The Hermeneutics of African Development: A Philosophy to Abide by. KEMKA S. IBEJI
If only Africa and her leaders can realize that culture and tradition are vital to understanding, they will definitely start to appreciate the importance of philosophy and especially African philosophy.
Hermeneutics which is the Philosophy of Understanding has taught us of the situatedness of tradition in understanding. This simply means that in order to understand anything at all, be it expression in dialogue, discussion or discourse, music or any other work of art, science and technology, cosmology, law or any axiological endeavor, one glances into understanding through the binoculars of culture and tradition.
If you need to exercise your power of thinking on the above assertion, you can take a little survey into comedy. Take up a comedy film produced and formed on the experience(s) of the West or the whiteman. Maybe you will at the end say it was actually a waste of time or that it was so dry.
If you will, please take that same clip to the whites around you and see how they will be cracked into much laughter. Perhaps, you should be thinking and asking yourself what is actually funny about all that. If your question is addressed to me, I will simply say you should ask culture. Laughter comes with or after understanding.
The laws guiding and governing the actions and inactions of a people in the commonwealth is indeed a product of a long and cumulative shared experience. This long and aggregate experience is and must be shared by a people. And to share such retinue of interactions over time, such group of people would have a shared setting, settlement or identity of locale. And by locale in this purview, we shall mean shared environment.
When a people who have generated and developed a value system across time, through shared experience and knowledge acquired through certain unifying interactions within a sphere of existence, are forced into leading, evaluating, practicing and judging their lives, works and morality on the basis of strange yardsticks, what else will you be expecting other than confusion and disorder?
Africa with her leadership is in disarray today because of understanding. The Hermeneutics operated by African leadership is corrupted, unserviceable and impracticable. The reason for our continued backwardness can only be found within this horizon.
Nigerian government is run on a British styled Constitution and so are various countries in Africa. Africa runs on the Philosophies that are essentially strange to our experience. This is the foundation of crass failure. The bane of African development is bad and battered thought patterns which enables them to borrow concepts and principles from said or acclaimed developed cultures without refinements.
Does inferiority complex have a hand in all these? I would say no first and yes afterwards. No, because no one is forced into choice. Choice comes from being human and we share same humanity with those who we borrow from. So there is no act of inferiority complex in the initial point of choice since as humans we are endowed with the reasoning capacities, are offered alternatives from which pool we make our choice.
I will answer yes afterwards to the question of inferiority complex above as I graciously murmured earlier because of the responsibility that comes with choice. If the choice African leaders have made is to depend on the choice of the other, their responsibility remains servitude. This simply shows why those who copy your work in the examination hall remain very humble and loyal to you. The will only stop being that loyal except there is a possible exchange somewhere along the line.
In the case of Africa and African leadership, there seems to be no exchange near sight.
The question therefore is why do our so called leaders in Africa persistently be leading us into servitude? Can we not be lead with concepts and principles that precipitate from our own philosophy drafted with home ingredients and informed by our localized experiences?
One may be forced therefore to think that African leadership is removed from localized experience and it is not wrong to think so after all.
Thinkers are unfailingly a sound clan of breeds cooked and prepared by their environment. These philosophers are worthy leaders for Africa. Here again is a point that raises many other paramount questions. What environment are African leaders raised in? What are their experiences? Do they share common experience(s) with the people they lead or intend to lead? What informs their choice; shared or strange? Why do they keep importing concepts and principles from strange experiences? What are the possibilities for real African leadership that will establish sound and reasonable governance grown on African logic?
Though it is our strong belief that Africa will rise again, the time and grandeur with which the rising comes will greatly and strongly depend on the quality of her leadership. But the quality of leadership depends on the properties and particles that informs her choice.
KEMKA S. IBEJI
Hermeneutics which is the Philosophy of Understanding has taught us of the situatedness of tradition in understanding. This simply means that in order to understand anything at all, be it expression in dialogue, discussion or discourse, music or any other work of art, science and technology, cosmology, law or any axiological endeavor, one glances into understanding through the binoculars of culture and tradition.
If you need to exercise your power of thinking on the above assertion, you can take a little survey into comedy. Take up a comedy film produced and formed on the experience(s) of the West or the whiteman. Maybe you will at the end say it was actually a waste of time or that it was so dry.
If you will, please take that same clip to the whites around you and see how they will be cracked into much laughter. Perhaps, you should be thinking and asking yourself what is actually funny about all that. If your question is addressed to me, I will simply say you should ask culture. Laughter comes with or after understanding.
The laws guiding and governing the actions and inactions of a people in the commonwealth is indeed a product of a long and cumulative shared experience. This long and aggregate experience is and must be shared by a people. And to share such retinue of interactions over time, such group of people would have a shared setting, settlement or identity of locale. And by locale in this purview, we shall mean shared environment.
When a people who have generated and developed a value system across time, through shared experience and knowledge acquired through certain unifying interactions within a sphere of existence, are forced into leading, evaluating, practicing and judging their lives, works and morality on the basis of strange yardsticks, what else will you be expecting other than confusion and disorder?
Africa with her leadership is in disarray today because of understanding. The Hermeneutics operated by African leadership is corrupted, unserviceable and impracticable. The reason for our continued backwardness can only be found within this horizon.
Nigerian government is run on a British styled Constitution and so are various countries in Africa. Africa runs on the Philosophies that are essentially strange to our experience. This is the foundation of crass failure. The bane of African development is bad and battered thought patterns which enables them to borrow concepts and principles from said or acclaimed developed cultures without refinements.
Does inferiority complex have a hand in all these? I would say no first and yes afterwards. No, because no one is forced into choice. Choice comes from being human and we share same humanity with those who we borrow from. So there is no act of inferiority complex in the initial point of choice since as humans we are endowed with the reasoning capacities, are offered alternatives from which pool we make our choice.
I will answer yes afterwards to the question of inferiority complex above as I graciously murmured earlier because of the responsibility that comes with choice. If the choice African leaders have made is to depend on the choice of the other, their responsibility remains servitude. This simply shows why those who copy your work in the examination hall remain very humble and loyal to you. The will only stop being that loyal except there is a possible exchange somewhere along the line.
In the case of Africa and African leadership, there seems to be no exchange near sight.
The question therefore is why do our so called leaders in Africa persistently be leading us into servitude? Can we not be lead with concepts and principles that precipitate from our own philosophy drafted with home ingredients and informed by our localized experiences?
One may be forced therefore to think that African leadership is removed from localized experience and it is not wrong to think so after all.
Thinkers are unfailingly a sound clan of breeds cooked and prepared by their environment. These philosophers are worthy leaders for Africa. Here again is a point that raises many other paramount questions. What environment are African leaders raised in? What are their experiences? Do they share common experience(s) with the people they lead or intend to lead? What informs their choice; shared or strange? Why do they keep importing concepts and principles from strange experiences? What are the possibilities for real African leadership that will establish sound and reasonable governance grown on African logic?
Though it is our strong belief that Africa will rise again, the time and grandeur with which the rising comes will greatly and strongly depend on the quality of her leadership. But the quality of leadership depends on the properties and particles that informs her choice.
KEMKA S. IBEJI
Comments
Post a Comment