1
OGBONNA, OBIORA B.
PG/MA/93/14687
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IN AFRICAN COMMUNALISM:
AN INQUIRY
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, FACULTY OF
SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA
Philosophy
UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA
2009
Webmaster
Digitally Signed by Webmaster‟s Name
DN : CN = Webmaster‟s name O= University of Nigeria, Nsukka
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INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IN AFRICAN COMMUNALISM:
AN INQUIRY
BY
OGBONNA, OBIORA B.
PG/MA/93/14687
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
FACULTY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA.
MARCH, 2009.
3
Title Page
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IN AFRICAN COMMUNALISM: AN INQUIRY
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY,
FACULTY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA.
BY
OGBONNA, OBIORA B.
PG/MA/93/14687
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF
MASTER OF ARTS (M.A.) DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY.
MARCH, 2009
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Approval Page
This Dissertation has been approved for the award of the Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree in Philosophy of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
By
______________________
Rev. Fr. (Prof.) B.O. Eboh
Supervisor
______________________
______________________
Prof. J.C.A. Agbakoba
Head of Department.
Prof. P.C. Onokala
Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences
______________________
External Examiner
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CERTIFICATION
OGOBNNA, OBIORA B., a post-graduate student of the Department of
Philosophy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with the Registration Number
PG/MA/93/14687, has satisfactorily completed the requirements for the coursework
and research for the degree of Master of Arts (M.A.) in Philosophy.
The topic of this dissertation is original, and has not been submitted in part or
in full for any other Diploma or Degree in this or any other University.
___________________
____________________
Rev. Fr. (Prof) B.O. Eboh
Supervisor
Prof. J.C.A. Agbakoba
Head of Department
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DEDICATION
Dedicated to all Africans interested in the upliftment of African Philosophy
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Human ideas and expressions, including his knowledge are formed over years,
at least in part, through a concerted channels, and influences. A work of this type is
therefore a beneficiary from many contributors known and unknown.
First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge God Almighty for sustaining me
throughout the course of this turbulent assignment. To God be the eternal Glory. Jesus
I trust in you.
I hereby express profound gratitude to those who helped in the production of
this work but whose names could not be mentioned individually because of their
number. I appreciate all their contributions.
My gratitude goes to my supervisor Rev. Fr. (Dr.) B.O. Eboh for the patience
and encouragement during these long years. I am indeed greatly indebted to him. And
to all the lecturers in the Department of Philosophy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
My gratitude will seem incomplete if I fail to appreciate the efforts of my
humble and lovely wife Nneka and three children. I found their attitude encouraging
and worthwhile during these years. God bless you all.
University of Nigeria,
Nsukka.
OGBONNA, OBIORA B.
PG/MA/93/14687.
8
ABSTRACT
There is in every society (community) a conscious effort to maintain and
preserve mutual respect of individual freedom and rights through gradual inculcation
of rationally derived principles. In the main, these principles seem to be borne out of
man‟s existential day-to-day experiences arising from human encounter and
interactions. Often they are formulated to instill discipline, and promote communal
relationship among the individuals. And since the individual is at the centre of every
community, traditional or modern, he is ipso facto, an undeniable formulator of moral
principles and traditional norms. The development of mankind is characterized by the
interplay of contradictory or opposing factors as thus: caste-system, human sacrifice
etc. The modern historical development which is national sovereignty emerged as a
result of progression – from the individual to family, to the clan, village, community
and state. Even within the state, there exist opposing ideals among the nationalities
that make up the state. These opposing ideals in the traditional Igbo community is our
research focus.
Individual freedom in Igbo communalism was a research work tailored
towards investigating the possibility of the above status in the corporate nature of the
Igbos. Here and everywhere the individual has always come across things which raise
the problem of his freedom – the caste system and human sacrifice. As a conscious
being, that was not only aware, but in tune with his world and things therein, he
questions why he was unfree to do whatever he wants to do at any point in time. This
research was able to look at freedom from two broad perspectives namely: freedom
from (without) and freedom (within). Ordinarily, the individual regards himself as free
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in proportion to what he does or thinks what he chooses without any restraints from
other people. Freedom from, is when the individual is able to carry out his desires
within a range of alternatives without external hindrances. Freedom from (within). The
Igbo himself is his own enemy in this direction. Hence he is comfortable with
tribalism, caste-system, human sacrifice, etc. of the Igbo individual as obstacles to his
complete freedom. The individual is a person and thing, and therefore cannot entirely
subordinated to the good of the community. The research from its x-ray asserts that the
individual who was not free to marry a person of his/her choice, hold traditional titles,
sacrificed to an idol, be accorded full burial rights etc. cannot be said to be free.
Though freedom is not totally lacking in Igbo communal life. In short the individual in
Igbo communal system have no say in consonance to the above. The community
decision oversides that of the insignificant individual. Communal system is a „given
system‟. „Life‟ for the Igbo has two related dimensions, “individual life” and
“Communal life” since the Igbo case may be seen as paradigmatic of what takes place
in other African community. The individual was only existing for the group not on his
concrete individuality.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certification ---
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Dedication
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Acknowledgement
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Abstract
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Table of contents
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study ---
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1.2 Statement of the study --- ---
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1.3 Objectives of the study
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1.4 Significance of the study ---
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1.5 Scope of the work ---
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1.6 Methodology
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1.7 Plan of the study ---
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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF CONCEPTS
2.1 African communalism
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2.2 African ontology ---
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2.3 Free-will ---
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2.4 Freedom ---
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CHAPTER THREE: MAN IN AFRICAN ONTOLOGY
3.1 Origin of man
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3.2 Destiny of man
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3.3 Man as distinct from nature in African philosophy
Notes
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CHAPTER FOUR: PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
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4.2 Community
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4.3 Status of the individual
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CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
There are many problems, which confront and perplex both the
traditional and modern man, which have been tackled by different political and
social philosophers according to their different philosophical background. But
one of the most complicated and sophisticated problems facing modern man is
how to bring into harmony the issue of human rights and freedom. The
concept of freedom, in essence has been a matter of great concern to many
philosophers.
