44—Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015
Philosophy, humanities and the national question in Nigeria (2) This is the second instalment of this discourse which was first published on January 30, 2015 of a perceived misinterpretation By Tunji Olaopa of the humanities’ essence. Yet it EARNED people do not ask would be utterly wrong if we the question of relevance? think the humanities should not That is very strange! Robert contribute to the need to ‘bake Heilbroner, the US economist, bread’ or the collective effort to notes that ‘Less and less are we build a virile nation in Nigeria. I able to locate our lives suspect that I am on the same meaningfully in the pageant of page with Prof. Dukor and history. More and more do we Ifeanyi. find ourselves retreating to the However, and this is really sanctuary of an insulated crucial: it doesn’t appear as if my individualism, sealed off in our interlocutors understand the private concerns from the larger urgency of what is required of events which surround us.’ It is the humanities. The humanities so easy to see how Ifeanyi will eventually die unless we rejoiced in Professor Tatum’s begin to rethink the issue of outline of classical studies but it relevance. In this regard, my seems to me that he fails to see argument against the Nigerian the import of the professor’s philosophers still stands: I point. Or maybe he saw it but consider them surprisingly didn’t know what implication to invisible essentially because they draw from it. have, for long, refused to face up This is because Mr Ifeanyi to the relevance of their agrees with me that Plato’s intellectual enterprise in the assessment about the need for a national scheme of things. philosophical intervention in Socrates drank the hemlock political and national affairs is because the Athenian states exactly what classical studies is could not face up to his critical all about. Yet, he went on to submit scrutiny of Athens’ so-called that learned men don’t ask the democratic experiment. Plato question of relevance! My worry wrote the Republic because he with Ifeanyi’s submission goes believes, among other things, deeper. In the quote above, he that the philosopher cannot seems to draw a tight dichotomy escape living in the polis, and between ‘thinking to live’ and hence that his responsibility must ‘living to think.’ Is that dichotomy be assessed by the extent to a legitimate one? Isn’t that which he is able to use his critical distinction at the root of the many capacity to make that polis a troubles of the humanities today? better place to live. We can, therefore, ask the Many troubles of critical question: Are there Nigerian philosophers who can the humanities dare to be like Socrates? Are there According to Cicero, ‘Socrates Nigerian philosophers who could was the first to call philosophy stand to be counted like Gani down from the heavens and to Fawehinmi, Wole Soyinka, place it in cities, and even to Claude Ake, Yusuf Bala Usman introduce it into homes and and several others who dared not compel it to enquire about life only to query the theoretical and standards and good and ill.’ foundation of our national but invaded Why do we think Socrates existence brought philosophy down from its esoteric ruminations about metaphysical issues? Essentially because we just don’t live to think alone, however much that is good for what Professor Tatum calls ‘the formation of the self.’ We also significantly convert our thoughts to the issues of life and existence. Living to think and thinking to Are there Nigerian live constitute, for me, two significant sides of the same coin. philosophers who When we fail to see it this way, could stand to be then we make the same mistake that Prof. Dukor and many other counted like Gani philosophers make that Fawehinmi, Wole philosophy does not bake bread. I know Dukor and Ifeanyi meant Soyinka, Claude Ake, well. Both are dedicated to the Yusuf Bala Usman overall status of the humanities and several others in a world that thought them who dared not only to useless. The fate of the humanities on query the theoretical the globe today is not envious. In fact, the humanities are foundation of our endangered. And it would be national existence? wrong to keep quiet in the face
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constructively its fissures, social formations and forces. Intellectual rebranding of the humanities: In this second part, I attempt an outline of the crucial challenge that the humanities face in Nigeria and a plausible methodology for responding to this challenge. The third part, sub-titled ‘Need for Marketing and Prodigal Projection of the Humanities’, will be dedicated to a strict advocacy of some policy recommendations that can kickstart specific pedagogical transformation to jumpstart the already waning national interest in the humanities. Imagine you’re a marketer. Further imagine that the public perceives your product as not worthy of spending their hard earned cash on. What are you supposed to do? There are three options available to you. First, you could move on to another product the public will like and buy.
