​Most educated Nigeria do not possess the knowledge required for the offices in which they are employed and heavily remunerated. Education, individually or collectively, is useless if it cannot lead us to produce what we need. The importance of education in Nigeria was first highlighted during the question time in the Federal Parliament in 1961 by Dr Nnamani who asked the government why there were still expatriate officers in the country despite Nigeria being independent. Answering on behalf of the government, Zana Bukar Dipcharima said that Nigerians were all around the world studying to acquire knowledge and, on their return, they would give Nigeria the manpower needed to turn our country into paradise on earth when educated returnees might have bombarded the abundant natural resources in the country with their knowledge. In fact, by 1964, all the ministries, departments and agencies had been taken over from expatriates by educated Nigerians and thereby gave credence to the aphorism that what Europeans could do, Nigerians could do it better. But as we have experienced hitherto, that aphorism is true only in the sense that educated Nigerians are much more ruthless in the exploitation of the uneducated Nigeria's masses than the European colonialists.

Most knowledge, even in the sciences, is not about providing such basic infrastructural amenities as water and electricity, nor about addressing energy needs invaluable as all those are - Oluwatoyin V. Adepoju. 

I would have considered Mr. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju a serious Kant Evangelist for dismissing knowledge as a provider of basic infrastructural amenities were it not for his post on this forum on Wednesday, 19 September 2018, titled - Scholarship in a World of Poor Electricity : The Nigerian Example. Our 2022 Kant Evangelist who is now preaching to us that man does not need knowledge to produce basic infrastructural amenity as water and electricity wrote in 2018 : I have been struggling for days in my home in Lagos with trying to meet externally created and self-generated deadlines on a number of essays.

But there has been a blackout of electricity in our neighbourhood for days.

I have access to a number of online databases but the scope of my use of these information systems is limited by access to electricity.

I have to fall back on prints of essays since access to electronic copies of essays is challenged by poor electricity. How are Nigerian Scholars coping? This situation has not changed for decades. It is horrible. Is it possible to do ones best in such an environment as a Scholar or other creative who requires electricity? May God help Nigeria, Black people and Africa. Most educated Nigerians are fictional academics producing imaginary developments while parasitising on the collectively owned natural resources of Nigeria to the exclusion of the masses of Nigeria without conscience.

S. Kadiri

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 June 2022 01:14
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem

 

Most knowledge, even in the sciences, is not about providing such basic infrastructural amenities as water and electricity, nor about addressing energy needs, invaluable as all those are.

Kant is about issues that are both fundamental to human existence and beyond material well being, issues that persist no matter how materially comfortable people are, how technologically and socially developed their society is, questions that have shaped human thought since humanity became aware of itself in the midst of the perplexities of existence and which will continue to reverberate as long as the human being remains trapped within the confines of cognitive limitations, a creature who ventures into space and the depths of the sea, but cannot decisively answer the question of the source and logic of it's existence and of the universe in which they find themselves. 

Why are we here? 

Why does the universe exist?

Does the cosmos have a beginning?

Will it have an end?

Is there life after death?

Is there God?

To what degree can we answer these questions?

How should we live in the face of these perplexities?

To answer these questions, each society creates myths, religions, philosphies and responses in the arts, initiatives also shaping the sciences, efforts that stretch perhaps from the earliest people to the present, across the world.

Kant seems to have been a deeply religious person who once thought his Christian faith answered those questions.

He then began to look closely at that faith, wondering about the foundations of those things it claimed to know.

He concludes that such knowledge does not really exist. 

Belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, etc is a matter of faith, not knowledge, he argues, with particular force in A Critique of Pure Reason.

Kant's profound sensitivity to these ultimate questions drives his work, even as it's soaring power may be seen as shot through with a sense of frustration at not being able to go beyond the limitations of the mind in exploring these questions.

Some of the most powerful expressions of the human hunger for ultimate knowledge, for a grasp of the unity and purpose of the cosmos, are found in A Critique of Pure Reason, even as Kant argues that such knowledge is impossible on account of limitations created by the structure of the human mind and how it gains knowledge.