Though at one extreme of this freedom, is philosophic anarchy which
advocates that man be left to his private life and decisions, totally free from the
interventions of the so-called society. The consequent result of this to man is
the return of Hobbesian life before the contract. But in reality there exist in
every society certain rules and standards that regulate the behaviour of
individuals within it. These rules and standards are meant to be obeyed and
adhered to for the peaceful existence of members of the society. Man by
nature, a social and political animal, should not be taken so much as to take
their compliance with these rules for granted. So, to be able to recognize
whether a communal social norm is violated, thus creating „unfreedom‟ there
have to be certain means to check the excess of individuals within. In short,
the concept of freedom becomes inelastic because where an individual‟s
freedom stops, there begins the freedom of another individual. Thus certain
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basic questions like, why should there be freedom instead of „unfreedom‟?
Does freedom really exist? Should there be individual freedom or collective
freedom?, have been the central problems in philosophy. Answers to these
questions have not so easily been come by. Okolo in his work, African Social
and Political Philosophy, stressed on two fundamental freedoms; „freedom
from‟ and „freedom to‟. A critical study on these freedom indicates that man
either in traditional or contemporary Africa is not free.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Freedom is a problem facing both the traditional and contemporary
man. The problem this study intended to tackle is outlined thus: what is the
freedom the individual has in the traditional Igbo society? Since communal life
is essentially characteristic of the Igbo way of life, („to be‟ for the African is to
live in community), how then is the freedom and autonomy of the individual
safeguarded? How free is the individual in this society? This is the
fundamental focus of our research work.
1.3 Objective of the study:
The objectives that have been set out in this study are as follows: The
first and most important is to inquire the extent of individual freedom in the
Igbo communal African society, that emphasis on the role of collectivity as the
ultimate dominant and determinant force. The individual in Igbo communal
society is being alienated because of the group stress. This study at another
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frame aims at arguing out that freedom is vital in man‟s life. Therefore, we
must begin with a concrete perspective analysis of what the needs of
individual vis-à-vis the community or group.
1.4 Significance of the Study
This study like the Socratic gadfly will sensitize Africans and African
scholars to reposition and re-articulate the status of the individual in the Igbo
community life. Though, the idea of communal life is not strange/foreign to the
Igbos. This cosmic unity is lived in the traditional community. The community
is a life-world where I am because we are.
To the researcher, the study is significant because the contribution of
this inquiry will add to the existing literature on the problems of freedom,
individual freedom and Igbo communalism. Lastly, this study will be important
to the modern and traditional Igbo society because the individual is the epicentre of cosmic action, who champions the course of history by his selfdetermination. The community is located from the individual and not the other
way round.
1.5 Scope of the Study
Individual freedom in Igbo communalism is primarily predicated of the
traditional Igbos. Traditional Igbos are used here as a case study. This study
investigated within the possible limit whether there is individual freedom in
Igbo communalism. Because of the inherent values associated with communal
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life, our inquiry tries to go beyond traditional expressions and exigencies and
focus on how they can be better expressed, and applied in contemporary
society if possible. It will also examine the individual vis-à-vis his freedom in
Igbo communal society. And if there is, to what extent it exists.
1.6 Methodology
The first method is a critical analysis of the Igbo Anthropological and
philosophical literatures, which includes also English literatures, relevant
theses, and dissertations on the Igbo. Here, the work will not be expository as
such, but an abstraction of the Igbo communal values. It is abstractions based
on what the Igbo aspire to achieve in their communal lifestyle. Oral interviews
are also employed to supplement the written materials, which indeed, are
scanty. The approach is largely critical, analytical and evaluative.
1.7 Plan of the Work
In general the work contains five chapters. Chapter one offers us the
bird‟s eye view of the work. This includes background to the study which is
essentially an assertion of lack of individual freedom. Within the chapter is
statement of the problem which discovered a submerged individual in the
group. Also under this chapter we will find the objectives of the study, why this
study arise, the significance of the study, what it intends to achieve and the
scope of the work, areas covered that is the Igbo identity. Still under the
chapter is methodology, that is the written and unwritten information relevant
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to the study. In chapter two we dwell on literature review, on Igbo and foreign
works and analysis of concepts – African ontology, communalism, free-will and
freedom, we have in the work a conceptual analysis of African, ontology,
communalism, free-will and freedom from available works and dictionary. The
third chapter looks at man in African Ontology. It also highlighted on origin of
man, destiny of man, man as distinct from nature in African philosophy.
The knob of this enquiry which is the chapter four, concentrates on the
problem of individual freedom, individual and community and status of the
individual. The final chapter, the fifth is the summary and conclusion of the
work. As a final remark, individual freedom in Igbo community is presented as
a dilemma to man plagued with the intractable problems of limitations,
inequalities and restrictions.
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CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF CONCEPTS
Literature Review
Some African scholars like Ruch, et al, Edeh, Nze etc. are of the view
that freedom and liberty of the individual are protected and guaranteed within
the corporate Igbo society. They all agree that freedom in Igbo understanding
and application is a positive inclination viewed as self-realization and
fulfillment within the community. Self understanding constitutes the highest
goal that philosophy can attain. The world that has no reference to the person,
to self-order or that is not self-centered has no meaning for the Igbos. So, the
world has meaning, order and unity by virtue of the self. This notion of freedom
is a consequent of Igbo world view or ontology.
Since the dawn of human history, man‟s battle-cry has been freedom.
This freedom is generally from oppressive laws and customs; in some
countries it is caste system, racial prejudice even from laws against interaction
of one community with the other. Often these laws and regulations are
infringements on individual freedom taking cognizance of the fact that man by
nature as Plato and other philosophers have defined him, is a social and
political animal. Man is created to live in a community. Thus, Aquinas argues
that societal living is an integral part of man‟s very nature and his potentialities
and well-being cannot be fulfilled independently of society.
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Again in modern times, the global cry is also freedom. That is to say,
freedom from militocracy to democracy. At other times and in some nations, it
is freedom to assume the status of a full sovereign nations as what is
happening to Taiwan in relation to China for instance, in March 1996, there
was a conference at Cairo that attracted twenty-nine world leaders which
demonstrated a strong will and unity of purpose to stifle terrorism. Arafat, the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader said, “Our dream of freedom
can never prosper in a sea of blood and tears - - - capital of terrorism”.1
In this meeting too, these world leaders vehemently condemned all
forms of terrorism, reaffirmed their commitment to the eradication of the
phenomenon through inter-governmental co-operation and a concerted efforts
of their respective security agents; as well as reach an international accord on
measures to bring terrorists to justice.
