kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Friday, June 25, 2021 11:19 AM
To: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>; usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kant and Africa
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 7:21 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kant and Africa
Please be cautious: **External Email**
--wow, this is a serious piece. thanks cornelius.i was slightly--i mean slightly--interested in toyin adepoju's claim; it seemed too simple. maybe the problem is with the term "racist," which meant one thing during the centuries when the great chain of being was naturalized, and therefore not questioned, and the modern period when evolution, genetics, and the sciences came into their own. racism concerning an epistemological understanding of the universe and its component, vs. popular beliefs about different people, as in the popular view of germans held by the french, or of new jersey people held by new yorkers. the first built on science with its presuppositions that were hard to change; the latter popular beliefs like slang or common speech, changing incrementally but inevitably due to usage.
the article, however, is serious philosophy, which makes serious claims worthy of our studythanksken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 21, 2021 6:43 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Kant and AfricaThis in not poetic, flowery or peripheral : Kant and Race Theory
--On Sunday, 20 June 2021 at 14:58:44 UTC+2 ovdepoju wrote:
Edited
Beautiful.
I am an African Independent Scholar who considers Kant's work part of the acme of human thought.
I refresh myself almost daily by visualising Kant seated in his house in Konigsberg, watching the glory of the night sky and reflecting on the harmony between his mind, which is able to perceive that sky, reflecting on the vast spatial and temporal spans represented by the celestial dynamism he perceives, an image drawn from his majestic meditation on time, space, finitude and infinity towards the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason.
From the perceiving mind to the question of how and what that mind perceives, the wonders of existence that motivate these reflections, wonders of the sublimity of nature and the grandeur of the human mind, a line of thought taking one from Kant's A Critique of Practical Reason to his A Critique of Pure Reason to his A Critique of Judgement.
Kant's thought engages the central questions of philosophy as traditionally understood in Western thought and as these resonate in bodies of thought and reflective traditions around the world.
Kant was racist. Hegel was racist. Heidegger, to give another example, was an enabler of Nazism.
Hinduism, to give other examples of the co-existence of the sublime and the dehumanizing, is the crucible of both lofty metaphysics and the Hindu caste system as well as the now abolished wife burning tradition; Judaism embodies awesome evocations of the human relationship with the divine but is also a pioneer in the practice of religiously sanctioned genocide;the Koran has wondrous passages but also orientations feeding inhuman fanaticisms....the list goes on.
It's possible to appreciate Kant and even Hegel while acknowledging their racism.
One may learn positively from Hegel's philosophy of history while recognizing the limitations represented by the Eurocentric and Africa denigrating bias of that philosophy.
One could even adapt the Hegelian inspiration in exploring how the African corollaries, such as the Yoruba "ase", of the German concept of "Geist", translated as mind/spirit, which underlies Hegel's thought, may be developed in terms of interpreting history as a dialectic between human and environmental potentiality and actualization.
I present this perspective in "Developing a Historiographic Method Inspired by Yoruba Thought 1 : Motivated by Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History, on Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning" and ''What Can an African Philosopher Gain from Hegel, Abhinavagupta and Ramana Maharshi? : Developing African Philosophy through the Inspiration of German Idealism and Indian Philosophy in Relation to Yoruba History as a Quest for Meaning in Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba : A New History.''
I am developing these ideas further for presentation in a paper at the Atanda conference on Yoruba culture that begins tomorrow.
Congrats, Bjoern, on the project to which you are contributing.
It would be great to read more from you on these issues.
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 11:03 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Beautiful.
I am an African Independent Scholar whose considers Kant's work part of the acme of human thought.
I refresh myself almost daily by visualising Kant seated in his house in Konigsberg, watching the glory of the night sky and reflecting on the harmony between his mind, which is able to perceive that sky, reflecting on the vast spatial and temporal spans represented by the celestial dynamism he perceives, an image drawn from his majestic meditation on time, space, finitude and infinity towards the conclusion of his A Critique of Practical Reason.
From the perceiving mind to the question of how and what that mind perceives,the wonders of existence that motivate these reflections, wonders of the submity of nature and the grandeur of the human mind, a line of thought taking one from Kant's A Critique of Practical Reason to his A Critique of Pure Reason to his A Critique of Judgement.
Kant's thought engages the central questions of philosophy as traditionally understood in Western thought and as these resonate in bodies of thought and reflective traditions around the world.
Kant was racist. Hegel was racist. Heidegger, to give another example, was an enabler of Nazism.
Hinduism, to give other examples of the co-existence of the sublime and the dehumanising, is the crucible of both lofty metaphysics and the Hindu caste system as well as the now abolished wife burning tradition, Judaism embodies awesome evocations of the human relationship with the divine but is also a pioneer in the practice of religiously sanctioned genocide,the Koran has wondrous passages but also orientations feeding inhuman fantacisms....the list goes on.
It's possible to appreciate Kant and even Hegel while acknowledging their racism.
