What is Ethnophilosophy? (Analyzing African Philosophy)
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- čas přidán 13. 04. 2019
- This video looks at the tradition of Ethnophilosophy often used for developing African Philosophies based in Leopold Sedar Senghor's work on Negritude, including three objections and responses to those objections.
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Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more! (#AfricanPhilosophy #Ethnophilosophy)
Ethno philosophy contributes something else a sort of counter narrative to the western imperialist. It should be studied if our goal is to study the history of humanities inquiry or love of wisdom to discount other cultures methodologies is both ethically and intellectually problematic.
I've never heard about such a project before. Thanks for this informative video.
To me, a lot of these objections seem to stem from internal bias to the Western World. Its arrogant to presume that everything important to ever occur happened in the area of the world you were descended from/come from. In fact, it should also be noted that Eastern Philosophy actually predates Western Philosophy by quite a bit, so the argument "it must come from Greece" is a blatant falsehood.
Regardless, I definitely think African Philosophy should be taught in university settings. If nothing else, it will provide interested students with a new subject to study if they chose to do so and can open the minds of various people to something new that they likely never considered before.
I wholeheartedly agree; the objections are just terrible to me. I fail to see how ethno-philosophy is importantly different from the type of philosophy that's done today. To your other point, I also agree that we need more viewpoints in the philosophy taught today. In my personal experience, I haven't been exposed to any philosophy outside of Ancient Greek philosophy, 17th and 18th century European philosophy, and contemporary analytic philosophy. Not as large of a scope as what would be ideal.
I was born in Africa and have traveled through and/or done work in a dozen or so African countries. I remain unconvinced that African philosophies are on par with European philosophies.
For starters, it's critical to understand that Africa is nowhere near as monolithic as Europe is (by comparison, Europe is monolithic).
Philosophies bandied around in north Africa and even in Ethiopia never seemed to have quite made it around to central/west Africa or South Africa. In many ways, these regions are stunningly unenlightened. (I kid you not: I was chatting with the curator of a Rwandan museum who said their history started around the time of the Colonists, because like almost all sub-Saharan countries, they had no written language, and their folklore didn't really match their archeology). So, he says, the Europeans brought technology, architecture, agrarian advances, literacy, etc, etc, etc. Question: why on earth did *sub Sahara* not have these modern advances that were known for millennia(!!) throughout South America, China, Japan, Indonesia, India, middle east, north Africa and Europe?? Why not sub-Sahara Africa???
At any rate...
@@timffoster The curator of that museum was probably alienated to the colonialist system of education. So, he was unaware of the great achievements of Africa before the inhuman slave trade and colonial shameful rule. Greeks learned from the Egyptians, do not forget that, and Egyptians are ancestors of Africans.
You should be happy to hear that, thanks to the efforts of Professor Thomas Auxter, the University of Florida is adding African Philosophy to the regular philosophy curriculum!
@@danmangoku Well now I love Florida
When I did my undergraduate degree in philosophy at a Norwegian university, I was majorly Pissed Off by the focus on Western philosophy, and the COMPLETE LACK of non-Western philosophical traditions on the curriculum. My focus was ethics, and in particular animal + environmental ethics. In our history of philosophy courses, we were told that the main goal of a philosopher, or of the activity of DOING philosophy, is to get as close to the Truth as possible. It thus seems logical that as I was searching for some kind of truth within animal + environmental ethics, I would have to look at as many different / opposing positions as possible in order to even be able to inch towards some kind of truth. I feel like the lack of non-Western philosophy at my university put a real limitation on the philosophical work that I was able to do in uni. If I ever go back for a postgrad, I will definitely do my best to gather ALL of the previous attempts at getting to the truth, before attempting to formulate and express my own truth. Gah. So frustrating. In other words: THANK YOU for doing this series 💙
No problem. Glad you enjoyed. :)
I am as guilty as anyone of focusing on a particular tradition of philosophy to the detriment of other traditions. It can be challenging to incorporate philosophical traditions that are not in conversation with the western canon as they often talk past each other (so much of philosophy is just responding to someone that came before you). That is not to say that this is not something that should be studied, quite the contrary, that there is a lot of work to be done to bring these positions in conversation with each other. Thanks for watching!
why? Would you expect to go to a Chinese University and learn about Heidegger?
