Existence and Heritage

Hermeneutic Explorations in African and Continental Philosophy

Tsenay Serequeberhan

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781438457901, 9781438457895
• eBook ISBN: 9781438457918
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In Existence and Heritage, Tsenay Serequeberhan examines what the European philosophical tradition has to offer when encountered from the outsider perspective of postcolonial African thought. He reads Kant in the context of contemporary international relations, finds in Gadamer's work a way of conceiving relations among differing traditions, and explores Heidegger's analysis of existence as it converges with Marx's critique of alienation. In the confluence of these different assessments, Serequeberhan articulates both a need and example of responding to Fanon's call for a new kind of thinking in philosophy. He demonstrates both how continental philosophy can be a useful resource for theorizing Africa's postcolonial condition and how postcolonial thought and African philosophy can provide a new way of approaching and understanding the Western tradition.

Notes

All emphasis in the original unless otherwise indicated.

Preface

1. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,” Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) 71.

2. This was the impossible dream of Descartes: To establish philosophy on absolutely indubitable grounds, or “What I wish to finish is … an absolutely new science enabling one to resolve all questions proposed on any order of continuous or discontinuous quantities.” As quoted by F. E. Sutcliffe in the introduction to Discourse on Method and the Meditations (New York: Penguin Books, 1977) 8. Having quoted the above, Sutcliffe correctly observes, “The whole of Cartesian philosophy is contained in embryo in this phrase.” This also describes, broadly speaking, the metaphysical tradition, as a whole, in its efforts to establish “a transparent language” in and through which to grasp—once and for all—“the truth” (i.e., the isness of what is).

3. Gianni Vattimo, Vocazione e responsabilità del filosofo (Genova, Italy: Melangolo, 2000) 71. Section 2 of chapter 1 will engage this point more fully.

4. Drew A. Hyland, The Origins of Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993) 185.

5. The term prejudice is utilized in the way specified by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982) 235–74. It does not mean, as in ordinary usage, a biased (in the context of the United States) or bigoted racist view of things. It refers to the totality of culturally-historically saturated pre-judgments, which constitute our sense of the world. Perspectives, à la Nietzsche, or as in Heidegger, the average everyday pre-understanding of Dasein. This can be either positive, negative, and/or a variedly interlaced pasticcio of both, which concretely orients our lived sense of the world (more on this in chapter 4).

6. Gadamer, Truth and Method 235–39.

7. The United States’ stance is imperious and aggressive because “regime change” is now an accepted part of its political lexicon. Any time the United States administration—Republican or Democrat—encounters a “troublesome” or otherwise difficult adversary, “regime change” is an option that is floated; whether it is utilized or not depends only on its tactical viability at the time and the strength or weakness of the particular “troublesome” adversary. That it is illegal for nations to comport themselves in this way because it goes against all kinds of international accords and conventions established since World War Two (and before) is something that is seldom, if ever, considered or taken account of by United States policy makers. It is as if international law does not apply to the United States any time it is inconvenient or goes counter to the crass—oil, for example—economic interests of this self-proclaimed super power. As Thomas McCarthy has noted, “our anomalous policies on trade, development, energy, environment, ‘preemption,’ unilateralism, and a host of other things … suggest that national false consciousness and self-righteousness have scarcely abated” (Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009] 231–32). See also Oona A. Hathaway, “Why We Need International Law,” The Nation 285.16 (November 16, 2007): 35–37; and Julian E. Zelizer, “It’s Obama’s White House, but It’s Bush’s World,” The Washington Post, August 15, 2010.

8. In other words, “terror” or “terrorism” is a tactic utilized in regular and/or irregular warfare. Is it possible to declare war on a “tactic”? And so, utilizing this rather befuddled and befuddling euphemism, the United States declares war on the Arabs and/or Islam. Indeed, as Edward W. Said has noted, “The United States … regards itself as at war with the Arab world, or Islam, or fundamentalism, or something of that sort” (387). And “With regards to the Arabs Europe has always had Islam at its doorstep … Islam, don’t forget, is the only non-European culture that has never been completely vanquished. It is adjacent to and shares the monotheistic heritage of Judaism and Christianity. So, there is constant friction. And unlike, say, the British in India, the problem has not been settled” (388), both quotations from “Europe and Its Others: An Arab Perspective,” in Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001). It ought to also be noted that—on the whole—in the language of contemporary Western social-political discourse, “fundamentalism” does not describe the zealots, or fanatics, of any religion; it is reserved exclusively for Islam.

9. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 267–68. To Gadamer’s formulation I add the view that, at any point in time, “effective-history” always affirms and sustains itself in an ongoing contestations with and against a residual dead-past or dead-history that threatens to resurface and reassert itself. A good example of this, in today’s United States, is the constant effort of Christian conservatives to reverse the progressive gains of secular society by making abortion illegal, or, along similar lines, the constant effort of the right-wing political establishment to undermine the gains of African Americans, and minorities in general, secured by the civil rights movement. I utilize the terms dead-past and dead-history to emphasize that the effectiveness of “effective-history” sustains itself not passively but by actively affirming its effectiveness against a dead-history or a dead-past that—in an ongoing manner—constantly threatens to revive, resurface, and reestablish itself (more on this in chapter 4). In The Ethics of Ambiguity (Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1948), Simone de Beauvoir utilizes the term the dead past (28), once and in passing, to refer to the discarded possibilities in the life of individuals. As indicated above, my use is wider and it is meant to function in conjunction with, and by way of supplementing/strengthening, Gadamer’s conception of “effective-history,” which suggests as much without ever explicitly affirming it.

10. Vattimo, Vocazione 73. As we shall see in chapter 2, Vattimo, a prominent contemporary Italian philosopher in the Continental tradition, is unequivocally sympathetic to the emancipatory efforts of non-European peoples. His stance originates in his appreciation of the favorable circumstance that has resulted from the demise of direct colonial rule (i.e., the curbing of Western hubris). What I am proposing in this study is to explore the consequences of this situation from the Other side—the side of the formerly colonized.

11. Okanda Okolo, Pour une Philosophie de la Culture et du Developpement (Kinshasa, Zaire: Presses Universitaires du Zaire, 1986) 45. As is the case with German and French thinkers, Okolo—who is a product of French education—uses the term scientifique to refer to any systematic study without restricting himself to the natural sciences.

12. Okolo 45.

13. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979) 315; Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) 363.

14. By Europe I mean Europe and the various parts of the globe that have been settled by a predominantly European population. J. M. Blaut, The Colonizers Model of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: The Possible in Philosophy
• Introduction: Reflections and Encounters
• I. Reflections
• II. Encounters
• Conclusion: Frantz Fanon, Thinking as Openness
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover