Yoruba Philosophy as a Quest for Foundational and Ultimate Meaning : A Summation Inspired by the Work of Rowland Abiodun and Wole Soyinka
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Yoruba Philosophy as a Quest for Foundational and Ultimate Meaning
A Summation Inspired by the Work of Rowland Abiodun
and
Wole Soyinka
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Abstract
An outline of Yoruba philosophy as a quest for foundational and ultimate meaning, as this philosophy may be perceived through the work of Rowland Abiodun and Wole Soyinka, in correlation with the work of other thinkers within and beyond Yoruba thought, and a summative, poetic reflection by me adapting Abiodun’s mapping of Yoruba aesthetics as a guide to living.
Contents
Abstract
Contents
Structure
A Quest for Ultimate Meaning
The Strengths and Limitations of Philosophy and Spirituality
The Ultimate Complementarity of Diverse Philosophies and Spiritualities
Yoruba Philosophy and Spirituality
Rowland Abiodun and Oríkì Theory
Approaches to Re/Constructing Yoruba Thought
Abiodun’s Multidisciplinary Constitution of Yoruba Aesthetics
Yoruba Thought as a Quest through Space and Time
Life as Spiral Quest Within a Marketplace Oriented Towards Infinity
Soyinka and a Philosophy of Transition
Mapping Yoruba Philosophy Through Abiodun’s Thought
Orí
Ìwà
Aṣọ
Àṣẹ
The Feminine Principle
Sùúrù, Ìfarabalè, Ojú-Inú, Ojú-Ọnà, Tító and Ìmojú-Mọra
From the Aesthetics of Material Forms to the Aesthetics of
Human Life
Oríkì
Ifá
The Mansion of Possibilities at the Intersection of Mind and Cosmos
Reflections
The essay is in three parts. The discussion of Abiodun’s ideas on Yoruba aesthetics constitutes the expository section of the essay. This is complemented by the indented interjections of Soyinka’s poetic summations, with an addition by me, on Eshu, a pivotal figure in Yoruba cosmology whom Soyinka’s poem does not address, on the significance of orisa-deities-and other ideas in Yoruba cosmology, from his poem in The Credo of Being and Nothingness, a poem the simple beauty of which distills Yoruba deity concepts in a few luminous lines.
The Soyinka lines provide an incantatory counterpoint to the linear logic of the exploration of Abiodun’s thought, indirectly resonating with the exposition of Abiodun’s ideational universe. It thereby possibly amplifies the communicative force of both forms of discourse, a consonance of expressive forms taken further through my concluding, poetic reflections on Abiodun’s philosophical synthesis.
My pairing of Abiodun and Soyinka might be subliminally influenced by Barry Hallen’s correlation of the ideas of both of them on Yoruba philosophy in “African Sculptures: Interrelating the Verbal and the Visual in Yoruba Aesthetics” in Philosophy of Sculpture: Historical Problems, Contemporary Approaches. Ed. Kristin Gjesdal, Fred Rush and Ingvild Torsen,2021, 93-110.
This essay emerges from my work as editor and publisher of the forthcoming second and expanded edition of Abiodun’s Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, due for publication in November 2021, itself part of a larger project exploring Abiodun’s thought as a philosopher in African and global contexts, a project that belongs within my work on various aspects of Yoruba thought.
A Quest for Ultimate Meaning
Obatala fulfills. Purity, love, transparency of heart. Stoical strength. Luminous truth. Man is imperfect; man strives towards perfection. Yet even the imperfect may find interior harmony with Nature. Spirit overcomes blemish – be it of mind or body. Oh, peace that giveth understanding, possess our human heart.
In my quest for the meaning of existence, who we are, why we are here and where we are going, I have come to the conclusion that each person has to find or construct the answers for themselves.
The Strengths and Limitations of Philosophy and Spirituality
I am deeply inspired by Asian, Western, Arab/Persian and African spiritualities and philosophies, from Hinduism to Christianity and Immanuel Kant to Islam and Yoruba spiritualities and thought, among others.
I conclude, however, that they can take one only so far. They represent
fragments of a holistic understanding that, even if accessible to humanity,
cannot be transmitted from one person to another in a manner that would enable
the other person know what the person transmitting knows. What can be
transmitted are often ideas, ideas that are limited in their ability to enable
others see things as the creator of the idea sees them.
Philosophies and spiritualities are often centred on perspectives on an
ultimate reality, an ultimate explanation of the cosmos, an embodiment of
its meaning, an integrator of its diversity and dynamism.