Wonderful video!🎉
Africa Ethno Philosophy is one of the best indeed. We are proud of who we are 👏💖👏🔥👏🔥
The objections are from a self-centered view point. The Greek definition of the word Philosophy is far away for the modern academic acceptance of that discipline. Remember philosophy implies speech as well as writing. So, the focus on the latter does not negate the validity of the primer as a way to express the Logos.
Especially since the father of Western Philosophy never wrote anything down and actually despised writing.
so nice an article
You should extend to the method of sagacity.
Yes please, I am currently in my fist year studying philosophy, your videos have really helped me understand better.
please, what are the tenets of ethno-philosophy and how did Okere react to them?
Placid and Kagame argue for ethnophilosophy, philosophy derived from the culture of a people, while Okere and Okolo argued for a hermeneutical view that focused on oral and written traditions. Check out the IEP for more: iep.utm.edu/history-of-african-philosophy/
A lot of those objections sound like they’re coming from racist philosophers that would rather dismiss the philosophy entirely then admit they don’t want to include African philosophers into their discussion
It's a way to be racist without being explicit about it. Instead just saying it's because they are black, you use reasons that align with the conditions that are only associated with a specific people group, which gives it the appearance of a valid reason.
I think that a comparison of the philosophy from Africa to some other philosophy is, in a certain sense, a problem because it creates a conflict in giving African philosophy a fair shake. Same could go with Eastern philosophy or American for that matter. It's too problematic to look at a body of work through only the lense of an analogy. The Kantian glasses will always be biased towards your own previous experience.
Always interesting to hear people in the west interpret and teach our African philosophy with a contemporary non-African perspective. This is very reductive and measures African philosophy based on a Western point of view.
Considering that it is a western philosopher delivering a lecture series with a western target audience as an introduction into African Philosophy I would argue that both the reductive and view point is justified. What is problematic though is that on our own continent our own Universities teach pretty much the same thing. What is lacking here is a starting point investigating the African origins of western philosophy.
Don't bitch that someone has interest in something that is so unknown that they were willing to try to explain what they learned as an introduction, from their own interpretation which is all we can go by. Regardless of the reductionism you see, any interpretation will have reductive qualities and if explaining the view points from another culture, viewpoints will be lost on them interpreting it to others outside their perspective, regardless.
The ancient greeks had multiple citystates, all under the same gods and pantheons, and all with different philosophies to the point of each individual. It would be insane to accurately understand any viewpoint without reduction, and that's generalizing an entire ethnicity rather than individuals valid interpretations from their own culture.
@@furyberserk don't bitch about him bitching
technically aristotle didn't record any of his own ideas directly, so everything we have on him was passed down via oral tradition to at least a small extent. so was much of the Bible, so it's not like oral traditon is foreign to western philosophy.
You're thinking of Socrates. Aristotle wrote all of his own stuff down, but much of it was lost in Europe. Same with Plato. Plato was the main source for what we know about Socrates, though. Socrates was the one who never wrote his own stuff down.
@@richyrich6099 it seems you are correct. I must have just been remembering that the nichomachian ethics was essentially lecture notes by one of his students.
1. It's better to begin with what Ethnophilosophy is, rather than going straightforward to what reasons there are to support/against it.
2. Whatever Ethnophilosophy is, there is a limit of what rational theorizations can do for us to understand it: it just coould not but be inherently controversial.
3. Perspective matters: there can be at least a difference between an African and a non-African talking about/ supporting ethonophilosophy: the former (more often than not) carries a cultural/political commitment, while the latter (more often than not) takes it as a piece of study.
