historical versus historical philosophers or like Cargill versus Spinoza,
for example, struggles over what counts as knowledge and early modern England.
So I had like the experimental philosopher to sort of boil an opposition to Hobbes,
who who sort of demonstrative knowledge as sort of the paradigmatic knowledge geometry was his model.
And then you also have like, you know, enlightenment philosophers and then counter enlightenment philosophers.
You have you have also like philosophical romantics, right,
who who also took issue with this idea that we should sort of dissect the world and assume that there is this sort
of schism between subject and object and that we have to manipulate nature in a certain way to understand it.
Mm hmm. So there is this tremendous diversity,
and I think this is why it's also important to to give room to diversity in African philosophy because, you know, maybe.
Some, some some some African philosophers only want to do philosophy of logic,
and already Professor Jiang mentioned that he works on philosophy of logic as well.
So I think we should definitely, you know, allow room for people with different interests,
people who don't necessarily want to or to think that they don't have anything to contribute to ethical discourse.
For example, I think that's fine. You know, not everybody has this proclivity or or the ability to to intervene in practical debates.
And I'll stop there. Thank you. I want to add something to that, right?
OK. We just want to throw some caution right in that.
From what I said,
it should not be interpreted to mean that I'm saying that Western philosophy is all critical and does not concern itself with the practical,
whereas African philosophy is concerned with the practical. No, not as subtle.
Well, even in the west, in western philosophy, there are various theories of knowledge, right?
So for instance, there's a broad category between analytics called analytics call of Philosophy.
Well, to emphasise a lot on this thinking, but also within still western philosophy, you have those who fall in love with hermeneutics existentialism.
Those are very pragmatic and practical, so to speak.
Just as much as also, I think in Africa, you'll find some persons who are very theoretical and verified in their thinking.
So it's not a question of one. Is this one?
Is that not simply a question of emphasis? I just wanted to question that.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, both of you. It's a really brilliant and pretty in-depth introduction to some of the ideas.
So I think we're going to move over to case first section sectional,
which is going a little bit more in-depth into some of the ideas which you guys have brought up over.
Thank you, Scarlett. Now we're going to take a closer look at each of your scholarly work, beginning with Henry Odoro,
a ruckus idea of philosophical sagacity which watching you mentioned earlier.
So please, could you start us off by outlining a Rukus concept of sagacity?
And what does it mean to be a philosophical sage? Right?
Thank you. Thank you, dear. Oh no. You see, odorous concern was that some philosophers, right?
Seem to be very theoretical in their thinking, and that's why he came up with this concept of.
Philosophic sagacity or sage philosophy, as some people would put it, right, because within that trend of philosophic sagacity,
the position is that philosophy does not start and end in modern Africa, traditional Africa.
Also, there are thinkers in traditional Africa, but those thinkers are not professionally trained philosophers.
They are not like their oracle. They're not like quasi they. They're a lot like Colin Ontology.
They're not like, you know, the trained philosophers. No, but they are nevertheless critical independent thinkers or most precisely, the sages.
And of course, initially, or Deira or Ruka defined sage as a person.
Could be man or woman. Not limited to one.
The way some people think.
It's either man or woman who is grounded in the wisdoms and customs of his or her people, and therefore he or she acts as a mirror of first society.
That if you want to know any aspect of the customs or cultures of the people, then this age would be able to tell you that this is how it is.
All right. OK, so that's the sage or more accurately, a fork sage sage.
That's the fork sage. All right. But there are other sages who besides being grounded in the wisdom.
Of the community, they are nevertheless critical independent thinkers.
They go beyond sagacity, in other words, they have this capability of interrogating and discussing issues pertaining to their customers.
And in some cases, the philosophic sages actually reject some aspects of their customers, especially those which do not satisfy the rational scrutiny.
So, in other words, being a sage? Does not make you philosophical and being philosophical does not make your seat.
But the ideal is to combine the two.
Now his concern as well was that you see, Oh, of course,
I have written a paper several papers trying to explain the rationale or the aims of sagacity, and I've often categorised them as three.
Right? I usually call it the epistemic. There's the epistemic aim, the academic aid and the cultural literalist.
But I'm more interested now in the epistemic aim.
You see, the problem is that in Africa now, though, I think I'll have an opportunity to say a lot more in some minutes to come later on.
You know, most persons in Africa today do not know much about their customs and cultures because they've actually adopted the foreign cultures,
so they are more grounded in foreign cultures rather than their own culture.
And you see, there is worry in a way was that no,
these aspects need to be documented and put down on paper so that they could be discussed even at the academic level.
All right. So that was one of the aims or data Oracle had in mind.
Besides, the culture is one which was supposed to bring this national culture so.
So that in a nutshell, was auditors concerned with sage philosophy.
OK. Thank you for that. A summary of what it is to be a sage,
and I think we should zoom in on what we say you're most interested in at the moment, which is that epistemic aim.
