Philosophers beyond borders : An illustrated guide to a selection of 30 thinkers from the world

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Occasional Publication 40

beyond borders

Saskia Pfaeltzer & Maria van Enckevort

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www.ascleiden.nl

Saskia Pfaeltzer (visual artist) and Maria van Enckevort (educator and historian): The thirty

philosophers are presented neither alphabetically or chronologically – at an early stage it became clear that a web of connections exists between the various philosophers – we only had to follow the lead. Like them, “Have the courage to think for yourself.”

About the book:

■ Margriet Schavemaker (Director Amsterdam Museum, the Netherlands): ”With so much joy I looked at the large variety of very artistically and detailed portraits of the philosophers accompienied by these crisp chosen quotes. What a joy and enrichment for everybody’s library, even if you never encountered a book of any thinker.” ■

■ Adriaan van Dis (writer): “An inspiring introduction that makes your world bigger and frees you from the stuffy western – and sometimes overly white – thinking. Useful and necessary brain gymnastics, especially now that more and more countries tend to turn inward and embrace the myth of ‘our own people first. An eyeopener!” ■

Omslag OP 40 lappendeken.indd 1 03-11-20 21:47

Occasional Publication 40

beyond borders

Saskia Pfaeltzer & Maria van Enckevort

Phi

los

op

he

rs b

eyon

d b

or

de

rs

40

www.ascleiden.nl

About the book:

Omslag OP 40 lappendeken.indd 1 03-11-20 21:47

Occasional Publication 40

beyond borders

Saskia Pfaeltzer & Maria van Enckevort

Phi

los

op

he

rs b

eyon

d b

or

de

rs

40

www.ascleiden.nl

About the book:

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Processed on: 9-11-2020 PDF page: 1PDF page: 1PDF page: 1PDF page: 1

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Saskia Pfaeltzer

Maria van Enckevort-Cijntje

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Occasional Publication 40

African Studies Centre Leiden

P.O. Box 9555

2300 RB Leiden

The Netherlands

asc@ascleiden.nl

www.ascleiden.nl

Layout: Sjoukje Rienks, Amsterdam

Printed by Ipskamp Printing, Enschede

ISBN: 9789054481850

© Saskia Pfaeltzer, Maria van Enckevort 2020

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at home in the world.’

Heidegger

‘Philosophers Beyond Borders’ covers 30 philosophers, some known and some not so known,

from different parts of the world. They were chosen to show how persons from diverse cultures

and different times are driven by the same desire to question well-established truths, and to find

answers to the questions humans encounter in life. Over time the questions might have changed

but the answers continue to provide us with values, principles, and ideas that are a guide for

living.

As the world is getting smaller and smaller, we are confronted with people from different

cul-tures, religions, and values. We need to learn to live in peace and harmony with these ‘others’.

Philosophy can provide the bridge to cover the gap between different worldviews. It will show

that our differences and our similarities stem from the same desire to understand our world and

the place of the human within.

To promote an international culture of dialogue between the different schools of philosophical

thought, UNESCO introduced ‘World Philosophy Day’, in 2002, celebrated every third Thursday

of November.

We hope that this book will contribute to that dialogue and that we learn to realize that no

ethnic group, nor gender, has a monopoly on ‘doing philosophy’.

Saskia Pfaeltzer

Maria van Enckevort-Cijntje

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46 48 50

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10 Cornel Ronald West

Philosopher, political activist, social & cultural critic, author, and public intellectual

Born

:

1953 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States

Influenced by

:

Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Cone,

Karl Marx, Richard Rorty, Søren Kierkegaard, Michel Foucault, Paul Tillich,

Blaise Pascal, Toni Morrison, Simone Weil

Influenced

:

Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter Movement

Fields of interest

: Political philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, race, democracy,

liberation theology, prophetic pragmatism, and transcendentalism

Selected Works

■

The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought, 1991

■

Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America, 1993

■

Race Matters, 1994

■

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, 2004

■

Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, a Memoir, 2009

■

The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto, 2012

■

Black Prophetic Fire, 2014

‘I am a bluesman in the life of the mind and a jazzman in the world of ideas.’

‘Patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse.

So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.’

‘You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t

serve the people.’

‘There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for

living a lie.’ ‘Be a voice, not an Echo.’

