while we wait for my friends to answer, here's a funny link to give you the gist of the matter:
 | Pronounced: khah-SID-ik, Origin: Hebrew, a stream within ultra-Orthodox Judaism that grew out of an 18th-century mystical revival movement. www.myjewishlearning.com |
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 12:39 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 12:39 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem
Very great thanks, Ken.
I'm honoured.
Can you suggest any Jewish texts that demonstrate such a spirit?
Toyin
On Wed, Jun 29, 2022, 16:43 Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
this is a wonderful reflection, toyin, really. many thanks.in much rabbinic jewish thought, the same relationship with god and the human obtains as you described below.This agonistic relationship between the sacred and the secular is one of Kant's greatest strengths as a philosopher, dramatising underlying streams of the human condition, what makes us homo sapiens, the thinking one whose perception exceeds his grasp, a chasm within which much of human creativity emerges, particularly in spirituality, philosophy and the arts.
How may such a perspective relate to the spirit of ese ifa? Relatable orientations are evoked by the hilarity of ese ifa composers in the face of divine presence, suggesting a balance of freedom from the sacred and dependence on it, a mutuality in which neither the human being or the spiritual Other enjoys dominance, a world in which human creativity and ultimate direction is assured more by one's individuality, one's unique participation in cosmic process, than by dependence on deities, valuable as that may be.ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 1:31 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problemEdited
Thanks, Salimonu, for appreciating my story and for your challengingly inspiring responses, invoking our friend Orunmila. Your responses provoke a number of issues, to which I respond in terms of the following outline:
1. Exploring the Meaning of Human Life in Material Well Being and Material Deprivation2. Between the Universal and the Unique3. The Figure of Orunmila and its Implications for Ifa Hermeneutics, Theory and Practise of Interpretation in Ifa, in Resonance with Kantian Hermeneutics
A.On Interpretive Scope in Ifa StudiesB. Between Ideas of Divine and Human IntelligenceC. The Vision of Ese IfaD. Between Kant and Orunmila on Self Destination
Exploring the Meaning of Human Life in Material Well Being and Material Deprivation
New York, 2015. Things were going well and yet things were tough. A lot of money was coming in but James felt increasingly disconnected from his own life. All his material dreams had been fulfilled but something strategic and unexplainable was missing. Entangled in unresolved questions, he went for help to the Samaritans, a non-religious organisation yet based on Jesus' vision of charity to all humans.
They would not pray with him, since they were not a religious group, but the volunteers, available in shifts throughout the day, were willing to share one's worries and help one think things through, in an elegant though minimally furnitured room, its smallness emphasising a sense of intimate discourse.
The very fact of having someone to talk openly to, without fear, made a lot of difference. How many lives have been saved by the simple act of being able to open up to someone else, whose conversation would let light into the otherwise darkened rooms of one's mind?
He was particularly assisted by a woman who, after earning a fortune in banking, enough to sustain her for life, after a career of almost 24/7 activity, left to to return to school to study her first love, art, which her Asian immigrant parents had earlier deflected her from in the name of economic security. She suggested he could examine his career motivations and other relationships to see why he was so unhappy.
Jide saw dark clouds enveloping his life. He was living the dream of many, a prosperous doctor, his own car, a prestigious SUV, a driver and a handsome income. But he could not make ends meet. Lagos rents were rising drastically and the price of cement had also risen astronomically, stopping work on the house he was building to escape the rent trap. As he pondered how to pay back the loan he had taken to build the house, he got a call about his beloved sister. She had been killed in a terrorist attack on the Kaduna-Abuja train.
His world crashed. For a moment, the universe became empty, a black hole in which he was reduced to nothing. When he opened his eyes, the waters of the lagoon underneath the speeding car he was riding on Lagos' Third Mainland Bridge looked very enticing....
Living in Lagos, to which many were drawn by its scope of opportunities, was made even more challenging for Isa by the constant rise in standards of living, in the midst of high rents and frenetic lifestyles even for those who had jobs.
Isa had come to Lagos from Southern Kaduna, fleeing the siege like existence of that place, the last straw being the combined attack through hordes of motorcycle riding, AK47 holding Fulani invaders, supported by a helicopter gunship which scattered opposition to the ground troops as they killed and burnt people's homes for hours, in which help came from nowhere.
The state government later claimed the helicopter was its own means of helping those being assaulted. Commentators observed that this ''help'' did not result in the deaths or capture of any of the invaders, talk less tracing them to their base. The victims silently concluded they had just suffered the opening of another layer in the unfolding Fulani supremacists' jihad in Nigeria.
Isa had found it impossible to sustain various jobs and wondered if bringing his life to an end would not be a wiser choice than prolonging it. He was pulled from the brink by people who urged him to take heart. Life is precious, they said, and while there is life, opportunities can emerge. He was eventually helped out of his crisis by someone who appreciated his readiness to work and recommended him to a friend who hired him to watch his gate, wash his car and do other small jobs around the house. From his earnings, Isa bought a wheelbarrow, vegetables and fruit and started a trade.