Kant's writings demonstrate some of the greatest expressions of wonder at the cosmos, a wonder he struggles to describe without invoking religious ideas, but, his description of encounter with phenomena that both make the human being feel small on account of their vastness and yet elevated through their inspirational power, the Sublime,  is an analogue of his sensitivity to cosmic immensity and his unfufilled hunger for greater understanding of it.

In his great reflection on time and eternity, mortality and im mortality, the minisculity of Earth within the temporal and spatial vastness of the celestial bodies, he is unable to escape  a spiritualist orientation, suggesting the shaping foundationality of his Christian background, as he projects an expectation to subsist into eternity, after the "flesh of my body has returned to the elements, having been imbued for a short while with vital force through an unknown process," as he states in Critique of Practical Reason.

My most intense encounter with the sacred has been at the Ogba forest in Benin-City, suffused by an awesome atmosphere described as demonstrating the presence of the goddess there, as such spiritual presences are to be found at every place where a river breaks ground for the first time, as the Ogba river does at that forest, as Benin spiritual belief was explained to me in connection with the forest.

How can I explain that experience, something I encountered before learning of the belief in a goddess there,a sense of presence that people recognised without performing any religious activity there, as when they went there to get  water or swim, a presence that was a part of the landscape?

"An invisible but majestic presence that inspires both dread and fascination and constitutes  the non-rational element of vital religion" sums up my experience beautifully, being a Webster dictionary definition of the term "numinous" as developed by Rodolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy, Otto being a deep Kant scholar, whose epochal book may be understood in relation to Kant on the Sublime , developing a similar thesis as Kant's through cupious examples from Western and Asian religions.

Kant cannot be for me simply a person from another century, from a different country, who held views that display a conceited ignorance about Africa, where I am from.

He is for me a fellow traveler, stranded in a location which he does not know how he got there, where he  is going, nor even why he exists in the first place, a person, who, in spite of his ignorance, which he mistook for knowledge, was  deeply insightful about the most fundamental of human psychological, spiritual and intellectual needs.

Thanks

Toyin

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 22:50 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:

​ From Salimonu Kadiri.

This Kant thing reminds me of what the late and the greatest Nigerian labour leader, Pa Michael Imodu, once expressed in pidgin English while stating his disappointment over how the educated (?) Nigerian class caused the ruin of Nigeria. He said, "A no go school - e better for me, because people wey go school e no get sense. If them get sense, Nigeria e no go be like this. Them talk say Nigeria be giant of Africa when for my two eyes na dwarf goat of Africa a de see." This Kant knowledge is not about generating and distributing electricity to Nigerian households, it is not about refining crude oil for Nigerian domestic consumption and it is not about pumping potable water into every household in Nigeria etc. To me, whatever is said about Kant is just like talking loudly and saying nothing. If Pa Imodu were still alive, he would have retorted, "Waiting concern me about Kant, na him go bring light, water, food for chop, house for sleep?"

S. Kadiri   

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: 18 June 2022 18:53
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem

 

Even better perhaps-

Kantian Professor of the Humanities.

According to one source, "Professor of the Humanities" is awarded for striking  achievement in various humanities disciplines.

Perhaps if I'm committed enough in broadening my scope, the award could even read "Kantian Professor of the Humanities, of Philosophy of Science and Social Media Studies"

Can you imagine that?!

One person carrying that load of award.

Toyin

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 16:59 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Gloria.

"Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,  Kantian Professor and Chair in Social Media Studies.

A professorship awarded for  Adepoju's unusually innovative explorations of Kant, fine grained, multidisciplinary and multicultural studies bringing to a broad readership Kant's fellowship with humanity in pursuit of the most pressing questions of existence, doing this in terms of that most democratic of public platforms, social media, Adepoju's extensive publications in that medium making his work a landmark in new styles of scholarship at the entrance to a new millenium"

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022, 14:42 Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:

Professor of Kantian Studies

and Social Media, 

we look forward to your brilliance

and “geniusness” at the June 30 

conference, and beyond.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2022 3:34 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem

 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

It's important to read critically rather than to impose ones preconceptions on what one reads.

I devoted an elaborate essay to a dialogue with Bjoern on Kant and you call that a dismissal?

