Paulin Hountondji, ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’ (1974)

This article was downloaded by: [Janz, Bruce] On: 24 March 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 920293802] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Philosophical Papers Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t909885669 Paulin Hountondji, 'African Philosophy, Myth and Reality' (1974) Bruce B. Janz a a University of Central Florida, Online publication date: 24 March 2010 To cite this Article Janz, Bruce B.(2010) 'Paulin Hountondji, 'African Philosophy, Myth and Reality' (1974)', Philosophical Papers, 39: 1, 117 — 134 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/05568641003669532 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/05568641003669532 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Philosophical Papers Vol. 39, No. 1 (March 2010): 117-134 The Folds in Paulin Hountondji’s Philosophy, Myth and Reality’ ‘African Bruce B. Janz Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-reading of Paulin Hountondji, ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’, Thought and Practice (Nairobi, Kenya) 1:2 (1974): 1-16.* One of the most discussed papers in African philosophy is Paulin Hountondji’s, ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’. Presented in Kenya in 1973, originally published in the recently revived Kenyan journal Thought and Practice, and most accessible in Hountondji’s book African Philosophy: Myth & Reality,1 it has served as a rallying cry and manifesto for many African philosophers. Its importance is undeniable— for some, it defined the direction of a new philosophy, and for others it rejected precisely that which was seen to be indispensible in African philosophy. ‘African Philosophy’, then, seems like a perfect selection for a rereading. It is seminal in, and formative for, the field of African philosophy, it is more often used as a marker (of positions, beliefs, or approaches) than it is actually analyzed, and as such it has almost turned the author’s name into a shorthand reference. ‘Hountondji’ has come to refer to a position rightly or wrongly derived from this paper, such that all a person has to do is invoke the name, and a particular view about the * Editor’s Note: ‘Re-Readings’ is a regular feature in Philosophical Papers. Authors are invited to write on a past article, book, or book chapter that they deem, for whatever reason, to deserve renewed attention. Authors are encouraged, where appropriate, to discuss the work’s reception by and influence upon the philosophical community. 1 Paulin Hountondji, ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’ in African Philosophy: Myth & Reality, Second Edition. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1983, 1996): 5570. Parenthetical page references in the text will be to this version of the paper. ISSN 0556-8641 print/ISSN 1996-8523 online © 2010 The Editorial Board, Philosophical Papers DOI: 10.1080/05568641003669532 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 118 Re-Reading deficiencies of ethnophilosophy are signified. Hountondji implicitly acknowledges the level of reaction to this paper in the preface to the second edition of African Philosophy: Myth & Reality, as most of the criticisms of the book which he addresses are directed at this paper. But there is one reason for hesitating before embarking on a rereading of this paper: it seems as if that task has already been done. Sanya Osha published an article in 2005 in Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de Philosophie titled ‘Legacies of a Critique of Ethnophilosophy: Hountondji’s African Philosophy: Myth & Reality Revisited.’2 Osha’s article revisits the central question of Hountondji’s critique of ethnophilosophy, and asks whether he continues his position in later works such as The Struggle for Meaning.3 So, has this project already been done? Not in the manner I think will yield the most interesting results. Osha’s main concern was to determine Hountondji’s consistency over time (specifically wondering whether he tempered his most direct critique of ethnophilosophy), and assess his susceptibility to classic criticisms. Osha’s conclusion was that his position did not change, that his critique remains his consistent position over time, and does not diminish. Osha also considered several prominent critiques of Hountondji’s position, and argued that, while they are serious critiques, they are ultimately not as successful as the authors would like to believe. But this is not my concern. I am more interested in looking at what Hountondji’s seminal paper makes possible, rather than whether or not he is correct or whether his position has remained consistent over time. The function of the paper has been to define the philosophical landscape in Africa, and to demarcate boundaries between types of philosophy, between good and bad philosophy, and between philosophy 2 Sanya Osha, ‘Legacies of a Critique of Ethnophilosophy: Hountondji’s African Philosophy: Myth & Reality Revisited’ Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy/Revue Africaine de Philosophie XVII (2005): 13-34. 