4. Whatever it is, it is best seen from the gap between what people expect it to be and what it actually brings about.
Aronmila predates Pythagoras and Socrates, he is a Yoruba philosophy - his philosophical work covers metaphysics, religion, science, mathematics, and probability - is systemic philosphy is called Ifa practiced amongst Yorubas
Ethno-Philosophy
- Before modern connections, societies evolved their philosophy in conversation with themselves and not others
2:35 Belief--> Formal, Written Codification
4:26 What the video is seeking to do, 3 Objections
6:33 (1) “Philosophy must be able to be dated back to The Ancient Greeks”
10:41, 14:57 (2) “They May have been doing philosophy, but they didn’t refer to it as such”
17:36 (3) “It’s philosophy, but...” 21:25
23:40 _“An individual’s idea about what they care about in philosophy may inform the things they want to study”_
What drives you is what will take you to where you want to go/ to be. What you care about determines what you will seek out/focus on/think about (go figure)
Time limits, time limits, make our focus limited, as we can only see the grains of sand, and miss the miles (or kilometers) of depth in the pale with the shovel
It seems just as reasonable to describe western philosophy as a disguised or unconscious religion based on dogmatic beliefs about the nature of Truth and Reality, beliefs which are implicit in the dogmatically presumed way to arrive at such Ideals (ie: "logical" argument) as to deny philosophy to other cultures or individuals.
Most philosophers seem to understand the sense in which it is impossible for an individual not to be philosophical, while being blind to the equally cogent sense in which it is impossible not to be religious (at least in the sense of having axiomatic values beliefs criteria and predispositions rooted ultimately in ones culture, subjective experiences and upbringing).
Bringing all of this into the discourse both individually and interculturally could, potentially and with good will, lead to, if not some presumed absolute Logical Truth, then to a kind of Honest Truth that is not plagued by the kind of "lying by omission" that is inherent in the banishment of such subjective, historical, biographical, and cultural factors from the universe of discourse. The ongoing attempt at such honest truth could be the foundation of real understanding, cooperation, and respect
Lastly, I suppose it might make sense to say that only individuals can be philosophical and not groups if philosophy is to be reduced to the act of questioning prevailing assumptions about ultimate things. This would also mean a willingness to question the ultimate value of logical or philosophical reason to arrive at Truth (certainly when this becomes a prevailing assumption in ones group). This criteria however, would mean there is no such thing as Western philosophy, African Philosophy, or any other collective form of philosophy. It would seem likely in that case, that, however rare, there have always been philosophers in every culture, though I am not sure that Socrates or most of the rest of the official cannon would qualify in that case...
...at least can't really imagine Socrates seriously questioning his own dialectical method or essentialist assumptions even if these had become popular in his time, but maybe...
The question is: do Philosophical people exist outside of the West? Of course, it's nonsense to Even make Arguments that westerners are the only Philosophical people. I really don't grasp that african Philosophical people are even under scrutiny and demanded to show that Philosophical thinking exists in Africa. That's like saying that Africans don't engage with topics that are considered to be Philosophical.
Maybe this is bias: I believe that people who can't recognize Philosophical talent in africans are probably not that gifted enough or are so racist, they are unable to even realize that Philosophical thinking itself like physics exists outside of the west.
Has the west brainwashed us to think that Philosophical thinking only exists in the west. Now we're going to be saying that because culture X didn't come up with basketball that they are incapable of playing basketball, because basketball didn't come out of that culture. I'm pretty sure that people all over are capable of playing basketball.
Moreover, ethniphilosophical thinking is Philosophical thinking, and that various ethniphilosophical thinkings exists.
