hegelian thesis on africa

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Hegel and the Hatäta Zär'a Ya‛ǝqob: Africa in the Philosophy of History and the History of Philosophy

2024, Hegel Bulletin

This article explores an episode in the reception of Hegel's philosophy of history and historiography of philosophy with reference to the question of the possibility of non-Western philosophy, in particular African philosophy. Section I briefly outlines the contents of the Hatäta Zär'a Ya‛ǝqob and the controversy over its authorship, focusing in particular on the argument of the Ethiopianist and scholar of Semitic languages Carlo Conti Rossini that 'rationalistic' philosophy was impossible in Ethiopia. In section II I suggest that a major component of the intellectual background to this notion of the impossibility of philosophy in Africa can be traced to Hegel's philosophy of history. To substantiate this claim I begin by providing an account of the broader historiographical shift between 1780 and 1830, in which Africa and Asia came to be excluded from the history of philosophy, and I suggest that Hegel's philosophy of history was decisive in this process. I examine how Hegel's account of history as the realization and actualization of freedom goes together with the development of cultural production culminating in philosophy, and how both of these processes (if they are really separate processes at all), can be mapped onto particular historicalgeographical populations and cultures. I suggest that, even though this was not Hegel's intention, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this served as a cultural justification for political domination: those who are unfree are unfree because they are unthinking (unphilosophical), and those who are unthinking cannot be free. Finally in section III I connect this Hegelian conception to Conti Rossini's work, both his article on the Hatäta and as apologist for Italian imperialism. I conclude by reflecting on what this underexplored connection between Hegel and early twentieth-century theorists of culture might mean for attempts to construct global histories of philosophy. This article has two interconnected aims. On the one hand it explores an episode in the reception of Hegel's philosophy of history and historiography of philosophy with reference to the question of the possibility of non-Western philosophy, in

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Journal of Contemporary African Philosophy, 2023

African philosophy remains bedevilled by relics of Hegel's racist chants against the rationality of Africans, and this situation deserves revisitation and reevaluation for reconstructive purposes. In this paper, I implicate Hegel's concatenations as necessitating the reactive fervour within which a significant portion of the themes, thesis, and content of African philosophy is locked. This influence, which partially eclipses African philosophy, I term historical denialism. In an attempt to repudiate Hegel's constructs, some philosophers in Africa seem ideologically contrived into developing or discovering an authentic philosophy for Africans, and in the process, advocate cultural essentialism as determinants of philosophy-at least logically. Averring that philosophy is not the sole representation of thought, I proceed by exploring other trajectories which could have informed a non-reactive African philosophy, while logically linking Hegel's denialism to subtle silencing of his idealism within philosophical discourses in Africa. This subtle silencing, which shortchanges pedagogy of philosophy on the continent, forms the other half of the eclipse in philosophy in Africa. I conclude the discussion by asserting that while it may be imperative to exorcise Hegelian ghost in African philosophy, to use Olufemi Taiwo's coinage, essentializing African philosophy would either further enmesh the field in a reactive predisposition, or limit its reflective and multifarious possibilities.

The paper aims to focus on the subchapter on World History, both from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, which marks the transition from the objective to the absolute Spirit within the frame of the Hegelian system. The threefold goal of the paper will be, a) to show the immanent connection between World History and the Hegelian Conception of objective Spirit and, thus, the necessity of human history within the Hegelian System; b) to elaborate on the crucial position of World History in the architectonic of the Hegelian system and, c) to bring into light and evaluate the latent tension between Hegel’s undertaking to reconstruct in a logical and necessary way the development of a subject so full of contingencies and randomness such as human history. In concrete the paper firstly will focus on the reason why World History, to wit the perpetual change and struggle between peoples and states is necessary according to Hegel. It will be argued that this perpetual struggle is not a mere given from Hegel, but intrinsically intertwined with the Hegelian understanding of objective Spirit as the perpetual activity of realizing itself. Secondly it will be shown that the reason for the transition from World History to the Absolute Spirit depends on Hegel’s view that the agents (states or world individuals) of world history are not conscious of their specific part within the development of world history. This function of self-awareness of the underlying logic of each historical phase is ascribed to Art, Religion and, ultimately, Philosophy. It is only within these realms, as the paper will further argue, that Spirit according to Hegel reaches its ultimate goal, to wit the consciousness of its freedom and its overpowering of its natural and historical limitations. Furthermore it is this function of the Absolute Spirit that sheds light to the specific systematic position of World History: World History creates the rational historical reality within which the (absolute) Spirit can recognize itself as free. In the concluding part of the paper I will try to show that the Hegelian conception of World History is ultimately not free from internal contradictions, the first of them being the aspect of necessity within his conception of world history, which actually revokes the character of world history as history completely. Furthermore Hegel’s categorization of World History shows itself as well to be problematic: Hegel’s logical argument regarding the reason of history is the perpetual self-realizing nature of Spirit’s activity. But since this activity is being retained in the final epoch of history (the Germanic World), the necessary development of history shows itself not to be justifiable from a systematic point of view. In a word, since the end of history preserves the main aspect of the Spirit, the rise and fall of states for the sake of the perpetuation of the Spirit ́s self-realizing activity, the existence of historical development of the four main worlds (Oriental, Greek, Roman and Germanic world) in the Hegelian narration of history is from a logical point of view not necessary anymore. To conclude, the paper aims to throw light into internal connections between Hegel’s understanding – and of his systematic use of World History, while hinting at the same moment at the internal limits of the Hegelian approach.