So it sounds as though a took in this case, various Kenyan beliefs and practises to be a world view or to have a worldview underpinning them.
And he saw sages almost as taps as individuals who could give him access to this worldview through dialogue.
So firstly, is that right? And secondly, what is it for a philosophy to underpin a worldview or a set of practises?
OK, all right, thank you, thank you for that. OK, you see.
So for instance, Kenya. Kenya is, as I said, actually earlier, you know, Africa is a land of diversity.
So for instance, in Kenya, there are 44 plus ethnic groups and different ethnic groups, or some would call them tribes.
But I never like using the word tribes and surprising ethnic groups.
So they are about 44 plus ethnic groups. Some books have put it on 40, some 42, some 44, some 45 or to six bodies over 40.
And their customs and cultures are in no way quite distinct in a way.
There are some distinctions here and there that you see, for instance,
or there belong to the ethnic group, just the same ethnic group that I come from.
Right? So you find that if I want to know something about another ethnic group, for instance, the Kikuyu, for instance,
or the Kalimah or even the Maasai, you see, I would have to go to someone who knows it and this someone would be the sage in that community.
He's the one who would be able to explain to me what their customs, their culture is.
But if the sage is philosophical as well, right, he would be able not just to tell me what the customs are, but the reasons underlying the customs.
That is why the customs are the way they are and not otherwise.
I philosophic sage would be able to rationalise over that give you the reason why it is that right?
So for instance, you see amongst, for instance, the ethnic community, which I come from, right?
You'll find that we usually remove the six lower teeth, the six lower teeth, the cut,
the call, the incisors, six of them as a rite of passage from initiation into adulthood.
All right. OK. It's more or less like circumcision us.
Right? You get the last six teeth removed.
Of course, the custom is dying. No. Right? But 50, 100 years back, it was in pain.
OK, so that's the custom. But you see, a sage will tell you all that, but a philosophic sage will give you the reason why.
The laws do that right. Most people don't know because, no, you know, interestingly, with customs, when something becomes customary,
so to speak, people just do it, do it, but they forget the reason behind it.
But the sages, the philosophic sages, would know.
So for instance, the reason why laws did that was that I think about one hundred and fifty years ago,
about a century and a half ago amongst the law there was this disease, lockjaw disease, Lockjaw, where you just look cannot open.
And of course, so many people were dying because of that cause.
You can't be fed. Not is when they say that, oh, what we can do is remove this exploitive and then serve the person porridge.
And they survived. And with time, they said, All right, no.
It became a custom that, OK, there's initiation into adulthood.
You remove the 16th so that in case this disease comes again, then we are safe.
So you see said you'd tell you all that philosophically, but you see the ordinary loser would not know that.
So the sages would actually go beyond the practise and try to give you the reason
why it is the way it is and hence the need and importance of philosophic sages,
so to speak. And of course, as also the other aim of philosophic sagacity, especially, well, there was 1976 project, right?
The aim was to come up with a national culture, Kenyan national culture to unify the Kenyans.
So the idea was that we would undertake researchers in all the communities and then get
the philosophic sages sit down and try to harmonise those aspects which are in conflict.
And based on that, harmonisation and national culture would be constructed.
Of course, we are still very far away from that.
All right. I'll talk there. Maybe there are questions. I have an interesting question.
If? So to sort of reflect back, you've given us this example of the practise of removing the insides of the lower incisors.
And I think you mentioned a Ruka in the first project and the second project, he he interviewed sages and philosophical sages.
And so you've given us a definition of what it is for a philosophy to underlie a practise, which is to contain the reasons for that practise.
So. The interviews he conducted were.
A way of accessing the reasons for a particular practise.
One thing I think is interesting about this also in relation to sort of modernity.
Is is the emphasis that it places on critical thought and critical thought as
a as a practise of evaluating and keeping alive the reasons for traditions.
You mentioned the 1976 project. So I think we'll move on to another question about that.
And so I have a quotation here from one of your papers,
but you say a Ruka intended his project of interviewing philosophical sages to remedy philosophical naivete,
which he saw as a major threat and danger to the development of authentic national culture in modern Kenya.
So could we please unpack together this quotation?
And I think a starting point would be. What does he mean by philosophical naivete?
Because superficially, it could refer to a sort of a state of Africa or a belief about African philosophy.
All right, thank you. Thank you for that. No philosophical naivete.
Yes. Right now, you see philosophy is sometimes taken as the heritage of Greeks, right?
And thus, some of us treat it as a typical European activity.
All right. So the so-called what I refer to as the Western discourse on Africa not only give birth to that attitude.
But it has continued to perpetuate that belief, despite African responses.
To the contrary,
the Western discourse on Africa has outlined it in my text trends and issues in Africa and Philosophy and Masondo also it is, I think,
African philosophy in search of identity, you know, portrays, you know,
that Western discourse in Africa portrays Africa as a continent innocent of philosophical thought.
And because of that attitude, that philosophy in the proper sense is European that is autochthonous to Europe and alien to Africa.
