Caliban's Cry: Reflections on the Meaning of Philosophy in Caliban's Reason

Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Paget Henry. New York: Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0415926459

Introduction

When Al Farabi, the great tenth-century philosopher—the acknowledged founder of medieval Islamic philosophy ¹ —laid out his comprehensive account of philosophy, he indicated unequivocally its derivative character. He said it came from "the Greeks, from Plato and Aristotle only. Both have given us an account of philosophy, but not without giving us also an account of the ways to it and the ways to reestablish it when it becomes confused or extinct." ²

What Al Farabi does, arguably, in his Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is to re-create in an Islamic context what philosophy is and the way to it. One scholar has recently called Al Farabi's work in this text his "rediscovery" of philosophy. ³ Of course, before it can be rediscovered it has to be discovered. The "discovery" is traditionally attributed to the ancient Greeks. According to this view, philosophy does not necessarily emerge in every culture or society. Rather, philosophy is linked to a particular culture or society by inhabitants who practice it, but it is not a distinct expression of the culture of society per se. Philosophy then, in a manner of speaking, is transcultural. And not only can it fail to emerge in a given culture, it can become extinct in one in which it has flourished.

In his new and important book Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, ⁴ Paget Henry takes an entirely different tack. For him, philosophy is not linked to a specific tradition and is certainly not transcultural. According to Henry, "From the point of view of the creative or world-constituting self, the culture of a people may be defined as an expression of a distinct consciousness of existence articulated in a variety of discourses. Philosophy is often the discourse in which we get the most general formulations of that consciousness of existence." ⁵ Philosophy, then, regardless of what it may claim, is completely culture-bound; it is nothing but the representation and expression of a people's particularity, that is, its "distinct consciousness of existence." People have, by definition, cultures, and therefore also philosophies, if only implicitly. Henry's aim, then, in introducing Afro-Caribbean philosophy must consist of articulating and clarifying the Afro-Caribbean cultural perspective. Caliban's Reason undertakes this daunting task in a courageous manner and gives us in the dialectics of its movement a comprehensive picture of the Afro-Caribbean culture.

Quite a bit, however, rests on Henry's conception of philosophy and its validity. This is what I want to examine in this essay. Caliban's Reason may be read as a series of studies on the Afro-Caribbean experience—similar to works in African and African American philosophy. ⁶ But what makes the studies in Caliban's Reason so interesting—and simultaneously problematic—is the robust conception of philosophy that informs their content and forges these disparate parts into an integrated whole.

What makes Henry's conception of philosophy so important and worth examining is that Caliban's Reason is the first book to treat Afro-Caribbean philosophy thematically. As we know, both African and African American philosophy are established courses of study. Afro-Caribbean philosophy is just beginning to emerge. ⁷ And if, as I noted earlier, Henry's conception of philosophy determines his understanding of Afro-Caribbean culture, then that conception plays an essential role in this nascent stage of the discipline. I'll devote the remainder of this essay to an articulation of Henry's conception of philosophy and an examination of the challenges it presents.

Part 1

Henry understands philosophy as the most general formulation of a people's culture—and "culture," a critical term for Henry, is understood to mean the general expression of a people's consciousness of existence, understood through a variety of discourses...