Three fictional stories. The first story, about James, is based on the view that meaning is the most fundamental of human needs, even in the midst of material well being or material deprivation, as developed in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The story adapts a factual description of the Samaritans, a real, non-religious counselling organisation in England and the life story of a friend of mine who had been a banker and later became a student of art history, her first love.The second story, about the doctor Jide, responds to Salimonu's puzzle over why a prosperous doctor should kill himself over ''depths of escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria. Did the Doctor tell you why his life had collapsed and why he felt himself worthless despite being a doctor, owning a personal car and being able to employ a driver to drive him to places? '' The story adapts the historical account on an attack this year on the Kaduna-Abuja train in which a female professional, perhaps a doctor, was killed in particularly moving circumstances.
The third story, about Isa, adapts Kant's ethical theory advocating relating to human beings in terms of the fundamental value of the interaction as a dialogue between human beings as ends in themselves, behavior one would wish to be a universal law in society, rather than on account of what one may otherwise gain from the relationship. Its scenario recounts that facts of a recent attack by Fulani supremacist terrorists in Southern Kaduna and the response of the state government.
These stories respond to Salimonu's query about the value of counselling in Nigeria's economic and security crisis, and go beyond this into a global context.
The narratives could be multiplied to include the multiple pressures suffered by those pushed into IDP camps by Fulani herdsmen militia in the Middle Belt, by Boko Haram in the North, those kidnapped, raped and brutalised by Fulani bandits and kidnappers across the nation, the families of those killed by Unknown Gunmen in the East, those struggling to feed themselves and their families across the country as the cost of living rises dramatically with the continuance of the Buhari govt.
What could have motivated a Nigerian doctor, sufficiently well off to afford a chauffeur, to commit suicide? What could have moved Ernest Hemingway, US Nobel Prize winner for Literature, to have probably taken his own life? What could have driven Virginia Woolf, one of the greatest English novelists, to have ended her life? What could have propelled particularly eminent Harvard scholar F. O. Mathiessen to have terminated his life? What could have led the great Cuban artist Belkis Alyon to hang herself?
All prominent figures in their fields, not like the Dutch-French artist Vincent van Gogh who had shot himself in the midst of a life of turmoil and poverty but whose paintings are now among the most iconic and expensive in the world, even used by an airline in advertising how much frequent flyers can save by using their airline, enough to buy a van Gogh.
There are various stories of people being talked back from the brink of suicide. Such interactions are likely to include something of the Kantian sensitivity to the incomparable glory of being, the infinite value of existing, in spite of life's challenges, challenges framed by the ultimate challenge of the body's eventual dissolution to earth at a time unanticipated, and the unknown fate of the consciousness that animated that body, challenges which inspire such a pessimistic position as David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, correlative with Emil Cioran's also provocatively titled The Trouble with Being Born.
Would the indwelling intelligence subsist after the body's often much regretted but inevitable dissolution? Kant states, in Critique of Pure Reason, that he is not a magician, and so can't presume, within the limited cognitive powers available to him as a human being, to have any definitive knowledge on the immortality of the soul, if such a phenomenon is possible.
In the later Critique of Practical Reason, however, he embraces the idea of his consciousness escaping the decay of his body to earth, entering into infinity.
In aspiring to infinity, such a view aligns with the Yoruba expression, ''aiku pari iwa,'' ''deathlessness consummates existence,'' as discussed in Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language:Seeking the African in African Art, an aspiration resonant across much of religious thought, and strategic for the belief many have in the value of existence.
These ideas are consonant with Kant's relentless exploration of the meaning of life within the walls of ignorance that close off understanding of life's ultimate logic, if any exists. Ignorance even more excruciating in terms of the distance between understanding life's ultimate rationale and the embedding of this logic in the structure, dynamism and purpose of existence, to the degree that such an ultimate centre of values exists.
Between the Universal and the Unique
One of the limitations of our thinking is the belief that beceause something was said in the Amazon, or some other place remote from us, or in some distant time, it is likely to have little value for us.
What, really, are the fundamental differences between human needs, from the most basic to the ultimate horizons of the human spirit, and the various solutions to those needs reached across space and time, particularly in the realm of thought and social relationships as different from science and technology?
The Figure of Orunmila and its Implications for Ifa Hermeneutics, Theory and Practise of Interpretation in Ifa, in Resonance with Kantian Hermeneutics
Could you have made me happier than through your invocation of our mutual friend Orunmila, whom you were privileged to learn about from your grandmother, while I, experiencing no direct exposure to those beauties, had to encounter that story in a volume of Cromwell Ibie's Ifism, upon which I rewrote it as "Themes in Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature : Courting Women 2 : The Exquisite Woman at Iwo?"
That story, in the version in which you told it, has serious implications for Ifa hermeneutics, theory and practice of interpretation in Ifa, literature of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge to which the story belongs, implications that align powerfully with Kantian thought.
Is Orunmila, particularly as depicted in ese ifa, Ifa literature, a fictional or a historical character? What were the intentions, along such lines, of the first tellers of those stories?
