A Place for African Philosophy
This movement of thought and political will has a long
history of dialectical engagement, stemming from the visionary articulation by Cheikh
Anta Diop in his 1948 essay “When Can We
Talk of an African Renaissance?”
The dialectical process of renewal /reclamation, gained
impetus as the continent emerged from the period of formal colonialism in the
1960`s, and intellectual giants ranging from Senghor who saw the Negritude movement
as essential to an African Renaissance, to Nkrumah who argued for a new “African personality” and a new “consciencism”.
With the emergence of an apparent resolution of the last
colonial conflict in Southern Africa in the 1990`s and the emergence of Nelson
Mandela as a new icon of an African Renaissance, the dialectical impetus of an
African Renaissance was renewed and was most famously elaborated into a
critical and urgent philosophical, political and economic project, by then Deputy
President of the South African Republic, Thabo Mbeki, through his “I am an African” speech.
In “Globalisation and African Renaissance”, MF Murobe seeks
to propose that the ethical values enshrined in Ubuntu provides an alternative
ethical value system which cold underpin the movement away from the self-interest
of western neo-liberal politics and economics which produces inequality and
indebtedness and which “cannot bring
about the common good.”, towards a “global consciousness” of
interrelatedness and a global ethics in
which we realise that “our existence
depends on the well-being of the whole”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 674)
In this essay we will briefly consider the key elements of
Murobe`s proposal and critically consider its validity within the unfolding
landscape of globalisation as a hegemonic imperative driven by Western philosophy,
politics and economics.
Interrelatedness and neo-liberal economic
practices.
Murobe begins his proposal by accepting as a given the existing
reality and continuing imperative for the world to globalise and that all that
remains for us to do is to engage with this reality as either Afro-pessimists
or Afro-optimists. Murobe dismisses the Afro-pessimistic view and posits
instead that the only way to an African Renaissance is through the social,
economic and political regional integration of African states. (Murobe, 1998, p. 671)
Murobe shows that the globalisation imperative which
connects us in new ways and which implies an increased related and relatedness,
is closely interlinked to a neo-liberal
economics which because of the systemic inequality that it creates, is “no longer able to control the powers of the
nether world which he has called up by his spells”[1]. The
roots of this dilemma according to Murobe are to be found in what he calls the
“conviction” (alluding here to the almost religious dogmatism that accompanies
such conviction), that “self-interest and
altruism need to be held in balance, with self-interest being the dominant
value”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 673)
Murobe contends that self-interest and altruism are
incompatible and leads to an unresolved moral conflict and this “reveals that the doctrine of self-interest is
actually built on fallacious grounds”.
Murobe delves extensively into the dialectic and proposed
moral conflict between self-interest and altruism and laments the Darwinian
natural selection on which it is based.
In considering self interest in terms of international
relations, Murobe attempts to show that National self-interest cannot lead to
solidarity at the global level and that if globalisation means that we are
increasingly related and interrelated, then it becomes “nonsensical to talk of national interest apart from the global
implications of this interest”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 673)
If it is correct that we are increasingly related and
interrelated, Murobe argues, that then it is perhaps correct that “instead of talking of National interest, we
should perhaps talk of global interest so that we might be able to come up with
a global ethics.” (Murobe, 1998, p. 673) in which the “present dualistic economic and political
system should be substituted with a another, more holistic economic model”.
(Murobe, 1998, p. 676)
To the criticism that an African moral outlook is incompatible with economic
development and that the concept of Ubuntu teaches Africans to evade
responsibility,[by hiding] behind the collective decision of the tribe , Murobe
argues instead that a “proper understanding of responsibility
should be that which sees the individual`s well-being as immersed in a web of
relationships”, rather than as a “human
being as a biological entity who pursue his or her own interest for his or her
own survival”. (p.680)
In making the case against cultural vindicationists, which
Murobe argues suffers from a “logic of
subsumptive rationality” in which reality is treated as a constant, Murobe
argues that if we see globalisation as implying relatedness and
interrelatedness, then we should account for change and becoming and challenges
the cultural vindicationists to go beyond cultural self-vindication. (P.682)
In order to do this
Murobe suggests that the “problem that
needs to be re-evaluated is that of ethnicity”(p. 684). The problem of
ethnicity is seen both as a legacy of Western colonialism`s “ethic of self” pitted against the
collectivity of the colonised, but also as one in which African politicians use
it as a tool to achieve and control political power. (p. 685)
Murobe argues that in order to overcome this dilemma, it calls for a vocational politics in which
the politician sacrifices his personal good for the common good, rather than a
professional politics which is motivated by the survival of the individual
politician. (p.685)
Some reflections
While Murobe makes a case for the need to realise an
alternative philosophical, political and economic model with which to challenge
the unrestrained creep of the global hegemony of a Western Eurocentric metaphysics,
underpinned by an economic system premised on the metaphysics of natural
selection and survival of the fittest, and on which basis, those who are
currently at the top of the pyramid will ensure their survival while those at
the base of the pyramid are “endangered species”, Murobe
unfortunately does not provide a sufficiently viable theory for how this is to
be achieved.