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12 Anthon Wilhelm Amo

Anton Wilhelm Rudolf Amo or Antonius Guilelmus Amo Guinea-Afer

Philosopher, polymath, and lecturer at the university in Halle, Jena and Wittenberg,

Germany

Born

:

c.1700 in Axim, Ghana

Died

:

1759 in Ghana, then Gold Coast

Influenced by

:

African heritage, Ancient Classical, Medieval Scholastic, and Enlightenment

philosophy (a.o.: Aristotle, Aquino, Descartes, Locke)

Influenced

:

Abolitionists in 19th century; Harlem Renaissance, Kwame Nkrumah, Paulin

Hountondji

: Philosophical psychology, epistemology, ontology, logic, aesthetics,

metaphysics, astronomy, physiology, science, theology, mathematics,

hermeneutics, philosophy of language

Selected Works

■

On the Rights of Moors in Europe (De iure Maurorum in Europa), 1729

■

On the Apathy of the Human Mind (De Humanae Mentis Apatheia), 1734

■

On the Absence of Sensation in the Human Mind and its Presence in our Organic and Living

Body (De philosophica continens ideam distinctam eorum quae competunt vel menti vel

corpori nostro vivo et organico), 1734

■

Treatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accurately (Tractatus de arte sobrie et

accurate philosophandi), 1738

‘To be alive and to exist are not synonyms. Everything that is alive, exists, but not

everything, that exists, is alive.’

‘To be alive and to exist are not synonyms. Everything that is alive, exists, but not

everything, that exists, is alive.’ ‘This kind of philosophy is defined by the

conditioning of the intellect and the will. Philosophy is nothing but wisdom – “wisdom”, in other words, “virtue”. This is an ability that has

to do with the exercise of a known truth.’

‘Intention in general is a faculty that pertains to an intelligent substance, which categorizes the

things known in itself according to end goals of which it is conscious, and according to what things should be done and should not be done.’

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14 Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu

Philosopher, painter, author, curator and art historian, co-founder of the African

Resource Center & the Africa Knowledge Project

Born:

1954 in Onitsha, Nigeria

Influenced by:

Onitsha Igbo heritage feminist movement

Influenced:

Gender studies, Black urban & popular culture, decolonization

Fields of interest:

Feminist philosophy, anti-and postcolonial studies, gender, African aesthetics,

multicultural studies in art, and digital publishing

Selected Works

■

Gender Equality in a Dual Sex System: The Case of Onitsha, 1994

■

Issues in Contemporary African Art, 1998

■

Contemporary Textures: Multidimensionality in Nigerian Art, 1999

■

The Epistemological Challenge of Motherhood to Patriliny, 2003

■

Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture, 2006

■

Onitsha at the Millennium, 2013

‘The dominant view of philosophy installed a regime of truth that limits what philosophy

could be. But what if that view is no longer ascendant? What if we step outside its influences

that for decades have exerted control on our thoughts, imagination, and beliefs? Seriously, what if we forgot about Descartes, Spinoza,

Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, and all those famous names? What if we do not seek their thoughts, because our thoughts, words, and languages are responding to a different conceptual order? How

would we philosophize and engage our world— water, wind and sound?’

‘We should revisit how modern art began and remind people again of the central role of African sculptural and two-dimensional forms in initiating European modernism. What should

be realized is that the construal of modern art as a European invention without adequate account of the role of African art and aesthetics is designed to establish that Europe sets the pace

for other cultures to follow. But this narrative is patently false and diversionary. It is more designed to hide the fact that modern art is a

provincial extension of African art.’

‘For me, that’s what it means to be an African woman – culturally prepared to handle a lot of roles without having one role define your identity.’

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16 Paulin Jidenu Hountondji

Politician (Minister of Education and Minister for Culture and Communication) and

philosopher

Born:

1942 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Influenced by:

Anton Wilhelm Amo, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl, Paul

Ricoeur, Marxism, critical theory, Présence Africaine

Influenced:

The professionalization of the discipline of philosophy in Africa and sage

philosophy

: Epistemology, history of philosophy, synthesis of traditional African thought

and rigorous philosophical method

Works

■

True and False Pluralism, 1973

■

African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, 1983

■

Endogenous Knowledge: research trails, edited by Hountondji, 1997

■

The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on Philosophy, Culture, and Democracy in Africa, 2002

‘Every thought, however original it may be, is to some extent shaped by the questions

that it is asked.’

‘Philosophy…cannot develop fully unless it “writes it memoirs” or “keeps a diary”.’

‘By African philosophy I mean a set of texts, specifically the set of texts written by Africans and described as philosophical by their authors

themselves.’