3 Paulin Hountondji, The Struggle for Meaning. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2002). Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 119 and non-philosophy. More interesting to me, though, is the issue of what kinds of questions this paper makes newly available to philosophers that were not available before. Hountondji himself seems to qualify and question what is ascribed to his name in subsequent publications, indicating to the superficial reader that he thinks interpreters got him wrong, but indicating to more careful readers that he thinks they have not understood the questions he wishes to raise. And, it may even be that new questions are raised in spite of Hountondji’s position, rather than because of it. The paper, by the admission of both the author and almost all readers, serves to define and demarcate the field of African philosophy. It is best remembered by most people as an attack on ethnophilosophy, that is, the practice of looking for (African) philosophy in the collectively held world-views of a traditional group. These world-views are not argued by individuals or disputed over; rather, they are seen as foundational to proper functioning within a culture. They are what everyone takes for granted, and can be embodied or encoded in proverbs, songs, practices, and are often best expressed by the wisdom of the sages. Hountondji’s stated intention was to analyze ‘the idea of philosophy, or rather, of African philosophy.’ He did this by showing that ‘the phrase “African philosophy,” in the enormous literature that has been devoted to the problem, has so far been the subject only of mythological exploitation and, second, that it is nevertheless possible to retrieve it and apply it to something else: not to the fiction of a collective system of thought, but to a set of philosophical discourses and texts.’ (56) These two goals can be seen as Hountondji’s critical and constructive agenda. The first part, which is critical, leads to his famous critique of ethnophilosophy. In effect, Hountondji needed to unseat the tacitly accepted orthodoxy in structuring the field of African philosophy. The second part, the constructive alternative, leads to his discussion of the essentials of a ‘real’ philosophy. In what follows, I will focus more on the second than the first part. This part makes a certain kind of questioning available, which Hountondji himself gives evidence of, but which can be Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 120 Re-Reading pressed further than he was willing or able to go. Following the kind of questioning he sets into motion will involve a sacrifice, though, for both Hountondji and his critics, which is that the initial goal of defining and delimiting the field will be less relevant and less interesting. For those who want to pursue the question of where the line is between African philosophy, non-African philosophy, and African non-philosophy, this is still possible, but such questions will preclude taking seriously a line of questioning that is the real strength of the paper. I want to start with a word, a small, almost incidental word that Hountondji uses in his critique of ethnophilosophy, a word meant to signify a space that he thought was resistant to philosophy. He says that ‘while [ethnophilosophers] were looking for philosophy in a place it could never be found—in the collective unconscious of African peoples, in the silent folds of their discourse—the ethnophilosophers never questioned the nature and theoretical status of their own analyses.’ (63) The word that interests me is ‘folds’. For one familiar with Deleuze this is, of course, a suggestive term—‘le pli’, that Baroque, Leibnitzian process of thought which privileges and makes productive the labyrinthine twists, mirroring of inside and outside, and differentiation of elements that exist in living material reality. The concept of the fold resists the traditional philosophical move, which is to define terms first and then build upon that base to produce the philosophical equivalent of a building. One might think of this as Deleuze’s response to the classic problems of the one and the many, and the whole and the parts. Both problems tend to have answers which come down on one side or the other. Deleuze’s ‘fold’ is his attempt to recognize the interrelatedness of these concepts, and his resolute refusal to reduce one side to the other. This account is not so much a statement on what the fold is as what it does or, perhaps better, how we know it when we see it, and how, in seeing it, we create new ways of thinking. Deleuze sees in reality and in thought a restless creative impulse, one in which rest is not the natural state. The folds of reality suggest a oneness in difference and a difference in oneness, and an adequate account of that Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 121 reality will, in his opinion, need to refuse the traditional reductionist move. Using an almost accidental, and certainly contingent word such as Hountondji’s mention of ‘fold’ may seem capricious, but in