A good number of people who have hard to say or write anything about or own African philosophy have done so with remarkable naivete,
but with a lot of innocence and ignorance.
Salt within philosophical circles, those who embraced the western discourse of Africa were, according to their Aurukun, misguided.
They were misguided. They exhibited naivety by denying philosophical mode of thought to Africans.
That is what he refers to as philosophical naivety that is thinking about philosophy.
The philosophical world of thought is a reserve of Europe not to be found in Africa.
So the question then becomes how is it a threat to the development of national culture?
In Kenya, that would be question or other nation states in Africa right now.
Culture Otero Ruka argued culture has two sides to it.
Two facets a theoretical and practical right.
The practical. Is the visible aspect of culture.
It includes music, things like music, dance, fashion, you know, and various other visible aspects of culture.
The theoretical the theoretical consists of the reasons that justify the various practical aspects of culture,
and the two theoretical and practical are inseparable.
Well, data and rightfully argue in some sense, one can say that the theoretical is the pedestal upon which the practical is conquered.
Or stated slightly differently. The theoretical is the metaphysical anchor of the practical,
philosophical naivete separates the theoretical and practical aspects of culture with respect to Africa in that it denies Africa the theoretical.
One could say, oh, say, therefore,
that the persons who operate within the confines of philosophical naivete sees African culture and its philosophy as a lived experience,
not a myriad of concepts to be pictured and rationalised by the mind.
Such a person sees the loss of in Africa as an inseparable part of the concrete of
culture of Africans feel and leave it and not an entity to be isolated and discussed.
So as a detailed mental activity and exercise philosophy has, according to this position, no place in African culture.
And therein lies the danger. Right?
A culture without a clear philosophy is actually incomplete and vulnerable to every foreign Islam or value, no matter how disgusting they may be.
All right. And according to Ruka, that was one of the biggest threat to the various African cultures.
And he believed that one sure way to avoid the invasion of foreign invasion by foreign ideas is for a
nation to develop and articulate the philosophy of its culture so that when these foreign isms come in,
they have to contend with a theoretical aspect of.
The culture, but in the absence of that theoretical, when these things come, they find a vacuum and they just fit in very easily.
So philosophical naivete, you know, their view was dangerous to African cultures in that sense.
Thank you. So to reiterate then,
philosophical naivete is a mistaken belief that African philosophy does not exist or that traditional cultures do not have a philosophy,
and Erika wants to defend against people believing that. So is it fair to say that he's is he perhaps most concerned with philosophical naivete as a
reflexive belief that Africans would have about their own supposed lack of a theoretical basis?
Yeah, there's there's that, too. There's that too, because you see this Western discourse on Africa was what it was and still is quite
true to an extent that even Africans from Africans have actually assimilated it.
Believe in it. So. And that even is now doubly dangerous to African customs and cultures.
So to finish unpacking this quotation, now that we know what philosophical naivete is,
I'd like to turn to how he saw it as a threat and how he hoped to combat it.
So there's this phrase. What he thinks is threatened is the development of authentic national culture in modern Kenya.
It seems clear to me why America thought he had and left and authentically Kenyan
philosophy because he had been interviewing Kenyan sages about their own practises.
So there's the authenticity is clear. But the word authentic sort of might suggest essentialism and to return to a
theme we flagged up earlier as the occupation with the danger of essentialism.
So I'd like to sort of dispel that here.
So how would you respond to someone who reads this and dismisses it or leave as an essentialist this let me come in first before the articles.
Yeah, oh well, it is when you read or closely that the idea of this concept being essentialist, you know,
is relegated me to backstage because really, all that he's saying is that you see these customs, these practises have a philosophical basis.
So what he wants to do is have these on Earth, you know, brought out in the fall because a good number of them are just implicit or underground.
So the idea is to ask them have been explicated.
What have the sages? Of course, some of them would be in conflict.
Right? Of course, there are 44 ethnic groups. Some of them would be in conflict.
But after they've been on Earth, the sages,
the sages from the various communities would sit down to harmonise those aspects, which are in conflict, right?
But then, even as they do that, the idea is not.
And this is very important.
Well, there is no saying that there is no space for foreign values or foreign customs is not saying that is simply saying that, OK,
let's have the Africans, these Africa aspects of it and anything we've come from outside, we add to it or is consistent with, then that's fine.
His concern was that you see, there are some aspects with foreign aspects we just come in which are distasteful,
but we find space because the theoretical aspect is missing.
So I think he gave examples such as basically within medicine, for instance, he says, you know, there are so many things like,
well, OK, but technological morality that he gives you see this idea of sagging pants, you know, the pants sagging.
You see that the young ones, you know, like, especially the men, young teenagers,
they walk around with their pants sagging very low with, you know, you can see their underwear as you know, wearers and whatnot.
And you see it's no very fashionable even in Africa, amongst the other ones.
But you see well, there, I see what's the benefit of something like this, you see?