‘Unfortunately, in the case of African “philosophy” there are no sources; or at least, if they exist, they are not philosophical texts or

discourses.’

‘To put it bluntly, each African scholar has been participating so far in a vertical discussion with his/ her counterparts from the North rather than developing horizontal discussions with other African

scholars.’

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18 Mariana Ortega

Philosopher, activist, founder and director of the Latina/x Feminisms Roundtable

Born:

In Nicaragua, came to U.S. in 1979

Influenced by:

Phenomenology, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, María Lugones, Gloria

Anzaldúa

Influenced:

Latina Feminism, theory of multiplicitous selfhood, ‘hometactics’

Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality, Aesthetics, Critical Race Feminism,

Feminist Phenomenology, Latin American & US Latina Feminism

Selected Works

■

Multiplicity, In-betweenness, and the Question of Assimilation, 2008

■

Speaking in Resistant Tongues: Latina Feminism, Embodied Knowledge, and Transformation,

2016

■

In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity and the Self, 2016

■

Sophia Is Still White… So Is Knowledge, 2017

‘The epistemology of ignorance is a very interesting subject right now. It is one that studies all the different practices that we engage in in order to become ignorant or continue to be

ignorant about specific people or subjects.’

‘We are multiple, both belonging to herd and not belonging to it; we are the product of history

and circumstances but also of our own making, not in the sense of a fully autonomous subject

but of a multiplicitous self who is constantly and critically negotiating our given and chosen

identities.’ ‘There is the need for an account that questions

traditional dichotomies (i.e. subject/object, inside/outside, self/other) such that to be a self – and this is a connection with traditional phenomenology –is to be a complex self in the making intertwined with the world(s) and other selves. To be you is to be engaged in your various

worlds in multiple ways.’

‘In terms of issues of selfhood, it is important to open up the terrain to include work that has not been traditionally considered philosophical

but that indeed has philosophical insights. The task is not only giving an account of self

to be included in all the other accounts of selfhood, but it is also an invitation to approach

philosophy in a more open and interdisciplinary way.’

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20 Achille Mbembe (Joseph-Achille)

Historian, philosopher, political scientist, public intellectual

Born:

1957 in Centre Region, Cameroon

Influenced by:

Julius Nyerere, Négritude, Pan-Africanism, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault,

Derrida, Deleuze, Sigmund Freud, Congolese music, Francophone African

literature

Influenced:

Discourse on postcolonial theory / postcolonial studies and African studies

Fields of interest: Anti-imperialism, decolonization process, postcolonial theory, critical

humanism, existential phenomenology

Selected Works

■

On Private Indirect Government, 2000

■

On the Postcolony, 2001

■

Africa in Theory, 2013

■

Critique of Black Reason, 2017

‘The future of the world in the XXI° century will come to pass

on the African continent.’

‘We will have to rethink the human not from the perspective of its mastery of

the Creation as we used to, but from the perspective of its finitude and its possible

extinction.’

‘To reopen the future of our planet to all who inhabit it, we will have to learn how to share it again amongst the humans, but also between the humans

and the non-humans.’

‘When Fanon uses the term “a new species of men”, what does he have in mind? A new species of men is a new category of “men” who are no longer limited or predetermined by their appearance, and whose essence coincides with their image – their image not as something separate from them; not as

something that does not belong to them; but insofar as there is no gap between this image and the recognition of oneself, the property of oneself.’

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22 Mpho Tshivhase

Philosopher, co-founder of the Society for Women in Philosophy – South Africa

(SWIP-ZA), President of the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa

Born:

1986 in Makwarela, South Africa

Influenced by:

Charles Taylor, Ubuntu philosophy

Influenced:

Discussion on personhood and authenticity

Applied ethics, social and political philosophy, ubuntu, sociology of race,

personal identity, uniqueness and individuality, autonomy and authenticity

Selected Works

■

Personhood: Social Approval or a Unique Identity, in: QUEST, an African Journal of

Philosophy, 2013.

■

On the possibility of authentic self-expression, in: South African Journal for Communication

Theory and Research, 2015.

■

Love as the Foundation of Ubuntu, in: Synthesis Philosophica 65 (1/2018) pp. (197-208)

■

Towards a Normative Theory of Uniqueness of Persons, Dissertation, 2018

‘I have humbly learned not to plan for the future, as tomorrow is a mystery that will become only known to me

when it manifests.’

‘The reasons for loving the beloved actually have little to do with the beloved, and more to do with what the beloved

means to the lover.’

