CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CONTEMPORARY CHANGE SERIES II. AFRICA, VOLUME 3 IDENTITY AND CHANGE Nigerian Philosophical Studies, I Edited by Theophilus Okere The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 1996 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Identity and change: Nigerian philosophical studies, I / edited by Theophilus Okere. p.cm.—(Cultural heritage and contemporary change; Series II, Africa; vol. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, Nigerian. 2. Identity (Pscyhology) – Nigeria. 3. National characteristics, Nigerian. 4. Urbanization – Nigeria. 5. Nigeria – Social conditions. 6. Moral education – Nigeria. 7. Christian ethics – Nigeria. 8. Christianity and culture. 9. Philosophical anthropology. I. Okere, Theophilus. II. Series. B5619.N63134 1995 94-40762 199’.669—dc20 CIP ISBN 1-56518-072-0 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I. CONTINUITY IN A CHANGING AFRICAN CULTURE 1. African Culture: the Past and the Present as an Indivisible Whole by T. Okere 9 2. Cultural Identity and Modernity in Africa: A Case for a New Philosophy by Joseph I. Asike 27 3. Africa: the Question of Identity by I.M. Onyeocha 35 PART II. THE CITY: CULTURAL CONTACT AND TRANSFORMATION 4. The City in Modern Nigeria: a Force in Rapid Change by Joseph I. Asike 55 5. Urbanization and African Traditional Values by C.B. Okolo 73 PART III. THE MORAL DIMENSION 6. Formation of Character in Traditional Nigerian Moral Education by I.M. Onyeocha 89 7. The Poverty of Christian Individualist Morality and an African Alternative by T. Okere 117 PART IV. AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 8. Names as Building Blocks of an African Philosophy by T. Okere 133 9. The Structure of the Self in Igbo Thought by T. Okere 151 PART V. VALUES IN CHANGE 10. The Influence of Christian Values on Culture by C. Nze 165 11. The African Experience of Christian Values: Dimensions of the Problematic by C.B. Okolo 173 APPENDIX. Traditions, Cultures and Values by George F. McLean 187 Index 209 PREFACE George F. McLean To enter into this book is truly to experience the turbulence of Africa today. Part I hides nothing; it attenuates nothing; instead it turns up the volume and marshals the spectrum of swirling concerns: conscious and subconscious, historical and contemporary, racial and cultural, internal and external, political, commercial and religious. Justly or unjustly no one is spared. The eminent Leopold Sedar Senghor is berated for the extrinsic and superficial character of his designation of Africanity as "negritude", even as he is being quoted as saying that this refers not to the color of one's skin but to spiritual values. The primacy for the intuitive and affective he cites in the African character is condemned as demeaning, in contrast to the analytic and utilitarian rationalism from which other cultures now are attempting to escape. When Kant's third critique, that of aesthetic judgement, is at last being taken seriously Senghor's stress upon intuition, participation and spontaneity which were as central to the African spirit are regarded. In this first part every shame is piled up and reinforced by examples, not merely from Africa in recent centuries, but even from preceding centuries in Latin America; every motivation is read at its blackest; every project from commerce, through education, to religion is scrutinized piteously for its unconscious (and often not so unconscious) demeaning biases. At first the reader might begin to fear that he or she had encountered authors obstinately set against developments in education or religion, but these chapters are written by outstanding and committed leaders in both universities and church. Gradually, from within this very critique there begin to emerge brief indications for a positive project. It is to push aside, however forceably, simplistic reductionisms to either the traditional culture from the African past, on the one hand, or to the more recent cultural imports from other continents, on the other. This would make way for a project described by Theophilus Okere as growing out of the past tradition, but actively oriented toward the development of a future adequate for the African and particularly the Nigerian peoples. There is therefore no need for African thinkers today selectively to regress into their "pure past" in a vain, quixotic quest for the "authentic" portion of the historic, but still ongoing, experience which is their culture. Neither is there any possibility of getting rid of their ancient, native africanity in order to fall into the embrace of an all-conquering but wholly imported culture that might pretend to the epithet "mainstream" or "universal". Culture today in Africa, as any time and anywhere, means total historical experience without denial or suppression of past or present, a