Given the vast range of ese ifa, its structural and content variety within a basic unifying format across poetry and prose narratives and more lyrical expressions, spanning different periods in Yoruba history, with one even making a case for the birth of Jesus in Yorubaland, his name henceforth being a mispronunciation of his original Yoruba name, Jewesu, as the story goes, what is the scope of attitudes to the truth value of ese ifa and what is the relative significance of these possibly diverse perspectives?
Can the various exploits of Orunmila in those stories be accounts of the life of the same historical individual or is Orunmila functioning as an imaginative frame for various fictional characters?
Was Orunmila an actual person at any point in time?
On Interpretive Scope in Ifa Studies
Given these questions, what is the interpretive range of ese ifa in various contexts, from divinatory praxis to literary analysis outside divinatory frameworks, in the varied global social contexts of engagement with Ifa, from Africa to the Americas and beyond, approaches to which questions Noel Amherd's Reciting Ifa and Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History present approaches?
Between Ideas of Divine and Human Intelligence
What is the nexus of the supposed divine intelligence of the Ifa oracle, that being the rationale for depending on it in the first place, and the intelligence of the person seeking a response from the supernatural intelligence?
Does Orunmila, in this story, represent the understanding of his identity as an embodiment of divine wisdom, who perhaps may legitimately shape oracular responses as he wills, since the wisdom of the oracle and himself are identical or does he represent the human babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, trying to learn from Ifa?
If the latter is true, does it suggest freedom on the part of the babalawo to manipulate oracular prescriptions as he sees fit? What may that say for the integrity of the oracle?
What is the relationship between such questions and the need to reinterpret oracular prescriptions that do not align with contemporary social reality, such as being asked by the oracle to take another wife or to sacrifice an animal, activities with grave legal implications in such a diaspora Ifa centre as the US, a very different context from old Yorubaland in which the oracular system was created, a question addressed by African-American female babalawo Ayele Kumari in ''Navigating Odu Ifa as an African/Atlantic Diaspora Woman?''
The Vision of Ese Ifa
The kind of self help projected in that story of Orunmila is typical of the genius of Yoruba spirituality, particularly as expressed in ese ifa. The story dramatises an imaginative universe defined more by the circumstantial and the relative than by the absolute. It depicts the jocoserious, adapting James Joyce from another context, the combination of fun, comedy and the serious, rather than seamless gravitas, as shaping that artistic cosmos.
Between Kant and Orunmila on Self Destination
The self help philosophy of Orunmila in that story, the decision to reconstruct seemingly sacred mandates in terms of one's own wisdom, is perfectly in alignment with the vision of the man from Konigsberg, who emphasised human intelligence over dogma, who insisted on the sacred as integral to humanity and the cosmos rather than as something over and above the material universe to which the human being submits, and the sacred itself as open to questioning by the human being.
Such questioning grows within intense sensitivity to the hunger for the sacred, dramatised through the underlying rhythms of Kant's own cognitive grapplings. From this struggle and its related meditations, the sacred emerges through his own secular vocabulary in the dialogue between the mind, itself and nature.
This agonistic relationship between the sacred and the secular is one of Kant's greatest strengths as a philosopher, dramatising underlying streams of the human condition, what makes us homo sapiens, the thinking one whose perception exceeds his grasp, a chasm within which much of human creativity emerges, particularly in spirituality, philosophy and the arts.
How may such a perspective relate to the spirit of ese ifa? Relatable orientations are evoked by the hilarity of ese ifa composers in the face of divine presence, suggesting a balance of freedom from the sacred and dependence on it, a mutuality in which neither the human being or the spiritual Other enjoys dominance, a world in which human creativity and ultimate direction is assured more by one's individuality, one's unique participation in cosmic process, than by dependence on deities, valuable as that may be.
''No orisa or deity can bless one without the consent of one's ori, one's immortal embodiment of ultimate potential'' it is said.
''If the deity does not like the house we have built for him, he should feel free to take a cutlass and go into the forest to cut wood and palm fronds to build a more befitting home'', as quoted in Abosede Emmanuel's Odun Ifa, Ifa Festival.
''Walking stick that crosses the road in a crooked manner consulted Ifa for the rabbit, whose wife was going to have children, upon which he was told to be silent about the good news but he went to the road side and chatterred his news to passing humans, who then followed him home, upon which he and his entire family subsequently followed soup off to its destination,'' as narrated in Wande Abimbola's Ifa Divination Poetry.
What could be the implications of these attitudes correlating the German philosopher and the Yoruba thinkers? Perhaps encouraging a keen, even deep sensitivity to spirituality but in a critical and yet relaxed spirit, a spirit of fun and analysis, devoid of absolutes.
thanks
toyin
On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 at 06:14, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, Salimonu, for appreciating my story and for your challengingly inspiring responses, invoking our friend Orunmila. Your responses provoke a number of issues, to which I respond in terms of the following outline:
1. Exploring the Meaning of Human Life in Material Well Being and Material Deprivation2. Between the Universal and the Unique3. The Figure of Orunmila and its Implications for Ifa Hermeneutics, Theory and Practise of Interpretation in Ifa, in Resonance with Kantian Hermeneutics
A.On Interpretive Scope in Ifa StudiesB. Between Ideas of Divine and Human IntelligenceC. The Vision of Ese IfaD. Between Kant and Orunmila on Self Destination
Exploring the Meaning of Human Life in Material Well Being and Material Deprivation
New York, 2015. Things were going well and yet things were tough. A lot of money was coming in but James felt increasingly disconnected from his own life. All his material dreams had been fulfilled but something strategic and unexplainable was missing. Entangled in unresolved questions, he went for help to the Samaritans, a non-religious organisation yet based on Jesus' vision of charity to all humans.