‘Personhood that is determined by anything

other than the self in question cannot be deemed

authentically personal.’ ‘Have you ever felt annoyed when someone ignores or fails to recognize your individuality by identifying you as part of a racial, sexual, or political group? Have you considered what it is that sets

you apart from other persons? If you answered ‘yes’ to any or all of these questions, then you have, intentionally or unintentionally, thought about individuality in the sense of uniqueness.’

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24 Al-Fārābī (Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān

ibn Awzalagh)

Scientist, mathematician, cosmologist, music scholar, and philosopher

Born:

870 CE in Farab or Faryab.

Died:

950 / 951 CE in Damascus

Influenced by:

Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy. First Islamic philosopher to translate the works of

Aristotle and Plato

Influenced:

Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinus, Benedict de

Spinoza. Knowledge in the Medieval period about the ideas of Aristotle

relied heavily on the works of Al-Farabi. He became the bridge between the

cultures of the West and the East

Logic, mathematics, metaphysics, political philosophy, ethics, music

Selected Works

■

The Book of Music

■

The Virtuous City

■

Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s ‘de Interpretatione’

■

Political Regime

■

Letter on the Intellect

‘We can achieve happiness only then when we have a beauty; and we have a beauty thanks to philosophy. The truth is that only because of

philosophy we can achieve happiness.’

‘A definition of philosophy and her sense consists in her assignment that it is a science about the

being as a being.’

‘An art, which has an aim to achieve the beauty, is called a philosophy or in the absolute sense it

is named wisdom.’

‘Philosophical discourse is called demonstrative. It seeks to teach and make clear the truth in the

things which are such that they afford certain knowledge.’

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26 bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins)

Educator, author, feminist & social activist

Born:

1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, United States

Influenced by:

Sojourner Truth, Toni Morrison, Martin Luther King, Paulo Freire, Malcolm X,

James Baldwin, Erich Fromm, Gustavo Gutiérrez

Influenced:

Women & Gender Studies, transnational feminism, feminist ethics, theory &

practice of education

Race, class, and gender in education, self-help and engaged pedagogy,

feminism, masculinity and patriarchy, community creation, and politics

Selected Works

■

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 1981

■

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,1984

■

Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, 1993

■

Teaching to Transgress, 1994

■

Where We Stand: Class Matters, 2000

■

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003

■

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, 2004

■

Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, 2010

■

All About Love: New Visions, 2016

‘When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can

draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.’

‘Educating is always a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning

is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way

to know.’ ‘Life-transforming ideas have always come to me

through books.’

‘The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to

truth telling.’

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28 Bernard Mullu Narokobi

Politician, lawyer, Supreme Court judge, philosopher, and author

Born:

1937 in Wautogik Village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea

Died:

2010 in Port Moresby

Influenced by:

Anthropology, Négritude, African and African American literature,

Melanesian tradition and values

Influenced:

Legal system, politics and ideological development of the Melanesian Way,

such as land reform and cultural regeneration

Fields of interest: Constitutional law, Melanesian philosophy, cultural identity, colonialism

Selected Works

■

The Melanesian Way: Total Cosmic Vision of Life, 1980

■

Life and Leadership in Melanesia,1983

■

Law and Custom in Melanesia (Lo Bilong Yumi Yet), 1989

■

Leadership in Papua New Guinea, 2005

‘Our vision sees the human person in his totality with the spirit world as well as the animal and the plant world. This human person

is not absolute master of the universe but an important component in an interdependent world of the person with the animal, the plant

and the spiritual.’

‘It is my hope that we would not blindly follow the West, nor be victims to technology

and scientific knowledge. These belong to humankind. They are not racial or national. It is the same with music and good writing. These are

physically located in time, place and people, but in their use and enjoyment, they belong to all.’ ‘Leaders of integrity do not change their values

to suit political convenience or to enrich themselves at the cost of common good.’

‘Gratitude cannot be forced out of people by giving of aid. Foreign aid, if given with right motive and used wisely is no more than sharing

the resources of the world among its citizens.’

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30 Suzanne Tanella Boni

Philosopher, poet, novelist and essayist, literary and art critic, Member of l’Academie des

Sciences, des Arts, des Cultures d’Afrique et des Diasporas Africaines (ASCAD) since 2016,

President of the Association of Writers of the Côte d’Ivoire (1991-1997)

Born:

1954 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Influenced by:

Négritude Movement, Henri Lopes, Teilhard de Chardin

Influenced:

African women’s emancipation, Ivorian nationalism

Feminism, Ivoirité, citizenship, relation between xenophobic nationalism and

women’s marginalization, strategies of resistance and revolt, human solidarity

and dignity

Selected Works

■

Aristotle et Teilhard de Chardin, Hommage à Pierre Teilhard de Chardin à l’occasion du

centenaire de sa naissance, 1981.

