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HEGEL’S IDEA OF THE ABSOLUTE AND AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
By John Inyang
6.
Works Cited…………………………………………………23
The focus of this paper is on the place of Hegel’s idea of the Absolute
in African philosophy. It simply
suggests a metaphysical theme both in context and content.
It is at the same time aimed at making an assertive portray of African
philosophy from a comparative perspective and its restriction is on the idealist
philosophy of Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel a German philosopher 1770 – 1831.
In his book The Philosophy of History, Hegel had derogatorily
detached Africans from rationality. Succinctly
stated, Hegel conceived the African as one who does everything except
the ability to reason or reflect philosophically.
This biased assertion of Hegel about Africa as a race could plausibly
be regarded as not only been obsolete but also inconceivable and inconsequential,
especially when we objectively re-examine African history and culture in addition
to the diverse corpus of literature on African philosophy.
Besides, there are innumerable African philosophers including Western
scholars like Barry Hallen, Thomas Hodgkin who have done great work on African
history and culture as well as the universally accepted statement that
However, African philosophy has come to stay.
In other words, African philosophy has gone beyond the debate on its
existence or reality and is practically demarcated from myth.
To support this claim, Uduigwomen expresses that;
The
debate or controversy on whether or not there is an African philosophy is dead
and buried. At least it is
a matter of mere historical interest… there is now an established tradition
of African philosophy (3).
This
assertion counters any claim about the name existence of an African philosophy.
Thus we are poised to examine fundamentally Hegel’s philosophical idea of the
“Absolute” and its place in African philosophy.
We shall establish that the notion of the “Absolute” is not peculiar
to Hegel’s thought but is also inherent in African worldviews and culture. It will also show that African culture
or thought system is anchored fundamentally on rationality.
A position that can only be discovered by critical minds, thus affirming
that African source of much of Greek and other civilizations cannot be denied. Supportive of these facts, G. M. James
opines that:
From
the Sixth Century B.C therefore to the death of Aristotle (322 B. C), the Greeks
made best of their chance to learn all they could about Egyptians culture; most
students (from Greece) received instructions directly from Egypt (1).
Thus
Greek Philosophy is partly shaped by the Egyptian early Priests and Hierophants
(James 3).
THE
ANTECEDENTS OF HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY
Apparently, philosophers and philosophy had existed long before Hegel
and some of these predecessors were directly or indirectly influenced by African
culture and thought system. Obviously,
early philosophers like Thales as far back as the sixth century had visited
Egypt to study predominantly the rich Egyptian culture.
History being the study of past events enables the transformation of
ideas in different epochs thus playing a significant role in the spread of ideas
and influence on human thinking.
It is pertinent to mention that the philosophical ideas of every historical
epoch is often a reflection or reaction to that which preceded it.
This historical influence of philosophical ideas extends to Hegel’s immediate
predecessor Fichte and Schelling both idealists.
Equally was Immanuel Kant whose ideas Hegel directly reacted to. For Fichte, Hegel disliked his identification
of the ego and non-ego in the ‘Absolute’.
This may be contrary to Hegel’s holistic notion of the Absolute. Regarding Schelling, Hegel agreed with
him in the identification of logic with metaphysics.
These three however, considered reality as “a living and evolving process”
(Avey 179).
Of much significance, Hegel was directly and largely influenced by Immanuel
Kant’s philosophy especially that of synthesizing empiricism and rationalism
as demonstrated by the functions of space and time as categories that must be
in place for experience to be meaningful.
In other words, Kant was of the view that space and time are logically,
categories preceding experience and gives it its form.
This position of Kant may have inspired Hegel to react by coming up with
a new logical method, which he called the dialectics.
Hegel may have dealt a great blow on the legacy of Immanuel Kant (1724
– 1804) by achieving that which Kant his predecessor thought could not be achieved.
This he successfully did by anchoring his philosophy and logic on the “Absolute
idea”. Kant’s foundation for the
attack on abstract concepts was laid in his refusal to submit absolutely to
the rationalist tradition of thought. Rather,
he attempted with a clear logicality a synthesis of both opposing schools –
rationalism and empiricism.
Albert E. Avey has pointed out that Kant’s “Critique of pure reason”
was the root of Hegelian doctrine (180).
It was in this work that Kant married empiricism with rationalism. For Kant, Hume attempted to reduce to
phenomena what can never be so reduced.
