NOT A HOUSE DIVIDED

Many who work in the domain of academic philosophy have come to take it for granted that there is a de facto division between professionals who align themselves with analytic philosophy and those who prefer a phenomenological or hermeneutical approach. That this ‘division’ also impairs communication between these schools of thought is evidenced by such familiar refrains as, “I can’t understand what you’re saying,” or “But what do you really mean by that?” In consequence analytic philosophers often only communicate with those of a similar philosophical persuasion, and the same seems to apply to those who opt for a phenomenological or hermeneutical approach. Panel presentations at conferences are divided along what, in some cases, become virtually ideological lines, and an analogous condition can affect professional journals, texts, and even whole departments. The divisions have become so ingrained that those involved sometimes relate as if aliens from different planets who have tried and failed to communicate.

In the earlier days of African academic philosophy there simply were not enough professionals doing it to entertain the possibility of such divisions. That perhaps explains why some of its memorable moments consisted of exchanges between the likes of Paulin Hountondji (influenced by Althusser’s Marxism and well-known for his critique of “ethnophilosophy,” which also can apply to analytic philosophy — language as a shared, a la ‘tribal’, source of meanings of philosophical significance), Kwasi Wiredu (a rationalist of transcultural but analytic persuasion), the late H. Odera Oruka (who, with his original theory of philosophical sagacity, would on occasion damn everyone else), the late Peter Bodunrin (who wondered whether ‘traditional’ thought was sufficiently critical in character to provide a solid basis for a form of philosophy that would essentially be analytic), and Theophile Okere (who advocates a specifically African form of hermeneutics). To be sure mutual understanding was not always achieved, but such syncretic palavers did produce some provocative and productive exchanges.

Recently I have had occasion to review much of this early literature, as well as the writings of the newer generations of philosophers in and of Africa (Hallen 2002). And what I think I am finding evidence of developments that are a source of worries to me, perhaps needlessly, perhaps not needlessly, in one respect. That is, I see a division similar to what has occurred in the Western academy growing between African philosophers who prefer an analytic approach and those who prefer phenomenology or hermeneutics. Some may feel that this is natural, normal, to be expected, even healthy. But when I think of the future of the discipline coming to be known as Africana Philosophy, I cannot help but wonder whether those involved would be well-advised at this point to make more serious efforts to discuss their similarities and differences before continuing to go their separate ways. I am not sure I am comfortable with the idea that, for example, Tsenay Serequeberhan’s The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy will be dismissed out of hand by analytic colleagues as empirically meaningless verbiage, or that Kwasi Wiredu’s most recent Cultural Universals and Particulars may be summarily typified by hermeneutical colleagues as too much talk about language in a pseudo-scientific guise.

Therefore my point in this brief essay will be to explore several topics or themes with reference to which I think analytic and phenomenological or hermeneutical thinkers may share some common concerns that could promote fruitful philosophical exchanges. These will include: (1) exploring the overlaps between the methods underlying analysis and phenomenologically or hermeneutically ‘describing’ or ‘interpreting’ a subject; (2) exploring what each of these approaches has to say about the relationship between language and philosophy; (3) exploring their contrasting views on the status of universals as compared with the status of the contextual (or, as in Wiredu’s title, the ‘particularized’); and (4) exploring what relativism may or may not mean to each of these schools of thought.

I have always believed there were common priorities shared by the idea(l)s involved in “analyzing” something and by what phenomenologists refer to as “description,” or what hermeneutic philosophers refer to as “interpretation.” None of the three schools intend that these activities would most importantly be carried out on some relatively superficial level. All involve in some sense ‘digging’ or ‘penetrating’ beneath the surface of a topic or phenomenon and discovering a deeper level of understanding, meaning or truth. In phenomenological terms this involves the so-called “reductions” or “bracketing” that take the philosopher beyond the level of everyday experience. In hermeneutical terms it involves a more profound appreciation of the underlying social and cultural ‘traditions’ formative of human understanding in a particular historical context (“historicity”). In analytic discourse it involves the notions of ‘clarification’ and ‘justification’, which also are intended to provide a deeper and more profound understanding of the issue or problem under consideration. And coming to terms with this deeper level of understanding can, on all three approaches, somehow involve clarification and new insights by identifying or defining its component elements or dimensions.