They would not pray with him, since they were not a religious group, but the volunteers, available in shifts throughout the day, were willing to share one's worries and help one think things through, in an elegant though minimally furnitured room, its smallness emphasising a sense of intimate discourse.
The very fact of having someone to talk openly to, without fear, made a lot of difference. How many lives have been saved by the simple act of being able to open up to someone else, whose conversation would let light into the otherwise darkened rooms of one's mind?
He was particularly assisted by a woman who, after earning a fortune in banking, enough to sustain her for life, after a career of almost 24/7 activity, left to to return to school to study her first love, art, which her Asian immigrant parents had earlier deflected her from in the name of economic security. She suggested he could examine his career motivations and other relationships to see why he was so unhappy.
Jide saw dark clouds enveloping his life. He was living the dream of many, a prosperous doctor, his own car, a prestigious SUV, a driver and a handsome income. But he could not make ends meet. Lagos rents were rising drastically and the price of cement had also risen astronomically, stopping work on the house he was building to escape the rent trap. As he pondered how to pay back the loan he had taken to build the house, he got a call about his beloved sister. She had been killed in a terrorist attack on the Kaduna-Abuja train.
His world crashed. For a moment, the universe became empty, a black hole in which he was reduced to nothing. When he opened his eyes, the waters of the lagoon underneath the speeding car he was riding on Lagos' Third Mainland Bridge looked very enticing....
Living in Lagos, to which many were drawn by its scope of opportunities, was made even more challenging for Isa by the constant rise in standards of living, in the midst of high rents and frenetic lifestyles even for those who had jobs.
Isa had come to Lagos from Southern Kaduna, fleeing the siege like existence of that place, the last straw being the combined attack through hordes of motor cycle riding, AK47 holding Fulani invaders, supported by a helicopter gunship which scattered opposition to the ground troops as they killed and burnt people's homes for hours, in which help came from nowhere.
The state government later claimed the helicopter was its own means of helping those being assaulted. Commentators observed that this ''help'' did not result in the deaths or capture of any of the invaders, talk less tracing them to their base. The victims silently concluded they had just suffered the opening of another layer in the unfolding Fulani supremacists' jihad in Nigeria.
Isa had found it impossible to sustain various jobs and wondered if bringing his life to an end would not be a wiser choice than prolonging it. He was pulled from the brink by people who urged him to take heart. Life is precious, they said, and while there is life, opportunities can emerge. He was eventually helped out of his crisis by someone who appreciated his readiness to work and recommended him to a friend who hired him to watch his gate, wash his car and do other small jobs around the house. From his earnings, Isa bought a wheelbarrow, vegetables and fruit and started a trade.
Three fictional stories. The first story, about James, is based on the view that meaning is the most fundamental of human needs, even in the midst of material well being or material deprivation, as developed in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The story adapts a factual description of the Samaritans, a real, non-religious counselling organisation in England and the life story of a friend of mine who had been a banker and later became a student of art history, her first love.The second story, about the doctor Jide, responds to Salimonu's puzzle over why a prosperous doctor should kill himself over ''depths of escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria. Did the Doctor tell you why his life had collapsed and why he felt himself worthless despite being a doctor, owning a personal car and being able to employ a driver to drive him to places? ''
Another doctor explains the probable reasons why the Lagos doctor on whom this story is based, an expansion of another story in my previous post, commited suicide.
The third story, about Isa, adapts Kant's ethical theory advocating relating to human beings in terms of the fundamental value of the interaction as a dialogue between human beings as ends in themselves, behavior one would wish to be a universal law in society, rather than on account of what one may otherwise gain from the relationship. Its scenario recounts that facts of a recent attack by Fulani supremacist terrorists in Southern Kaduna and the response of the state government.
These stories respond to Salimonu's query about the value of counselling in Nigeria's economic and security crisis, and go beyond this into a global context.
The narratives could be multiplied to include the multiple pressures suffered by those pushed into IDP camps by Fulani herdsmen militia in the Middle Belt, by Boko Haram in the North, those kidnapped, raped and brutalised by Fulani bandits and kidnappers across the nation, the families of those killed by Unknown Gunmen in the East, those struggling to feed themselves and their families across the country as the cost of living rises dramatically with the continuance of the Buhari govt.
What could have motivated a Nigerian doctor, sufficiently well off to afford a chauffeur, to commit suicide? What could have moved Ernest Hemingway, US Nobel Prize winner for Literature, to have probably taken his own life? What could have driven Virginia Woolf, one of the greatest English novelists, to have ended her life? What could have propelled particularly eminent Harvard scholar F. O. Mathiessen to have terminated his life? What could have led the great Cuban artist Belkis Alyon to hang herself?