This includes the presuppositions or prior frameworks that gives phenomena
the form they have. Accordingly,
there can be no specific items in space and time for one who has nor capacity
to perceive space and time. Avey
further express Kants thoughts that the assertion;
This
is an instance of spatiality is impossible without the assumption of a logically
prior general idea of spatiality … the capacity for experience cannot generate
from experience. The case
is similar with time. Space and time are a priori forms of experience. (166)
Kant
had argued that in order to have a coherent picture of the world, there must
be concepts and categories of understanding, which organizes the raw material
of sense experience into knowledge.
Accordingly:
We
could not understand or even think about what we experience without certain
detailed concepts. For example
without the idea of space and time, we could not perceive things as things at
all. (Reader’s Digest 642)
Simply
stated, the concept of “space” and “time” must be in place for experience to
thrive. Space and time are
not derived from experience, they exist prior to experience.
What struck Hegel significantly was Kant’s argument that it is not possible
to know ‘things-in-themselves’ or things as they really are.
This implies that knowledge of things outside or beyond experience (noumenal
world) cannot be known. For him,
such realities are “known only by God and his angels, who, being non-physical;
do not have sense experience. All
that human beings can know is what Kant called the phenomenal world” (Reader’s
Digest 642).
In other Words, since the forms (space and time) of perception and thought
are due to the structure of the knower, it follows that they can give no knowledge
of ‘things-in-themselves’ (noumena) beyond experience.
We can think of the noumena (things beyond experience) but we cannot
know them. Avey explicitly explains
this with an illustration.
We
cannot discuss the nature of the soul except in terms of its manifestations
in empirical psychology. Nor
can we talk about the material world in transcendent terms, terms referring
beyond our possible experience. If
we try to do so we get into antinomies, two incompatible points of views, each
of which seems equally convincing. (167)
From
the above, one can infer that Kant had abandoned the idea of absolute certainty
concerning ultimate reality to sense experience.
This may imply that “Metaphysics is impossible, that it is impossible
for the human mind to achieve theoretical knowledge about all of reality (Stumpf
310). This is obviously a departure
from the rationalist notion that human reason can penetrate the natural secrets
of ultimate reality without recourse to sense experience.
Based on this, Kant set forth his “critical philosophy” describing the
limits of the human mind. Accordingly,
he asserts that:
…the
mind is structured in such a way that it is forever barred from going beyond the realm of sense experience,
the realm of phenomena or appearances. (Stumpf 312)
This can be interpreted as meaning that the phenomenal world is permanently
fixed by the categories, which the mind imposes upon the objects of experience. The categories include space and time,
cause and effect, existence and negation, etc.
In his ‘synthetic a priori judgement’, all these categories or concepts
are possessed by the mind prior to experience and are employed in relation to
objects thus making knowledge possible. In Kant’s critical philosophy the noumenal
aspect of an object is what that object is as such.
That is what the object is like when the categories of the Mind are not
imposed on it. For example, we can
only experience the appearances of a green apple (phenomena) and not what the
apple are as such (the noumena). Here, the appearances of the apple in experience
are different from the abstract aspect of the apple that bears the appearance. That is, behind the green apple, there
must be something which the colour green is related.
According to Kant, though we can say there is besides the appearance
of the green apple, the thing-as-such, we can never know anything about this
thing-in-itself. This is because,
the categories of the Mind only apply to the phenomenal world and not to the
thing-in-itself. Thus “knowledge
is of phenomena; noumena may in a sense be thought, but not known” (Avey 167). This implies that reality cannot be
known because knowledge is only possible when the categories of the Mind are
imposed upon the object we experience, secondly, we do not experience the thing-in-itself,
except the appearances.
A critical examination of Kant’s argument shows a shortfall in his critical
philosophy which no doubt influenced the Minds of the idealist philosophers
like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Obviously,
to say that the noumena exist but that we cannot know anything about it, is
a contradiction, for we assert its existence.
The question is from where comes the idea of its existence? In this respect,
Stumpf points out that:
For
Kant to say therefore that the thing-in-itself is the cause of our sensation
is to contradict his own rule for limiting the use of the categories to our
judgements about the object of sense experience (313).
This
means that to assert the existence of the thing-in-itself is to go beyond the
limits, which Kant set for knowledge because for him, existence is a concept
applied to only the objects of experience.
The implication is that Kant seems to have retained invariably what his
critical philosophy was set out to eliminate.