But you see it is finding space and very popular because there's the theoretical
aspect is not well established because if the theoretical are well established,
then it would check such undesirable elements, but desirable ones, which would add would come in.
So in other words, he's not socialising, so to speak.
It's only that. And he again, maybe I'll go back to Nkrumah.
You see, when you read Nkrumah in his conscience ism,
I think one of the chapters he says that you see Africa Modern Africa has three segments Europe, Christian, Traditional Africa and Islamic.
All right. And those three are competing. I call them competing ideologies in modern Africa,
and it's making life very difficult in Africa because those three ideologies are complete competing.
Each wants to be the dominant one right is Islamic, one which wants to dominate.
But then there's the Europe Christian, one also, which wants to be the dominant one.
Then there's the traditional African one, which is also wants to be dominant.
So Nkrumah argued that no, the ideal is to get the best or the good from all these three.
It doesn't matter. All right. Get the good from all the three.
Harmonise them. But of course, he also emphasised that the pedestal should be African traditions.
In other words, the African personality. So as he puts it, but he does not say that you discard everything.
You grow Christian. So this is that's the way in which order is seeing sage philosophy as a vehicle to national deconstructing national culture.
If that makes sense. It certainly does.
I think you're right about this at the end of your article that we're in the notes that he envisage this discursive
process would suggest from different ethnic groups would rationally discuss their philosophies and try to harmonise them.
And I suppose you could extrapolate from that and say that in this fear of politics or education,
having an articulated philosophy and knowing the reasons for that traditional practises would make it possible
to have debates and to evaluate them and cultivate a society that meets the needs of the people living in it.
Whereas if you don't have that, you don't have the words to to discuss. Dad, did you have something to add?
Yeah, yeah, it's so, so so yeah, I think there is an overlap again with too connected to sort of the the overlaps between,
for example, Luca's understanding of culture that become adults understanding of culture.
Again, I mean, so so the thing that Gabriel is concerned with is being able to assess the relative utility or this utility of foreign foreign ideas,
foreign institutions and so on. So. So again, it's not really a question of rejecting something that's foreign, but understanding that,
you know, the mere fact that it's associated with, you know, a kind of prestigious power centre.
So if it comes from like the former metropolis or you're like an informal French colonised from Paris or something or,
you know, you're in greater Nairobi than it's London or something,
that this idea that just because it comes from a certain place that's associated with prestige because
of of these historical relations of colonialism that we have to be able to sort of discriminate.
And so to that extent, I think the two approaches are not essential.
It's also a reaction, I think, to the manner in which, especially after independence of some of the elite ruling groups took on this foreign.
So almost all these foreign elements without critical assessment and sort of
propagated them as cultural elements that should be just assimilated by by everybody.
And so in a sense, it's really a kind of the basic demand of philosophy, right, articulated in a specific historical context,
which is OK, we have to be able to give justifications for our acceptance or rejection of some elements.
We cannot simply accept it or reject it, you know, just because everybody is doing it or something like that.
So to that extent, it's really, you know,
the expression of what people would think of as just like the regular classical philosophic spirit in a specific historical context.
Yes, if I may add something right to what they are said, I agree with what the others say 100 percent, that's true.
And I also want to bring to our attention that you seem.
In Africa, the colonialists, you know, especially the British, used to divide and rule policy quite well during the colonial times.
So for instance, in Africa, Kenya, for instance, you know, they played those ethnic groups against each other.
Those 44 ethnic groups, the Britons played them against each other, played the key coups against the laws and laws against the lawyers,
the lawyers against the Mercedes, so as to perpetuate their rule, so to speak, right?
So their policy of divide and rule worked very, very well.
And it is still reflected even up to today.
Kenya is over as hard as political independence for over 50 years.
It was in 1963. But that ethnicity, you know, tribalism is still there.
And because of that, what the Britain did during the colonial rule that you find that in Kenya,
for instance, with the introduction of multiparty, which is something nice.
All right. OK. It served democracy very well.
But you find the introduction of multiparty in Kenya, for instance, because there are several parties, but those parties are ethnic based.
You find that the this particular ethnic group has their party.
This other one has theirs so that you see, when it comes to elections, you realise in Kenya, for instance,
elections are usually a very difficult period because that's when the tension, you know,
these parties, you know, you know, they fight, you know, they kill each other or whatnot.
And even after elections, they never accept the results.
They fight and whatnot because of that ethnicity, you know, which was instilled during the colonial days.
And you see, that was one thing which really troubles Odetta.
Ruka know that each time Kenya gets round elections, there would always be tension amongst the because there's nothing unifying Kenyans.
And you see even the way the boundaries in Africans in Africa was made left a lot to be desired.
So for instance, in Kenya, I come I belong to the ethnic group, but you find that the laws are in Kenya.
Some are in Uganda, somewhere in Tanzania. Some are found in Sudan, even if you appear OK.
But you see, so in Kenya, you find that the law in Kenya feels closer to the law in Uganda than to a Kikuyu who is a Kenyan like him.
