Reflections on Paulin Hountondji’s Legacy
“The conceptual and existential questions African thinkers and scholars across multiple disciplines have posed since the dawn of independence are frequently interrelated. From the mid to late 20th century, two major preoccupations were discernible in addressing the sociopolitical conditions in Africa namely, the nation-building project, on the one hand, and processes of decolonisation, on the other,” said Sanya Osha, Co2libri Fellow from ZMO Berlin, Germany.
“We may add confronting the ambiguities of modernity as being embedded in the aforementioned problematiques,” he added.
Osha’s project explores how the renowned philosopher, Paulin Hountondji, together with his peers, tackled this nexus of existential and intellectual challenges.
“Since the publication of his landmark book, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (1976), Paulin Jidenu Hountondji has become one of the most important names in modern African philosophy,” said Osha. “This study explores his conceptual development by investigating his various philosophical concepts, formulations, writings and activities as a theorist engaged in establishing crucial institutional practices in Africa and beyond.”
Hountondji (1942 – 2024) was a Beninese philosopher, politician and academic. He was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he completed his doctorate in 1970. After teaching in France, Kinshasha and Lubumbashi, he returned to Benin where he taught at the Université Nationale du Bénin. In the early 1990s he briefly served as Minister of Education and Minister for Culture and Communications in the Benin government.
Hountondji was also a STIAS fellow who was last in residence in 2012.
“He made a great impact on Africa and beyond and was acclaimed as a global philosopher,” said Osha.
Osha started by describing his own entry into philosophy and the limitations of the field that he experienced. He specifically highlighted transdisciplinarity which is an integral part of the STIAS ethos and was enshrined in Hountondji’s work.
“I studied philosophy in the hope it would answer the intellectual challenges I faced as a young man. I had left the city of Lagos to study and came back years later but the city had transformed and I felt like a stranger in my own city,” he explained. “I believed philosophy was the queen of sciences, the foundation of all knowledge and would give me the analytical tools to understand my own city. But I found philosophy didn’t have the answers. I therefore looked beyond philosophy – first to visual artists who answered many of my questions and later to musicians – like Fela Kuti – if you listen well to Kuti you see the noise, the city, colours, the pace and the rhythms.”
He also highlighted his artist friend, Dil-Humphrey Umezulike, known as Thejunkmanfromafrica because of his use of materials from scrapyards. “One of the most original artists I have ever met. He tries to highlight the uses and abuses of capitalism and traditional notions of beauty. In spite of challenges and difficulties, he is still an artist. You may not like his work, he may not be the artist for you, but he is an artist.”
“Philosophy couldn’t give me the answers so I had to go beyond it to embrace and incorporate other disciplines,” he continued. “Philosophy had become narrower and critical of approaches it didn’t sanction. You were excommunicated if you didn’t stay within certain parameters.”
“The language of philosophy is difficult,” he added. “It’s a discipline as old as mankind. There’s a lot to learn and you can only master an infinitesimal proportion.”
Osha believes that Hountonji faced similar challenges – “He was under pressure to develop an approach to the study of philosophy in Africa but also to make the discipline relevant to his community. His big challenge was in answering questions like: Why study philosophy in the midst of national building and decolonisation? And, how can philosophy help?”
Osha explained that Hountonji faced both pressure from within the discipline as well as the need to use the discipline to address social challenges. Along with his contemporaries (including prominent Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka) he debated the purpose of philosophy post-independence in African countries.
Osha indicated that Hountonji was also critical of European and American philosophers trying to harvest ‘folk’ knowledge from communities and turn it into works of thought. “This is related to the issue of scientific dependency across Africa. It also comes from the economic realities – the idea of Africa as a producer of raw materials. It’s the same in the intellectual fields. Africa provides the data which are refined and developed elsewhere.”
In answer to this challenge, Osha explained that Hountonji gathered students to do fieldwork in communities around local forms of knowledge and to produce critical thought on this body of work. This culminated in a book published in 1994 for which Hountonji only wrote the introduction. “In so doing he adhered to the expectations of traditional philosophy and what philosophers ought to be doing which was not ethnography,” said Osha. “It was a clever way of excusing himself.”
Osha explained that Hountonji’s other critique was of the concept of unanimism
which is the cornerstone of ethnophilosophy – because he believed there is no one homogenous human society where everyone is one and the same.
“So, for me, his main contributions were his critique of ethnophilosophy, unanimism, scientific dependency and the concept of endogenous knowledge.”
“He was a remarkably sophisticated scholar who navigated the pressures in his field and the restrictions, remained loyal to the demands of his discipline, but also responded creatively to the demands of society – advancing philosophy for the betterment of many,” said Osha.
“His meta-philosophical ideas are very interesting today especially in the era of Trump with the closing of borders and increased exclusion. Hountonji’s approaches crossed traditions globally and incorporated global knowledge systems. More inclusivity in the discipline is now occurring. I’m excited to be part of it.”
“He suggested a new approach to knowledge-making incorporating African knowledge systems which are quite holistic and embedded in existence. I want to see how this is engaged with,” Osha concluded. “The concept of African philosophy is still contested and not fully accepted. It’s still seen as marginal and only done by enthusiasts.”
Osha remains hopeful that this will change.
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photograph