All prominent figures in their fields, not like the Dutch-French artist Vincent van Gogh who had shot himself in the midst of a life of turmoil and poverty but whose paintings are now among the most iconic and expensive in the world, even used by an airline in advertising how much frequent flyers can save by using their airline, enough to buy a van Gogh.
There are various stories of people being talked back from the brink of suicide. Such interactions are likely to include something of the Kantian sensitivity to the incomparable glory of being, the infinite value of existing, in spite of life's challenges, challenges framed by the ultimate challenge of the body's eventual dissolution to earth at a time unanticipated, and the unknown fate of the consciousness that animated that body, challenges which inspire such a pessimistic position as David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, correlative with Emil Cioran's also provocatively titled The Trouble with Being Born.
Would the indwelling intelligence subsist after the body's often much regretted but inevitable dissolution? Kant states, in Critique of Pure Reason, that he is not a magician, and so can't presume, within the limited cognitive powers available to him as a human being, to have any definitive knowledge on the immortality of the soul, if such a phenomenon is possible.
In the later Critique of Practical Reason, however, he embraces the idea of his consciousness escaping the decay of his body to earth, entering into infinity.
In aspiring to infinity, such a view aligns with the Yoruba expression, ''aiku pari iwa,'' ''deathlessness consummates existence,'' as discussed in Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language:Seeking the African in African Art, an aspiration resonant across much of religious thought, and strategic for the belief many have in the value of existence.
These ideas are consonant with Kant's relentless exploration of the meaning of life within the walls of ignorance that close off understanding of life's ultimate logic, if any exists. Ignorance even more excruciating in terms of the distance between understanding life's ultimate rationale and the embedding of this logic in the structure, dynamism and purpose of existence, to the degree that such an ultimate centre of values exists.
Between the Universal and the Unique
One of the limitations of our thinking is the belief that beceause something was said in the Amazon, or some other place remote from us, or in some distant time, it is likely to have little value for us.
What, really, are the fundamental differences between human needs, from the most basic to the ultimate horizons of the human spirit, and the various solutions to those needs reached across space and time, particularly in the realm of thought and social relationships as different from science and technology?
The Figure of Orunmila and its Implications for Ifa Hermeneutics, Theory and Practise of Interpretation in Ifa, in Resonance with Kantian Hermeneutics
Could you have made me happier than through your invocation of our mutual friend Orunmila, whom you was privileged to learn about from your grandmother, while I, experiencing no direct exposure to those beauties, had to encounter that story in a volume of Cromwell Ibie's Ifism, upon which I rewrote it as "Themes in Ese Ifa, Ifa Literature : Courting Women 2 : The Exquisite Woman at Iwo?"
That story, in the version in which you told it, has serious implications for Ifa hermeneutics, theory and practice of interpretation in Ifa, literature of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge to which the story belongs, implications that align powerfully with Kantian thought.
Is Orunmila, particularly as depicted in ese ifa, Ifa literature, a fictional or a historical character? What were the intentions, along such lines, of the first tellers of those stories?
Given the vast range of ese ifa, its structural and content variety within a basic unifying format across poetry and prose narratives and more lyrical expressions, spanning different periods in Yoruba history, with one even making a case for the birth of Jesus in Yorubaland, his name henceforth being a mispronunciation of his original Yoruba name, Jewesu, as the story goes, what is the scope of attitudes to the truth value of ese ifa and what is the relative significance of these possibly diverse perspectives?
Can the various exploits of Orunmila in these stories be accounts of the life of the same historical individual or is Orunmila functioning as an imaginative frame for various fictional characters?
Was Orunmila an actual person at any point in time?
On Interpretive Scope in Ifa Studies
Given these questions, what is the interpretive range of ese ifa in various contexts, from divinatory praxis to literary analysis outside divinatory frameworks, in the varied global social contexts of engagement with Ifa, from Africa to the Americas and beyond, approaches to which questions Noel Amherd's Reciting Ifa and Akinwumi Ogundiran's The Yoruba: A New History present approaches?
Between Ideas of Divine and Human Intelligence
What is the nexus of the supposed divine intelligence of the Ifa oracle, that being the rationale for depending on it in the first place, and the intelligence of the person seeking a response from the supernatural intelligence?
Does Orunmila, in this story, represent the understanding of his identity as an embodiment of divine wisdom, who perhaps may legitimately shape oracular responses as he wills, since the wisdom of the oracle and himself are identical or does he represent the human babalawo, adept in the esoteric knowledge of Ifa, trying to learn from Ifa?
If the latter is true, does it suggest freedom on the part of the babalawo to manipulate oracular prescriptions as he sees fit? What may that say for the integrity of the oracle?
What is the relationship between such questions and the need to reinterpret oracular prescriptions that do not align with contemporary social reality, such as being asked by the oracle to take another wife or to sacrifice an animal, activities with grave legal implications in such a diaspora Ifa centre as the US, a very different context from old Yorubaland in which the oracular system was created, a question addressed by African-American female babalawo Ayele Kumari in ''Navigating Odu Ifa as an African/Atlantic Diaspora Woman?''