Igbo culture assumes that a life-force permeates the universe, that the
world is centred on the self, that reality cannot be separated from personal
experience and that all life forces in their hierarchical order are in constant
interaction. Igbo reality is a living thought in a sense not concluded with
finality, because life goes on and never reaches final stage until death, death
and even then life goes on but with a new cast of actors.
The concept of freedom or individual freedom is not easy to define
philosophically. Some scholars define and limit the notion to moral freedom;
others to material freedom; still others to political freedom as well as social
freedom. To Betran Russel, “freedom in general may be defined as the
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absence of external obstacles to the realization of desires” 2. Freedom is
required for one to be able to choose perfectly. Once there is any external
influence on one‟s will, whether mediate or immediate, one ceases to be free.
For Marx, alienation is opposed to freedom. A non-alienated man is a free and
a rational man. However, Marx argues that freedom is not realizable within a
capitalist society, just as individual freedom is not realizable in communal Igbo
society. By and large, Marx opined that, freedom and rationality permits man
to exercise creative autonomy”. In other worlds, freedom for Marx, is
materialistic. Freedom for Mill, is utilitarian, „the greatest happiness principle‟.
Even in western cultures, the pragmatic concept of freedom is different
from existentialist concept. For the existentialists, especially Sartre, freedom
differs from ability to achieve success or to obtain what one wants. For Sartre
the formula to be free does not mean to obtain what one has wished but rather
by oneself to determine oneself to wish (in the sense of choosing). For him
success is not important to freedom. In short, the existentialist freedom does
not lay emphasis on the practical end-result as a target of freedom, but
stresses the ability to wish and to choose freely. Again, it is a freedom of an
individual, in which “man cannot avoid choosing because to refuse to choose
is itself a choice”3
Pragmatic concept of freedom on the other hand, implies success in
achieving what one wants. The scholastics describe it as immunity from
coercion. Ordinarily; men regard themselves to be free, according to Arendt in
Ekei‟s work, thus “as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free
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and to act are the same”4. Thus, the pragmatic freedom refers essentially to
effective choice”, or a desire that is founded in praxis.
One can hardly discuss freedom without making reference to the
individual. Philosophers, for ages have battled and aired their views regarding
individual freedom in pre-scientific and scientific ages, that is to say, freedom
as it affect the individual in his moral, political and social aspects. The moral
aspect of freedom stems from the fact that God is omniscient and omnipresent
and human existence have been pre-determined. Though no matter how fancy
and cosmetic the fact of predetermination looks, there is still the claim that
man is responsible for his actions. This idea is foreign to the traditional Igbo
man.
Commenting on the notion of individual freedom in traditional Igbo
community, Nze5, remarks by asking, a pertinent question thus, how free is the
individual in African communalism? If the individual is under the firm grip of
compulsion. This is as a result of his overdependence on and his overidentification with the community.
Nze answers here positively. The individual is free even through his will
is determined by his community. As a member of the whole, he enjoys that
amount of freedom which derives from the collectivity. The individual choice,
demonstrates his freedom and liberty allowable to him by the collectivity.
Though some scholars in African philosophy contend that the individual
in Igbo communalism is free, but where one considers the individual who is
part and parcel of a group and whose choices and actions are to a great
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extent perfectly determined by this group. Then it becomes difficult to see how
such individual can be said to be free. In effect, individual choice is left to the
will and caprices of the group. Even when the group chooses wrongly to the
detriment of individual will.
Edeh, is also of the view that in traditional Igbo community, members
are traditionally united by communal bonds. He states, that every member is
fully welcomed and equally recognized. Rights, duties and obligations are
defined within the traditional cultural norms. For him, taboos and prohibitions
are not seen as repressive laws. They act as checks that controls and firmly
guarantees the freedom of each and every member of the community.
The Igbo notion of freedom ushers certain qualities with both
existentialist and pragmatic freedom; and also differs from them. Like the
existentialist, the Igbo freedom upholds the value of choice or of making
choices as a basic pre-supposition. But while the existentialist and pragmatic
lay emphasis on individual as a subject of choice, the Igbo highlights
„individual-with‟ as the focus of freedom. In their characteristic man-withothers, the individual choices, according to Nze, “roll on to become collective
choices”6
By and large, the individual chooses for the community while choosing
for himself. He puts the communal interest alongside his own while making his
choices. Ayer, also in Central Questions of Philosophy argues positively in
favour of freedom. He opined that as philosophers, we are solely interested in
the analysis and place of individual freedom in Igbo communalism.
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According to Iwe,7 “intellect and free-will are the highest spiritual
attributes of human personality”. He goes on to enumerate thus --- it is by the
power of the human intellect that all these human activities are carried out and
on by man. By this rational ability man thinks, deliberates, reflects, visualizes,
envisages, understands, judges and learns. He maintained that, the intellect
as a faculty constitutes the moral and spiritual light of man. We must give fair
play to the nature of each individual, meaning that the right to liberty requires
the equal right of freedom for all persons. Be that as it may, there should be
certainly some restrictions on individual freedom, to ensure a viable communal
or even modern society.
In the history of philosophical and social thought, freedom has a
specific use as a moral and a social concept, refer either to circumstances
which arise in the relations of man to man or to specific conditions of social
life. That even when so restricted, important differences of usage are possible,
and most of the political or philosophical argument about the meaning or the
nature of freedom is concerned with the legitimacy or convenience of
particular application of the term.
Partridge,8 “Encyclopedia of Philosophy” „Freedom‟, which is an all
encompassing work on philosophy, sees freedom, as the absence of
obstacles to the exercise and satisfaction of specific interests and forms of
activities which are accepted as possessing special moral and social
significance, in its abstract nature, it comprises freedom of thought, speech,
association, assembly, worship or disposal of one‟s property and movement.
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Okolo, in African Social and Political Philosophy enunciates two types
of freedom, „freedom from‟ and „freedom to‟. For him, „freedom from‟ is
exercised when man effectively carries out his desires within a range of
alternatives without external hindrances. One is held to ransom, to unfreedom
when the range of one‟s effective choices is narrowed down by external
impediments namely, law, authority, or custom. „Freedom to‟ is man‟s true
freedom and independence. It is self determination, the ability to be one‟s own
master. In furtherance, also he believed that freedom in the sense of not being
coerced or constrained by another is negative freedom „freedom from‟.
“Freedom refers fundamentally to a condition characterized by the absence of
coercion or constraint imposed by another person; man is said to be free to
the extent that he can choose his own goals or course of conduct; can choose
between alternatives available to and is not compelled to it by will of another
man; of the state or any other authority”9.
