I don't know if the mandate of this list stretches into discussions
of African philosophy, but let me give it a try. I have been doing
some work in African philosophy recently, on the borders of the
postcolonial discussion but unwilling to subsume African philosophy
completely under that horizon. My own interest in philosophy revolves
around hermeneutic issues, and so it was with interest that I read
Tsenay Serequeberhan's recent book *The Hermeneutics of African
Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse*. In it, he situates African
philospohy within the historical horizon of colonialism. He attempts
to work past Senghor (the paradigm of ethnophilosophy for him) and
Nkrumah (the paradigm of professional philosophy) using Fanon
(mainly), with Hegel and Marx always close in the background.
So, I have a number of questions:
1. Has anyone else read his work? What do you think? Particularly,
what do you think of his characterizing philosophy as essentially
within the bounds of postcolonial theory?
2. Serequeberhan starts with Heidegger and Gadamer, and continues
with Hegel and Marx. Any observations on theorizing history with
these assumptions? This is a philosophical problem more than
anything, I suppose.
3. Part of the current discussion on the nature of African philosophy
concerns historical origins -- Cheikh Anta Diop, and before him Isaac
D. Osabutey-Aguedze argue for the historical origins of Greek
philosophy in African thought. Serequeberhan's version of history is
not this version -- he never mentions Diop, for example. My question
here is not about Serequeberhan, but Diop -- how much credence does
this view have in North America? At University of Nairobi last
summer, I talked to a few of the philosophers, and they didn't seem
to think that many of their colleagues made too much of this.
Well, that's enough for now.