Suffice it to say that Kant’s strongest argument against the metaphysicians
before him who according to Kant had erroneously ascribed existence to supposed
beings and realities beyond sense experience, did inspire the idealists especially
Hegel to come up with his notion of the ‘Absolute idea’ as a defense of metaphysics. We shall then examine Hegel’s idea of
the Absolute and later on relate it to African philosophy.
HEGEL’S
IDEA OF THE ABSOLUTE
From the preceding, one can now understand Hegel better after a clear
understanding of Kant who greatly influenced him with his “critical philosophy”. While Kant had argued that the Mind
imposes its categories upon experience the idealists especially Hegel rather
came up with the theory that every object and therefore the entire universe
is a product of mind. Here there
is a difference between ‘the Mind’ and ‘Mind’.
The former is finite while the later is infinite and eternal.
Hegel therefore set for a transformation of Kant’s critical philosophy
into Absolute idealism. As an idealist, Hegel was of the view that there cannot
be any unknowable thing-in-itself and that both the content and forms of knowledge
must be the product of the mind contrary to Kant’s notion that the mind produces
the forms of knowledge through the various categories and that the forms of
knowledge receive their material content from the given of our experience.
In strong terms, Hegel’s reaction to Kant’s critical philosophy is that
“the real is rational and the rational is real”.
When
he says this, he does not mean by “the real” what an empiricist would. He admits, and even urges, that what
to the empiricist appear to be facts are, and must be, irrational; It is only
after their apparent character has been transformed by viewing them as aspects
of the whole that they are seen to be rational. Nevertheless, the identification
of the real and the rational leads unavoidably to some of the complacency inseparable
from the belief that whatever is, is right.
The whole, in all its complexity, is called by Hegel ‘the Absolute’ (702).
When
we consider Hegel’s theory that every reality is rational and that the rational
is real, Stumpf opines in this respect that; since there can be nothing unknowable,
the idealists and Hegel in particular is confident that he could know the inner
secrets of absolute reality. Furthermore,
the reality for the idealists is expressed in some form of rationality because,
they have argued that there is no independent and essentially unknowable external
thing – in – itself that causes consciousness rather, it is only Mind that produces
the object of our knowledge (314).
In this connection, one may note that we experience external things in
the world independent of us. If
therefore all objects of our knowledge are the products of ‘Mind’ as against
our individual minds, then, we can attribute all objects external to us to be
the product of an intelligence other than that of a finite individual.
Thus Hegel concludes that all forms of knowledge, all objects indeed
the whole universe is a product of an absolute subject, an Absolute Mind called
God. It is pertinent at this juncture
to consider some steps taken by Hegel in arriving at the conclusion of an Absolute
idea.
The
Nature of Reality
The world for Hegel is like an organic process (made of many related
parts and arranged in a system). The
real is what Hegel called the Absolute.
Theologically, the Absolute is God.
However, Hegel’s idea of the Absolute does not refer to a being separate
from the world of nature or individual persons.
Obviously, his reality is a departure from plato’s distinction between
appearance and reality. Everything
in the world of Hegel is related. Nothing
is unrelated. Thus, a question about
the separate individual things we experience different from us, Hegel according
to Stumpf would say:
Whatever
we experience, as separate things will upon careful reflection, lead us to other
things to which they are related until at last the process of dialectical thought
will end in the knowledge of the Absolute. (316)
Here
one notes that the Absolute is not the unity of things as such since Hegel rejected
the concept of materialism which holds that there are separate, finite particles
of hard matter which when arranged in different formations make up the whole
nature of things. Also rejected
by Hegel is the extreme alternative as conceived by Parmenides and Spinoza that
“everything is one” or “a single substance with various modes of attributes”
respectively.
For Hegel, the Absolute is rather a dynamic process, an organism having
parts but nevertheless United into a complex system.
Thus, one understands Hegel as saying that the inner essence of the Absolute
could be reached by human reason that is, by reflection since the Absolute is
described in both Nature and the working of the mind.
In this connection, the Absolute, nature and Man’s mind are all connected
by thought for example, a person’s way of thinking is as it were fixed by the
structure of Nature, that is, by the way things are naturally ordered.
Things behave the way they do because the Absolute expresses itself through
the structure of Nature. In other
words, a person thinks about nature, the way the Absolute expresses itself in
nature.