He asserts that, freedom is not exercised only when the end is thought
of. Freedom is a condition, which exists when a man is free or at liberty; he is
not under the control or influence of another. It means when one owes one‟s
existence to oneself. For, to owe one‟s existence to another or to conditions
external to one‟s being, is to be dependent.
Hobbes, in one of his philosophical writings, published in 1642 “De
Cive” in Paris. Leviathan presents the idea of an irrevocable contract between
the citizens and the state by which the state was given absolute powers in
return for securing peace and order. His idea is that the price of peace and
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security could hardly be too high in terms of individual freedom. However,
individuals, in their attitudes towards one another, exhibit their natural
instincts, tendencies and inclinations to satisfy their individual selfish interests.
The equality of individuals gives me equally hope of attaining their
ends. According to Hobbes quoted in Anibueze, “the right of all to all, the
freedom each man has to do what he would and against who he thinks fit and
to possess, use and enjoy all that he can get for his self-preservation12. What
will then determine the continued existence of the body politic/community
depends on the relation of the sovereign with the individuals who have agreed
to put him in power. Okolo, is of the view that there is nothing like an individual
standing on his own. He calls, it “humane attitude, an involvement-with, a
being-with-others”10… is characteristic of the interpersonal relationship
existing in traditional Igbo. It usually manifests itself in concrete ways thus, in
habits of the people, cultural values, their out look, and most importantly in the
way they relate to one another. This is “being-with” in its concrete realizations
or as existentially analyzed.
Individual freedom is elastic both in definition and practice. Though
some scholars limit it: to moral, others material; still others to political freedom
as well as social freedom. Freedom in its strict form, exists when one is able to
choose perfectly. Once there is any external influence on one‟s will whether
mediate or immediate, one ceases to be free.
Communalism, is the social life of the Igbo which is founded on the Igbo
belief that all human beings are members of one family of mankind.
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Communalism is based simply on the notion being. For the Igbos therefore,
everything is in everything and conditioned by everything. As such, the ideal of
Igbo culture is co-existence. In communalism things are related to one another
through a common life namely „force‟.
The Igbo therefore lives and works so as to increase vital force and as
a result maintain the ontological harmony which is inherent in the network of
relationship in the Igbo cosmic universe. Indeed everybody is related to
everybody else and this principles is the basis of the life in the Igbo
community. The Igbo community, on the other hand is a community: the Igbo
puts more stress on the solidarity of group and on the collectivism of the
members, than on the autonomy and contribution and needs of the individual.
Who is the Africa? Onyeocha in Njoku‟s11 Essays in African Philosophy,
Thought and Theology, addresses the identify crises with the conviction that
the African psychology or psyche had been invaded and raped. Africa has
been culturally distorted, politically manipulated and socially degraded. Be that
as it may, Onyeocha borrows a leaf from William Abraham in describing the
African as the man of two worlds and simply displaced in each in a mess of
cultural confusion and ambiguity. The crises of colonial and post-colonial
period, Onyeocha believes that a decision will have to be made. To the
question who is the African? Jacques Maquet affirms thus:
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The African is the Yoruba craftsman and the Tuts, Lord,
the Nairobi mechanic, and the Ibadan professor, the
Fulani nomad and the Congolese villager, the hunter of
the great forest and the warrior of the high Plateaus; the
woman trader of Dakar and the factory girl of Bonake, the
Benin sculptor and the lumumbashi painter. This list of
differences within the Sub-Saharan African the could be
extended indefinitely.12
Indeed Maquet‟s characterization only represents a limited Africa –
Negro African. Onyeocha, concludes that Maquet‟s imperfect definition cannot
exhaust the idea of who the African is. And he maintains thus: As a definition it
falls far short of its true function of classifying the meaning of a term by
analyzing and relating the elements involved in it. At best, it can only pass as a
nominal definition that does nothing else than supply synonyms. Maquet‟s
definition fails to provide the „reason behind‟ or circumstances around . . . the
reality known as the African. It fails to provide the purpose, the nature and
properties of the African while merely satisfying itself with enumerations of
characteristics13. The place geographically called Africa is the homeland of
those of African descent. Which in Onyeocha‟s thinking, all those who call
themselves Africans or blacks can directly or indirectly trace their route to the
African soil.
Africans no matter where they live, either the continent of Africa or in
the diaspora have some peculiar characteristics. The African is not only
rational, social and communitarian but he or she, is a “being-with others”14 a
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dynamic being in the African world. The African is not a being and an isolated
individual. This concept of being with others is what Heidegger and Martin
Buber mean by “desein” or principle of dialogue and relations – “I and Thou, I
and” respectively.
Ifemesia15 observed that many authors and books on African history do
not possess that peculiar and indefinable African-ness which would make their
indigenous readers freely relate to their spirit and message. He affirms, that it
could be easier for the African historian, in the name of universalism, to
employ, as has hitherto been generally done, established concepts and
categories than to evolve apposite African modes and modalities in defining
and delineating phenomena. Nor should African, history, by its being overly
fashioned for external appreciation, be allowed to encourage the disorientation
of the new generation of Africans, who are already being estranged from their
own by the unsettling events going on around them with lightening rapidity.
African history should be tailored towards informing young Africans and all in
appropriate terminology, of their immemorial heritage and traditional manner of
living, to encourage them to have greater confidence in their own, and even to
stimulate them to take a hard look at some of their current problems and see if
the past could not help them, in some measure at least, to redress the balance
of the present.
For Mbiti16, Africans are notoriously religious. Religion permeates into
all the departments of life so fully that it is not easy or possible always to
isolate it. Religion is a vital element in traditional background, and exerts
28
probably the greatest influence upon the thinking and living of the African
people.
Each African people according to Mbiti17, has its own history. And the
history moves „backward‟ from the Sasa period to the Zamani, from the
moment of intense experience to the period beyond which nothing can go. For
the African, there is no concept of history moving „forward‟ towards a future
climax or towards an end of the world. The future does not exist beyond few
months, the future cannot be expected to usher in a golden age, or a radically
different state of affairs from which is in the sasa and the Zamani. Both history
and pre-history are dominated by the myth.
Life for instance, in the African personality is an integrated network of
artistically harmonious daily rhythm. One can now reason why Senghor dwelt
so much on the gift of myth-making, dance and rhythm as typical of NegroAfrica.