The Vision of Ese Ifa
The kind of self help projected in that story of Orunmila is typical of the genius of Yoruba spirituality, particularly as expressed in ese ifa. The story dramatises an imaginative universe defined more by the circumstantial and the relative than by the absolute. It depicts the jocoserious, adapting James Joyce from another context, the combination of fun, comedy and the serious, rather than seamless gravitas, as shaping that artistic cosmos.
Between Kant and Orunmila on Self Destination
The self help philosophy of Orunmila in that story, the decision to reconstruct seemingly sacred mandates in terms of one's own wisdom, is perfectly in alignment with the vision of the man from Konigsberg, who emphasised human intelligence over dogma, who insisted on the sacred as integral to humanity and the cosmos rather than something over and above the material universe to which the human being submits, and the sacred itself as open to questioning by the human being.
Such questioning grows within intense sensitivity to the hunger for the sacred, dramatised through the underlying rhythms of Kant's own cognitive grapplings. From this struggle and its related meditations, the sacred emerges through his own secular vocabulary in the dialogue between the mind, itself and nature.
This agonistic relationship between the sacred and the secular is one of Kant's greatest strengths as a philosopher, dramatising underlying streams of the human condition, what makes us homo sapiens, the thinking one whose perception exceeds his grasp, a chasm within which much of human creativity emerges, particularly in spirituality, philosophy and the arts.
How may such a perspective relate to the spirit of ese ifa? Relatable orientations are evoked by the hilarity of ese ifa composers in the face of divine presence, suggesting a balance of freedom from the sacred and dependence on it, a mutuality in which neither the human being or the spiritual Other enjoys dominance, a world in which human creativity and ultimate direction is assured more by one's individuality, one's unique participation in cosmic process, than by dependence on deities, valuable as that may be.
''No orisa or deity can bless one without the consent of one's ori, one's immortal embodiment of ultimate potential'' it is said.
''If the deity does not like the house we have built for him, he should feel free to take a cutlass and go into the forest to cut wood and palm fronds to build a more befitting home'', as quoted in Abosede Emmanuel's Odun Ifa, Ifa Festival.
''Walking stick that crosses the road in a crooked manner consulted Ifa for the rabbit, whose wife was going to have children, upon which he was told to be silent about the good news but he went to the road side and chatterred his news to passing humans, who then followed him home, upon which he and his entire family subsequently followed soup off to its destination,'' as narrated in Wande Abimbola's Ifa Divination Poetry.
What could be the implications of these attitudes correlating the German philosopher and the Yoruba thinkers? Perhaps encouraging a keen, even deep sensitivity to spirituality but in a critical and yet relaxed spirit, a spirit of fun and analysis, devoid of absolutes.
thanks
toyin
On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 at 06:56, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
Your story about the Fraternity of Solace, a secular mission founded to help people overcome crisis - psychological, physical or spiritual is fantastic. I am mostly excited by your information that, "The mission was founded in the depths of escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria. It operates through counselling and physical assistance to people in need." Thank you for your effort in persuading a doctor from jumping into the lagoon in Lagos to end his life. However, I am amused by your story that a doctor who was able to buy a car and employ a driver to whom he probably paid a minimum wage of N30,000 a month should have any reason to think of committing suicide because of what you termed depths of escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria. Did the Doctor tell you why his life had collapsed and why he felt himself worthless despite being a doctor, owning a personal car and being able to employ a driver to drive him to places? How does counselling people help to curb the escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria? If Pastor/Alhaji Kant's mission is to help people overcome economic and security crisis in Nigeria, what do Kant's missionaries live on, verses of Bible or Quran or some philosophical humbugs?
The greatest psycho-therapist in Yoruba history, my grandmother once told us her grandchildren, was ÒRÚNMÌLÀ, the IFÁ progenitor. She told us that when ÒRÚNMÌLÀ was at the town of ÌWÕ to marry, he was subjected to seven rigorous tests so as to determine his capability to be a husband and to maintain a wife. Despite the fact that ÒRÚNMÌLÀ endured the tests the last hurdle was the traditional tossing of four sectioned cola nut called OBÌ ÀBÀTÀ ALÁWÉ MERIN in Yoruba. To secure approval of the marriage with ÒRÚNMÌLÀ, two of the broken four sectioned cola nut must turn their face up while the other two should turn the face down. But when the broken four sectioned cola nut were tossed on the ground, each three turned the face up and one turned the face down, thus implying that ÒRÚMÌLÀ's marriage to the bride was not approved. ÒRÚMÌLÀ asked the attendants to close their eyes and before urging them to open their eyes again, he changed the positions of the broken and tossed four sectioned cola nut into two facing up and two facing down. When ÒRÚMÌLÀ was queried why he changed the positions of the tossed cola nuts he replied : Owó eni ni a fi ntún nkan ara eni sé, roughly meaning, you can change your fate with your own hands or to be more appropriate, your fate is your own hands. ÒRÚNMÌLÀ got his wife, euphemistically referred thenceforth to as ÌYÀ'WÕ, meaning the suffering in IWÕ. When it comes to the economic and industrial predicaments of Nigeria, I can relate to the philosophy of ÒRÚNMÌLÀ but not Kant because the fate of Nigeria is in hands of Nigerians.S. Kadiri
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: 26 June 2022 11:07
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problemNa wa.
