415. What African philosophy can mean for the West
A basic idea in African philosophy is that of binary complementarity, the complementarity of opposites. I think that is important for Western philosophy, and what I have been writing in this blog accords well with it. Here I use the book on the African philosopher Orunmila by Sophie Oluwole[i] and the book on ‘Ubuntu’ by Mogobe Ramose.[ii]
The complementarity of idea/theory and practice/action is closely associated with philosophical pragmatism, as developed in the US by Peirce, Dewey and James, and practised, in different ways, by Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, with the basic idea that ideas lead action but are also formed in it. It is a cornerstone also of my philosophy.
That goes together with a dynamic view, a process view of knowledge and of meaning.
Related to that is the complementarity between individual and society, as also argued in this blog. Counter, in particular, to the view in economics of the autonomous individual, the person is seen as socially constituted, in interaction with others, in constructing his/her personal identity, to arrive at an individual but socially embedded identity, along his/her unique path of life. This does not eliminate individuality, because of the idiosyncrasy of inherited potential and actualization of it along a personal path of life.
There remains what in this blog I have called ‘cognitive distance’ and people can profit from that, in bridging distance, in their development. I have argued that the highest form of freedom is freedom from prejudice, and to have a chance of that one must seek opposition from others.
Oluwole showed that typical African systems are decentralised to small local communities, as more conducive to democratic involvement of people in public decision making and projects. That is also something pleaded for in this blog.
Most people have a deep seated need for social recognition and respect, as a basis for their sense of identity.[iii] In small communities of collaboration, identity is derived from the role and position one develops there.
As argued in a recent hook by Fukuyama[iv], and in earlier items in this blog (395, 389), in modern society urbanisation and globalisation have uprooted people from local communities, and this raised awareness of identity as an issue, with corresponding anxiousness: ‘who am I?’ This has led to a forking into two forms of identity: individualistic, in a liberal ideology, and collective, in a revival of nationalism and religious fundamentalism and exceptionalism (notably in islamism, but also in white supremacism).
This opposition between the individual and the collective goes back, most evidently, to Rousseau. In his early philosophy he celebrated the individual as an untainted source of humanity and authenticity, spoiled by the infringement of collectives. Later, in his ‘social contract’ he switched to the other extreme of total submission of the individual to a totalitarian social order.
This polarisation of two forms of seeking identity is creating a major political crisis, in the West and the rest of the world. A synthesis, in a view of the human being as socially constituted and yet individual is a matter of the highest priority, and if lessons for this can be learned from Africa, the opportunity should be taken.
In African philosophy, going beyond Orunmila, a well-known idea is that of ‘Ubuntu’. It refers to the spirit of solidarity, hospitality and mutual support between people. The individual exists by virtue of the existence of others. It is claimed to constitute a specific, African form of humanity.
There are mixed but similar views on the etymology of the word. It derives from the root ‘ubu’ that means ‘being in’, according to Oluwole, or ‘enveloped’, according to Ramose, and the root ‘ntu’ that refers to manifestation, according to Oluwole, or ‘unfolding’, according to Ramose. In a stream of being there is ongoing interaction between what is wrapped inside and how it unfolds in the outside.
Socially, together they mean ‘I am because you are’, expressing the social constitution of the self.
I do wonder what the implications are for relations between local communities, in larger constellations in society. Does Ubuntu apply there as well? How does that work? David Hume proposed that people can learn, become habituated to a regard for others, in empathy, solidarity, a degree of altruism, and trust, in small communities with local, personal interaction, and can then carry that into wider relationships, in larger groups. Does that apply here?
What comes up to me, here, I hope not too farfetched, is a connection with the ‘Object Oriented Ontology’ (3O) that I have been using and trying to contribute to. In that ontology, philosophy of existence, of what exists and how it exists, an object in the world has two dimensions: ‘what is in it’, its composition, and ‘what it is in’, its environment, including its ‘phenomenology’, how it presents itself, is used and experienced. For people, the first corresponds with the individual, one’s constitution, and the second with the social, in which one is constituted.
Dynamics, change of objects, then arises from interaction between inside and outside, what goes in and what comes out. Is this a valid connection with Ubuntu? If so, then Ubuntu would express a deep understanding of ontology that in Western philosophy is fairly recent.
In sum, I see a number of intriguing connections between what I read about African philosophy and more or less recent developments in Western philosophy, in particular in parts of it that appeal to me and that I have used and developed. It might be worth while to set up a programme for further study of these connections.
[i] Sophie Bosede Oluwole, 2018, Socrates and Oluwole; what we can learn from
African philosophy (in Dutch), Utrecht: Ten Have.
[ii] Mogobe Ramose, 2017, Ubuntu, Stream of existence as philosophy of
life, (in Dutch), Utrecht: Ten Have.
[iv] Francis Fukuyama, Identity; Contemporary identity politics and
the struggle for recognition, London:
Profile books.
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