2.1 African Communalism
For every community of people, there is a time when they must
consciously recognize the things that form the cornerstone of their excitement
and depression, the things that characterize them so that they see their true
representation in some form of behaviour and not in others, their modes of
intention which when attributed to them they will acknowledge as valid: it is
more dangerous to postulate the motivation of a people, especially on a group
as dynamic, varied, and to a large extent individualistic as the Africans.
29
Traditional Africa is characterized as communalistic. Africans, like every
other people, have observed their environment and interacted with it. They
have embedded their observations and reactions in patterns of social,
economic, and political relationships represented as communalism.
This study is the picture which we have derived from experience,
research, and interpretation of the African understanding of reality in his world
and how this affects the social and economic relations of human beings in
society and within the inner recesses of the individual person. It is attempt to
give rationality and consistency to the African‟s being in the world. Then to the
tenets of traditional African communalism not negate those of individual
freedom and social justice.
Senghor, in Njoku‟s18 work Essays in African Philosophy, Thought and
Theology, describes this uniquely African trait, negritude, in its fundamental
human horizon that negritude is all that the black man hopes for, lives for: all
the values that make him live authentically in his communal world and in the
world of acculturation. Negritude, as a myth, is the ideal that all are working
for; but whether we reach the ideal or not is a different matter. Nevertheless,
the target is a movement towards a communal symbiosis and mutual
embrace.
In African world-view, religion becomes the epic-centre. In traditional
African there are no creeds to be recited; instead, the creeds are written in the
heart of the individual, and each one is himself a living creed of his own
religion. Just as African communalism is not a legislation but it is given.
30
Though there is no universally accepted behaviour, there are expectations.
Where the individual is, there is his religion, for he is a religious being. It is this
that makes the Africans so religious. Religion is in their whole system of being.
Religion therefore becomes African‟s attachment to community life. The
community is a life world where I am because we are. In the African communal
world, the important elements of individual consciousness are widely shared in
the community, these shared elements (belief, ideas, feelings, sentiments,
etc.), constitute the consciousness of the epoch. The community is a selfworld and it demands an undivided union with others. Existence apart from the
community or the universe of life-force is unthinkable. Thus, “in African
communalism the individual decides, and chooses for the community as he
chooses for himself, and the community in turn chooses through individual
choices of the members of the community”.19
Testifying to the African communal living, Swailer Sidhom argues that
existence in-relations sums up the pattern of the African way of life. This
encompasses within it a great deal, practically the whole universe. The African
maintains a vital relationship with nature, God, the deities, the tribe, the clan,
ancestors, the extended family and him/herself 20.
Religion is the strongest element in the traditional world-view, and
exerts probably the greatest influence on the thinking and actions of the
African people. Religion permeates all departments of life so fully that it is not
possible always to isolate it. In the words of Mbiti, “Africans are notoriously
religious, they eat religiously, dress religiously and dance religiously” 21.
31
Ordinarily, in African traditional life, the individual is involved in religious
activities which usually start before birth and continue after death. For the
individual, and for the larger community of which he is part, to live is to be
caught up in a religious drama. This is the fundamental, for it means that the
African lives and dies in a religious social/communal universe. There is
nothing like an individual standing on his own different from the group or
community.
There is nothing like an isolated individual or individual standing aloof.
There is inter-relatedness. What Okolo, calls “humane attitudes, an
involvement-with, a being-with-others… is characteristic of the interpersonal
relationship existing in traditional African. It usually manifests itself in concrete
ways in the habits of the people, their cultural values, their outlook, and most
importantly in the way they relate to one another.
Man is the centre of unity of expressions in his inter-relations, where
contradictory forces are transcended in synthetic complementarity. Thus he
transcends the contradiction of the elements and walks towards making the
life forces complementary to one another:
In himself first of all, as man, but as in the whole of human
society. it is by bringing the complementing life forces
together in this way that man reinforces himself, that is, he
passes from existing to being. He cannot reach the highest
form of being; for in fact, only God has this quality; and He
has it all the more fully as creator; all that exist fulfil
themselves and express themselves in Him”22.
32
This is being-with in its concrete realizations or as existentially
analyzed. African world-view is such that, its horizon is essentially towards
others. The African world is a self-in-relation-to-others. Placide Tempels,
summarizes this fundamental category in his work on African (Bantu)
philosophy thus; “Just as Bantu (Black African) ontology is opposed to the
European concept of individuated things existing in themselves, isolated from
others, so Bantu psychology cannot conceive of a man as an individual, as a
force existing by itself and apart from its ontological relationship with other
relationship with other living beings and from its connection with animate or
inanimate forces around it”23.
Plato‟s ideas in his work, The Republic, have a semblance with the
African communal life-style when he observed thus: “That unity and harmony
require that no individual should differ from any other in the feelings of
pleasure or pain in respect of any person or any object whatever. He says,
that all “must rejoice and grieve alike at the same, losses,” “the words „mine‟
and „thine‟ must be pronounced by all simulataneously”24.
African communalism is the traditional African concern for man and his
well-being. It presupposes that the family is the unit of the African community,
everyone in the community is his brother‟s keeper. For Senghor, the roots of
African socialism is founded on the family. By family here he understands not
the western mother father and children triad, but family as a natural and
spiritual union in which the living and the dead commune with each other in all
its extended roots. He states: The family in African is the clan and not as in
33
Europe „mum, dad and the baby‟. It is not the household but „the sum of all
persons, living and dead, who acknowledge a common ancestor.‟ As we know,
the ancestral lineage continues back to God.
As far as people can lay claim to the same common, ancestry, they are
looked to the bonds of family hood. Therefore, the kinship system is, as
Nkrumah points out, the theoretical basis of African communalism which
expresses itself on the social level in terms of institutions such as the clan;
underlying the initial equality of all and the responsibility of many for one.
The community is a self-world and it demands a personal union with
others. Existence apart from the community or the universe of life-force is
unthinkable. Because communal problems are shared collectively, the
problems of survival are overcome with great success. This is how communal
people create social process which ultimately recreate them, community
creates man. As a matter of fact, the African concept of man is inadequate
without the idea of shared existence. Ordinarily, one would hear the African
say that he exists because others exist. This is what Okolo calls the “human
angle by which self is with-and-for-others in participatory relationship or social
existence25. The awareness of self is not in isolation but in the company of
other. The more this awareness is recognized by others, the more the
individual belongs to and identified with the group.