■

Les Chaînes de l’esclavage [The chains of slavery], 1998

■

La femme, le corps et l’esprit : contribution à une analyse de la vie quotidienne des femmes en

Afrique, 1999

■

Matins de couvre-feu [Mornings after curfew], 2004

■

Les nègres n’iront jamais au paradis, 2006

■

Que vivent les femmes d’Afrique ?, 2008

■

La diversité du monde. Réflexions sur l’écriture et les questions de notre temps, 2010

‘On résiste par les mots.’ ‘Si les mots des écrivains n’ont jamais tué personne, il n’en va pas de même pour les mots

de la propagande idéologique et politique, relayés par les médias.’

‘La philosophie doit pouvoir remettre la femme, l’homme, l’enfant, tout ce qui concerne l’humain,

au centre des préoccupations politiques et sociales.’

‘La littérature est comme un chemin, une école de la vie. Quand on emprunte ce chemin, ce n’est jamais facile. C’est pourquoi, nous femmes, nous avons besoin d’être encouragées, afin que nous

n’abandonnions pas dès la première difficulté.’

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32 Léopold Sédar Senghor

Poet, politician (president of Senegal 1960-1980), philosopher, cultural theorist,

co-founder of the Négritude movement

Born:

1906 in Joal, Senegal (formerly French West Africa)

Died:

2001 in Verson, France

Influenced by:

African cultural values and aesthetics, French colonialism, Harlem

Renaissance, Maurice Barrès, Leo Frobenius, Placide Tempels

Influenced:

Alexis Kagame, Henry Odera Oruka, Janheinz Jahn, Ethnophilosophy

Philosophy, linguistics and poetry, politics and African socialism

Selected Works

■

Chants d’Ombre, 1945

■

Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie négre et malgache de langue française, 1948

■

L’avenir de la France dans l’Outre-Mer, 1954

■

Nation et voie africaine du socialisme, 1961

■

Négritude et humanisme, 1964

‘Négritude is the simple acknowledgement and acceptance of the fact of being black, of our destiny as Black people, of our History, and of

our Culture.’

‘What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet’s desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over

death and light.’ ‘The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable

one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of

black-African culture and those of modern life.’

‘We have denounced the imperialism of the great powers only to secrete a miniature imperialism

toward our neighbors. We have demanded disarmament from the great powers only to

transform our countries into arsenals. We proclaim our neutralism, but we do not always

base it upon a policy of neutrality.’

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34 Angela Yvonne Davis

Political activist, socialist, philosopher, feminist, educator, and author

Born:

1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Influenced by:

Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Herbert Marcuse & Frankfurt School,

Michel Foucault, Black Power Movement, Civil Rights Movement

Influenced:

Prison Reform Movement, Black Feminist Thought

Political philosophy, Marxism and historical materialism, feminism, Black

Power Movement, philosophy and history of punishment and prisons

Selected Works

■

Women, Race and Class, 1980

■

Women, Culture & Politics, 1989

■

The Prison Industrial Complex, 2001

■

Are Prisons Obsolete?, 2003

■

The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues, 2012

‘I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be

involved actively.’

‘Walls turned sideways are bridges.’

‘I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change … I’m changing the things I cannot

accept.’

‘Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous

to each other.’

‘I’m a feminist so I believe in inhabiting contradictions. I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both.’

‘We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.’

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36 Paulo Reglus Neves Freire

Philosopher and educator

Born:

1921 in Recif, Pernambuco, Brazil

Died:

1997 in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Influenced by:

Marx, Lenin, Marcuse, Fanon, Illich, Gramsci, Althusser

Influenced:

Movements of critical pedagogy, bilingual and multicultural education,

community development

Phenomenology, psychology of language, philosophy of education, adult

literacy, law, Christian political thought and humanist Marxism

Selected Works

■

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968

■

Education for Critical Consciousness, 1973

■

Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea Bissau, 1978

■

The Politics of Education, 1985

■

Pedagogy of hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1994

■

Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, 1996

■

Pedagogy of the Heart, 1997

‘Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not

liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.’

‘Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with

the powerful, not to be neutral.’

‘The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which

dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.’

‘I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.’