''Yes, Nigeria requires different kinds of knowledge to develop economically and industrially but that does not under any circumstance include knowledge of who was Kant and what he stood for. The economic and industrial underdevelopment of Nigeria today are caused by educated parasites, beset with irrelevant and useless knowledge, presiding over the nation's Ministries, Departments and Agencies. Disprove me if you think I am wrong. ''
Salimonu Kadiri
''A doctor had his driver stop at Lagos' Third Mainland Bridge. He got out of his car and climbed the railing, preparing to jump into the water, as a crowd gathered. I approached him and wondered aloud why he would want to end his life,a great gift with infinite potential, a potential even greater than that of the stars, stars he can see but which cannot see him, a life vibrant in the fires of his inner life. How many lives could be blighted or lost if he, a healer, were to end his own life in a country where there were so so few doctors?' I spoke gently and he listened.
'What really is the problem? I asked. 'He told me his life had collapsed and he felt himself worthless. 'Really?' I queried. 'But many would be ecstatic to be in your position,' I told him, 'given that you are alive and healthy.' 'Come, let's talk about it,' I urged him.''
This is the founding story of the Fraternity of Solace, a secular mission founded to help people overcome crisis, psychological, physical, spiritual. The founder, known only as God's Greatness Crowning, states that she is inspired by her introduction at the University of Lagos to the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant who celebrates the glory of living and the need to treat each person as having infinite value.
The mission was founded in the depths of escalating economic and security crisis in Nigeria. It operates through counselling and physical assistance to people in need.
Berlin, 1945. The Second World War had come to a devastating end for the Axis Powers, led by Germany. After months of terrific bombardment had reduced much of the city to rubble, the conquering US and Russian armies had converged in Berlin, the German capital, with the capture of Adolf Hitler, the German leader, one of their primary goals.
''In the midst of the life and death struggle of Berliners within this hell, I thought, more than once, of taking my life,'' states Klaus Johannan, ''having endured rape, starvation and homelessness. But at night, sleeping on the street, with the sky as the only roof over me, the stars would enthrall me, a magnificent display for everyone, and for me alone. I felt free, lifted into their timeless brilliance, liberated from the agonies of earth, projected into eternity. In this way, I gained the strength to survive day after day.''
''After much struggle, I became a local government chairman,'' states Niyi Akande, of his life as a politician in Nigeria's Ekiti State. ''I experienced intense pressure,'' he discloses, ''to share the state government's allocations to the local government among a network of supporters and other powerful figures. It was a constant battle with my conscience'' he describes. ''My heart kept struggling between the idea of how to behave in a way that would benefit the larger body of those I was elected to be responsible for and those few associates who insisted that without them I would not have been elected, the many and the few, the electorate and the enablers''.
''As a new employee at one of Nigeria's power distribution companies'', states Nicholas Ekundayo, ''I was appalled at the practice of replacing fuses in transformers with copper wires in order to sell the fuses, leading to the copper wire experiencing burn out and causing recurrent power outages in the affected communities.''
''Why can't we, the custodians of this resource people depend so much on, not behave in a way we would like to become a normal way of life, even a law, for everyone? A way of life benefiting everybody?"
All these stories are fictional scenarios evoking the creative possibilities of Kantian thought. The story of the doctor about to take his life on Third Mainland Bridge adapts a report of an actual suicide on the bridge in visualising how the story could have been different, drawing on Kant's great meditation on self and cosmos, time and infinity, within the context of the celestial bodies in Critique of Pure Reason as well as Kant's ethical philosophy of treating human beings as ends in themselves, not means to ends, an idea suggesting the infinite creative potential of the human person, a potential dramatised in the meditation on self and cosmos.
The account of a woman, Kluas Johannan, in 1945 Berlin, is inspired by Annemarie Schimmel's story of how the Islamic mystical writings of Abdullah-i Ansari inspired her will live to live in the chaos of 1945 Berlin. This scenario is reworked in terms of Kant's meditation on self and cosmos in relation to the stars in Critique of Practical Reason.
Schimmel's account is deeply memorable:
It was a night of despair, a cold October night, 1945, in Germany. We were sitting in a dirty railway station, lucky to have found at least one place to spend the night after long and uncomfortable travelling. People around me tried to sleep, or talked about the horrors of the war, of imprisonment, or hunger...I took from my coat's pocket a small book that had survived wartime Berlin, deportation, and internment, and had given me unending consolation during those years [Abdullah-i Ansari's] Munajat which I had found in the Berlin print of 1924 sometime during the war.
Once more I delved into its depths, scribbled some rhyming translations of its pithy sayings and verses between the lines, and was carried away from the ''world'' in its ugliest aspects into the realm of peace [through]the wisdom of a searching and suffering man who poured out his feelings in the presence of his Lord like little sighs...
