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Complementary Reflection, African Philosophy and General Issues in Philosophy |
Essay on Complementary Reflection
By Eyo Arit Bassey
Error
of Transposition
Error of transposition according to Prof. Asouzu is a form of category mistake. This form of error arises for example when a particular tribe, nation, individuals or groups of individuals see themselves as superior to other individuals and thereby negate the complementary nexus that makes their existence possible. There should be a unification of thought, no country should see itself as superior to others. For instance like the USA, tries to impose its culture, policies, mode of trade, ethics on the generality of the world. Other cultural worldviews should equally be adapted by them and vice versa.
Picture
Type Fallacy
The inability of
philosophers to distinguish between content and form is what Professor Asouzu
designated within the context of complementary reflection as picture type
fallacy. This fallacy is often evoked in matters regarding traditional
African philosophy where the essence of this philosophy is glossed over due to
the type of weird images an observed might have concerning the traditional
African. To remain condemned to the
periphery of a people’s worldview has been the bane of its misunderstanding.
This erroneous judgment resulted for instance in seeing Africans as alogical
and a form of out-of-history type of human beings. Whatever form of symbols and
pictures one uses to capture a thing
must be so structured that we do not mutilate the essence of the thing by
clinging to the image itself. In picture type fallacy, the mind does not
transcend the picture, it makes this the focus of its attention. Symbolic
representations in matters concerning Africa requires one to penetrate to the
motives and essences of these representations etc. Many odd conjectures about Africa
and its people arise out of this fallacious representation of a picture type.
Experience of
transcendent Complementary Unity of Consciousness
This experience
shows that man can transcend his historical conditions to grasp proleptically
into the content of the future through innate capacity of the mind. This he can
do because the mind is fundamentally imbued with the transcendent categories of
unity of consciousness. These categories include those of universality,
totality, comprehensiveness, unity, and future referentiality. The experience
of transcendent complementary unity of consciousness is very characteristic of
the ontology of traditional African philosophers of the complementary school of
thought. In
this experience, the mind seeks to existentialise the transcendent categories
of its unity in the day to day encounter. In this way an individual seeks
authentic existence through the acquisition of a mindset that seeks to
concretize the joy of being as lived experience. It is on the basis of this
experience that an individual can say jide ka iji, as the Igbos say, and mean
it.
Transcendent
categories of Unity of Consciousness
The transcendent
categories of unity of consciousness include universality, totality, comprehensiveness,
unity, future referentiality. As an implication of complementary reflection,
the acquisition of these categories as tools of reflection and action goes a long way to further
global peace and coexistence. Complementary reflection demonstrates the innate
capacity of the human mind to transcend the fragmented moments of his
historical existence, and to proleptically grasp into the content of the future
as the legitimizing foundation of all relative forms of existence. One
implication of this metaphysics is the advantage it affords man in adapting
well to the challenges of his ambience. Rather than a particular race, tribe,
culture or civilization seeing its own values as ultimate and superior, the
mind sees all these as units within the framework of the totality that seeks
legitimization. Thus by adhering to the dictates of the transcendent categories
of unity of consciousness the mind of a cultured individual always seeks
complementarity and supplementation of the inevitable inadequacies of human
ontological relativity. Here the human mind in all moments and events reaches
out to the universal, total and comprehensive and sees all things as moments of
missing links of reality that complement themselves towards a perfect future
referential synthesis.
In this way
peaceful co-existence will be fostered by the world’s citizens. Here racism,
chauvinism, tribalism and other social ills of superiority in relation to
inferiority would be removed and probable eradicated. Equally, Immanuel Kant in
his doctrine of “transcendental unity of apperception” was hinting on this
capacity of the human self to grasp realities in a totality. In spite of Kant’s epistemological
mistakes, he made a salient point in his alluding to the capacity of man to
outlive his epistemological relativity.
Gilbert Ryle also
contributes to the talk about peaceful coexistence in his “category mistake”. He
holds that to judge or evaluate a position against another position or brand
the former irrational or mistaken, is itself a category mistake. This Ryle’s
position suggests the need for global complementarity. When the world is viewed
through the prism of complementarity made possible through the transcendent
categories of unity of consciousness, the chauvinistic positions of Hegel who
dialectically kicked Africa out of history, Hitler who displayed an avowed
hatred for the semantic race, would be corrected. Globalization can then be
used not as a strategy of universal policing of the developing world by the
developed countries, but as a natural evolution for peaceful co-existence.