Lack of insight Two, you could lament the public’s lack of insight in failing to see the significance of what you have to sell. Third, you could repackage your product in a manner that will convince the public of its worth. Globally, and since the dissolution of the significance of the liberal arts as a broad educational programme which prepares the students for existence, the humanities and the sciences have been involved in a protracted intellectual war. And the sciences are winning both the battles and the war. The sciences are winning because they are perceived to be relevant. They pursue knowledge not for knowledge sake. Rather, science transmutes knowledge into technological breakthrough and we see the consequences all around us: television, telecommunication, transportation, computers, the Internet, better healthcare, and even the food we eat! Science has become a brand that sells anywhere. When a student enters the university to study medicine, engineering, dentistry, nursing, laboratory technology, nutrition, radiology, biochemistry, microbiology and even mathematics or physics, the parents don’t worry as much as they do when their wards gained admission to study Yoruba or Linguistic or Religious Studies or Classics or Philosophy or even History and English Language. No wonder my poor parents thought I was foolish or ignorant when I insisted I wanted to be a philosopher! Their most
immediate thought, like most good parents, was: how does being a philosopher put food on the table? If you don’t consider that a legitimate query, then you make yourself as unrealistic as the ostrich.
Human character And yet the humanities have placed their relevance, for far too long, on their supposed formation of the human self, of human character, and of the scrutiny of human cultures and societies. These are noble and sublime subject matters and concerns. And it is in precisely this shape that the humanities are facing the most crucial challenge on the globe. In other words, the humanities have been selling a product that has lost its allure for a long time. And the idea of an intellectual rebranding has not occurred to many humanist scholars. This isn’t any longer the Renaissance period, the heyday of the humanities. We now live in the Age of Capital! Everything boils down to its cash value. No discipline can afford any longer to be insular or glory in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Such a discipline will atrophy. And the humanities are weakening faster than their custodians can understand. While students want to study disciplines that will add value to their life prospects, nations want disciplines that will facilitate the onerous task of nation building.
It seems logical therefore, within this context, that such nations will massively fund those disciplines they perceive as being relevant and starve those that seem irrelevant. I know this is a critical and sensitive matter. And I stand the risk already of being misinterpreted. I stand the risk of being labelled ‘a sell out.’ But the humanities have been fighting a losing battle all over the globe - Europe, America, Asia, the third world. Our intellectual predicament in Africa is worse. Any attempt at intellectual playfulness or grandstanding will doom us. Let me give an instance I am familiar with. In the late 80s and early 90s, the emerging discipline of African Philosophy was embroiled in a wasteful debate about whether or not there is anything that qualifies as ‘African Philosophy.’ What could be more
frivolous! I have also heard of Derridean deconstruction. This intellectual strategy, however, significant as a theoretical instrument, would be utterly useless to scholarship in the third world if it doesn’t enable us deconstruct our national predicament in a manner that facilitates living the good lives for the people. The charge of relevance requires that all disciplines, including those in the humanities and the social sciences, must readily dirty their disciplinary hands in the murky penumbra of national affairs. If the humanities see to the development of the whole man qua man, then they must help us in rethinking man as a good citizen too. And this is the catch: the national question is too significant to be left to the machinations and arrogance of the sciences or other professional disciplines alone. The humanities and the social sciences have a huge and critical role to play. That, essentially, is the imperative of relevance. Yet, we have been shying away from it for too long. Intellectuals can’t neglect praxis; the humanities must be redeemed by the practical. As far as I am concerned, if a nation is listless, first ask its intellectuals; and specifically, ask its humanistic intellectuals. Gerald Brenan, the British writer, says damningly, that ‘intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are more
important than values.’ Consider that an indictment. Yet Thomas Mann, the German writer is prescient. According to him, ‘every intellectual attitude is latently political.’ It is always oriented towards a deconstruction or a reconstruction of what we can call the national architecture. In the original article we are revisiting, I indicted the Nigerian philosophers precisely for making their intellectual attitude too latent to make a mark on the Nigerian political space. In the Republic, Plato calls all philosophers to political action: the nation requires urgent philosophical assessment and intellectual redemption. Here, I indict all humanistic scholars. We have all refused, too overtly, to interject our disciplines into the national space. To be continued