Seems you might need to wear your scholarly hat more in social media dialogues instead of this tendecy to retreat into uncritical verbal brushstrokes when dealing with perspectives you don't agree with.

Have you read Kant? How much Kant do you know? How well have you understood what you know? How informed are you about the signposts of his work in relation to his total productivity? What is the scope of your analysis of Kant? To what degree do you engage with Kant scholarship?

These are the questions through which critique of a scholar's engagement with any body of knowledge, including  Kant Studies, is asessed.

It's not about projecting unsubstantiated views, ungrounded in both the primary subject and it's sorrounding scholarship.

Anyone can see that my Kant scholarship is grounded in close study of Kant, in a degree of relationship to the circles of scholarship developed in relation to his work, going beyond these to bring Kant's thought into dialogue with some of the greatest expressive achievements of various cultures, in various disciplines, Asian, African, Western, and to some degree, Islamic, from the visual and verbal arts to spirituality and philosophy, therefore I can't be accused of Eurocentric parochialism.

The simple truth is that certain achievements in all fields of endevour are unique miracles of creativity, distinctively demonstrating human potential, achievements that inspire acknowledgement from people of all ideological persuasions who understand them. The limitations of Kant's work do not deny him that distinction.

Your responses, indicating strongly  held and emotive convictions that do not demonstrate acquaintance with  Kant's work or with Kant scholarship, suggest one pole of the mythologising to which Kant is subjected.

The other pole sees him as the creator of a forbidding forest of thought, a solipsist living in his own mind, engrossed in his almost self flagellatory existence as a perpetual bachelor of amazingly routinised life style in one small town where he was born, when, in fact, his striking minimality of existence is about the discipline required to pursue the most fundamental questions without extranous considerations. 

We cant all live like that, and Kant had a richer social existence than is often attributed to him, succeeding in social integration as a university lecturer within which context he pursued his mental explorations, but we can learn from such people.

Such mythologising suggests there needs to be more texts that allow Kant to speak for himself, in tandem with close anaysis of what he says, analysis that is simple and clear, yet responding adequately to the profundities of the Konigsberg master.

My central interest in approaching Kant in that way is to foreground his character as a seeker of ultimate meaning, describing his awe at the wonder of existence and trying to map  various  responses to this wonder, in the context of asking how much human beings can really know about the mysterious immensity in which they find themselves and how they can live within the context of this mystery.

Kant is a fellow traveller for me in this quest in which I am also engaged. 

So, my study of Kant is centred in the raison d'etre of my life, it's ultimate purpose, yet approaches this coincidence of values between myself and the advocate of international unity in the critical spirit representing Kant at his best, while going beyond the limitations of his epistemology and developing his work in relation to a cultural ecumenism foreign to him.

 I thereby make my own contribution to Kant Studies and perhaps to the various subjects into which I bring him into dialogue with.

I wish you a nice, Afrocentric weekend.

Thanks

Toyin

On Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 20:20 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Have the last word on this. You also

dismissed Bjoern’s critique of Kant

so I am in good company- and

he is a philosophy specialist.

I suggest that you attend this conference

on Racist Ideology with focus on Kant etc.

June 30, 2022.

Have a nice Kantian weekend.

GE

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of bfreterb@gmail.com <bfreterb@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2022 9:11 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-reading the Canon. Lecture 1: Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy. A reflection on Kant & the canon problem

 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Dear All,

 

You are cordially invited to the first lecture in the series: Re-reading the Canon. New perspectives on ignored problems!

 

The first lecture will be delievered by the great Huaping Lu-Adler.

 

Please find all details below!

 

I hope to see you there!

 

All the best,

Bjoern

 

 

Lecture 1

 

 

                                                              

 

 

Philosophy, Racist Ideology & Liberatory Pedagogy: 

a reflection on Kant & the canon problem

Huaping Lu-Adler

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown

Vice President, North American Kant Society

 

June 30, 2022, 4-6 pm (BST)

 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://soas-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pf-GupzwvH9Umntg1j5enh9985IDZxm8Q

 

 

 

Björn Freter (he/him/his), PhD

Lecturer in World Philosophy

School of History, Religions and Philosophies,

The School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS),

University of London

bf22@soas.ac.uk  

 

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