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38 Anya Topolski

Philosopher, feminist, activist, founder of ‘Another Jewish Voice’

Born:

1976 in Toronto, Canada

Influenced by:

Spinoza, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Edward Said, Judith Butler

Influenced:

European critical philosophy of race, race-religion constellation

Political philosophy, ethics, European identity and exclusion, racism, gender,

antisemitism and islamophobia, political theology, Jewish thought, Arendt,

Levinas, ‘Judeo-Christianity’

Selected Works

■

Arendt, Levinas and a Politics of Relationality, 2015

■

Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? A European Perspective, 2016

■

Tzedakah: The True Religion of Spinoza’s Tractatus?, 2016

■

The Race-Religion Intersection: A European Contribution to the Critical Philosophy of Race, 2018

■

Nation-States, the Race-Religion Constellation, and Diasporic Political Communities: Hannah

Arendt, Judith Butler, and Paul Gilroy, 2020

‘Frantz Fanon was right: Society is racist, or it is not. The society we live in is racist. Only those

blinded by privilege can deny this. Silence or denial are racism’s greatest collaborators. Get up

and speak out against racism.’

‘If we commemorate the Shoah but fail to do the same for the horrors of slavery and colonialism, we run the risk to condemn antisemitism while

maintaining racism based on skin color. By disconnecting these genocides, we promote a

myth of European innocence.’ ‘Knowledge about your own history and

culture – whether positive or negative – is a privilege that (alas) has been given to only a few.’

‘Contrary to the maxim popularised by political scientists that there is no political community without a political identity, what Europe most needs is a political community without identity.

The project of the EU should be to create a space for the clash of ideas, a Europe of different visions, different voices, different languages that

are continuously in discourse.’

(41)

(42)

40 Frantz Omar Fanon

Psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, pan-Africanist, and writer

Born:

1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique

Died:

1961 in Bethesda. Marlyland, United States

Ethnic origin:

Afro-Caribbean

Influenced by:

Aimé Césaire. Sartre, Lacan, Négritude, Marxism, Existentialism

Influenced:

Steve Biko, Ali Shariati, Che Guevara, Fausto Reinaga, Paulo Freire, Ngũgĩ wa

Thiong’o, National Liberation Movements, Post-colonial Studies

Medicine, psychiatry, philosophy, literature, psychopathology of colonization,

process and consequences of decolonization

Selected Works

■

Black Skin, White Masks, 1952

■

A Dying Colonialism, 1959

■

The Wretched of the Earth, 1961

■

Toward the African Revolution, 1964

‘For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new

man.’

‘Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our

minds as well.’

‘O my body, make of me always a man who asks questions!’

‘Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.’

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42 Vandana Shiva

Physicist, environmental & social activist, philosopher, author

Born:

1952 in Dehradun, Uttaranchal, India

Influenced by:

Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Sunderlal Bahaguna & Chipko

Movement, Edward Goldsmith, Forum on International Globalization

Influenced:

Ecofeminism, global environmental movement

Physics, biodiversity, intellectual property, agricultural genetic engineering,

sustainability, peace and social justice

Selected Works

■

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, 1988

■

Monocultures of the mind, 1993

■

Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, 1997

■

Water Wars: Pollution, Profits and Privatization, 2001

■

Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, 2005

■

Soil not oil, 2007

‘Living democracy grows like a tree, from the bottom up.’

‘The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis.’

‘We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the

Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all.’

‘Climate change is not just a problem for the future. It is impacting us every day, everywhere.’

‘I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy – not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around

you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human

societies are based.’

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(46)

44 W.E.B. Du Bois (William Edward Burghardt)

Philosopher, sociologist, historian, author, editor and journalist, civil rights activist and

social critic, pan-Africanist, co-founder of the NAACP (National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People)

Born:

February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, United States

Died:

August 27, 1963, in Accra, Ghana

Influenced by:

Alexander Crummell, William James, Hegel

Influenced:

Critical race theory, concept of double consciousness, pan-Africanism, Civil

Rights Movement, Black nationalism, Africana critical theory, standpoint

theory in epistemology, Cornell West, Lewis Gordon, Kwame Appiah, Angela

Davis

Fields of interest: Race and the Negro Problem, social philosophy, political philosophy,

philosophy of art, epistemology, pan-Africanism, Marxism and international

communism

Selected Works

■

The Study of the Negro Poblems, 1898.

■

The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.

■

The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America, 1924.

■

Black Reconstruction in America, 1935.

