HUMEAN GHOST, POSITIVISM AND AFRICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE:

AFRICAS CHALLENGE TO JURISPRUDENCE

IDOWU WILLIAM
FELLOW, AFRICAN HUMANITIES INSTITUTE
DEPT. OF PHILOSOPHY
OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY
ILE-IFE, NIGERIA
idwilly@yahoo.com

Paper Proposal

I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all the other species of
mento be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilised
nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual
eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures
amongst them, no arts, no science - David Hume.

Introduction

The debate on the nature and texture of African philosophy has been one of the most
eventful controversies to emerge with respect to the search for continuing innovations in
African humanities and arts. The durable antagonism between those who affirm and/or
deny its existence centres on whether what is labelled African Philosophy really conform
to the universal, general principles that undergird the practice of philosophy. In
retrospect, the controversies revolve around a consensual definition of what the general
principles of the practice of philosophy are.

The questions then are why is Africas complex historical and cultural experience not
fully represented in the current corpus of canonical works? Why is there so little, if any,
respect for and, as a consequence, interest in African phenomena and their philosophical
resonance? Why is it that there is an intellectual numbness and muteness about all that is
African? In what ways are the historical and cultural heritage of Africa reproduced,
projected and represented in contemporary philosophical disquisition?

In mainstream debate on the existence of African philosophy, one crucial point of

evidential importance in this whole representation and projection of the African historical
and cultural heritage is the fact that what constitute the definition of philosophy, the
philosophy of society and its subject matter altogether has been, for some centuries,
defined exclusively by the West. According to Olufemi Taiwo (1998), It is only insofar
as Western Philosophy has passed itself off as Universal Philosophy that we may talk of
the peculiar absence. The catalogues of distasteful perceptions about Africa are not
limited to the sphere of philosophy alone. It reflects entirely in the sphere of the
production of knowledge philosophy, science, technology, jurisprudence, morals etc.

Objectives
One area of momentous importance in the rediscovery and explanation of African
cultural and historical heritage, but often neglected in African studies, is the African
philosophy of law. Any serious scholarship on the place of law in African realities
must of necessity raise questions about prevailing concepts and theoretical approaches.
This is a result of the fact that the architecture and furnishings of jurisprudential and legal
researches have been by and large distilled from Europe and American experiences.

This paper is interested in interrogating the peculiar absence of African philosophy of law
or better still, African jurisprudence in mainstream jurisprudence discourse. The paper
posits the view that beneath the peculiar absence of African philosophy of law or African
jurisprudence in mainstream jurisprudence discourse is a recourse to an Eurocentric,
positive historiography which defines the past - realities, perceptions and social
categories - by its own image. It is contended that beneath this positivist historiographic
rejection of African realities is Eurocentrism. What then is Eurocentrism?

There have been various conceptions of this trend but I am quite at home with the
conception adopted by Chandra Mohanty. According to Mohanty, Eurocentrism is
produced when third world legal, economic, religious and familial structures are treated
as phenomena to be judged by Western standardsWhen these structures are defined as
underdeveloped or developing (1994:71). Interestingly, the major aim of
Eurocentrism is the projection of the interests, concerns, predilections, neuroses,
prejudices, social institutions and social categories of Europe and America as the sine qua
non of what is right, what is acceptable, what is progressive, what is modern, what is
utopian etc. To this end, arising from the rising tide of Eurocentric projections, Euro-
Americans ideas and values have dominated the writing of human history. One effect of
this Eurocentrism is the racialisation of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source
of knowledge and Europeans as knowers. Indeed, Euro-American values in politics,
philosophy, economics, law and jurisprudence and most significantly, morals values are
not only privileged but also enshrined as an essential part in the culture of modernity.

This globalisation of Europe and American values have often played a denigrating role in
divesting comprehension of the African realities. Whatever values are projected within
the schema of Eurocentrism, it is a proposition too plain to be contested that without a
recourse and adaptation to local realities, the contours of African political landscape will
continue to witness the ills of disappointments regardless of how grand the many projects
of the west may be. In actual fact, the many projects of support and sponsorship to the
African continent expressing Western notion or paradigm of development has done
everything except develop the continent. As a matter of fact, it has succeeded in whittling
away the necessity of the continents history in the formation of any blue print of
development and progress.

Trenchantly, what is suspected as responsible for the varying shades of the evils of
Eurocentrism is the view that it subscribes to a positivist historiography that defines the
past by its own image, inevitably leading to the absurd conclusion that realities,
conditions, perceptions and values in non-western societies are inherently lacking and
incomplete when compared to western society seen as the apex of development.
The need to transcend this Eurocentric pessimism in relation to African philosophy of
law consists in the task of exorcising the Humean Ghost in African philosophy of law.
David Hume supplied the foundation of positivism in jurisprudence.

The rest of the paper shall be concerned with a comprehensive exploration of the nature
of African jurisprudence. In the preliminary sense, African Jurisprudence is a derivative
of the existing pattern of thought and belief system prevalent in each African. In a great
deal, this existing pattern of thought and belief system is radically influenced and shaped
by the prevalent metaphysical outlook or framework that it bears (Oke, 1994). The
preponderant and prevalent metaphysical outlook and framework in which basic
relations, ideas about life, ideas about the afterlife, actions, experiences whether past or
present are judged and encoded in a meaningful structure consist in what can be regarded
as African traditional thought. Therefore, in this task of exorcism, what is distinctively
African in jurisprudence in Africa today derives from African traditional thought and
philosophy of society. This paper will treat of that body of thought as interpreted and
analysed from the standpoint of contemporary African philosophy.

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