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& Chapter 5 The Migration of Ideas and Afrikaans Philosophy in South Africa1 Pieter Duvenage The phenomenon of philosophy in the Afrikaans language is the result of social and cultural circumstances that have played themselves out for more than two centuries in South Africa. From the 19th century, Afrikaans (and South African) philosophy has been influenced by British Idealism, continental thought (including phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism ), Anglo-American conceptual analysis, and philosophies informed by religious traditions, such as Reformational philosophy and Thomism. It is presently also no surprise that philosophers who work on postmodernism, postcolonialism , feminism, analytic philosophy and African philosophy do so by utilizing formulations of other contexts. Consequently, the following questions can be asked: Does a South African philosophical tradition, and more specifically an Afrikaans one, exist? If so, what is its nature, and what possibilities does it harbour for the future? Is Afrikaans philosophy a phenomenon that might disappear, or will it remain? In order to answer these questions the following issues will be considered. First, the reality in which we live (exist) is not philosophically neutral. Every view of the world (Weltanschauung), idea of science, theological or judicial position, and political programme, has an underlying philosophy; every issue in the world must be approached from a specific horizon. The subject always encounters the world from a certain background, horizon or framework. Second, in this chapter the focus is the encounter between various schools of thought and thinkers and 1 This contribution is a translated and substantially revised version of an article that appeared in Hervormde Teologiese Studies 56, no. 2/3 (2000): 723–742. It also draws on my article on South African philosophy in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005, http://www.rep.routledge. com/. 106 Duvenage the South African historical reality. Thus, we need to address the migration of ideas and the application and working of those ideas in a new context. Third, we need to understand what it means to speak of an Afrikaans (or South African) philosophy. There is no Oxford, Sorbonne or Heidelberg, hundreds of years old, in South Africa. It is thus perhaps inappropriate to speak of an Afrikaans philosophical tradition, and more apt to refer to an Afrikaans philosophical approach. By considering these issues, we may be able to provide an historical and systematic answer to the phenomenon of Afrikaans philosophy. 1. Colonialism and the ‘Institution’ of Philosophy in South Africa The history of the ‘institution’ of philosophy in South Africa is closely intertwined with the history of colonialism. The Dutch East India Company, established in the 17th century, saw the Cape of South Africa as a halfway post. The emphasis of their colonial policy was most definitely not the Cape, but the treasures of the mysterious East.2 The settlement of the Cape happened in between, and this is where the European involvement, and more specifically the Dutch one, started in South Africa. This is a history closely linked with Western modernity . Habermas writes, “The discovery of the ‘new world’, the Renaissance, and the Reformation—these three monumental events around the year 1500 constituted the epochal threshold between modern times and the middle ages.”3 The founding of a settlement at the Cape though does not mean that thinking and reflection only arrived with the Dutch. At the time of Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, there were already various indigenous groups, each with long traditions of wisdom. What did begin to develop in the Cape and the interior in the 17th century was a very modern occurrence—the encounter of the West with its other. In the first 150 years (1652–1795), apart from a few rudimentary schools, the Dutch did not have any academic plans in the Cape. It was only after Britain formally became established as the colonial power in the Cape in 1806 that an educational system was slowly established. In this process British imperialism 2 J. M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1. A hundred years after Jan van Riebeeck, O. F. Mentzel writes, “There are no high schools or universities in this country. Such institutions are not required, for what use could one make of learning acquired there in a land where live is still primitive and where the Company’s rule is law.” O. F. Mentzel, Life at the Cape in Mid-eighteenth Century (Kaapstad: Van Riebeeck Vereniging , 1919...

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