Here, we see a major departure of Hegel from his predecessor Kant. Whereas Kant sees the categories of
the Mind (space and time) as that which merely makes knowledge possible, Hegel
sees the categories as having a mode of being independent of any individual
mind except the Absolute Mind. Equally
while for Kant, the categories are conceived as a mental process thus, providing
the critical explanation of the modes and limits of human knowledge, and as
concepts in the human Mind by which the Mind can understand and experience the
world, they are on the other hand for Hegel, not only mental processes but are
objective realities possessing being independent of the thinking individual.
Here Hegel succeeded in transforming Kant’s critical philosophy into
Absolute idealism since for Hegel, the categories do not have their existence
in the individual mind but in the Absolute. Hegel unlike Plato never ascribed
any independent existence to the categories or universals.
They are rather independent of any subjective mind.
This means that ideas or categories are not different from things (objects)
like chair, trees, apple etc. Example
what is in a ‘table’ is not more than the universals or categories that we find
in it. There is no unknowable part
of the table as held by Kant (the thing-in-itself).
The universals or categories have their being (existence) independent
of the knowing subjects. Thus the
object of thought consist in thought itself.
Logic
and the Dialectical Process
Logic in the Hegelian conception is equated with metaphysics.
Here, knowing and being are one and the same thing.
The rational is therefore identified with the actual.
The actual is where logic and logical connections are discovered. It is through logic that we deduce from
our experiences of the actual, the categories that describes the Absolute.
Hegel’s dialectic is expressed in a triadic structure, the Thesis à
Antithesis à
synthesis. The graduation
or movement from the thesis to synthesis,
is a continues one. From
synthesis, a new thesis develops and the process continues until it ends in
the Absolute. This indicates thought
instead of coming to a halt, it rather moves in a contradiction.
However, Hegel’s basic triad is that of being à
Nothing à
becoming. It suggests that
one common feature found in all objects is their being (existence).
It is prior to any specific thing and a general concept the Mind can
formulate.
Logic therefore begins with the indeterminate, the featurelessness preceeding
all definite character especially as the first of all things.
It is being (thesis), the first concept in Hegel’s philosophic system
having no content. The lack of content in Hegel’s being is based on the fact
that once it is given some content, it ceases to be the concept of pure Being
but that of something which might limit its existence.
The movement from Being à
Not Being occurs when we contemplate Being without any particular characteristics. Thus Being and not-Being are the same
because the concept of Nothing is a deduction from being (something).
This implies that the antithesis “Nothing” is
contained in the thesis Being. The
mind moving from Being to Nothing results to a third category ‘Becoming’ which
for Hegel is the Unity of Being and Nothing.
Here, Becoming is conceived as the Absolute idea, a process of self development. While logic begins with the abstract
concept of Being, Nature rather begins with another abstract concept – space.
THE
PLACE OF HEGEL’S ABSOLUTE IDEA IN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
In this section, our concern is not to define African philosophy or argue
for its existence. For sometime
past, this had been the major concern of every researcher or writer on African
philosophy. Thus, the available
corpus of literature on African philosophy and philosophers could lead to the
conclusion that African philosophy has come to stay and is real both in context
and content.
We shall therefore focus our attention on the area of African metaphysics
and try to find the place of Hegel’s Absolute idea in African thought system
or world-view. The idea of Reality,
Being or Absolute idea as conceived by Hegel no doubt has its place in African
culture. According to Bartholomew
Abanuka, reality is “all that is perceptible or conceivable on the basis of
human experience of the universe” (16).
This in a way is to be understood as that which underlies African beliefs,
signs and symbols. The unity of
reality as a whole in the African context stems primarily, from the fact that
reality that is, things as they are in themselves, are different from appearance,
that is, things as they appear to us in our individual transitory, subjective
state as a whole. This is opposed to nothingness.
According to Kwasi Wiredu: “Any
claim to know something as it is in itself would be a contradiction as much
as it would amount to a claim to know something as it cannot be known” (113).
Here, Wiredu an African indigenous philosopher, appear to deny Kant’s
cognizance of a “thing-in-itself that cannot be known. He however seem to agree
with Hegel’s holistic notion of reality. It is equally a contradiction in line
with Hegel’s clear version of dialectics of Being and not-being.
Reality in African context cannot be reduced to nothingness.
Something must always exist. According
to Abanuka in line with the Hegelian conception; “all particular things have
one thing in common; they are all real” (21).
This implies that all things have being, existence, which in Hegel’s
logic is derived from non-being. Abanuka
argues further that “so far as all particular things are real, they are not
repugnant to one another, their reality must arise from one source or an ultimate
support or reality” (21). Reality
in thought actually is a combination of both experience and ‘being’ serving
as the ultimate or support. The
question one is likely to ask is what is this ultimate support or source? Answering
this question takes us to the ontological base of African thought system.