dynamic unity of ancient and modern, a two-headed continuum with one head plunged into the immensity of the immemorial past, and the other as firmly and deeply immersed in the contemporary here and now. It is this total and holistic view of culture that has inspired the approach we have chosen in developing this first volume of the Nigerian Philosophy Series. For this a first step is to follow the opening exorcism by a fresh acceptance of self after the words of Mokwogo Okoye, "I had thus no need for complexes of contempt, rage or dissembling, and everywhere I moved, I saw myself as the equal or even superior of the people about mea pardonable sin after emerging, with my country, from a long period of repression and humiliation." That this is truly the place to begin is not simply a psychological consideration, but reflects the absolutely central role of the self in Igbo thought as is developed intensively by T. Okere in chapter IX. But this must mean accepting as well the reality not only of one's special competencies, but the limitations of one's culture and one's guilt for one's past. President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic has pointed out the importance of this for his own people after their 40 years of obvious oppression: only in finding the intersection with a people's history of their exercise of their own freedom even where this has been in self-betrayal can one assume the direction of this history and begin the rebuilding of one's future. When the overall project on "African Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Life" was being planned in Abidjan in 1982 T. Okere noted this with regard to the active participation of African Chiefs in supplying human chattel for the slave trade. It is a theme which reemerges here in the last two chapters by C. Nz and C.B. Ckolo in their references to the efforts by Christianity to overcome local slave trade. T. Okere is undoubtedly right, and courageous, in preferring to proceed descriptively and thence to allow the outlines of a Nigerian philosophy to emerge. Hence, he does not undertake in chapter IX to look for an Igbo notion of "people", but rather gradually and richly unfolds the central notion of Onwe. His brief reflection on method warrants intensive development, particularly in the light of recent studies on hermeneutics. It is not incidental that this philosophical work in hermeneutics has emerged as central in philosophy at the same time that culture has taken its place as a locus philosophicus, or source for philosophical insight, just as scripture is a locus theologicus. As with other fields under intensive development, this is not an area of philosophical concord, but that very fact is a richness. An appendix to this volume surveys the hermeneutics of H.G. Gadimer for its development of the nature of a cultural tradition and its application to changing circumstances. It reviews also the critical hermeneutics of Jurgen Habermas for its effort to provide a way of reading tradition that will protect against its becoming a means of perpetuating structures of injustice. Finally it considers their interrelation in searching out the meaning of a tradition and relating it to the task of building the future. The parts of the present work contribute importantly to this constructive task. Part II locates the city as the place of dynamic tension where all the forces at play in Nigeria come to bear one upon the other, and hence where the future of the continent is under construction. J. Asike provides the history of the development of the city and the present result. C.B. Okolo's chapter is tempered, but hopeful that the new forces can yet prove to be also helpful and not only destructive of the African and, in particular, the Nigerian personality. In Part III, I. Onyeocha describes the process of personal moral formation in the traditional African setting and the importance of the rites of initiation. The rich content of this teaching is sketched, as well as are its methods for vivid inculcation. T. Okere analyses the communitary dimension of the African moral vision. In chapter VI he mounts a vivid, systematic critique of Western Christian morality for its individualism, suggesting that this may derive from its strong enhancement of the notion of person. Here, as usual, it is the very strength of a philosophy or theology that engenders its weakness. If so this may provide an important warning of the inherent danger in the spread of Western intensively individualist commercial structures in Nigeria. But it may suggest as well the importance of Africa's sharing its sense of community in cultural interchange with other continents. Indeed, as in setting out a fire line, in this period of increasing interrelation of cultures such sharing with others may prove essential to protecting Africa's own sense of community.