All right. Or actually in Uganda feels closer to a law in Kenya than to buy your window in Uganda.
So the aim of philosophic the sagacity was to unify bring some kind of unity within African nations states.
Well, this is a perfect Segway, I think, into now focus, turning to focus on Cobra and there on your work on him because as you mentioned earlier,
Cobra like Haruka and probably like most philosophers, if we're honest,
developed theoretical ideas in response to a concrete situation and one strand that relates very closely to what we've been looking at,
a Rucker's work is his conception of authenticity and his theory of culture.
So said, could you please speak for a few minutes about first of all, what is this discourse of culture and modernism that you reference from Taiwo?
And then why do you think Cabral is a cultural modernist, right?
Thank you so much. So in terms of the kind of framing philosophical structures.
So if we take the philosophical discourse of modernity and hit them following
all of Amitai was accounting his how colonialism came to modernity in Africa,
which I think was published in 2010. So, so Taiwo identifies three elements of the philosophical discourse of modernity.
And my argument in the in the in the paper, which was published on capitalist philosophy of culture,
was precisely that we find those three principles instantiated and Cameron's thinking.
So the three principles, very. Very succinctly, also the principle of subjectivity,
so so there is this idea that what distinguishes modernity as a historical epoch and as a philosophical
discourse is the archaeological importance assigned to an individual's ability to choose to do with it,
to choose what to do with their lives.
So this idea of self-determination, some people, you know, if that sort of cantons, they speak about it in terms of self legislation.
And I argue, if you look at comparable sort of directives in the context of the party,
he thinks of the party's role as basically helping people set up structures that would enable them to govern themselves.
And the second element is that they will call it the central city of reason.
So by that, I mean that for the subject of modernity, any given, you know, a set of institutions,
webs of beliefs or practises can be regarded as legitimate only if and only one can produce reasons good reasons then justify its existence.
So think about it this way. The fact that an institutional belief has always existed.
It's inhabited, for example, is not regarded as sufficient for its justification.
Now, of course, a consequence of this idea is that modern science, insofar as it embodies human rationality, is an important evaluative standard.
You know, when it comes to assessing beliefs that you know, seek or purport to describe the natural world.
And the third element is, is the belief in progress or. And by that,
I just mean that individuals and societies that believe in progress as a kind of normative ideal or future are
primarily future oriented in the sense that they consciously seek to change their social and vitamins for the better.
So this means that the orientation towards existing institutions is not primarily one of preservation.
It's not the destruction of preservation, but it's almost this attempt to always seek to improve existing social arrangements.
And basically, I argue that income wc all these three elements in his thought, he doesn't set out explicitly.
But when you read through his various concrete pronouncements and analysis of specific situations,
you'll find that he more or less adheres to these views. So what does that mean for culture?
Briefly. So, so that means I think for the that he has this historical view of culture, he sees it as something that changes as a function of time.
And he sees it as something that can be changed based on collective goals that people agree upon.
And to this extent, he's sort of tying it to a specific political project.
I mean, obviously, his specific context was a war of national liberation.
I mean, we should keep that in mind. But but he doesn't see it as the kind of interesting historical context or Isaiah Brown sort
of emphasising that culture can change and that we shouldn't have these essentialist views.
Because if you look at what the Portuguese were doing, so a lot of the people leading people in the IGC were from Cape Verde and there was already.
Professor Chang mentioned this colonial ploy of attempting to divide and rule essentially.
So the Portuguese government had sort of presented the Cape Verdeans as relatively
privileged relative to other people who live in the mainland in Guinea-Bissau.
Hmm. And Cabral was of Cape Verde in the sense.
And so so as most of the leadership, but also the Portuguese would essentially claim that, you know, Cabral is not ideal misogyny,
and he's not really an ideal member of that community because, for example, he doesn't speak land, for example.
Then they say, Look, you know, he's he's just he's speaking in either Creole or Portuguese.
And Cabral says, Look, well, what's significant in our context isn't the language that they speak.
What's significant is OK, the kind of contribution that you're making you know, to to to free people from under colonial rule.
In this specific context, because there were the Portuguese with essentially have these counter political organisations that
they would foster who would sort of use the banner of authenticity to undermine the PR agency.
So, so that's sort of like a very brief overview of the historical context.
Is it fair to say then, that Kabras conception of what it is to be authentic is linked to rationality and to national autonomy?
Yes, yes. I would say so, I mean, doesn't really use the discourse of authenticity.
So he talks about returning to the roots, which which is in which I don't think is necessarily the same thing as a question of authenticity.
But definitely there is this idea that to be really, you know, so he makes okay.
I'll give you an example. He makes this distinction between somebody who belongs to the population and somebody who belongs to the people.
So for him, you belong to a population if you're born in Guinea-Bissau. OK, that's just that's a fact.
You know, it's part of the population. And that's the fact that you have no control over.
It was a smaller but belonging to the people, he said.