These conceptions, however, are no more than ideas that cannot be proven to the satisfaction of most people. At best, their validity may be individually discovered, justified for oneself through means that might not appeal to others or even if they do, do not guarantee the same enlightenment. So, the journey continues, perhaps infinitely, as various religions and philosophies continually present their own perspectives on such ultimacy and how to approach it.
The Ultimate Complementarity of Diverse Philosophies and Spiritualities
The ideas they depict are often profound and very helpful about how to understand existence and how to live. Their perceptions, outside ethnocentric limitations and claims of exclusive knowledge, are often similar. Their perspectives on the human self and on ultimate reality are better understood as complementary rather than as fundamentally divergent.
Yoruba orí theory about the nature of the human being, for example, is better appreciated in its conjunctions with the Igbo chi concept and both better understood in relation to the Edo ehi idea and all these better grasped in consonance with the Akan sumsum and kra ideations.
These African insights are more richly illuminating in relation to the Hindu atman idea, correlations extending across forms of deity, such as Allah, Yahweh, God, Olodumare, Brahman, among others in terms of similarities that are more significant than their differences.
Seek understanding of the signposts of existence. Is knowledge not within and around us? If the Supreme Fount of Thought sought counsel of Orunmila in the hour of crisis, why will you by-pass the seer of signposts, O seeker of knowledge? Wisdom may slumber on the gums of infants; lucky that man who patiently awaits the loosening of infant tongues. Ifa maps the course through shrouded horizons.
Yoruba Philosophy and Spirituality
Rowland Abiodun and Oríkì Theory
Among these systems, one of those that have caught my particular interest is Yoruba philosophy and spirituality, an interest that emerged from reading Wole Soyinka's amazing Myth, Literature and the African World, wonderful in its dramatization of awe at the mysterious cosmos enfolding the human being and the various strategies through which humanity has tried to celebrate and penetrate this mystery, particularly as demonstrated in Yoruba arts and thought.
Another response to Yoruba thought as an engagement with the cosmic context of existence that inspires me is the work of Rowland Abiodun. I have read some of his essays and am studying the reworking and unification of a number of those essays in terms of what may be described as oriki theory in his Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, 2014.
This theory is further discussed in his autobiographical introduction to the
forthcoming 2021 edition of Yoruba Art and Language, describing his
transition from lived immersion in the expressive contexts represented by Yoruba
discourses to his scholarly exploration of them in his essays and books. Oríkì
theory may be seen as a theory of discourse, of thought and expression,
developed from Yoruba philosophy to explain Yoruba expressive forms, but which
may be demonstrable as having significance beyond the Yoruba context.
Abiodun uses the Yoruba term “oríkì,” but not the term “oríkì theory.” Describing his use of the idea as a theory is helpful for appreciating his efforts in employing oriki as a means of unifying Yoruba imaginative expressions. Abdul Karim Bangura develops a similar orientation to Abiodun’s work on oriki in Bangura’s construction of the term “Abiodun Oriki Methodology’’ in Falolaism: The Epistemologies and Methodologies of Africana Knowledge, a striking effort very helpful for appreciating the implications of Abiodun’s construct.
Ogun sets the example: Virtue wears the strangest garb – comradeship in strife, meditation in solitude, the hardy route of self sacrifice…Life is multiple and strange. The death of fear liberates the Will that sets forth where no mind ever trod. Ogun liberates: rise beyond his shadow.
Approaches to Re/Constructing Yoruba Thought
Abiodun may be described as understanding himself as a scholar trying to faithfully reproduce and interpret what he has learnt about Yoruba thought. Soyinka is an imaginative thinker in essays and literature whose work represents more of an individualistic response, a reworking of the cultural material in terms unique to him. His writing is readily appreciable as an expression of his distinctive style of thinking. This unique cognitive style yet aspires to actualize the essence of the cultural forms he is approaching through resonance between his own imaginative and critical dynamism and that suggested by the cultural expressions that inspire him.
How different from each other are the Abiodun and Soyinka orientations, however? Can one arrive at the imaginative intimacy and analytical depth of an Abiodun without the individualistic engagement, the marriage of mind and subject in terms of which Soyinka's work and creativity like his are more often understood?
In fact, are efforts to interpret a philosophy and a spirituality, particularly an oral one developed across more than a thousand years and across different peoples, often speaking different dialects of a language, as with Yoruba, not a largely individualistic exercise within the context of an effort to arrive at commonalities within variations? Is this not so even though the dialects may demonstrate various degrees of mutual intelligibility, as between variants of Yoruba, and significant similarity between various perspectives on what has come to be known as Orisa cosmology?