Murobe does not for instance factor into his considerations,
the issue of power and privilege and the distortion that it imposes on the
theoretical considerations. Murobe leaves very little room to consider how
diametrically opposed world views such as the “ethic of self” and that of “collectivity”
would evolve within a dialectic in which the power differentials between the
two are grossly distorted in favour of the former. Murobe indeed discounts such a dynamic when he
claims that self- interest and altruism are incompatible and leaves us with the
impression that we are left with a Manichean choice between self-interest and
collectivism. This dualism displayed by Murobe seems to be in direct
contradiction to the claims of relatedness and interrelatedness that Murobe
wishes to propose.
In fairness Murobe does realise the problem of dialectical
power, when he proposes that in order for African states to attempt to
challenge the dominant metaphysis of the “ethic
of self” that African states would need to pool their resources in order to
stand a chance against what could be described as an imperial hegemony[2].
However Murobe seems to suggest that Africa requires a
political renaissance before it can consider an economic one. In this
assertion, Murobe assumes firstly that a renaissance or renewal would be a
sufficiently robust mechanism to address the fundamental conflict of interest
between a dominant Western hegemonic paradigm of the ethic of self and the
resurgent African paradigm of Ubuntu.
And secondly Murobe assumes that “professional” politics as
an arena of power and privilege is open or susceptible to moralistic calls
without the collective involvement of the community, collective.
Both these assumptions present themselves as Utopian visions
couched within the current imposed Western Paradigm, rather than as viable
philopraxis informed by Africans and defined by Africans for themselves.
In the first instance, the assumption that renewing a political system without considering the origins of the system and its contextual relevance and applicability as well as its design and intention to the African experience is bound to result in an analysis that is not sufficiently grounded in the African experience and as such would struggle to present itself as an African solution, Rather, the charge could be made that assuming the current imposed Western liberal democratic systems are merely in need of renewal is fundamentally at odds with Murobe`s own understanding of what is required, namely the substitution of the present dualistic economic and political system with another.
In the second instance, Murobe falls once gain into the trap
of developing his theory within the confines of the broad paradigm of Western metaphysics
of the “ethics of the self” when he
proposes that it is indeed only the Big Men who make history and that it is the
politicians who must bear the moral responsibility of ending it.
Murobe again encounters here the contradictions inherent in
his argument when he concedes the very argument he vehemently argued against
when claiming that “a proper
understanding of responsibility should be that which sees the individual`s
well-being as immersed in a web of relationships”. By arguing that it is
only the politicians who should take responsibility Murobe inadvertently
reverts to the argument he refuted by
suggesting that the individual is the key actor within society and by so doing dilutes
the role and responsibility of the collective, indeed the very foundation of
his argument, in bringing to fruition
the solution he proposes.
Conclusion
The idea of an African Renaissance has been an ever present
intellectual, political and economic imperative for a continent that has suffered
some of the worst excesses of Western Colonial domination. Despite the contentions for or against a
Renaissance, De-colonisation, or Revolution, every effort to further develop,
problematize and analyse what this task entails must be welcomed and
appreciated as a necessary step towards producing our own knowledge, reclaiming
our rightful place in the community of the world and in defining for ourselves
who we are and who we should be.
The relatedness and interrelatedness of this project often
means that our paradigms will merge and collide, swirling in the warm life
giving ocean of knowledge production and progress. It is understandable then
that we will mix our metaphor’s and confuse our arguments in the process.
The thesis proposed by Murobe is an important contribution
to the post-colonial debate about how the underdeveloped world, and Africa in
particularly, should approach the project of untangling and decolonising its
philosophy, politics and economics from the shackles imposed by past colonial
powers.
The shortcomings in the theory, particularly those
highlighted above, in which theories and philosophies are constrained and
subsumed by the colonial world view, should serve not as reasons to dismiss the
thesis, but instead should act as sites of philosophical engagement which could
provide greater clarity to the tasks that must be accomplished.
[1]
Murobe quotes Marx to illustrate this point. Pg 673
[2]
"Hegemony" is an indirect form of imperial dominance where the
hegemon (leader state) rules subordinate states by the implied means of power
rather than direct military force. Given the anomalous nature of the
philosophical challenge faced by Africa and other post-colonial states as well
as the constricting nature of control employed by economic powers, the term
imperial hegemon seems useful to denote the underlying power dynamics.
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