Reasoning with Caliban's Reason

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

Paget Henry has written an important book, breathtaking in its ambition and sweeping in its vision. Henry's purpose is nothing less than to explore and map a field that has not been previously charted: that of Afro-Caribbean philosophy.

His central thesis is the confirmation of the existence of an Afro-Caribbean philosophy, albeit a minor tradition, operating in the interstices of the more dominant forms of Caribbean intellectual production. He divides Afro-Caribbean philosophy into two subtraditions—that of the historicists (Eric Williams, Arthur Lewis, C. L. R. James, for instance) and that of the poeticists (like Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite and Aime Cesaire). Though there are important individuals who span both traditions (Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Sylvia Wynter), they have for the most part been separated, and this, as Wilson Harris has suggested,¹ has served to diminish potential advances in social understanding that might have arisen from a closer affiliation.

More important, the absence of a self-conscious philosophical gaze has prevented Caribbean intellectuals from focusing on critical existential matters related to "ego genesis" and ontology. This weakness, Henry argues, has severely impaired Caribbean intellectual exploration and has affected Caribbean efforts toward social and economic liberation. Thus, in order for social movements to have a better chance of succeeding, they will have to engage in the "setting afoot of a new man."² This will require a new focus on philosophical matters ignored by the social movements of the mid to late twentieth century, including the nature of the innate creativity of the Caribbean people, and most of all the formation and composition of the Caribbean self.³

Grappling with Caliban

At the heart of Henry's argument is the first chapter, on African philosophy, which advances two proposals: that there is a coherent African philosophy and that it has had a significant though subterranean impact on Caribbean thinking. African philosophy did not develop as a formal university discipline but as a form of "mythopoetic traditions." This fact does not void it of its philosophical substance but rather informs us of its character. Within the "mythopoetics"⁴ of African philosophy, then, there exist origin narratives, which explain how the human ego is formed and sustained. These origin narratives have as much validity as any, since they affect and help to determine human behavior. One of the tasks, then, is to grasp the nature of the mythologically constructed African ego and to understand its implications for social life.

Using examples primarily from West Africa, Henry posits that in the African conception there is a spiritual world that has both "immanent and transcendent relations to the material, social and individual worlds."⁵ Generalizing from the Akan myth, he advances a view of the human being as the "ontic unity" of three component parts: the okra, or soul, the sunsum, or ego, and the honan, or body.⁶ In order to achieve human fulfillment, the sunsum must develop within guidelines set by the okra, which is in turn determined by God and is therefore predestined. To function effectively, the ego must cooperate with the soul. Though unity between the two counterpoised dimensions of the human self is never fully achieved, striving for it is the purpose of human existence. Unlike Western or Indian philosophy, which in different ways assert a radical separation of matter and spirit, Henry posits that in African philosophy the two are integrated.

Important corollaries flow from this juxtaposition of ego and spirit. In the ethical sphere, the implication is that if the spirit dominates and there is a unity among all people at the spiritual level, then for the ego to be in harmony with the spirit it must also seek, in everyday life, to be in harmony with the spirits of other human beings. Thus, African philosophy, arguably, embraces a communitarian as opposed to an individualist ethic. The ego/spirit connection is...