One may learn positively from Hegel's philosophy of history while recognising the limitations represented by the Eurocentric and Africa denigrating bias of that philosophy.
One could even adapt the Hegelian inspiration in exploring how the African corrolaries of the German concept of "Geist", translated as mind/spirit, such as the Yoruba "ase" which underlies Hegel's thought may be developed in terms of interpreting history as a dialectic between human and environmental potentiality and actualisation, a perspective I present in an essay on Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History, a perspective I am working on for presentation in a paper at the Atanda conference on Yoruba culture that begins tomorrow.
Congrats, Bjoern, on the project to which you are contributing.
It would be great to read more from you on these issues.
Toyin
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 08:37 <bfre...@gmail.com> wrote:
--Dear Colleagues,
For some years I am working in the research area of decolonization. I see, as a white scholar, my responsibility to find out what the Western philosophy's part in the project of decolonization has to be. Western thought, most notably since the beginning of the Enlightenment, has been permeated by the sense that it is the standard-bearer of thought. With an unprecedented violence, Western philosophy asserted itself as the one right way to peace, prosperity and happiness for all human beings. Within the framework of philosophy, thousands of years of contributions beyond the so-called western traditions have been largely ignored. If we look closely at many of the important thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Kant, Hegel or Voltaire, we find vile testimonies of racism or sexism, of, in a word: superiorisms. The superioristic thinking asserts itself above the other and makes itself decisive for the other. The superiorisms of the Enlightenment resulted in the fact that a multiplicity of human beings were and continue to be excluded from the project of the Enlightenment, even if this is rarely acknowledged explicitly. The persistent claim of the Enlightenment thinkers to address the needs of all human beings seems in sharp contradiction with, for instance, the exclusion of non-white people from the Enlightenment. It seems even until the present day it is not clear how this could happen. Therefore, we would like to address questions such as the following: Did the thinkers of the Enlightenment manage to be humanists and racists at the same time? Or did they dehumanize those excluded from the Enlightenment so that the contradiction just dissolved? Are the values of the Enlightenment such as democracy, autonomy, freedom contaminated by the superiorism of some of their architects or not? Might this sense of superiority be an explanation for the fact that western thinking remains deeply convinced of its own rightness and for the on-going superiorism we see in our divided societies?
It seems Western thought, to this day, has not sufficiently recognized its superioristic danger as the danger that it is! When considering contemporary contexts, this danger remains real. The other is stigmatized or re-stigmatized. Western thought remains dangerous. The West must finally take this seriously and critically evaluate its value as a normative authority. It would hardly be surprising if we indeed find that a lot of contemporary problems have grown forth from the pseudo-self-evident superiority of the white, heterosexual, male human being many of the Enlightenment thinkers tried so vigorously to defend by manipulating philosophy. The West needs to understand itself, needs to understand all the intricacies of its superiorism, its superalternity and finally start working on the Desuperiorization of its thought. We want to stimulate a discussion that Western thought must understand that its central task must be its Desuperiorization.
Let me know try to explain why I am writing to you today: I was blessed to be asked to contribute to a volume entitled "Kant in Africa and Africa in Kant. Critical Philosophy in African Culture and Though" (http://www.hegelpd.it/hegel/cfa-kant-in-africa-and-africa-in-kant-critical-philosophy-in-african-culture-and-thought-estudos-kantianos/).
I am well aware of the more known literature on this (from Eze to Bernasconi and from Kleingeld to Mills), but what I realized is, that I am truly missing in my work (even though I have not precisely determined what my contribution will be about) are more contemporary African voices to help me understand how Kant is perceived in (and outside) of the philosophical departments of Africa today. I am blessed with many friends in Nigerian and South-African philosophical departments, but I felt, I would need to reach out to more colleagues! I am wondering how is this strange tension of the Kantian philosophy perceived? The tension of this egalitarian Enlightenment thinker who is so brutally anti-African at the same time… How is Kant taught? How is the Kantian philosophy viewed or used? Can his racism be ignored? Can it not be ignored? Can it be evaded? Does this influence your work with or teaching about Kant?
Perhaps you have seen my requests on some philosophical mailing lists, but so far I did not receive a lot of responses, this is why I wanted to ask, if there is anything you could share with me regarding this topic. Perhaps you have experience from teaching Kant yourself, or from participating in courses about Kant? Perhaps you have course material you could share or texts written by African philosophers who I might have missed? I am thinking esp. about books, texts, collections, materials which have only been published in Africa, or by University publishers etc.
As you can tell from my introduction, I have fairly strong (and fairly negative) opinions on the failings of the Kantian philosophy, but, of course, I need to learn from my dear African philosophical colleagues, how Kant is perceived in African places or in the African diaspora today.
I would also welcome if you would have ideas about issues you think need to be addressed with regards to Kant's racism which so far have been ignored.
Of course, I am happy to share with you some of the ideas I developed on Kant, should you be interested!
All the best,
Bjoern (Freter)
https://independent.academia.edu/Bj%C3%B6rnFreter
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