These limited introductory similarities, arising from what I am characterizing as shared methodological priorities, might be challenged by members of these respective schools as themselves superficial because they ignore the radically different frameworks or world-views (for lack of a better word) within which these approaches to philosophy operate. The one side (phenomenology and hermeneutics) might argue that analytic philosophy is nothing more than the contemporary metamorphosis of classic British empiricism with all of its scientistic or positivist trimmings. One evolutionary difference between its previous and contemporary manifestations is that the former claimed to be analyzing ‘experience’ while the latter targets ‘language’. But this does not mitigate the basic fact that its most fundamental orientation still is to be empirical (whether focusing on shared experiences or shared languages), and therefore fatally constrained within a view of philosophy and the world that places a distorting emphasis on some form of public verifiability and purported objectivity.

The other side (analytic philosophy) might argue that phenomenology or hermeneutics are, analogously, contemporary manifestations of (European) Continental philosophy’s long-time obsession with introspection, supposedly methodologically sanitized by various cognitive measures that are designed to promote intersubjectivity (sharing via dialogue, etc.). Still, since subjectivity by definition is said to lack the ‘objective’ constraints supposedly guaranteed by a more empirically-minded approach, the levels of understanding claimed by phenomenology or hermeneutics are regarded as difficult to attain or sustain with anything approaching the intersubjective certainty to be derived from shared, public experience.

Before turning to the topic of language, I would ask you to reflect on the flavor of the rhetoric of these last two paragraphs in which I have tried to characterize the supposedly ‘opposing’ world-views of these three schools of thought. There is a latent, implicit, simmering hostility to it. And a further explanation for this is the fact that they have, in effect, now been ‘opposed’ to one another in their current forms for much of the past century. It is the longevity of this tradition of hostility that adds a further element of legitimacy, of convention, of business as usual, to the contesting sides’ respective pronouncements about not being able to ‘understand’ what the other is saying.

Analytic philosophers who favor a universalist approach argue that there are indeed a body of fundamental truths that characterize all forms of human understanding which may be characterized by the controversial term “rational.” But this foundational claim is not really very different from phenomenology’s assertion that there are fundamental structures common to all human experience. What the two sides disagree about is how narrowly or expansively the category of relevant ‘experience’ is to be delimited. Nevertheless rationality itself is acknowledged by orthodox phenomenology as a perfectly respectable form of consciousness. This would indicate, at the least, that these two ‘sides’ might benefit from exchanging their viewpoints on what are the distinguishing attributes of the rational, and why or why not other forms of thought/consciousness are philosophically significant. In the domain of African philosophy it is difficult to identify thinkers of substance, who align themselves in a straightforward manner with orthodox, mainstream phenomenology as practiced by Husserl and company. One reason for this is probably that philosophers in the African context were wary of another European-generated approach to human understanding that focused in such an emphatic manner on elements that were said to be universal to human understanding because of concerns that such an overview could underrate or ignore elements to African cognition that were distinctive or perhaps even somehow unique. Other less technical considerations, such as Husserl’s idealization of Greece as a philosophical fountainhead and his own pejorative remarks about people of ‘color’,^¹ no doubt played a role as well. It possibly was and is considerations such as these that help to explain why most African philosophers of a phenomenological persuasion have opted for a hermeneutical approach (see below). Nevertheless, even orthodox phenomenological characterizations of the rational do form a basis for potentially enlightening and provocative exchanges between mainstream phenomenology and such comparatively universalist analytic African philosophers as Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Sam Oluoch Imbo, and ‘Segun Gbadegesin. Could there also be other reasons for the paucity of phenomenological faith, such as (a) the apparent counter-intuitiveness of the approach to dealing with problems created by anthropological thinkers who have denied the existence of African philosophy, (b) the fact that most of the followers of the phenomenological approach are either philosopher clergies or persons who have renounced the cloth to follow secular life, and (c) the apparent impenetrability of phenomenology, due to some tendency toward mysticism, as a tool for relating to the human experience, especially given the need to question the validity of Christianity, which religion has derided African theologies and religiosity?