In Dean Moyar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Hegel, pp. 603–622., 2017

Hegel sees history as the dialectical movement of Spirit. This dialectical movement involves the thesis, the antithesis and the synthesis. At the thesis, Spirit is an abstract entity which embodies its antithesis. Spirit becomes real through its antithesis of human consciousness. Man, the opposition of Spirit, helps the Spirit to actualize its self purpose of freedom. When the Spirit finally attains its purpose it becomes the synthesis. This process continues but in higher form than the first. For inherent in every synthesis (which in turn becomes the thesis) is its antithesis, then to synthesis. This paper critically analyzes the underlying assumptions of Hegel’s conception of history with the philosophical tool of criticism. With the tool of criticism, we aim to show that history as a dialectical movement of Spirit is necessary but not sufficient to deal with the details of human history. It is necessary because it acknowledged the history of human society; but is not sufficient because it fails to conceive history in light of man creating his own history rather it conceived history as Spirit actualizing Self-knowledge. This paper draws much insight from Karl Marx in establishing that history is made by man and for man and not by any absolute spirit.

Science and Society, 2014

A growing body of scholarship has addressed Hegel’s analysis of the social question and of European expansionism. An equally significant literature has focused on his philosophy of history, discussing its Eurocentrism or even his racist distortions. Study of the link between Hegel’s political economy and his philosophy of history reveals the centrality of labor and of historical evolution in his work. This permitted Hegel to overcome, in part, the naturalizing approach of the classical economists and to identify some contradictions of the system. As he also ended up by naturalizing it, however, Hegel promoted European expansionism on the basis of a Eurocentric vision that clashes with the universalist perspective of the Philosophy of Right.

Plurilogue, vol.4 (1), 2014

This paper aims at demonstrating the Hegelian concept of the philosophy of the History. The terms, Spirit, Universal History and Truth, are widely used in the Hegelian notion of the History. The unity of these terms sheds light on the route of the History which is viewed as to be pre-destined to reach a particular goal, the freedom. The freedom is only attainable if imperative stages are reached. The progress, in History, plays an indispensable role to accomplish the goal of the History. The paper ascertains the role of each notion in depth to display the overall structure of the Hegelian philosophy of the History. INTRODUCTION Hegel's philosophy of the History is criticized due to its lack of tangible data and speculative content, even though it does not address the concrete existences. 1 Firstly, Hegel has not written on the philosophy of the historiography. The major works of Hegel concerned with the questions related to metaphysical aspects of the History such as history of philosophy. Hegel represented the history of philosophy or thought in a historical way by examining the characteristics of each well-known culture such as Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and German respectively. Hegel's philosophy of the History is somewhat similar to the philosophy of historicality which investigates the main driving forces behind the major events in history. 2 Hegel, by following the traits of the History demonstrated that the aim of the History is the emancipation of the Spirit. 3 Nature, in its incipient form, is the obstacle ahead of human beings to reach designed subjectivity. Nature, put the humans in the confinement of irrational environ. The Reason and Nature are in conflict on the way to the freedom. Nature must be defeated to achieve greater spiritual freedom. History is the medium of this conflict. Hegel defines the history as a rationally motivated phenomenon destined to set free itself for itself. History is the development of Spirit in time and nations can be ordered according to their present levels of the Freedom. However, Hegelian development concept takes the thought as an indicator of progress, not the time. 4 Hegel's history of philosophy was the first treatment of the history of philosophy in a philosophical sense. 5 Hegel was ahead of his peers in terms of speculative penetration and sharpness of universal criticism.6 Furthermore, Hegel can be classified as the most influential philosopher after Plato and Aristotle in a context of prevalence in the philosophical world.