( From Ibn 'Ata' Illah, The Book of Wisdom; Kwaja Abdullah Ansari, Intimate Conversations. Translated by Victor Danner and Wheeler Thackston. Preface by Annemaire Schimmel. Paulist, Press, 1978, xii-xiii).
The narrative of the local government chairman Niyi Akande adapts my expectations of the logic of corruption in Nigeria in terms of the values that shape behaviour in such contexts. The central inspiring idea in that story is Kant's famous ethical concept, the Categorical Imperative, which I understand may be stated as ''behave in such a way as you would wish to become a universal law in a world you would want to live in.''
The picture of Nicholas Ekundayo at a Nigerian power distribution company is reimagined from an actual account of one of the reasons why Nigerians suffer power outages. It reflects on the internal world, the universe of motivations, of people who engage in the negative practices described, in terms of possible motivations to do things differently, an imaginative reworking of the implications of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
Development and underdevelopment embrace the entire spectrum of quality of life, within and beyond material well being, implicating how the material, the psychological and the social shape each other.
Nigeria is underdeveloped significantly beceause of the values of those who manage it. Philosophy is about values, about reflecting on possibilities of how to live, and of the logic of living, in order to arrive at optimum existence.
If those who manage the country were more motivated by the lofty values represented by thought like that of Kant, the country would become paradise.
Those fictional scenarios can be multiplied indefinitely, drawing from different Kantian ideas and texts as inspiration, relating their inspiring values to actual historical and contemporary contexts in Nigeria and across the world.
thanks
toyin
On Sat, 25 Jun 2022 at 11:25, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
And what did you mean when you wrote this : MOST KNOWLEDGE, EVEN IN SCIENCES, IS NOT ABOUT PROVIDING SUCH BASIC INFRASTRUCTURAL AMENITIES AS WATER AND ELECTRICITY, NOR ABOUT ADDRESSING ENERGY NEEDS, INVALUABLE AS ALL THOSE ARE. Feigning Solomon and Sampson in one incredible delusion do not constitute a serious analysis of the different kinds of knowledge required by humanity. Yes, Nigeria requires different kinds of knowledge to develop economically and industrially but that does not under any circumstance include knowledge of who was Kant and what he stood for. The economic and industrial underdevelopment of Nigeria today are caused by educated parasites, beset with irrelevant and useless knowledge, presiding over the nation's Ministries, Departments and Agencies. Disprove me if you think I am wrong.
S. Kadiri
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: 23 June 2022 13:30
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problemWhere did I write this
" dismissing knowledge as a provider of basic infrastructural amenities..."
When a response to a serious analysis of the different kinds of knowledge required by humanity degenerates into fictional claims that such an analysis argues that knowledge is unnecessary for proving electricity, water and the likes, what's the point of trying to engage with such thinking?
I wonder why Kant is inspiring such extremist responses.
Thanks
Toyin
On Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 22:12 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
Most educated Nigeria do not possess the knowledge required for the offices in which they are employed and heavily remunerated. Education, individually or collectively, is useless if it cannot lead us to produce what we need. The importance of education in Nigeria was first highlighted during the question time in the Federal Parliament in 1961 by Dr Nnamani who asked the government why there were still expatriate officers in the country despite Nigeria being independent. Answering on behalf of the government, Zana Bukar Dipcharima said that Nigerians were all around the world studying to acquire knowledge and, on their return, they would give Nigeria the manpower needed to turn our country into paradise on earth when educated returnees might have bombarded the abundant natural resources in the country with their knowledge. In fact, by 1964, all the ministries, departments and agencies had been taken over from expatriates by educated Nigerians and thereby gave credence to the aphorism that what Europeans could do, Nigerians could do it better. But as we have experienced hitherto, that aphorism is true only in the sense that educated Nigerians are much more ruthless in the exploitation of the uneducated Nigeria's masses than the European colonialists.
Most knowledge, even in the sciences, is not about providing such basic infrastructural amenities as water and electricity, nor about addressing energy needs invaluable as all those are - Oluwatoyin V. Adepoju.
I would have considered Mr. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju a serious Kant Evangelist for dismissing knowledge as a provider of basic infrastructural amenities were it not for his post on this forum on Wednesday, 19 September 2018, titled - Scholarship in a World of Poor Electricity : The Nigerian Example. Our 2022 Kant Evangelist who is now preaching to us that man does not need knowledge to produce basic infrastructural amenity as water and electricity wrote in 2018 : I have been struggling for days in my home in Lagos with trying to meet externally created and self-generated deadlines on a number of essays.
But there has been a blackout of electricity in our neighbourhood for days.I have access to a number of online databases but the scope of my use of these information systems is limited by access to electricity.I have to fall back on prints of essays since access to electronic copies of essays is challenged by poor electricity. How are Nigerian Scholars coping? This situation has not changed for decades. It is horrible. Is it possible to do ones best in such an environment as a Scholar or other creative who requires electricity? May God help Nigeria, Black people and Africa. Most educated Nigerians are fictional academics producing imaginary developments while parasitising on the collectively owned natural resources of Nigeria to the exclusion of the masses of Nigeria without conscience.S. Kadiri
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