fact, it opens a door into a real issue. Hountondji is in no way a Deleuzian, but that is not the point here. My observations do not depend on tracing Hountondji’s provenance of terms, or in suggesting that this little word is somehow evidence of some deeper current hitherto unnoticed. The real question, which Hountondji is explicitly interested in, is the question of what would constitute an adequate and creative philosophy in Africa. His explicit answer to that is well known—it is a philosophy based on science, one which has shed its mythological roots and has made way for a progressive, methodologically rigorous and self-critical intellectual practice. It is, in other words, a practice without (acknowledged) folds. It is a linear practice, a straight productive line from premises to conclusions. It depends on some arbitrary decisions, such as the idea that what makes African philosophy African is that its author be African (64), but it is the fold which Hountondji seeks to reject, and which I would like to rehabilitate. Hountondji sees this as a mode of creation within African philosophy, one which takes philosophy out of its preoccupation with tradition and reclaiming the past, and moves it toward a progressive practice. It is important to note that Hountondji is not saying that tradition, culture, history, or anything else is not philosophically interesting. His argument is not about the ‘stuff’ of philosophy, but it is about the identity of philosophy, specifically as found in its method. It is the method of ethnophilosophy that he objects to, and he objects to it precisely because it produces a flawed subjectivity, that is, a flawed self-identity for African philosophy. And he may well be correct about this. This is his critical moment, and one might grant him the point. Self-critique and self-examination, a hallmark of philosophy from any tradition, was lacking from this approach to philosophy, this attempt to find philosophy in the collective Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 122 Re-Reading unconscious and ‘silent folds’ of discourse. It is in the construction that things get interesting, because his solution to the problem is to impose a linearity and an almost Cartesian foundation on African philosophy. Any ‘silent folds’ are rendered irrelevant, although it is important to note that ignoring the folds does not mean they do not exist. The linearity already mentioned may see itself as progressively creative, but in fact, the self-identity of African philosophy is always replicated at lower and higher levels, or perhaps better, at closer and wider focal lengths. What does this mean? For one thing, if you have already defined African philosophy using the method that Hountondji prefers, and in distinction to ethnophilosophy, you will look for what you expect to find. That is the most basic fold, the understanding of subjectivity which then produces its own evidence, although I am more tempted to see this as less a fold and more a slip-knot. Philosophy is not about myth? Then even though it is possible that myth could be philosophically interesting, it is effectively ignored. And further—what would it mean to engage in a metaphilosophy of African philosophy, as informed by African philosophy itself? Hountondji rightly objects to ethnophilosophy on the grounds that it’s imperatives come from Europe, from conversations with the West that demand an ‘authentic’ Africanity. But is positivist science no less European? Is it not also an answer to a question about how to cleanse thought of its tradition, which developed in the wake of the Enlightenment? It is a different provenance, one of method rather than of dialogue, but still looking elsewhere for its authenticity. Of course, looking elsewhere may be inevitable. Not in terms of finding some outside validation, but in the sense that any philosophy which takes its own place seriously must do so both in terms of the questions that have currency in that place, and also in terms of the differences between its own questions and those of the concepts and questions that have currency elsewhere. An African metaphilosophy would have to take into account its own place, the place from which its concepts come, and do so in a manner that does not simply focus on the Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 123 production of texts in a technocratic and a-historical manner, as Hountondji’s method does. The point is this—the folds are there, whether Hountondji wishes to only see them in ethnophilosophy or not. To suppose that the new method could simply be modeled on positivist science simplifies African philosophy beyond the point of interest, and beyond the point of creativity. It is ethnophilosophy that takes the ‘silent folds of [Africans] discourse’ seriously. Hountondji is right about that. And he is also right that focusing on such folds as if they guaranteed the Africanity or the philosophicality of African philosophy is a futile undertaking. The folds are then not folds at all, or at least not recognized as such, but are selfjustifying objects. The ethnophilosopher expects to find a