Is sort of when you participate in this collective struggle for liberation.
So you could conceivably be a member of the population and not be a member of the people.
According to that distinction and vice versa, you could be a member of a, you know,
you could belong to the people by participating in the struggle even though you were born somewhere else.
Maybe you wouldn't in Senegal and you'd be born and whatever, you know.
OK, thank you. There's one more distinction, actually, that we'd like you to explain before we move on to the next section,
which is this distinction you find in combat between cultural influence and cultural domination.
And I think there's a there's a nice comparison to be made with the idea of defending culture against foreign values before you before it comes in.
If I may make a comment, I like that distinction between being a member of a population and being a member of the people.
It's a nice distinction. It has made me thinking in the sense that you see, I was born in Uganda,
so it means I'm a member of the Ugandan population, but actually I'm a member of the Kenyan people.
I just thought I wanted to share that. Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's sort of precisely what the distinction is supposed to draw,
yeah, I'm happy that it resonates and that it makes sense, of course.
So so the question was about cultural domination. And it's the distinction from cultural influence, correct?
So, so, so okay. So here's the thing so Cabral wants to social and cultural thinking.
There is always this idea of idea of a return to history.
And and so for Cabral, having one's own history doesn't mean that one doesn't adopt safe techniques, practises and beliefs from other peoples.
It means that one is free as much as possible to decide if and when to adopt techniques, practises and beliefs from other peoples.
Whereas when you think about cultural domination, obviously it involves a kind of undermining of one's autonomy.
I mean, it's in the need to dominate somebody is to impose your will upon them and so on through coercion,
but maybe through, you know, less directly coercive means. So a relationship of cultural domination is one in which the dominated party doesn't really
have any choice over whether or not to accept the cultural elements that are imposed upon it.
So think about, you know, the acquisition of a language, other people, they don't really have a choice.
You know, you just say, Look, you're going to whatever speak Portuguese, French, and that's it.
Whereas cultural influence, of course. You know, if you look at human history, humans have always, you know,
humans living in different cultures have always been influenced with one by one another and not necessarily through domination,
you know, so people see some invention, some technique that they think, OK, this could be useful for us.
And they borrow it so heated the element of coercion and of inequalities absinthe.
So essentially, Cabral wants to see this is right for Cabral.
It's interesting to think about it this way. You know, the struggle for independence is actually one that gets you to a situation where you can
have these relations of cultural influence instead of traditions of cultural domination.
So it's not about closing in upon itself, it's about being in a position where now we can talk as equal interlocutors.
And I could freely, freely bottle or not borrow from you. Depends on whether I find it convincing or not useful or not.
Yes. So that, in a nutshell, is the distinction. OK, great.
One reason we've brought these two strands together is that Cabal and Oracle both have this
project of cultivating a national culture that is either authentic or truly autonomous.
So this is an open question for either of you, but we might start with Z.
What do you think Cobra would have thought about a Rukus project of uncovering a national
philosophy because they both have this interest in enabling critical dialogue and evaluation?
But what about this idea of an implicit philosophy? Yes.
Very briefly, so I don't know if I have much to say about what corporal would have thought
about that simply because so corporal doesn't really speak explicitly about,
you know, a national philosophy, but he's definitely interested in national culture, right?
As so so in creating a national culture as well.
Because in Guinea-Bissau, of course, there are also there was also a multiplicity of ethnic groups who will have different modes of life,
who had different relations with the Portuguese colonial administration and.
And so to the extent that you look as interested in developing this, this unifying cultural project,
of course, this would be something that would have been interested in.
And specifically also the kind of the political project or social project and the background of Lucas as a project.
I think that would also be something that you can find similarities between it and capitalism project.
Yeah, I I'll just leave it at that. Thank. What did you have any thoughts?
Not really, but what I would just emphasise is that you see, for Deborah Ruka, culture and philosophy go together to have this national culture.
You need this philosophy behind it to strengthen it.
So but of course, he was a trained philosopher, so one would understand why he's emphasising on the philosophy.
OK, that I think I'll pass over to Scarlett.
We'd like to finish with seeing where the conversation takes you, but to begin by comparing their approaches to serving culture.
Yeah. So as previously discussed, Erica, you know,
he hoped that national projects on philosophic sagacity would protect African nations from kind of I'm reflectively adopting harmful foreign values.
And as I think of projects that area, he believes that, you know,
today that is that is the case that lots of Africans have adopted these kind of foreign values.
And BresaGen gives technological morality as an example of a firm value that is potentially dangerous to African societies.
I guess the concern is this kind of assumption that because something is, you know,
more to give answers better and we want to look at the real content of the thank in stats.
Yes. So just briefly in terms of the question of technological morality.
So with respect to Cabral, you know, because I think this happens quite a bit and some of the secondary literature on cultural world
modernity as a kind of philosophical discourse and gets associated with modernisation theory.
So people think that, you know, some things when I'm seeing that Cabral was a cultural modernist or a modernist in the
realm of philosophy of culture that he was also an adherent to modernisation theory.
