The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

I used to think Western philosophy and Western academic scholarship uniformly  saw animism as a primitive style of thinking until I read such sources as the Wikipedia essays on animism and panpsychism.

What are the implications of such re-examinations for African thought, the value of whose animistic character is highly contested between philosophy and Abrahamic religions?

More forthcoming.

[Harrow, Kenneth]

ecocriticism is now effacing the ontological lines between the human and non human. old school thinking about animism, as understood along anthropological lines, is no longer respectable, which goes along with the end of abrahamic religions as defining any meaningful priorities of value.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 11:26 AM
To: usaafricadialogue; Yoruba Affairs
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

I used to think Western philosophy and Western academic scholarship uniformly  saw animism as a primitive style of thinking until I read such sources as the Wikipedia essays on animism and panpsychism.

What are the implications of such re-examinations for African thought, the value of whose animistic character is highly contested between philosophy and Abrahamic religions?

More forthcoming.

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

great thanks, Ken. i will look into ecocriticism.

Is the following not an exaggeration, though- 'the end of abrahamic religions as defining any meaningful priorities of value'.

secondly, can the lines btw human and non-human be effaced? is it not more more realistic to aspire to a redefinition of those lines?

toyin

[Harrow, Kenneth]

good questions toyin. there are lines between entities when they are drawn. they are not "god-given," let's say. anyway, recent critical work very much is pushing notions that animals share traits, emotional psychic etc, with humans. it isn't my field, but major critics are now writing in that direction. cajetan iheka is writing about it. the whole field of animal rights is burgeoning.

anyway, it isn't that the three major western religions are gone,but that their "cultural capital" in the realm of knowledge--epistemology and ontology--has been supplanted by scientific/enlightenment values. that was althusser's point quite a while ago, and if anything it is more true than ever.

meanwhile, popular values, grounded in faith, seems stronger than ever as well.

so i guess we have to define which audience we are addressing: an educated or a non-educated one.

now, african religious beliefs had been denigrated by colonial discourses. i believe firmly that is changing, that scholars are now looking at how african religious beliefs function in defining values, in opening new possibilities for studying philosophical questions, like being, free from the wretched baggage of colonial thinking or its christian political agendas.

we surely are in a new age; but no new age comes without fighting off and rejecting the old, which is what your question about abrahamic religions suggests to me.

and we can discuss this calmly, looking at this film or novel, that theoretical philosophical text, without impediment. while at the same time, to open those questions in public venues might indeed risk exposing us to attacks.

the venues make all the difference (thinking of that pakistani girl condemned to death for christian beliefs) and i would be more circumspect around boko haram ideologues, or anywhere in the sahara these days, than i am here in my little corner of east lansing.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 12:03 PM
To: Yoruba Affairs; usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

interestingly put, ken- the venues make all the difference ... i would be more circumspect around boko haram ideologues, or anywhere in the sahara these days, than i am here in my little corner of east lansing'.

perhaps the abrahamic traditions are still deep in western academia, in the name of those who have assimilated and transformed them, as m.h. abrams argued for romanticism in his book natural supernaturalism: romantic theory and the critical tradition.

heidegger's educational foundations, for example, are in christian theology and the marriage of that with ancient greek and husserlain thought, along with his own independent reflections, may be said to have given us his master work being and time, itself fundamental to his huge influence on thought in various disciplines.

i wonder if its possible to adequately grasp the provenance and echoes of derrida's use of the image of the circle in his  influential essay structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences without reference to the use of similar images in christian thought.

Stephen hawking is compelled to invoke an old christian mystical concept in the last paragraph of his a brief history of time , on how a grasp  of few summative physics concepts could lead people to know the mind of God.

is it possible to adequately appreciate hegel and his influence without understanding his christian roots, how he transformed those roots which were then further transformed by others? his idea of Geist-spirit/mind, as working itself out in history- i wonder what it may owe to augustine's city of God and the concept of the holy spirit.

on humans and animals, we may be animals, but we are certainly not identical with the other animals who have not built the kind of civilizations that we have. is that a line drawn by human  beings or by nature?

perhaps what might be more clearly in dispute might be the idea of humans beings as  superior to animals.

thanks for the beautiful ideas and particularly for this which i will look into and chew on-

'recent critical work very much is pushing notions that animals share traits, emotional psychic etc, with humans... major critics are now writing in that direction. cajetan iheka is writing about it. the whole field of animal rights is burgeoning.  we can discuss this calmly, looking at this film or novel, that theoretical philosophical text, without impediment. 

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Ken you still have to watch your back in Michigan, this time from the intolerant, evangelical rightwing.

G

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 4:48:51 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Harrow, Kenneth]

hi toyin

i think there is something of an error in your way of putting things below. you write as if there is a hidden subtext to all those thinkers' thoughts, which is an underlying christianity.

i'd put it differently. all of our thinking is grounded in what came before us. but it changes. it is not the same. that doesn't mean that hegel or anyone else's philosophical position is essentially that which he started with. all discourse of any kind, anywhere, has to be grounded in preceding language and thinking that enables the writer to put thoughts into a meaningful language, a meaningful frame.

then it changes.

there is no start to it. if there was christianity, in one of its forms, there was the thinking that came before christianity. there is no ground, never a ground, only a stop on a way of putting things, as if you are putting a pin in a moving flow.

an arbitrary stop.

for some, that pin goes where "christianity" was to be found. call it st augustine, or a million others. another would want it to be muslim, with mohammed, or the hadith. others the torah or talmud or mid eastern texts. i dare say others want egypt.

and all those places are actually reconstructions of today about an imagined yesterday.

go back a million years, some caveman is quoting his grandfather, and everyone sagely nods his head and says, yup, that's the divine truth, since grandpa saw god, or grandpa's grandpa is god, or whatever.

in that sense i am of course agreeing with you, the philosophers you cite had a set of values that preceded their own, and proceeded to trope on them. but your ascription of all preceding discourses as being abrahamic or christian or whatever is far too arbitrary. there is no single source, not for any of us, anywhere.

not even grandpa.

i like what peter brooks has to say about melodrama. you might appreciate it. he says that melodrama compensates for the loss of the dominant religious worldview by driving it underground, and having it return in the narrative emplotment, where divine retribution and values ultimately prevail. a spiritual substratum that provides values, without openly averting that.  he calls it the moral occult

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 6:52 PM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Harrow, Kenneth]

gloria

i just read the bbc report of the latest trump rally where the bbc camerman was attacked. everyone should read the report, though i admit i stopped before the end, it upset me so much.

trump is a fascist. i have the misfortune of knowing history, being old enough to have been born during world war II, so it is not like a distant past. plus, more importantly, i have studied enough of it to be able to recognize it, in its modern iteration.

trump is a fascist, his supporters include those we would have called black shirts in germany or italy. the attack took place a couple of days ago, and apparently trump eggs on these people at all his rallies.

his policies require a scapegoat, and the scapegoats in the past suffered in the holocaust, including jews but also slavs, gays, gypsies, and even mentally deficient people.

trump is a fascist, which means if we stand up to him, we will incur the wrath of his followers.

even here in michigan, of course. everywhere in this country.

that's the sad truth/.

gloria you are right.

and before trump we had the tea party, with equally regressive values.

the only good thing to say here is that we, many of us, can resist them. and do resist trump.

the best way to begin to resistance is to recognize and name what you are opposing. i call it fascism

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2019 11:03 AM