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Exiled from history: africa in hegel’s academic practice.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

Many scholars, African and otherwise, have excoriated G.W.F. Hegel for his dismissal of Africa from history and progress in his lectures on the philosophies of history and religion. This has been done by quoting his texts and setting his words in the context of his influence on nineteenth-century European imperialism and racism. A different approach informs this paper. I treat Hegel, a complicated person, as a working university academic with a career to make and an overriding desire to publicize his own thought. I provide biographical insights relevant to these matters, and go on to examine specific texts about Africa that Hegel either sought out or chanced upon, read, misread, excerpted, used, and misused in support of his theorizing and apriorism. Attention is paid throughout to the construction, recording, and dissemination of Hegel’s lectures, and to aspects of their reception and authority in the educational formation of selected modern African intellectuals. I argue that such persons and African studies more widely are still trying to come to grips with the long and enduring shadow cast by Hegel over both the past and present of the continent.

De nombreux chercheurs africains et d’ailleurs ont vertement critiqué G.W.F. Hegel pour son exclusion de l’Afrique tant de l’histoire que du progrès dans ses conférences sur les philosophies de l’histoire et de la religion. Cette critique a été faite en citant ses textes et en plaçant ses paroles dans le contexte de son influence sur l’impérialisme et le racisme européens du XIXe siècle. Une approche différente informe ce papier. Je traite Hegel, un personnage compliqué, comme un universitaire de métier devant construire sa carrière et désirant très fortement faire connaître sa pensée. Je fournis des éclairages biographiques pertinents sur ces questions et analyse ensuite des textes spécifiques sur l’Afrique que Hegel a soit recherchés ou trouvés par hasard, lus, mal lus, extraits de leur contexte, utilisés ou utilisés à mauvais escient pour soutenir ses théories et préjugés. Une attention toute particulière est accordée à la construction, à l’édition et à la diffusion des conférences de Hegel, ainsi qu’aux aspects de leur réception et de leur autorité dans la formation pédagogique de certains intellectuels africains contemporains. Je soutiens que ces personnes et les études africaines plus largement tentent encore de s’attaquer à l’influence très vaste et durable des idées développées par Hegel sur le passé et le présent du continent.

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• Tom C. McCaskie
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2018.27

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Hegel and Africa

• First Online: 25 November 2017

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• M. A. R. Habib 2  

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This chapter examines Hegel’s fiercely-debated views on Africa, which have often been viewed not only as Eurocentric but also as racist. Considering the debates within Hegelian scholarship, the chapter situates Hegel’s views within a broader tradition of European thought that has persistently denigrated non-European cultures, resorting even to pseudo-science in this endeavor.

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The most comprehensive indictment of Hegel is Teshale Tibebu’s Hegel and the Third World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011), hereafter cited as HTW . Tibebu argues that Hegel’s philosophy of history is informed by a “racialized philosophical anthropology” and that its “most profound message” is “its Eurocentrism , its systemic racism .” Indeed, Hegel’s works constitute “the most sophisticated rendering of the Eurocentric paradigm” ( HTW , xiii–xiv, xvi). Tibebu sees Western modernity as comprising a positive aspect inasmuch as it produced “prodigious material and cultural progress for some.” But it also has a negative dimension, what Tibebu calls “negative modernity,” which has three pillars: “the American holocaust [of Native Americans], New World slavery, and colonialism ” ( HTW , xvi). As such, Hegel was central to the articulation of both dimensions of Western modernity. Tibebu characterizes Eurocentrism as “the self-consciousness of capital accumulation,” and it is founded on “a paradigm of essential difference between the West and the rest…Eurocentrism as Western identity is Western difference.” He traces this notion of identity as constituted by difference, as intrinsically relational, to Hegel’s Science of Logic ( HTW , xx). Marxism is not exempt from Tibebu’s censure: “Marxist Eurocentrism follows in the footsteps of Hegel’s Eurocentrism” because it views Western capitalism as progress over other societies. The Marxist Eric Hobsbawm, for example, assigns “historical dynamism” exclusively to Europe ( HTW , xxii–xxiii). Overall, then, Tibebu argues that “Eurocentrism in its systematic formulation, structural foundation, and origination is essentially Hegelian” ( HTW , xxvii).