■

Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, 1940.

■

Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, 1945.

■

Africa in Battle Against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism, 1960.

‘The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.’

‘Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.’ ‘An American, a Negro … two souls, two

thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.’

‘The dark workers of Asia, Africa, the islands of the sea, and South and Central America … these are the one who are supporting a superstructure of wealth, luxury, and extravagance. It is the rise

of these people that is the rise of the world.’

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46 Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí

Sociologist, feminist, pan-Africanist, gender scholar

Born:

1957 in Nigeria

Influenced by:

Yorùbá epistemology, traditional Yorùbá kinship, Pan Africanism

Influenced:

Gender studies, feminist philosophy, discourses on decolonisation

Fields of interest: Sociology of gender, race, culture & knowledge, critical epistemology,

transnational feminism, decolonial & pan-African studies

Selected Works

■

The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, 1997

■

Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of

African Epistemologies, 2002

■

Abiyamo: Theorizing African Motherhood, 2003

■

Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions and Identities,

2011

■

What Gender is Motherhood? Changing Yoruba Ideals of Power, Procreation and Identity in the

age of Modernity, 2015

‘The idea that biology is destiny – or, better still, destiny is biology – has been a staple of Western thought for centuries. […] biological explanations appear to be especially privileged

over other ways of explaining differences of gender, race, or class.’

‘Paradoxically, in European thought, despite the fact that society was seen to be inhabited

by bodies, only women were perceived to be embodied; men had no bodies – they were

walking minds. Two social categories that emanated from this construction were the ‘man

of reason’ (the thinker) and the ‘woman of the body,’ and they were oppositionally constructed.’ ‘These essential gender identities in Western cultures attach to all social engagements […]. The classic

example is that for many years, women could not vote solely because they were women. Another example is the genderization of professions to the extent that professional lexicons contain phrases such as ‘woman pilot,’ woman president.’ And ‘professor emerita,’ as if whatever these women do in

these occupations is different from what men do in the same.’ ~ ~

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48 Mohammed Arkoun (Muḥemmed Arkun)

Intellectual in revolt, reflective researcher, and philosopher

Born:

1928 in Beni Yenni, Algeria

Died:

2010 in Paris, France

Influenced by:

Ibn Miskawayh, Annales School, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Derrida,

Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon

Influenced:

Western scholarship on Islam

Islam and modernity, secularism, and humanism; dialogue between Islam

and the Western worlds; history of Islamic thought. Structuralism and

deconstruction

Selected Works

Towards a Critique of Islamic Reason, 1984

■

Arab Thought, 1988

■

The concept of revelation: from the people of the book to the societies of the book, 1988

■

Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers,1994

■

The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 2002

■

Islam: To Reform or to Subvert?, 2006

‘… it is time [for Islam] to assume, along with all of the great cultural traditions, the modern risks

of scientific knowledge.’

‘Accurate description must precede interpretation, but interpretation cannot be attempted today without a rigorous analysis, using linguistics, semiotic, historical, and

anthropological tools.’

‘Political analysts err in concentrating all their attention on the burning, militant Islam in plain sight; other manifestations of Islam deserve to be more closely examined and better known to the public

at large.’

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50 Linda Martín Alcoff

Philosopher, Distinguished Woman in Philosophy for 2005 by the Society for Women in

Philosophy, recipient Frantz Fanon Award 2009

Born:

1955 in Panama

Influenced by:

Feminism, Michel Foucault, Hans Georg Gadamer, existentialism

Influenced:

Social epistemology, racial identity and gender theory, discussion on white

privilege

Feminist theory, decolonial theory, critical race theory and identity, social

epistemology, 19th and 20th century continental philosophy, Latin American

philosophy, Foucault

Selected Works

■

Real Knowing: New Versions of Coherence Theory, 1996

■

What should White People Do?, 1998

■

Singing in the Fire: Stories of Women in Philosophy, 2003

■

Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, 2006

■

The Future of Whiteness, 2015

■

Rape and Resistance: Understanding the complexities of sexual violation, 2018

‘It’s painful to pass, because you hear white people say all this garbage you don’t want to

have to hear, I never had the luxury of thinking that race

was not important.’

‘Nietzsche said that all philosophy is a little bit of autobiography. He was a little

reductive in this, but he was onto something. A lot more of philosophy refers back to individuals than we may

realize.’

‘Latin American philosophers have had to justify their prerogative, and their ability,

to contribute to normative debates over the good, the

right and the true.’