I think it should also fall under cultural philosophy and philosophical anthropology so there is a more positive discourse. Unfortunately there is a lot of stinking thinking by westerners who think too much of themselves. Before the ancient Greeks were the Egyptians and before them the Sumerians. On the other side was the Asians. Most westerners were conquered by other westerners and enslaved in ancient times. Then they became conquerors and did the same. Our ancient history of philosophy is only 2500 years old, but human beings migrated from Africa way longer back than that. Archaeologists and genealogists will tell you the timelines. Empires were created and destroyed by conquerors and natural disasters throughout time and space. Literature and information was lost and we start again
A number of interesting points. I think there's an important distinction to be made between the claim that the ancient Greeks were doing thinking that no one else was, and during that period of history people were coming up with ideas which had not been documented before, and much of that documentation was done in ancient Greece. Many "Greek" philosophers were actually from Africa (Carneades, Aristippus, etc.), and others (Epicurus, Pyrrho, etc.) lived extensively in Asia. The things that make these philosophers unique, and still relevant today is not their nationality but 1) The fact that we actually have them written down, while many of the philosophies that impacted them (from India, Persia, etc.) have been lost. 2) The fact that they are not religion, i.e. they attempt to explain phenomena with reference to rules of the universe not the whims of deities (effectively the thing that makes Thales of Miletus (from Western Asia) the "first" philosopher czcams.com/video/4RSvZMImEwE/video.html). It is quite possible that 2 arose in many other places throughout time (and ethnophilosophy attempts to pull those cultural philosophical beliefs out of traditions), however the fact that we actually have record of it (1) is what makes it both unique and impactful for the rest of philosophy.
The first objection to Ethnophilosophy, as you put it, is very Anglocentric. Your definition of philosophy as something that needs to have roots in ancient Greek forms of dialogue is incredibly squirreled and does not hold merit. Although your second response (somewhat) refutes this idea of referencing some ancient Greek philosopher, I don't understand why you would even include this very illegitimate objection.
In other words, what the ancient Greek called philosophy which then developed into western philosophy, has no respect for Eastern philosophy and African so called entho-philosophies are real philosophy but the western supremist won't let African philosophy be what it is, a philosophy. Ubuntu philosophy was engraved in the hearts of our ancestors, they passed it down through oral tradition, for a reason for they used to sit down a communities around big fire playing mbira and ngoma and the younger generations will be taught of the ways if our ancestors, the only crime was that western forces came and destroyed all the people who had the important information and disrupted not only African philosophies but African religions were demonised and anything from Africa was bad juju uhhh black magic says the advocates of the western suprimisists. What has ancient Greek philosophy to do with any other philosophies ?
I subscribed at first thinking this is a legit philosophy channel but got turned off by the anglosaxon arrogance partly from the objection, and also in your comments as well. You seem to have been studying some sort of distorted western history or something to even think things such as "Thales of Miletus" being the first philosopher from Asia when he was only born around 620 BCE or that Asian philosophies were religionized. Asian cultures were never faith based until Islam or Christianity came in contact - asian cultures record philosophical debates that went on for even a month sometimes between philosophers much before that, in Sanskrit. If you're talking about the Vedas when talking about whimsical diety doing things - you should know that Vedas are inherently agnostic and the diety within them is some trait personified. Even a single sanksrit shloka in them has over 21000 meanings. It would be arrogant to say that Greeks were the first proper philosophers or that their philosophy is more of a "standard" than Indian or Chinese or African or philosophy of any other region.
How can you learn about African philosophy from a non-African person?
How can you learn about Greek philosophy from a non-Greek person? Kant from a non-Prussian? Descartes from someone who isn't French? Who should be allowed to teach Carneades, who was born in Africa but migrated to Greece? What about Epicurus who spent around half his life in Asia? And what makes you think I am not African?
@@CarneadesOfCyrene I am an asshole for making that statement lol. I get you. You sound like a Yank by the way.
Lol I am laughing so hard right now
Aristotle did not have his own philosophy from his own perception but all he had profess as his own philosophy was the written traditions of the Egyptian library which Alexandra confiscated as a gift and gave to his master Aristotle as a booty
So why Barbarians and Vikings philosophy not called European ethno philosophy since they were an illiterate society? African classical philosophy is that of ancient Egyptians and Kushite. Not Ethno nonsense