Nkrumah and Hountondji on Ethno-Philosophy a Critical Appraisal
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NKRUMAH AND HOUNTONDJI ON ETHNO-PHILOSOPHY A CRITICAL APPRAISAL Martin Odei Ajei (Ghana) 1. Introduction Today, ‘African philosophy’ is well understood as a culturally determined specifi cation of philosophy comprising both oral and written traditions of speculative and analytical thought1. Th is consensus on the nature and pos- sibility conditions of this type of philosophy was achieved by considerable debate in which the term ‘ethno-philosophy’ was a most contested notion. Th e term was introduced to philosophical vocabulary by Kwame Nkrumah in the title of an uncompleted2 thesis entitled Mind and Th ought in primi- tive Society: A Study in Ethno-philosophy, which was intended for partial fulfi llment of the award of a PhD degree3. Henceforth, this work will be rendered as ‘the thesis’. 1 Wiredu, K. 1995, “African Philosophy”, in Ted Honderich (ed.), Th e Oxford Companion to Philoso- phy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 17-18. 2 Professor Hountondji, in an email correspondence with me dated 22 August 2010, expressed the opinion that the thesis is perhaps not well described as “uncompleted” because “it seems to be quite complete as it is”. Although this is a fair judgment of the state of the work, I maintain the description as uncompleted for this reason: as mentioned in the footnote above, Nkrumah confi rms going to England with the aim of completing his thesis in ethno-philosophy. He does not indicate elsewhere that the work was actually completed. Th erefore I consider it is safer to describe it as “uncompleted”. 3 Th e most probable period for the composition of this work is between 1943 and 1945, at the earliest. From the details of his studies in the USA as narrated in his Autobiography, we learn that he earned a BA in Economics and Sociology at Lincoln University in 1939; a Bachelor of Th eology at the same university in 1942; a MA in Education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1942; and a MA in Phi- losophy at the same university in 1943, aft er which he “began to prepare himself for the Doctorate of Philosophy examinations” (Nkrumah, K, 2002, Ghana: Th e Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, London: Panaf Books, p. 31- 33). We can suppose, from this, that work on the thesis commenced aft er the MA in Philosophy and is likely to have continued until 1945 when he departed the USA for England intending to study law and “completing his thesis for a doctorate in philosophy“. However, “as soon as he arrived in London [he]…. abandoned the research work that I had been doing in ethno-philosophy, which was the subject of my original thesis, and decided to work on another thesis on what was then a new theory of knowledge, ‘Logical Positivism’”, under Professor A. J. Ayer (Autobiography: op. cit. p. 51). Th is account of the work receiving his attention aft er November 1943, is corroborated by the thesis itself: Footnote 24 of its “Conclusion” is a quotation from his own article entitled “Education and Nationalism in Africa”, which appeared in the 1943 issue of a publication called Educational Outlook. 131 Nkrumah and Hountondji on ethno-philosophy Since 19674, ‘ethno-philosophy’ has generated intense debate on instances of refl ective attention that can appropriately denote African philosophy, and on the nature and possibility conditions of philosophy generally. Th e specifi c objections raised against the term in the course of this debate vary, but its critics unequivocally conclude that ethno-philosophers engage in something other than the practice of ‘philosophy’. What is striking about these objections is that most of them have been advanced without refer- ence to the origins of the word. What, then, justifi es revisiting such a well-argued subject matter? It is precisely because Hountondji, whose insistent opposition to the term has earned him the distinction of authoring ‘the bible of anti-ethno-philoso- phy’5, an epitaph which he seems to accept6, has paid the philosophi- cal courtesy of directing his criticisms to Nkrumah’s usage of the term. Th e specifi c aim of this paper, then, is to assess Hountondji’s criticisms of Nkrumah’s meaning of ‘ethno-philosophy’ with a view to showing that it is quite fl awed. More broadly, the paper seeks to free the term from the pejorative connotations customarily ascribed to it by its opponents, and appraise the role that its rehabilitated meaning can play in African philo- sophical discourse. 2. Synopsis of the Thesis Hountondji provides a good summation of the thesis which, although extensive, is worth replicating here as a guide to our subsequent discussion of it. According to him: The document contains a total of 226 pages, the majority of them type- written, 7 of which are numbered with Roman numerals, 212 of them bearing Arabic numbers from 1 to 212, and an appendix containing three pages of handwritten diagrams pertaining to the tribal State, the army and tribal organization of the Akan, and four pages of summary and acknowledgements. 4 Hountondji, P. J., 2002, Th e Struggle for Meaning: Refl ections of Philosophy, Culture and Democ- racy in Africa, 2002, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, pp. 81-84. Here, Hountondji asserts that his earliest critical focus on ethno-philosophy occurs in an article entitled “African Wisdom and Modern Philosophy” presented in a colloquium entitled “African Humanism- Scandinavian Culture: A Dialogue” held in Copenhagen in August 1967. 5 Mudimbe, V. Y. 1985, “African Gnosis”, in Th e African Studies Review, 28, 2/3: 149 – 233, p. 199. 6 Hountondji, P. J., 2002, Th e Struggle for Meaning, op. cit., p. xvii: Here, Hountondji accepts that “for many readers, my name, with that of a few others, remains linked to the critique of ethno- philosophy”. He does not reject this attribute but rather proceeds to explain why the critique of the term and the practice identifi ed with it. 132.