This fact is reinforced by African traditional religion which is not solely
for the individual, but for the community of which the individual is but a
microcosm. This is communalism defined by Nze “as the social life of the
34
African which is founded on the African belief that all human beings are
members of one family of mankind”26. African communalism is totally opposed
to individualism, for instance because in individualism, the individual is
fundamental and the community or society is secondary. The relationship
between the individual and the community in a communalistic society is
analogous to that between pain and brain-interpretation. The spirit of
collectivism among Africans can best be illustrated by the story in Chinua
Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, when a daughter of Ogbuefi Udo, was killed at
Mbaino. She was referred to as, „Our daughter‟, the whole village was
concerned and in order to avert communal war between Umuofia and Mbaino
a young boy and a virgin was given. This clearly shows how knit-together,
African communalism is different to the Western way of life. This could be
likened to the African saying, „Onye ayana Nwa-Nne Ya‟ meaning let no body
leave his kinsman.
Another striking feature of African communalism is „we in I „ which is
embedded in collectivism, togetherness, brotherhood, team spirit or communal
spirit. This could be illustrated with the story in Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart of a
man with amputated led who went for fishing expedition, but on his way back,
the fish was snatched away from him. When he cried out the whole village
came out to retrieve the fish. This is a typical display of communal spirit.
African communalism is rooted in the conviction that the society forms
an ontological and well structured unit in which everybody is linked with all the
other members, living or dead, through a complex net-work of spiritual
35
relationships into a kind of a “mystical body”. This ontological unity makes no
sense without having, at its summit, God from whom all existence and life
draws its source and its continued force. As a result, a fundamental force in
African traditional life is religion which provides strict moral code for the
community.
It is the community that makes it possible for the individual to find
meaning and purpose in life. The African universe is not a chaotic tangle of
unordered forces blindly struggling with one another. “Nor must we believe
that this theory of forces is the incoherent product of a savage imagination, or
that the action of the same force can be now propitious and now pernicious,
without a determining power to justify the fact”27. “Somadina‟ (May I never be
alone), „Obiechina‟ (May the kindred home-stead not close), „Maduakolam‟,
(May I never lack human beings). For instance, Tempels, writes that, the name
expresses the individual character of the being. The name is not a simple
external courtesy, it is the very reality of the individual, that is, African names.
It can rightly be stated that the whole traditional African value system is
human-centered. It fulfils the yearnings of the common spirit as opposed to
selfish individual interests. Individualism leads to the disintegration of
community, the decline of shared social purpose, the weakening of the
identification of individual with the community.
African communalism, could be said to be fraternal in its existence and
relationship. This is because the connecting link between members of the
community is blood. The social aspect in African communalism is, therefore,
36
based on kinship, on common blood relationship since all know that they all
descended from common ancestor. Much like a tree that sprouts first, then the
branches and sub-branches which all come from one source. Nobody can
detach himself or herself from his or her community for the community is the
entrance through which religion, the life-wire of the people is practiced.
Another basic social unit is the patriarchal group or „Umunna‟. The
village, are linked on the basis of these kinship ties and the bond is further
fortified to a great extent, by the common use of land (the communal land),
common ownership of shrines and markets. Furthermore, the unity is forged
by the way a community co-celebrates the success or failure of any one of its
members. For instance, if a child is born, the entire community rejoices and if
there is a crime committed by an individual, the whole community rallies round
to appease the gods. This could be summarized with the following aphorism,
that if one finger touches oil; it soils the others. The entire African community
is part and parcel of the individual good or bad act and vice versa. He is not
left alone as an individual to whatever befalls him. This social relationship is
also evidenced in the usage and employment of such familiar terms as „Papa‟,
father, „Mama‟, mother, „Nwannemnwoke‟, brother, and „Nwannemnwanyi‟,
sister.
To ensure that this is not violated, when one wants to marry, the choice
of marriage partner largely depends on the family, extended families and the
community. That is, to the consensus of elders in the prospective husband‟s or
wife‟s community. For the community, the new link to be formed (through
37
marriage), strengthens the web relationship. It is the focal point of existence. It
is the point where all the members of a given community meet both the
departed and those yet unborn. Group membership is in fact very real to the
African. Thus to be human is to belong to the whole community. Marriage in
traditional system is a collective affair. It usually involves the two families
concerned, their extended families and the community in general. Marriage as
we have seen is extremely important in Africa societies. Because is one‟s
family that the living-dead are kept in personal memory the longest, after their
physical death. This is why statement of this kind usually heard from elderly
people to their grand-children who seem to wait too long before getting
married. „If you don‟t get married and have children, who will pour out libation
to you when you die‟? This (marriage) is a serious philosophical concern
among traditional African.
This is also why we see in both levirate and sororate institutions of
marriage. The philosophical awareness of the individual that “I am because we
are; and since we therefore I am”. The existence of the individual is the
existence of the corporate; and where the individual may physically die, this
does not relinquish his social-legal existence, since the “we” continues to exist
for the “I”.
Getting married to two or more wives is a custom found in almost all
over Africa. Although in some societies, it is less common than in others. The
custom cements the social structure of traditional life, and into the thinking of
the people. The more wives a man has, the more children he is likely to have;
38
and the more children, the stronger the power of immortality in that family. He
who has many descendants has the strongest possible manifestation of
immortality. He is „reborn‟ in the multitude of his descendants, and there are
many who remember him after he died physically and enter his „personal
immortality‟. Such views are predicted on the fact that the more we are, the
bigger I am. Children are the glory of marriage, and the more there are of
them, the greater the glory.
This solidarity is so strong that it does not even cease with death. It
continues long after physical death. In Africa, one hears the cult of the
ancestors, which is cemented thus: ‟Two brothers are united because they
have the same progenitors, who themselves have been generated by others.
Those who die survive only in their children. Thus a vital link, transmitted by
generation ensures the unity between ascendants and descendants.
Nor is it sufficient for the child to be physically born. He must also be
born into the group, for it is only within the group that he is fully, a man. More
still a whole series of rites accompanies the child through his early years, to
culminate in most African societies in the rites of passage from childhood to
adulthood. It is only at the end of all the initiation into life is a human fully
accepted as a full member of community. Man reaches full stature only in
solidarity with the community.
Communalism is drama-like where everyone is an active participant.
