Culture, Politics and Writing in Afro-Caribbean Philosophy: A Reply to Critics

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

I must begin by thanking Brian Meeks, Maureen Warner-Lewis, Patrick Goodin, and Claudette Anderson for taking the time to put down so clearly their engaging and critical responses to Caliban's Reason. I appreciate both the depth and specificity of the comments and the critical issues raised. Also I would like to say a special thanks to the editors of Small Axe for making this exchange possible, and so contributing to the kind of discussion that will expand and contest the foundations of Afro-Caribbean philosophy established in Caliban's Reason.

All four presentations can be divided into two basic parts. The first of these two parts is expository in nature, with authors taking up various themes that will feature prominently in the second part of their particular essays. These second halves are more critical in nature, raising many more questions than I can answer here. However, before turning to those questions that I will attempt to answer, let me say that I have little with which to disagree in the expository parts of these essays. They are excellent statements of the particular themes selected for development, often framing them in language more precise than my own. Consequently, my responses will focus primarily on the critical sections of the essays where differences over the multiple meanings of terms, over what are satisfactory arguments, over what is possible and what is not possible, all emerge quite sharply.

Goodin's critique takes the form of a series of very explicit questions. Because of the number of them, they all cannot be addressed individually. However, together they raise three issues, which I will address. First is the relationship between philosophy and culture; second is the problem of existence and consciousness of existence; and third is the application of "European concepts" to Afro-Caribbean philosophy. In contrast to Goodin, Meeks raises specific questions in the critical part of his essay, which I will answer individually. In the critical section of her essay, Maureen Warner-Lewis raises the question of how accurately I've represented the continuities between the African philosophical heritage and the tradition of Afro-Caribbean poeticist writing. Finally, Claudette Anderson's subtle essay begins the discussion of the post-Caliban phase of Afro-Caribbean philosophy.

I will begin with the three questions that I extracted from Goodin's larger set.

Philosophy and Culture

Goodin begins his essay with a reference to the work of the Islamic philosopher Al Farabi, who lays out a "transcultural" conception of philosophy that Goodin contrasts with the culturally embedded conception of philosophy that I articulate in Caliban's Reason. Goodin does not tell us what makes Farabi's conception "transcultural" other than it being exclusively of Greek origin. In other words, how is the claim for the "transcultural" status of philosophy to be justified? My position is that this claim cannot be satisfactorily justified. First, the claim that philosophy is of Greek origin is problematic enough for me to reject it. The Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese philosophical traditions pre-date those of Greece. The arguments for the Greek origins of philosophy can be made only by categorizing, as Hegel and Husserl did, these earlier traditions as being prephilosophical. That is, they were not Greek, not rational or too strongly linked with religion. However, the Eurocentric and self-serving nature of these arguments become clear when St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Boethius and other Christian philosophers of the medieval period are routinely included in the Western philosophical canon. If the works of the above-mentioned authors are philosophical, then so also must be those of Shankara, Ramanunja, Buddha, Confucius and others that derive from traditions that are much older than the Greek. Thus, Goodin's claim that the nature of philosophy is transcultural because it has Greek origins collapses.

Whether African, Indian, Chinese or Greek in...