Thus, the ultimate support referred to here is a believe in a supernatural
Being which as perceived by the African is the highest of all beings. This
Supernatural Being no doubt is conceived in the notion of God the Creator of
the universe.
The African supernatural being is supreme among a hierarchy of beings. This Supreme Being in the African context
expresses itself through other smaller beings such as deities, ancestors, spirits,
rivers etc., which are further expressed in either animate or in-animate things
around us. Thus both objects and
human are discovered by reason to connect one another to the Supernatural Being.
According to Eneh;
The
African believes that man’s ontology or notion of existence is a relationship
with all the existent beings or forces including God.
This is because the African accepts that he lives in a co-ordinated,
harmonious, united and religious universe – the universe created, ordered and
directed by the supreme force. The
Highest force-God is responsible for the existence of all other existent beings
and things or forces (14).
This
shows that the African concept of ontology is based upon the interconnections
and interactions of beings. At
this juncture, we cannot hesitate to admit that reality is perceived from a
holistic perspective. A theory that
is in agreement with Hegel’s inseparatism of things.
To Buthness this holistic view of reality, Eneh succinctly states that
“for the African, there is a harmonious linkage between these forces of human
beings, animals, things, plants etc” (15).
It is pertinent to note that the principle of ultimacy as conceived in
African tradition, deals with the first cause or origin of all things.
For there is no other principle that can be conceived as more fundamental
than ultimacy itself. Its significance
is found in all things being a manifestation or expression of the ultimate reality
itself (being). Thus in African
belief, whatever that has ontological reality is what it is because the reality
it possess has its basis on the ultimate origin or support of all things.
Inferring from the above, we can assert that the African idea of the
universe is conceived as unitary and this can be likened to Hegel’s concept
of inseparable world of things. This
includes ancestors, deities, divinities, spirits man, rivers and even the dead
considered as not being far removed from the living.
Argumentatively, if reality is conceived as the totality of everything,
which is and their ultimate support, source or force, then, every particular
thing is a part of the whole of reality.
Just as Hegel’s totality of reality ends in the Absolute idea or Being,
in African tradition, you will agree, that, every object of being or existence
and their relation is an attribute of the supernatural being linked by other
hierarchy of beings. With this interconnectedness of beings ending in the supernatural,
and the supreme Being or force behind all things having a holistic character,
we can liken this African notion of Supreme Being to Hegel’s theory of the Absolute
idea. This two are experienced and
reached by means of reason, which in a technical sense is part of itself.
Thus, the traditional African perceives existence whether physical, visible
or invisible or immaterial as one because of the ontological relationship among
all beings. He does not make a strong
distinction between spiritual values from the physical life because the African
thought patterns are more congress than abstract.
This is in a way similar to Hegelian conception of totality.
CONCLUSION
We should be reminded once again and in summation that the Supernatural
Being (God) is the centre of all things in so far as it contains in itself all
the characteristics which are manifested in varying degrees in all particular
things. Since in this connection,
reality is a totality of all that is and anchored on the supernatural Being
or Force, it is realized that, African Being or not-being cannot be experienced
by sense experience as an apple is, it is therefore reached in conclusion, through
reason or Mind. According to Eneh
in Hegelian manner,
The
African believes that man’s ontological or notion of existence is in relationship
with all the existent beings or forces including God.
This is because the African accepts that he lives in a coordinated, harmonious,
united and religious universe – the universe created, ordered and directed by
the Supreme Force. The Highest Force
– God is responsible for the existence of all other existent beings and things
or forces (14).
This
implies that the totality of reality in African tradition is rational and that,
which is rational, is real. A
theory already held by Hegel.
In a dialectical manner, the principle of nothing distinguishes reality
from what it is and this further distinguishes itself from nothing (thesis –
Antithesis – synthesis) it take a unity of being and nothing to get at the real.
Finally, Being or force in African context permeates all things and is
responsible for what is and what is not.
According to Idjakpo in Uduigwomen, the African do not look at Being
as God, Reality or something mysterious.
All these for him represent aspects of Reality.
In other words, the African do not consider reality to be one, two or
many as in parmanides, Descartes or Spinoza respectively but reality as a holistic
notion similar to Hegel’s concept of the Absolute idea.
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