Sandra Bonetto , “Race and Racism in Hegel: An Analysis,” Minerva , 10 (2006): 15. See also Philip Kain , Hegel and the Other: A Study of the Phenomenology of Spirit (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005), p. 254; and Brennan , who urges that Hegel “gives an explicit theoretical space to non-western thought,” that he “relativizes Christianity,” and that he lays the foundation in his Philosophy of Right for the foundations of anti-colonial discourse, which “begins by recognizing the other.” Brennan stresses that Hegel “voiced his opposition to slavery for being contrary to the personhood of property, hence destructive of ethical existence” (“HE,” 145–149).

See, for example, Ronald Kuykendall, “Hegel and Africa: An Evaluation of the Treatment of Africa in the Philosophy of History ,” Journal of Black Studies , 23.4 (1993): 574–577. See also C. A. Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality , trans. M. Cook (1955; rpt. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1974), p. 102.

It should be noted that, as we shall see, some African and Afro-diasporic scholars have adapted Hegel’s views on Africa to their own purposes. These include Amada Aly Dienge, Babacar Camara, and C.L.R. James.

A. Lassissi Odjo , Between the Lines: Africa in Western Spirituality, Philosophy, and Literary Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 2, 121. Hereafter cited as BL .

In this context, Timothy Brennan pertinently points to the “upside-down” claim in post-structuralist thought that Western philosophy has privileged the oral over the written, when in fact it has been precisely the machinery of the written, in its clerical, philological, and new critical manifestations that “marks the violence of the west” on the illiterate, oral, and the vulgate, Timothy Brennan , “Hegel, Empire, and Anti-Colonial Thought,” (“HE,” 157–158).

Robert Bernasconi , “Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” in Hegel After Derrida , ed. Stuart Barnett (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 45. Hereafter cited as HAD .

Joseph McCarney , “Hegel’s Racism? A Response to Bernasconi ,” Radical Philosophy , 119 (2003): 33. Hereafter cited as RP .

For example, Bonetto additionally points out Hegel’s statement that “the slavery of the Negroes is a wholly unjust institution,” and rejected the concept of racial purity (“Race, 13, 17). In short, suggests Bonetto , Hegel’s undoubted Eurocentrism does not amount to racism (“Race, 15). Timothy Brennan urges that some statements of Hegel’s demonstrate cultural relativism and lend theoretical support to the “decentring of Europe ” (“HE,” 154–155).

Baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. I (1748; rpt. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1956), pp. 154–159.

David Hume , “Of National Characters,” in Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader , ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 33. Hereafter cited as RE .

Meiners ’ influence is treated extensively in Peter K.J. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 (New York: SUNY Press, 2013). Park suggests that Kantian philosophers such as Tennemann subordinated the empirical-historical record of philosophy to an a priori schema whose principles were derived from Kant (p. 149). Hereafter cited as AHP .

I have referred the reader to Eze’s excellent and convenient anthology of these views.

As Eze points out, the writings on race by the major Enlightenment thinkers have either been ignored or dismissed. Yet Kant —to give but one example—devoted the largest part of his career to research and teaching in anthropology and cultural geography . Even the philosophers who have studied Kant’s work , including Heidegger, Cassirer, and Foucault , do not discuss Kant’s theories of race, “Introd.,” RE , pp. 2–3.

It should be noted, however, that Hegel had available to him a far greater amount of anthropological material from missionaries and explorers than any of his predecessors. Yet his views of Africa remained rooted in the scientific and philosophical perspectives of his major Enlightenment predecessors ( RE , 7).

As recently as 1963, the eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper almost replicated Hegel’s words when he remarked: “Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness,” “The Rise of Christian Europe,” The Listener 70.1809 (1963): 871. Trevor-Roper is symptomatic of scholarly historians of his time who essentially viewed Africa as having no past and entering into history only when the Europeans arrived. In the 1960s the historiography of imperialism came under widespread scrutiny from both Afrocentric historians such as J.F. Ade Ajayi and proponents of various kinds of literary theory; see J.F. Ade Ajayi, “Colonialism: an Episode in African History,” in Colonialism in Africa 1870–1960, Vol. I , ed. L.G. Gann and Peter Duignan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). It is worth remembering, however, that imperialism received its first extended critique far earlier in the traditions of Marxism , beginning with Marx’s own characterization in the Communist Manifesto of capitalism as inherently imperialistic, a connection foreshadowed by Hegel. Marchand also points out that critiques of imperialism have a long history and did not suddenly emerge with postcolonial discourse, German Orientalism , pp. 495–498.