philosophy embedded in practices in traditional Africa, and so, such practices are found. Any practices would in fact work just fine, and so there is little that could serve as disconfirming evidence for African philosophy or, more importantly, disconfirming evidence of a particular understanding of culture. It is why so much ethnophilosophy ends up being largely similar to other instances of itself—what is really being examined is the expectation one brings to traditional culture. There are no folds here yet. But what is a fold? It is a term that is more often invoked in Deleuze than it is made clear, even in his book The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque4. Hountondji recognizes that there is a mis-step in ethnophilosophy. I am claiming that that mis-step amounts to a misunderstanding of the fold that is there. The fold is not creative, but limiting, as ethnophilosophy merely addresses a question that did not come from itself. But then, Hountondji himself mis-steps, in that instead of allowing the fold to truly become creative, he again attempts to harness it by turning it into something positivistic. 4 Gilles Deleuze, 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Foreward and translation by Tom Conley (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). 124 Re-Reading Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Perhaps the best way to get at the concept of the fold is to ask the question, what does it mean to think in an African place? Ethnophilosophy answered that question by referring to a particular subject matter, and Hountondji answers that by referring to a method and starting point. But thinking is not so easily harnessed. Rendered visual, ethnophilosophy wants to draw us a picture which represents reality, while Hountondji wants to produce a modernist map that will guide us unerringly to a destination. Attending to folds means something other than either the picture or the map, something more like drawing a chart. The chart, as Russell West-Pavlov puts it, … resonates with premodern, pre-technical map-making practices… A Chart, in Deleuze and Guattari’s usage of the term, is open-ended, reversible, can be constantly modified. It is part of a practice which has purchase upon the real, one which can be constructed in any place, read from any point, as part of any number of diverse practices.5 In other words, the third option is to imagine a philosophy which is rooted in the reality of experience in Africa. It is not so much an interpretation of reality, or a recipe for producing a particular outcome, but a way of navigating reality by creating concepts which are adequate to that reality, and revelatory of the potential within it. Philosophy’s task is not to be the mirror of nature (or culture), nor is it to provide a reliable path to knowledge using the model of the sciences. It is to produce concepts that are adequate to the places from which their questions arise. That is what a chart does, in its classical sense. It was never just a partial or inadequate map. It was not an abstraction, like a map, in which lines of longitude and latitude are laid down first, and then whatever happens to fit within that grid is filled in. Charts were based on experience. They included what actual travelers reported (and, to be fair, also mis-reported). They were not windows on reality, but guides for later travelers who would also be moving along the same path. The ‘fold’ in the chart is not just the kind that allows it to be put in a 5 Russell West-Pavlov, 2009. Space in Theory: Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze (Amsterdam: Rodopi): 224. Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 125 backpack or pocket. The fold is the repetition, the additive possibility which exists as trips are repeated by the same traveler and by other travelers and routes are annotated, and the revisionist possibility which exists as alternate routes are inscribed and old ones erased or altered. When GPS systems start enabling travelers to upload not just updated road information, but also observations on what happens on the path at a particular time of day or year, what to watch for apart from commercial and tourist opportunities, and how to ‘read’ the locale as if you were a local, it will move from being modeled on the map to being modeled on the chart. It will have folds, which will make possible creative movement rather than just correct or efficient movement. For some examples of the folds that are recorded and made available by ‘charts’, we need look no further than the rest of the book in which the essay ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’ is located. Hountondji identifies some significant examples of repetition and contrast, which can be the basis for a creative (as opposed to progressive) philosophy. The first example comes in the chapter immediately following the ‘African Philosophy’: ‘Philosophy and its Revolutions’. Hountondji tells us that philosophy is a history and not a system (72), and a discontinuous history at that, which means that any revolution will be a Kuhnian-style leap from