There is no question that analytic philosophy does attach a higher priority to language as the target of its analyzes than is the case with phenomenology or hermeneutics. Nevertheless it is certainly not the case that hermeneutics, in particular, ignores language as a topic of philosophical interest and significance. This is why it is important to appreciate the implications of the hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ideas (1975) concerning the relationship between philosophy and language as a further step toward exploring overlapping concerns that may be shared by these two schools of thought. As intellectual descendants of the Anglophone tradition of (British) empiricism, manifested most notably by the sciences, analytic philosophers who concern themselves with language, concepts, or certain ‘problems’ of philosophy do appear to relate to these things as if they were stable and static ‘things’ existing in a (culturally and historically) neutral environment that makes it possible to perform various definitive experiments and tests with and upon them that other philosophers may thereafter verify and confirm. I am not saying this attitude is articulated in an explicit manner, but I am suggesting it is implied by the ways in which the techniques of analysis are employed. Furthermore, the writings of analytic philosophers often do give the impression that the more important problems, topics and questions of philosophy — on a purely ‘rational’ basis — transcend any particular historical or cultural context. If time is assigned a role in the search for philosophical truth(s), it is that an essential cluster of those truths will be timeless — universally applicable to all of humankind.

The idea of analyzing language, in isolation from the particular social and historical contexts in which human beings employ it, is something Gadamer cannot accept and therefore rejects as fundamentally flawed. To Gadamer language, as well as the world it is used to ‘talk’ about, are both living things — in process and constantly adapting or being adapted to express and accommodate old and new ideas and forms of understanding — rather than ‘things’ situated in an independent ‘reality’ that can be regarded as if on display in a museum case (1975, 345). Language and the world cannot be isolated from human life (as ‘subject’ over against ‘object’) because they are so fundamental to being human. Language therefore is essential, indeed inseparable, from the activity of constituting both human life and the world (more about this below):

As a shared vehicle of understanding and communication language, as evidenced in conversation and dialogue, ensures that understanding is intersubjective rather than private. But since natural languages do differ from one another (“to see languages as views of the world (1975, 364)”), and since social and historical contexts also differ as well as change, Gadamer’s orientation would obviously be more compatible overall with a relativistic appreciation of human understanding. In other words, he would regard it as culturally chauvinistic or ethnocentric for philosophy to anoint one particular natural language (English, Bantu) as some sort of paradigm, or one particular approach to defining ‘rationality’ (Western, Yoruba), for example, at some point in time as a basis with which to assess the merits of others.

If the preceding does not do Gadamer’s extensive writings on this subject an injustice, I cannot help but wonder whether the genuine differences between (a) analytic philosophers who embrace relativism and (b) hermeneutic approaches to the study of language are so fundamental as to make these two traditions irreconcilable. By “relativism” in the present context I mean those analytic philosophers in and of Africa who argue that there may be unique and variable elements to the language of any culture at different points in its history that somehow set its forms of understanding apart from any other. Certainly African analytic philosophers of a relativist persuasion, who argue that social, cultural, and cognitive contexts are subject to change, and who do not privilege those of any one culture or historical period as providing a rational paradigm for others to imitate or emulate, would seem to demonstrate a more flexible approach to human understanding that shares something fundamentally in common with their African hermeneutical colleagues.

Hermeneutical philosophy is explicitly context-oriented, by which is meant that it stresses the fact that human cognition always takes place in a particular historical, cultural and intellectual era, and is informed by the paradigms and priorities distinctive of that era (Serequeberhan 1994; Okolo 1986; 1991). As such the hermeneutical approach takes a fairly radically relativistic view of ‘knowledge’. The responsibility of philosophers is to come to terms with their historicity by acknowledging it, and by achieving a degree of reflective/reflexive understanding of the characteristics that distinguish their era while at the same time being situated in it. This would seem to indicate that the hermeneutical philosopher would be rather wary of philosophical ‘talk’ that presumes the existence of cognitive, etc. universals that are said to underlie or to be formative of understanding in all historical eras. Claims about the existence of such ‘universals’ would likely be treated as intellectually ethnocentric and false reifications of the paradigms of one particular era as somehow essential to all.