The views of British imperialists—historians, politicians, businessmen—are well-known. The politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British Consul-General of Egypt Lord Cromer, and other ideologues of empire such as Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston all expatiated upon the superiority of the Europeans to Africans and Orientals. Lord Cromer wrote: “The European is a close reasoner…he is a natural logician … The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand … is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description,” Evelyn Baring Cromer (Earl of), Modern Egypt, Vols. I and II (New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 146. R. Hunt Davies observes that “Nearly every white person…whether pro-colonial or anti-colonial, possessed a stereotyped view of Africa.” He adds that this general outlook toward Africa remained dominant until the second world war, “Interpreting the Colonial Period in African History,” African Affairs , 72.289 (1973): 386. Some of the material in my account draws on his very useful study. Recent scholarship, we might add, has shown that this outlook was shared even by Gandhi; see Ashwin Desai and Goolem Vahed, The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), pp. 30–48.

This is well-documented in Marc Ferro, Colonization: A Global History , trans. K.D. Prithipaul (1994; rpt. London: Routledge, 1997), p. 172. But Hegel is not mentioned in this book.

Russell A. Berman , Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 22. Hereafter cited as EE . It would have been instructive to see Berman’s valuable insights illustrated in an engagement with the actual texts of Derrida or Foucault.

See also Anne Laura Stoler’s “Reason Aside: Reflections on Enlightenment and Empire,” which also shows how the connections between Enlightenment and colonialism were complex, ( OHPC , 39–62). Similarly, Birgit Tautz , in Reading and Seeing Ethnic Differences in the Enlightenment: From China to Africa (Basingstoke, U.K. and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), sees contemporary postcolonial and cultural theory as dominated by a monolithic Self-Other dichotomy which is largely the legacy of Hegel. She views Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History as marked by a fissure in configuring ethnicity , since these lectures bear the traces of older, heterogeneous, eighteenth-century discourses that, for example, apprehended Africa largely through visuality while they perceived China using a textual tradition (3–50). Though Hegel attempted to bring order and unity to the multitude of representations of ethnicity , his text fails to integrate Africa—perceived geographically and in terms of space—into the temporal logic of his historical narrative (16, 25). As such, Hegel effectively replicates perceptions in popular scientific texts and travelogues that see China (and Asia generally) as an inflection of Enlightenment reason and Africa as the absolute Other of reason (29). Nonetheless, Hegel’s lectures yielded the binary framework of Self and Other which served as the paradigm for discussions of race and empire in colonial and postcolonial discourse (14–15).

Stephen Howe , “Imperial Histories, Postcolonial Theories,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies , ed. Graham Huggan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 164. Hereafter cited as OHPC . Robert Young has also remarked on Hegel’s Eurocentric legacy for historiography ( Young, 1991, p. 2).

Michel Foucault , The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language , trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (1969; rpt. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 3–5. Hereafter cited as AK .

Edward W. Said , The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage, 1980), p. 78.

The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered: An Address Before the Societies of Western Reserve College (Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann, & Co., 1854), pp. 16–17, 29.

The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638–1870, Vol. I (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1896), pp. 153–168.

Shamoon Zamir reads this engagement as a critique of the widespread adoption of Hegel in the later nineteenth century by the St. Louis Hegelians in support of American nationalism and manifest destiny. Zamir argues that the narrative structure of Du Bois’ notion of “double consciousness” draws upon the early chapters of the Phenomenology , especially the master -slave dialectic and subsequent sections. Du Bois uniquely resists the idea of a historical teleology under which the particularity of African-American experience can be subsumed; Shamoon Zamir , Dark Voices: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–1903 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 13, 113–126, 146.

Ajayi, J.F. Ade. 1969. Colonialism: An Episode in African History. In Colonialism in Africa 1870–1960 , ed. L.G. Gann and Peter Duignan, vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Habib, M.A.R. (2017). Hegel and Africa. In: Hegel and Empire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68412-3_4

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Published : 25 November 2017

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