What factors influence a scholar or writer's choice of subjects from within the available spectrum of possibilities? What considerations shape the interpretation of what is studied? What are the various orientations represented by the translations of the source texts?
Why are Abiodun's choice of subjects within Yoruba thought largely convergent with as well as divergent from those of Babatunde Lawal and both of these similar to and different from those of Henry John Drewal and these both correlative with as well as different from those of Bolaji Idowu and these divergent from but related to those of Akinwumi Ogundiran, referencing some of my favourite authors across decades of Yoruba Studies, an individualistic selection yet significantly representative of the work of scholars in this field, particularly those writing in English?
The most realistic approach to the reconstruction of oral philosophical traditions might be the tentativeness represented by Chinua Achebe's ''Chi in Igbo Cosmology,'' defined by a cautious sensitivity to the challenge of piecing together disparate perspectives to present a unified whole, a unity that may be seen as more individualistic than representative.
Justice is the mortar that kneads the dwelling-place of man. Can mere brick on brick withstand the bloodied cries of wrong from the aggrieved? No more than dark withstands the flare of lightning, roofs of straw the path of thunderbolts. Sango restores.
Therefore, I approach Abiodun, Soyinka, Lawal, Drewal and other scholars in Yoruba thought as reconstructors rather than as reflectors. I wonder if they may be better understood as shaping perspectives rather than as reflecting those perspectives. May their work be better appreciated as that of people assembling and unifying fragments than as depicting an existing unity?
I puzzle over whether the more relevant image for describing their work might be that of the Yoruba deity Orunmila collecting the scattered remains of the deity Obatala in a calabash. With reference to the work of these thinkers, however, the movement may be seen as going from fragmentation to unity. The Obatala image, on the other hand, is that of the fragmentation of an original unity, fragments then reconstituted into a new unity. On second thought, though, perhaps Yoruba oral traditions oscillate between the implications of these two images, of both fragmentation and unity as existing within the oral tradition.
Various Yoruba thinkers have tried to generate such unity before the advent of writing represented by contemporary scholarship. Such developments are exemplified by the Ifa synthesis described by Thomas Mákanjúọlá Ilésanmí in “The Traditional Theologians and the Practice of Òrìṣà Religion in Yorùbáland.” This synthesis is depicted by Ogundiran in The Yoruba: A New History, 2020, as generated by thinkers in the creation of the cultural centrality of Ife in the Yoruba world through the instrument of the Ifa system of knowledge.
Without change, can we grow? The day of birth points to the moment of death. Without pain, what is the value of pleasure? What is life without death to give it urgency? Position yourself with Eshu at the intersections of change. Eshu – the flash that unites the cosmos, the gleam that illuminates being to being, the potential for transformation.
Abiodun’s Multidisciplinary Constitution of Yoruba Aesthetics
Abiodun's synthesis, an approach to Yoruba aesthetics, is particularly powerful in his integration of different arts and different philosophical zones in terms of luminous beauty of expression in both Yoruba and English, exploring some of the richest Yoruba texts I have seen.
Yoruba literature, Yoruba visual and performative arts, dance and dress, cognitive institutions such as Ifá and to a lesser degree Ògbóni, come together in his work in relation to Yoruba metaphysics, ideas about the nature of existence, and Yoruba epistemology, theories of knowledge, a synthesis unified through Yoruba theories of discourse, theories of human expressive and reflective capacity, a synthesis explored in its dramatization within social reality.
Yoruba Thought as a Quest through Space and Time
Studying Yoruba philosophy may be seen as walking with the Yoruba on their journey through space and time, in a quest for the meaning of existence, a quest the fruits of which are expressed in concepts foregrounded by Abiodun’s Yoruba Art and Language understood as an integrative template for Yoruba thought.
The idea of Yoruba identity as representing a cognitive journey is developed by Ogundiran in The Yoruba, in which he maps the environmental and social factors that have shaped this journey, describing the evolving configurations of thought the journey represents.