Although it might be possible to complain that the hermeneutical claim about historicity is itself a kind of universal truth, this would be a ‘cheap shot’ if the implication were that this then constitutes a methodological inconsistency. For that hermeneutical philosophers assert (or should the verb be “claim”) this is simply a bare fact, a given, about the human predicament — that we have no choice but to be historically situated — than a form of triumphal discovery (although it too obviously constitutes an important hermeneutical insight). As, analogously, some analytic philosophers react to the idea of posing the question, “Why be rational?”

The mutually beneficial dialogue between the American analytic philosopher Donald Davidson and the German hermeneutical philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (Hahn 1997, 421-435) about the manner in which language constitutes ‘reality’, rather than merely describes ‘reality’, is one example of the kind of positive convergence of interests and insights I have in mind. Both Davidson and Gadamer reject the conventional epistemological model of the ‘subject’ facing a ‘world’ which must then be described with words that re-present it in a sensible (‘objective’) manner. They suggest that since “thought itself depends upon language, [therefore it is] ‘the medium of language which would allow the [very notion of the] object to come into words’ (Davidson 1997, 431; the quote within the quote is from Gadamer 1975, 350).” For, as Davidson then goes on to say:

In the domain of African philosophy a similar sentiment seems to underlie Helen Verran’s recent Science and an African Logic when she suggests:

Analytic philosophers in and of Africa whom I would suggest favor a relativist approach to understanding or cognition are people like Anthony Appiah, myself (as well as the late Olubi Sodipo), and Godwin Sogolo. Hermeneutic African philosophers, whom I think evidence at least some sympathy for relativism, are people like Theophile Okere, Okonda Okolo, and Tsenay Serequeberhan. African analytic philosophers of a relativist persuasion are perhaps more common than is the case in the ‘mainstream’ Western tradition. This is probably a consequence of a supposition on the part of such scholars and intellectuals that African cultures may be different from those of the West in important ways that deserve to be highlighted, and that would therefore be misrepresented by beginning from a presumption that cognition in Africa and the West are essentially the same. If the issue is cognition, of course the key question becomes just how different it has to be in order to be rated as qualitatively distinct. And then there is the further consideration that, in the past, supposed ‘differences’ in African cognition were sometimes used as evidence that Africa’s indigenous intellectual heritage was thereby inferior to or less advanced than that of the West. This is one important reason why African analytic and hermeneutic philosophers of a relativist persuasion have devoted so much time and effort to clarifying what they believe to be the accurate depiction of cognition in the African context. But, again, one reason for highlighting the similarities between them in this way is to show there is a consensus on certain issues that transcends methodological commitments and thereby provides a basis for dialogue and discussion between hermeneutical philosophers and analytical relativists because of a common commitment to cognition’s being somehow distinctive to social and cultural contexts.

Obviously one point of this essay is to call for more occasions for dialogue and debate between these schools of thought in the African context. Obviously it would then be somehow disturbing if there continues to be a growing consensus, even if tacit, that the absence of such dialogue and debate is not even an issue in the contemporary African philosophy scene. But one can still persist in asking the question — “Why shouldn’t it be?”

If such exchanges of viewpoints were to become more of a priority in Africana philosophy, there might be at least two further positive stimuli for it:

To repeat one final time: the important thing, as far as Africa’s overall philosophical future is concerned, is for analytic and phenomenological or hermeneutical philosophers to interact regularly in order to stimulate dialogue on the professional or intellectual level. In the Western academy this is not the case and the split between them is sometimes viewed as irreparable. But as the above synopsis hopefully indicates, with reference to Africa there are shared common concerns and interests and these should be explored, hopefully to their mutual benefit.

Note

1. It is tragically ironic that Edmund Husserl, who was to be persecuted for his own Jewish heritage, confounds his supposedly “presuppositionless” point of view with such observations as “according to the old familiar definition, man is the rational animal, and in this broad sense even the Papuan is a man and not a beast (1970, 290).”

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