one paradigm of thought to another. African philosophy’s goal should not be to create a new philosophy by ignoring what has happened elsewhere. African philosophy becomes genuine, for Hountondji, when it absorbs the international philosophical movements in order to transcend them (72). This strategy fits with the path Hountondji has laid out elsewhere. Philosophy is modeled on the sciences, and is therefore a linear process of knowledge creation, punctuated by periodic changes in paradigm. And yet, does science need to be positivist science? Or does it mean the kind of complex science we have seen in more recent times? ‘It is not philosophy but science that Africa needs first,’ he tells us (98). Really? Is that the conclusion to be made here, that knowledge of one sort needs to be assembled before knowledge of another sort is available? What if Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 126 Re-Reading positivism was not the model of science, and we saw the development of science not as the assembly of a particular kind of knowledge, but rather an ‘other’ for philosophy, a set of practices that (to use Deleuze’s terms) can produce an intensity and engender new lines of flight? Or, to put it in non-Deleuzian terms, what if the host of material done over the past decades in science and technology studies was brought to bear on this assumption of the construction of knowledge about Africa? What if science was not the disinterested pursuit of knowledge that it presents itself as being? Or, more importantly, what if science itself does not easily fit into the Enlightenment picture anymore, but is rather itself infused with chaos, uncertainty, and provisionality? The science Hountondji seems to think is appropriate as the foundation of African philosophy is the science of the predictable machine, not of the quantum state, the fractal, or the autopoetic system. The end of the same chapter yields a second example of a fold in Hountondji’s thought, which can lead to something creative. A central part of Hountondji’s critique of ethnophilosophy is that it is largely a creation of the West. He furthers this critique to claim that more specific African philosophies are also answering Western questions rather than building thought on their own terms: It is now recognized that in this sense ‘Bantu philosophy’, ‘Dogon philosophy’, ‘Diola philosophy’, ‘Yoruba philosophy’, ‘Fon philosophy’, ‘Wolof philosophy’, ‘Serer philosophy’, etc. are so many myths invented by the West, that there are no more spontaneous African ‘philosophies’ than there are spontaneous Western, French, German, Belgian or American ‘philosophies’ creating silent unanimities among all Westerners, all the French, all the Germans, etc. African philosophy can exist only in the same mode as European philosophy, i.e., through what is called literature. (101) This is a telling statement. Hountondji sees local philosophies as exactly the same as the more general ‘African philosophy’ and susceptible to the same critique as any ethnophilosophy. But there is clearly an opportunity to recognize a potential fold here. Do these more specific philosophies contain the same questions and concerns as the more general category? What if they do not? What if a closer focal length produces a different set Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 127 of questions, relevant to a more specific place, along with concepts that have a more specific provenance? The fold here is the replication of elements at different levels, at the same time as there is a change at different levels. Instead of thinking of African philosophy as a general category, it may well be that it is the distillation and transformation of more specific issues. Indeed, we could draw the focal length closer—could there not be a philosophy of a more specific place, perhaps of a school or a region? To the extent that we assume that there is nothing but identity at all these focal lengths, we end up with an arid philosophy, and one in which all that we can see is ethnophilosophy. But what if the philosophy is, in fact, there, and the problem is with the way it has been written about to this point? Tempels does, indeed, deserve criticism, but not because he talked about a Bantu philosophy, but because he looked for it in the wrong place, in the static beliefs that underlay a culture. He was not equipped to think about the questions that the people in the culture actually asked, and he was therefore not equipped to see the potential fissures and differences in the answers that different members of the culture may have given to those questions. These different focal levels are at least potentially what Deleuze calls ‘planes of immanence’. The fold that is available at these different focal lengths is both the fold of repetition at various levels, along with difference, and also the relationship between the inner and the outer. We should not think of African philosophy as either the addition of all local philosophies put together, or a wholly separate enterprise. A third example comes with the discussion of the 18th Century Ghanaian philosopher