Everybody is both an actor and a spectator. This, goes to be affirmed the
saying, „that “our elders in traditional African set-up work collectively from start
39
to finish”. A house is a house of all and for all „Ulo Anyi‟. That is why, in Africa,
one often hears, „Nwa bu nke Oha‟, „a child is a communal possession‟. Also
death is a communal affair, whenever it occurs, the community or the village
collectively mourn the loss. Consequently, when there is birth, people also
collectively rejoice. Everybody plays a prominent and significant role. Indeed
many other social activities of the African people promote this spirit of
communalism. Hence we shall agree with Ifemesia, that “… Age sets were
vital institutions for fostering communal and humane living among the
African28. This is because everyone must at one time or the other be a
member of one age set. There are age-sets, for children where they learn the
secret of masquerades. This is a powerful age-set and it goes a long way in
determining how the children keep the secrets of the masquerades. This sets
also learn the techniques in farming, hunting, folktales, wrestling, etc.
Higher than these are the age-sets for adolescence where adults
collectively sweep the village square and market. Next in rank is, the adult
men, whose duty it is to defend the village in times of war, (inter-tribal wars),
construction of village road paths and to enforce the decision of the council of
elders. They are the most volatile of all the sets. These adolescent age-sets
also act as the „village police‟ in the traditional set-up. At the peak, is the old
age-set. Those in this set are primarily concerned with governance duties and
settling disputes such as land and marriage disputes.
Ordinarily, everyone knows everybody else. The African community is
thus viewed hierarchically. But one important fact is that all are solidly united
40
to each other. None of the age-set or group is independent of others.
Whatever collective decision that is taken, all sets are usually involved. A
solitary individual is an absurdity. A solitary individual according to Nze,
„dances carrying his bag‟29. An infamous thing to do, a cursed life.
For the African people, the family has a much wider meaning. In
traditional society, the family includes not only husband, wife and children but
also grand-parents, uncles, aunts and others who may have their children. To
the cultural anthropologists, extended families generally mean that two or
more brothers (in the patrilocal societies) or sisters (in the matrilocal societies)
establishes families in one compound or close to one another. The joint
house-holds are like one large family.
The family also includes the departed relatives, who are classified as
the living-dead. Thus, as their names imply, are alive in the memories of their
surviving families, and are thought to be interested in the affaires of the family
to which they once belonged in their physical lives. The living-dead solidify and
mystically bind together the whole family.
The house-hold is the smallest unit of the family, consisting of the
children, parents and sometimes the grand-parents. It is what Mbiti calls „the
family at night‟, for it is generally at night that the household is really itself. It is
only at night that the parents are with their immediate children in the same
house. The discuss private affairs as it affects their household. It is called the
nuclear family.
41
There is the horizontal solidarity between all members of a community,
who are interwoven by an extremely intricate web of family and other bloodrelationships. This intricacy appears natural and simple to the African but
totally bewildering to alien thoughts. These family ties very tightly knotted with
taboos, interdicts and cross-checks. This maintains the harmony of the group
but may also lead to furious vendettas where a member of the group has been
ill-treated by an outsider.
The basis of this solidarity is, of course, the family which is not merely
the nuclear union of husband and wife together with their children, but ties
together the families and communities of both man and wife. This could go to
show the rich in a super abundance of symbolic words as thus: The family is
the focus of existence. It is the point where all the members of a given
community meet: the departed, the living and those not yet born . . . “It is a
drama in which everybody becomes an actor or actress and not just a
spectator”30.
Among Africans, there is a meeting point between individual needs and
communal ones and the pursuit of the action to satisfy these needs is
engineered by the collective wants of the people, the satisfaction of the
extended family, the needs of the entire community. This inter-communication
between nature and man in his culture unfundamental to the equilibrium and
harmony found in communalism. Blood ties and marriage links, are generally
the foundations and fortifications of communalism. African man, Nze, writes is
42
not a lone-range in his world rather the individual is the community and the
community individual.
This African belief in „one family‟ is strengthened by the traditional
African religion which by its nature, is not primarily for the individual but for the
entire community of which the individual is but a microcosm. According to
African peoples, man lives in a religious universe, so that natural phenomena
and objects are intimately associated with God. Within traditional life, the
individual is immersed in a religious participation which starts before birth and
continues after his death. Though an individual member of an African
community might claim his autonomy no less to affirm himself as a being, he
feels and thinks that he can develop; his potentials, his originality only in and
by the community in union with the whole. Onuoha, 31 summarizes the
solidarity in dynamic African communalism as follows:
Social Unit
Social Process
Social Negative
Extended family
Village
Work
Discussion
No loiters
No loneliness
Tribe
Co-operation
No class
Chief
Leadership
No communes
Elders
Public service
No individualism
People
Common ownership
No capitalism
Priest/”Eze muo”
Common worship
No atheism
These units, and process solidly aim at the well-being of the entire community.
43
Another unifying principle is the common belief in the Mother Earth,
Ajala or Ala, among the African which is the supernatural security and the
guardian of the social well-being, the law and morals of the people. For the
Africans it is force. It symbolizes a tangible link unifying all the members of the
community. The individual who is above his community or apart from it, that is
to say, a solipsist, one who thrives on individualism, has no place in African
communalism. The individual finds fulfillment in the community, not outside it,
to the extent that „he who is unable to live in society or who has no need
because he is sufficient of himself must be either a beast or a god.
The net connections and interactions which define the social relations
of individuals and community in African communalism are rooted in their
macro-dimension in the extended family system conceived by Ruch et al, as
one in which everybody is linked with all the other members, living or dead,
through a complex net-work of spiritual relationships into a kind of mystical
body.32 In its macro-dimension, African self as a being-with is seen in its
ontological relations not just self to self but self to all reality, material and
spiritual; visible and invisible.
Although, for westerners, “being is not an essence” and therefore
undefineable, in terms of their „genius and specific differences like the
„universals and individuals in Plato‟s idealistic philosophy. Ideas, for instance,
ideas of essences are formed by mere abstraction but “being” here comprises
the totality of reality. There is however, a disagreement on how the concept of
being is formally realized.
44
Edeh, maintains that „being‟ has no formal English equivalent. However,
he demonstrates two hypothesis, namely, the „Onye‟ and „Ife‟ hypotheses, in
his effort to find a suitable African word for the English word „Being‟. „Onye‟
generally means, a person, the „who‟ or „being‟ is a subject of action or
predication. It can also apply to both human and purely spiritual beings.