So modernisation theory, of course, was a theory of development or beach that sort of the kind of poster book for it, as well as those rosters.
1960 book the stages of Economic Growth A Non Communist Manifesto, so you could see like the Cold War context and the subtitle.
And according to this theory, I mean,
one of the themes that the developing foetus so adopted this account advanced is this idea that, you know, you know,
having a modern society means that you have to start sort of reinvesting surplus from the agricultural sphere into industry located in urban centres.
So that's, for example, something that are rejected. I mean, he thought that for the foreseeable future,
it just it was more practical and more equitable to focus on development in rural areas and Guinea-Bissau.
So, so there is also capital, for example,
was very close to what we today call agro ecology saw this idea that our agricultural practises shouldn't be sort of directed against nature,
but rather to work with it in order to prevent things like soil degradation.
You could see that in his writings because he was trained as an agronomist,
and he was really he was actually interested in how sort of colonial monoculture, for example, degrades the soil.
So there is definitely a sense in which he's not some kind of Promethean technological modernist when he says,
Okay, any kind of technological development is OK.
You know, we should go ahead and adopt it or implement it.
Yeah, yeah. So so so that that's that's I think the distinction to be made there with else.
Yeah, absolutely. That reminds me of I've got a quote here from Carol, which I think it's quite nicely with this idea that logical morality, which is,
you know, the most important thing for the liberation movement is not to test the uniqueness and not not uniqueness of the popular culture,
but to undertake its critical analysis as a function of the needs of the state of struggle and progress,
rather than just assuming something is better because it is unique or because it is new.
I mean, I may be adopting this wrong, but you know, I have a look at the actual needs of the people and the needs of the the liberation movement.
I was this kind of idea of progress was just tell me a little bit, and I was wondering the question before us urging,
you know, would Haruka have thought in terms of progress, do you think or what he articulated, what he views that time?
Would you have articulated his vision differently?
And the question for both of you, what do you think or what do your respective authors think constituted real social progress?
What was the kind of essence of that? All right.
I'll go first. I wish there was it was like, well, I think so.
But anyway, I'll try and answer it on his behalf right now.
What I would say is that order or Ruka was really not hostile.
To non-African cultures.
Well, to start with and that and that is precisely why, unlike some scholars of African philosophy of his time, he did not join in the bond,
the work of whether African philosophy is professional or was professional or not, whether it was unique or not.
No, he did not go that route.
Most scholars of his time tried fitting themselves in either one of the two solutions offered regarding the nature of African philosophy or order,
or Ruka, on his part, came up, as I've already said, with the four friends in African philosophy.
So, according to him, African philosophy.
Her fortress in that it could be approached in four different ways, in other words, his view accommodates topic themes,
methodologies which others would argue below typically to Western philosophy or dare, or Ruka held African values and cultures in high regard.
There's no doubt about that. But he did not romanticise them.
I would say that his view resembled that of. Kwame Nkrumah, you know, well.
There are three competing ideologies in Africa.
So the idea is to harmonise those three competing ideologies.
However, the emergent emergent ideology should be based on the African way of life in his language.
One African personality in a way.
That is what Auditor Ruka has in mind when it talks about harmonisation.
Of. National cultures into national philosophy when decisions come together so as to harmonise those aspects.
Of their cultures that are in conflict when you take into account as well.
non-African cultures, so long as they are not a threat.
To the African pedestal, so to speak.
So, in other words, he would not. Privilege.
One of the three ideologies over the other, so long as it was projected a projection was towards the benefit of humanity, so to speak.
Yes, I did. You have any comments on this idea of social progress?
Yes. So I think so for for the camera, all the social and social progress basically involves sort of removing as many of the impediments as possible,
impediments to human beings being able to sort of act as a collective makers of their own history to put it in a kind of Marxist terms.
And that obviously involves improving material conditions.
It also involves removing what we can call so there are no material impediments, such as, for example, certain, you know,
false beliefs about, you know, in the natural world or about human relations, which obviously exist in both, you know, in all societies.
Yes. So it is very much geared towards this view that, you know, humans should be able to sort of almost create themselves.
So there's again, a kind of Promethean element, but not necessarily in that kind of ecologically destructive sense.
And I think that's sort of what he understands might be social progress. That's great, thank you.
Thank you so much for the.
Yeah, I think I'm going to move over to OK, now I've got a couple of questions on kind of the institutional pedagogical side that concerns me.
Yes, so to wrap up this discussion, we'd like to link this back to another theme of the journal to which this podcast is an introduction.
This theme is the values of our education. Unfortunately, at this point, we began having problems with Cheng's microphone,
but we hope you listen on to his dad's thoughts and teaching philosophy and making research accessible.
Maybe that you could begin. Do you have specific ideas about how this material should be taught?
Yes, obviously, I don't have the teaching experience of Professor Cheng,
so I'm going to be very brief in terms of what I see because I think you'll have a lot more to say about this.