William Amo. Hountondji has the most extensive published treatment of Amo anywhere, to my knowledge, but that treatment is, unfortunately, a mere chapter in length, and consists of a brief biography and overview of his thought as expressed in his second dissertation (the first, on the rights of Africans in Europe, is lost, and known only through a brief summary). Hountondji argues that African philosophy is philosophy done by Africans. Here we have a historical African who works on problems very Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 128 Re-Reading similar to German philosophy during the time of Kant. So, is this really African philosophy? Amo wrote for a place, Germany, but did he write for his home as well? In Hountondji’s estimation, he did not. There are no theses that could be seen as African in origin, he argues (128), nor should we expect any. They would not be free thinkers, if we expected them to hold ideas that were governed or dictated by their place of origin. Hountondji’s regret is that a thinker like Amo belonged ‘entirely to a non-African theoretical tradition,’ (129-30) in other words his writing could only insert itself into a cultural conversation other than his own. The argument that Hountondji recounts from Amo’s dissertation certainly does look like it inserts itself into a European debate between the mechanists and the vitalists, or between those who saw the human mind as the seat of reason and understanding alone and those who saw the mind as also being the seat of sensation. Amo argued that sensation, properly understood, was a function of the living and organic body. The faculty of sensation, in Hountondji’s translation of Amo’s Latin, is: A specific arrangement (dispositio) of the living and organic body, thanks to which animated beings are affected by material and sensible things, given in immediate presence. (122) Sensation in the body depends on the circulation of the blood, Amo thinks, and so could not be a function of the mind. Because of this, then, the mind is impassive (or ‘apathetic’ in his words). The body is the place where sensation takes place, where passion exists, and where life is. The body is not alive because it is moved by something immaterial, such as a spirit, but is alive in itself. Vitalists were prone to ascribe to an infinite spirit all sorts of attributes, including activity, and by extension the human mind also partook in these attributes, all except for infinity (124). In arguing that the mind is passive, Amo is arguing against a certain version of vitalism. None of this suggests, of course, that sensation does not happen. Quite the opposite; Amo says ‘To live and feel are two inseparable attributes. Proof of this lies in the convertability of these two propositions: all that lives necessarily feels, and all that feels necessarily Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 129 lives, so that the presence of the one implies the presence of the other.’ (120) Hountondji adds that life itself may not consist in motion ‘but in receptivity, permeability, openness to the world.’ The irony here becomes apparent when we look at this from Deleuze’s point of view. Deleuze draws on vitalism, particularly that of Bergson, but not to suggest that there is some infinite spirit animating everything. For Deleuze, the vitality of life does not contradict a materialist philosophy about the world. He would, in fact, agree that to live and to feel are inseparable. More than that, a being that is truly alive would ‘feel its way’ through its world, making decisions in response to specific stimuli and particular situations, in part by instinct and in part by creating concepts that enable a coherent response to the world. While Amo might think that he is arguing against vitalists, that is true only if vitalism entails spiritualism. Spirit lacks the ability to sense, and Hountondji argues that Amo regards this as a defect. (120) Amo’s central propositions, Hountondji thinks, are clear: ‘the apathy of mind signifies, on the one hand, that mind does not have sensations, and, on the other hand, that it lacks the faculty of sensation.’ (121) The conclusion Hountondji draws from this is that ‘The field of that science is thus clearly defined, and the scientist will no longer have to resort to the mysterious action of spirit to explain physiological processes.’ (121) In other words, in Hountondji’s account, Amo supports the overall argument of Hountondji’s book by arguing for a unique basis for science. In fact, though, the situation is not at all so clear, as I have suggested, since Amo could just as well be seen to argue that matter itself has life and sensibility. Hountondji notes that the concept of organism is not fully explored by Amo, and ascribes this lack to the fact that it was a ‘recent addition to the arsenal of scientific concepts.’ (121) He says that it functions ‘almost as a theoretical stopgap in his discourse, a flatus vocis destined to cover up an omission.’ (121) But what if there was no omission? Amo’s De humanae mentis apatheia is unpublished and untranslated, so it is difficult to say for certain just what the text itself indicates. But what if this is not Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 130 Re-Reading ‘the negative moment of the thesis’, as Hountondji would have it, but a point of difference with the European tradition in which Amo is writing? Hountondji takes great delight in pointing out Amo’s use of irony to undermine vitalism. He points out that Amo uses the arguments of the scholastics about the nature of spirit, and its distinction with matter, to further argue for the passivity of the human mind. Humans are necessarily embodied, and so the scholastic arguments about spiritual cause fail. He does not argue against the very concept of spirit (although, he does think that there is nothing we can know or say about those spirits), but as soon as a body is involved, the body’s imperatives take over and, as a result, the human mind becomes passive. The fold here is multiple. First, Amo uses scholastic thought against itself. Second, though, Hountondji’s evident delight in finding someone like Amo arguing for materialistic science is turned on its head as well. Amo is, indeed, arguing for materialist science, but that does not necessitate Hountondji’s positivist version of that science. Third, Hountondji seems to take it all back, by the end of the chapter, by pointing out that the importance of Amo’s work must not be exaggerated, that it was ‘essentially a kind of academic exercise, a display of stylistic skill, as much as a piece of philosophical reflection.’ (127) In other words, he might have just been showing his abilities rather than arguing something he actually believed. This is, of course, always possible with every argument. But it is particularly ironic to be mentioned in this case, as the chapter has accomplished its task of establishing that an African in the 18th Century already argued for something like a scientific approach to the world. It seems to validate Hountondji’s argument. As I have tried to suggest, thought, things may be very different than what they seem. For the final example, let us return to the end of the essay ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’. Hountondji here gives some examples of questions which might lead to the creation of the kind of charts I mentioned earlier, although he does not make that connection himself. Despite seemingly setting himself up to answer them, ‘[t]his is not the Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 131 place to answer these questions,’ (66) but answering them may not be the point anyway. The point is in asking them, or more importantly, in interrogating the asking. In the ‘Final Remarks’ section of this paper, he begins his list of questions with the least interesting one: ‘how shall we distinguish philosophical literature from other forms of scientific literature, such as mathematics, physics, biology, linguistics, sociology, etc., inasmuch as these disciplines also develop as specific forms of literature?’ The next question is one which he sees as an extension of the previous one, but which is not: ‘In other words, what is the particular object and area of study of philosophy?’ And finally, ‘In more general terms, what relation is there between scientific and non-scientific literature (for instance, artistic literature), and why must we include philosophical literature in the first rather than the second?’ These questions flow from the logic of the rest of the essay. What is interesting is not just the questions, but Hountondji’s demurral at answering them, even at this point. These questions ‘can never receive definite and immutable answers, for the definition of a science must be revised constantly in the light of its own progress, and the articulation of theoretical discourse in general—by which we mean the demarcation of the various sciences—is itself subject to historical change.’ (67) Hountondji’s questions rely on several assumptions, argued earlier, and have several consequences. The assumptions: first, philosophy’s identity lies in the form of its literature. Second, establishing philosophy’s nature depends on distinguishing it from other forms of disciplinary literature, and then (as he suggests later), putting those disciplinary literatures in dialogue. And third, the result of looking at philosophy in this way will be that we will have a progressivist philosophy, that is, philosophy that advances in ways analogous to the advancement of the sciences. As for the consequences: The progressivism that will result from shifting philosophy to this model will be driven by the ability to critique ideas without falling for the ‘allure of ideological fashions.’ (68) He has in mind nationalist philosophies of various stripes, applications of Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 132 Re-Reading otherwise interesting and useful theoretical perspectives (such as Marxism) in superficial and heavy-handed ways. A further consequence is the removal of the main obstacles for philosophical development, which he sees as mainly being political. Several things are noteworthy in this section. First, to one versed in African philosophy, it is clear that Hountondji is resisting Oruka’s ‘trends’ as an account of the forms of African philosophy. He does not explicitly mention the trends, but he has already expelled ethnophilosophy, and at the end of the essay here he rejects Oruka’s category of ‘nationalist-ideological philosophy’ as being part of African philosophy (and to be sure, Oruka has his reservations about these categories himself). Both of these, Hountondji argues, are not so much (misguided) alternatives to philosophy, as Oruka’s ‘trends’ suggest, but are actually impediments to philosophy. The first serves a Western anthropological agenda, and the second makes free inquiry and scientific development impossible. The point is not just that the other elements of the trends are to be rejected (sage philosophy will, largely, be seen as ethnophilosophy by Hountondji, despite Oruka’s protestations), but the very idea of having diverse forms or modes of philosophy under the umbrella of African philosophy cannot stand for him. The second thing to note, though, is that Hountondji’s refusal to answer the questions he posed at the beginning of the section seems very odd, at this point. The reasons for this refusal ring hollow. Yes, the definition of a science may shift over time, but not so much and so quickly as to make it impossible for a positivist such as Hountondji to have a firm footing. The problem of demarcation that he mentions also seems overemphasized, under the form of progressivist science that he champions. And the third thing to note is that philosophy is to be put on the side of the sciences rather than other literatures such as artistic literature. It is unclear what exactly he has in mind when he refers to artistic literature, but I will hazard a guess that he is demarcating science and Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 Re-Reading 133 non-science by the forms of knowledge each produces or, to put it more bluntly, by the idea that science produces knowledge and artistic literature does not. Since we are left to speculate as to his reticence to answer these questions that he has clearly set himself up to answer throughout the entire paper, we cannot press this guess too far. But fortunately, we do not have to rely on a guess to make the point I want to make. The point is that there are folds in Hountondji’s work that he cannot or will not follow. His is a strategy of straightening out all paths to knowledge. This is positivism. And yet, throughout the book and even at the end of the very chapter in which he makes his strongest case for basing philosophy on positivism, he does not follow through to the end. The fold here is the ambiguity that arises when any answer to these questions is given. It is the same problem which any positivism meets—a critique of inadequate knowledge construction is much easier to make than is a constructive proposal that is not self-contradictory or selfdefeating. As soon as Hountondji actually answered any of the questions he posed, it would be clear that philosophy in Africa would not be so easily caged, and its path would not be so easily prescribed. Constraining its method to being something analogous to scientific method would only serve to overlook or reduce the myriad forms of intellectual life as actually lived (and not just reflected on) in Africa. This is the problem of the many and the one in disguise. Modeling philosophy on scientific method assumes that phenomena can be divided into parts, those parts can be analyzed, and the whole can be reassembled. That may work for mechanistic science, if we wish to be charitable to it, but it will reduce knowledge of human existence as lived to lifeless parts. This privileges the many over the one, and the parts over the whole. Hountondji’s reaction against the colonial agenda implicit in ethnophilosophy was well taken, and was an important statement to make. His sense that we cannot compartmentalize philosophy from science is also well taken. What becomes apparent, though, is that his Downloaded By: [Janz, Bruce] At: 18:10 24 March 2010 134 reliance on a particular, outdated form of science also ends up restricting what philosophy could be. All these examples extend well past the essay that began this study, but, I would suggest, give a clear picture of Hountondji’s logic and purpose in that essay while at the same time suggest alternatives to that logic. ‘African Philosophy, Myth and Reality’ remains a milestone in African philosophy, but as I have tried to show, there is much more going on than meets the eye. If we ask what the paper makes possible, rather than whether or not the author is correct in his argument, we find a more complex and more interesting document. The folds that Hountondji wishes to dismiss turn out to be found everywhere, and suggest that the optimism toward building a philosophy on positivist science is overstated. In its place, though, there is the potential for a much more interesting philosophy, one which can follow the flow of the folds, which can navigate the philosophical territory by chart. University of Central Florida [email protected]