‘I think we get our sense of self from how we are seen by the Other. Sartre is right and he gets it from Hegel. I think as women we may intuit this better because we experience such a disparate number of selves. In the classroom we are given authority, and everyone writes down what we say, but then in a

bar or walking down a street, you’re a cunt: you have this totally different sense of self.’

(53)

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52 Lewis Ricardo Gordon

Philosopher, political thinker, educator and musician, director of the Institute for

the Study of Race and Social Thought, director and founder of the Center for Afro-

Jewish Studies, founder of the Second Chance Program at Lehman High School in the

Bronx (N.Y.), Past President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2003-2008)

Born:

1962 in Jamaica

Influenced by:

Fanon, Du Bois, Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl, Max Weber, Freire

Influenced:

Africana studies, Fanon studies, Black existentialism, existential sociology

Africana philosophy, Black existentialism, phenomenology, social and

political theory, theories of race and philosophies of liberation

Selected Works

■

Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, 1995

■

Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, 1995

■

Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age, 1997

■

Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times, 2006

■

What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought, 2015

‘One of the things about Black feminism in the United States is that its history is often misrepresented. Black feminist activism began in

every moment of defiance that Black women – enslaved and otherwise – were engaged in from the moment they landed in the Americas (Abya

Yala).’

‘Now there is a difference between liberty and freedom. Liberty is a function of not having obstacles; it’s about the conditions, the possibilities. Freedom is about what we, in our ability to be creative and choose, are able to take

responsibility for. Our freedom is not always in sync with options available to us in the world.’ ‘Anti-intellectualism is one of the seductive forms of stupidity. There is no shortage of intellectuals who claim to be anti-intellectual. It’s one of the doorways to fascism; fascists valorize their stupidity as a kind of mass consciousness. The fear of reality and truth already permeates many societies … Too

many people don’t think anymore; they “feel”.’

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(56)

54 Sophie Bosede Oluwole

Feminist, philosopher

Born:

1935 in Igbara-Oke, Ondo State, Nigeria

Died:

2018 in Ogun State, Nigeria

Influenced by:

Orunmila, Socrates, oral African literature, traditional African thought,

Pan-Africanism

Influenced:

Discourse on the place of oral traditions in African philosophy, development

theory

Metaphysics, African philosophy, oral tradition, women and development,

sage philosophy

Selected Works

■

Witchcraft, Reincarnation and the God-Head, 1992

■

Womanhood in Yoruba traditional thought, 1993

■

Philosophy and oral tradition, 1997

■

The cultural dimensions of development, 2003

■

Socrates and Orunmila: Two Patron Saint of Classical Philosophy, 2015

‘The fabrication of theories has been allowed to replace the formulation of hypotheses based on the facts of a people’s language as expression of thought. Today many scholars have

become inventors of African unity rather than discoverers of it.’

‘For if we are not fully conscious of what we were, hardly can we really understand who we are now and how we can have a clear vision of

what we ought to be.’

‘Present day African intellectuals have lost contact with their forebears as well as with one another. Colonial education did not bequeath to Africa only new systems of government, education, etc., it replaced African traditional principles of thought with foreign ones. Worse still, it gave Africa several

alien languages that cut their intellectuals from their base. It is not an exaggeration to say that most African scholars are pure illiterates when it comes to speaking, writing or understanding their native

tongues. It is also not strange that they are generally unaware of the intellectual principles that underlie the formulation of the beliefs, values or doctrines that occurred within African thought.’

(57)

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56 Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr.

Political activist, black nationalist, pan-Africanist, anti-colonialist, journalist,

philosopher, and poet

Born:

1887 in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica

Died:

1940 in London, United Kingdom

Influenced by:

Edward Wilmot Blyden, Henry Sylvester Williams, Dusé Mohamed Ali,

Booker T. Washington, Hubert Harrison

Influenced:

Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Patrice Lumumba,

Civil Rights Movement, Rastafari, Nation of Islam, Reggae music

Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism, journalism, literature and

arts, economics

Selected Works

■

The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, 1923

■

The Tragedy of White Injustice, 1927

■

The poetical works of Marcus Garvey, edited by Tony Martin, 1983

‘A people without the knowledge of their past, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.’

‘There can be no peace among men and nations, so long as the strong continues to oppress the weak, so long as injustice is done to other peoples, just sol long we will have cause for war,

and make lasting peace an impossibility.’ ‘There shall be no solution to this race problem

until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty.’

‘A race without authority and power is a race without respect.’

‘We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to

develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.’

(59)