But yeah, so right now, for example, I'm planning a course on modern African intellectual history.
And I think one problem is a lot of this material, it's not that it doesn't, doesn't get taught and doesn't get thought.
This philosophy, which I think becomes a bit of a problem and becomes a kind of case studies, for example, in anthropology, sort of.
It's the kind of first order discourse.
And then you're supposed to come up with a kind of theoretical discourse that referred us back to it as primary material.
At least that's the case, I think, and in the way it's often thought in North America and in, you know,
African studies and anthropology, which I think becomes a bit of a problem because so people read Cabral,
for example, because they don't learn, they want to learn about sort of the history of Guinea-Bissau with that period in time, which is fine.
Guinea-Bissau and competitive, it's just fine. But then they don't take on the actual ideas, take them seriously.
And of course, but by taking them seriously, we don't mean, you know, we should celebrate them or something.
But obviously critical engagement, actually thinking through the arguments, attempting to reconstruct the arguments and so on.
Can I ask each of you, what are your practises beyond academia and interpret this as broadly as you want to?
Oh, remarkably well. Oh, what I usually do.
Who the [INAUDIBLE] is this?
Well, I usually conduct public lectures.
Yes, I go to schools, primary schools with you telling you how to oh, the it's important for the health of all the school principals as well.
And also whenever I visit to visit, if you are there, you would remove all visit.
How would you like to go to the village in the village and hub because you have told me this and also other places to.
Yes, so in terms of practises outside academia, so.
So I mean, this doesn't really count,
but I suppose it comes in the context I'm in because obviously I study at the North American University and I write mostly in English.
But you know, I have this interest in making sure that contemporary African philosophy from other parts of the African
continent is accessible to to people in North Africa because many people don't don't really study there.
So I try to write in Arabic as well. So for it, for the various outlets.
And recently, actually, we did this, we did the bookshop that in Arabic, on Cambrils thought and philosophy.
So that was a good, you know, the book was published in Cairo, but was distributed in Sudan as well, and in Tunisia and Morocco.
I think it will be distributed this one in terms of non-academic stuff.
So again, you know, I try to make time for as much public engagement as possible.
So, you know, like podcasts like this, for example, because I think it makes the research accessible.
And finally, I think we'll makes these last two questions together, so.
What is your well, what is your main takeaway from the discussion today and an optional question if if there's something you'd like to say on it?
What is the biggest problem facing African philosophy today? Yes.
I mean, I don't really have a lot to add, but I just want to reiterate what professor watching has emphasised the importance to the
importance of making sure that African philosophy is being taught in as many places as possible.
Um, and and you know, it's it's this is sort of a general comment, but you see today that a lot of struggles about,
you know, the structure of syllabi and North American and European universities, the way they sometimes get interpreted.
It's as if, you know, we're telling people, no, you know, think Aristotle of the syllabus or something like that,
but it's really about integrating more elements and reframing pre-existing elements because there is a way in which,
you know, some people seek the kind of decolonising discourse to mean, well, you don't want us to teach grant or something.
But of course, you know, that's that's not the point. It's about context to reframing and drawing these connexions.
So I think, for example, must always work on like Augustine as a North African philosopher of late antiquity.
So I guess that's a kind of reframing of of a pre-existing canonical figure or reason to work on Wilhelm Amo, for example,
early modern philosophers from the Gold Coast who was in Germany and who sort of obviously involved in these in debates
about the relationship between the mind and between the mind and the body in the context of early modern philosophy.
So, so again, it's really this reframing and rethinking of connexions and parallels.
Thank you for that. Finally, is there any main takeaways you have from the discussion today or from the preparation you did?
I start off. In reading Z's essay on some of the Lotus writers,
I was perhaps embarrassingly surprised at the point you made that to be modern is not to be western.
And there's a strong association between those two, but it really doesn't make sense to equate them.
And I was surprised when you said that to realise the extent to which I do equate those things and reflectivity.
So that's the thing that you've taught me the most. Yeah.
I mean, so I learnt a lot from this discussion, from both your questions and from Professor Cheng's interventions and answers.
Yeah, I mean,
the thing I would pick out as something that they've learnt that became very clear to me is the way that Oracle's programme of siege philosophy is,
is an attempt to sort of balance the criticisms that were levelled at the ethno philosopher just by the professional philosophers,
while also not not assuming that the existing African intellectual discourses do not possess individual
thinkers who are able to engage in second order critical thinking about existing beliefs AI.
So that's been very helpful for me in terms of in terms of how we think.
Thank you. Well, you know, the Sochi Olympics before, and this is just one culture in the world where you always be.
Be close to one. One of the most exclusive of mobile.
Well, thank you for watching that and Scott, it. It really was a pleasure to meet and share this conversation.
Thank you for making room for the possibility of strengthening me or contesting in three months and no consideration.
Maybe that's the entire baby nature allows teams to cry with you and you possibly the next.
Pecks you then.