Ogundiran’s account of the coordinates of Yoruba thought, however, are different from the ideational configurations presented here, a difference suggesting the varieties of perspective actualizable through the shaping process in which breadth of ideas may be synchronized in the study of this subject. I discuss Ogundiran’s book in the ongoing project accessible at Yoruba and African History as a Quest for Meaning: An Exploratory Journey with Akinwumi Ogundiran’s The Yoruba: A New History
Life as Spiral Quest Within a Marketplace Oriented Towards Infinity
The overarching understanding of the quest for meaning represented by Yoruba thought may be seen as provided by the Yoruba proverb, “ayé lọjà ọ̀run nilé” “the world, ayé, is a market place, ọ̀run, the zone of ultimate origins, is home,” as discussed by Olúwọlé Tẹ́wọ́gboyè Òkéwándé in “A Semiotic Investigation of the Relations between Ifá and Yorùbá Indigenous Markets, Markets Location and Marketing Theories.” Identical ideas are also expressed by other African peoples, as indicated by a similar perspective in classical Igbo philosophy, “uwa bu afia,” “the world is a market,” analyzed by Nkeonye Otakpor in "The World is a Marketplace."
This is a journey of being and becoming which may be seen as a spiral of birth,
death and rebirth. The spiral image is adapted by Margaret Thompson Drewal in
describing this journey in ''The Ontological Journey'' section of her book Yoruba
Ritual, interpreting the account distilled by her teacher Kolawole Ositola
from the Yoruba cognitive institutions Ifá and Ògbóni. A
similar perspective is developed by Henry John Drewal in ''Yoruba Art and
Life as Journeys,'' in The Yoruba Artist, edited by Abiodun, Henry
John Drewal and John Pemberton III.
The spiral motif in terms of which
Margaret Thomson Drewal characterizes this journey is resonant with a global
range of deployments of this and related images as well as with other African
examples of their use. These include the Nsibidi symbolism of the spiral from
Nigeria's Cross River. This spiral,
meaning journey but also suggesting the sun and eternity, is magnificently
visualized by Victor Ekpuk, and beautifully described of Ekpuk’s reworking of
this symbol in the Smithsonian exhibition Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African
Art.
Correlative with this visual and
ideational conjunction is the Kongo cosmogram, a spiral or circle indicating
the progression of human life across the cycles of terrestrial life, correlated
with the rising, ascent and setting of the sun, discussed, among other sources,
by Robert Farris Thompson in Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American
Art and Philosophy and The Four Moments of the
Sun : Kongo Art in Two Worlds and summed up by the
Wikipedia essay on the subject.
In the process of transacting in relationships and values, in the exchange of the fruits of work for the means to sustain body and soul in the motion towards the inevitable departure from Earth that climaxes each incarnation, and the return to Earth to continue the cycle, processes at the centre of which are life in the marketplace that is the world, what insights have been developed by Yoruba thinkers over the centuries?
Soyinka and a Philosophy of Transition
Soyinka responds to the cyclic structure of the Yoruba idea of birth and rebirth in terms of what may be described as a philosophy of transition, in which change from one state to another is a central source of ultimate meaning. His development of these ideas is more evocative than systematic, worked out through poetic essays and through drama and poetry. This flexibility of expression leaves his orientations open to presentation and adaptation in various ways by those who wish to distill a more carefully structured body of ideas from its imaginative wealth.
Thus, adapting Soyinka, every moment may be seen as a moment of transition, in which one moment is replaced by another, transmuted into a new state, as the human being undergoes transition between states of being in moving from terrestrial to post-terrestrial life and back again, in a continuous cycle.
What is the significance of this motion between states of being? Does it lead to the cultivation of understanding of the meaning of existence through the vicissitudes of life, eventually leading to a summit of awareness that makes further reincarnation unnecessary, as is held in such schools as Hinduism and Buddhism?
Soyinka’s works seem to suggest, in contrast, that the process of transmutation itself represents a fountain of meaning illuminating human existence as positioned between a mysterious cosmos and the evocation of this mystery by the material circumstances of existence. Each moment, therefore, may be seen as a passage through what he names ‘’the abyss of transition,’’ an entry into new possibilities of relationship between self and existence that mirrors the larger transition between states of being in moving between terrestrial and post-terrestrial life.
The foregoing, however, is an adaptation of Soyinka rather than a restatement of his thought. Such an adaptation is more useful for this essay as a discussion of philosophy understood as a balance between imaginative evocation and ideational specificity.
This adaptation correlates his essay collection, Myth, Literature and the African World with his play, Death and the King’s Horseman and its introductory essay, texts in which Soyinka’s evocations of cosmic mystery and meaning are particularly powerfully developed.
These contexts are correlated with his exploration of similar perspectives in his autobiographical The Man Died, and the more distantly correlative but relatable poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt and the poem ‘’Idanre.’’