„Onyeokike‟ means „creator‟. „Ife‟, which is the acceptable alternative means „a
thing‟, material or immaterial. If „Ife‟ is prefixed to another term, like „Ife Obuna‟
which now means „anything whatsoever‟. For this reason, Edeh, agrees with
those who argue for the „Ife‟ term being the nearest and closest to being a
substitute in African ontological notion. The „Ife‟ has a wider outlook and
approach; for it covers almost if not all the aspects of being and all reality.
There is a great unity of being since all beings derive their existence
from the ultimate cause, namely, God, as their creator. Life for the African is
seen in materials things (not in the sense of the materialistic conception, such
as Marx, sees it). Life for the African means that „life‟ or „force‟ permeates his
ontological universe. This life-force is active and everything real shares in it.
Every existing thing or event contributes to the universal order or harmony or
to its destruction. It does mean that both man and other things, visible and
invisible, form the great „chain of being‟ which makes up the African universe.
Thus the African has a hierarchical view of the universe. At the peak of
the pyramid of hierarchically structured beings, there is God, the creator of all
life the originator of the first ancestor, that is to say, the first fathers of the land
or the living dead. In a sense, God may even be considered the „first ancestor‟
45
Himself, thus echoing the biblical concept of man being made „in the image
and resemblance of God‟. Though this thought may be foreign to the African in
his cultural understanding.
African religious ontology is clearly anthropocentric and sociocentric. It
is in society that man realizes his full existential being in the sense of a beingwith-others. This is a genuine form of humanism different in kind from the
Western type. “being-with” is the humane and socialist attitude to life which is
the essential horizon of the African and his mode of being-in-the-world, that is
to say, his concern of man-or an involvement of man-with-and-for-others. It
may well be called African brand of humanism but it is not just mere humanism
as in Marxism or in naturalistic and even radical existentialist philosophies
which terminates its concern with man and for the sake of man and the
material universe, per se. The fundamental consequence of this ontological
hierarchy above all else is solidarity, togetherness and family spirit. These
relationships with the ancestors are more than a mere abstract genealogy.
They are a concrete and existential reality.
Next in the hierarchy after the first fathers of man, is the living-dead. He
is the „being-with intelligence‟. He has an immortal soul and a higher form of
knowledge than other living things on earth. According to Mbiti, they are still
within recognizable memory, that is to say that they are in the state of personal
immortality, and their process of dying is not yet complete. They are the
closest links that man has with the spirit world. Mbiti, holds; “That the livingdead are bilingual; They speak the language of man, with whom they lived
46
until „recently‟, and they speak the language of the spirits and of God to whom
they are drawing nearer ontologically”.33
It is through the living-dead that the spirit world becomes personal to
man. Up till this time, they are still part of their human families and people
have personal memories of them. In as much as they are within the personal
immortality, they are still „people‟, and have not yet become „things‟ or „it‟.
The ancestors and the living-dead communicate their vital forces to
man and man make use of inferior forces for his own benefit. These inferior
forces, for the (Bantu) African are seen thus; “In fact, even inferior being, such
as inanimate beings and minerals are forces which by reason of their nature
have been put at the disposal of man, of living human forces, or of man‟s vital
forces”.34 Important also, among living man, there is also a hierarchy in order
of primogeniture and their vital rank. Hence the older a man gets, the higher
he is in the hierarchy of being.
The created universe is centered on man. The present human
generation living on earth is the center of all humanity, including the world of
the dead. African ontology, is extremely anthropocentric ontology in the sense
that everything is seen in terms of its relation to man. Man is the centre of this
ontology; the animals, plants and natural phenomena (rivers and mountains),
and objects (trees and snakes), constitute the environment in which man lives.
That is what may be called, cobweb relation. And as Tempels writes; “Nothing
moves in this universe of forces without influencing other forces by its
movement. The world of forces is held like a Spider‟s web of which no single
47
thread can be caused to vibrate without shaking the whole net-work”.35 The
older forces ever dominate the younger.
The last but not the least in the hierarchy of forces, is the inferior forces.
The lower or inferior forces do not exercise their influence on themselves, but
through the vital energy of a higher force acting as a cause, namely, man. The
possibility of a lower force exerting its influence on a higher force, to the
African, is entirely foreign and unimaginable, and are metaphysically
impossible.
The whole African society, living and the living-dead, is a living net-work
of relation almost like the net-work of the various parts of an organism. When
one part of the body is sick, for example, the whole body is affected. When
one member of a family or community is honoured or successful, the whole
group rejoices and shares in the glory and vise-versa.
There is no doubt that the African ontology is deeply knitted with
invisible forces responsible, for almost anything that happens. Idoniboye,
defines this spiritual forces thus: “Spirit is real. It is real as matter. Its reality is
primordial and it is not superior at least as primitive as that of matter. In its
pure state, it is unembodied. Spirit is what gives anything its individuality. In
human bodies it becomes the mind or soul so that the individual mind or soul
shares in the collective mind-stuff of the universe”.36
We maintain that the traditional African conception of the world is one in
which „forces‟ or „being‟ plays an essential part. Tempels, who pioneered the
study of African (Bantu) philosophy in affirmation stated that, the African
48
traditional metaphysics is one in which being is identified with force. “The force
is inseparably tied to being and this is why these two notions remained tied to
each other in their definition of being”37. Force for the African is not merely an
accidental attribute of being.
Communalism, in so far as it is democratic in nature (a participation of
all for the good of all) and in so far as it is a common basis under which all the
members of the extended family operates, it is often seen as the realization of
the individual and his personality. It is a means of avoiding the sorrows which
befall an individual. It also offers the individual an opportunity to develop an
existential relationship with nature.
In an individual, one detects and locates others and the entire
community becomes also discoverable in him. Man according to Nze, is
therefore a genetic being. The individual is elevated beyond his subjective
individuality and it is necessary to recognize the universal in him. Even in his
individuality, man is a concrete universal. He constitutes in himself the unity of
simple beings. Communalism is a system that upholds wholeness as against
individualism. If it is allowed to operate in its traditional forms, will go a long
way in even cementing the disorderly modern democracy.
2.2 African Ontology
Africa represents the value expressed by one of the first principles of
being: the principles of similarity or identity. It states that every being is
determined in itself, is one with itself and is consistent in itself. Therefore every
49
being is one with itself and always behaving in the same way in itself. By and
large every being is one in itself and divided from the others. If everything is
everything else, there will be one thing since it will be difficult to separate one
being from the other; it will be hard to distinguish the subject from the object
each time there is knowledge situation.
Every being is separated from the other; and the qualities of matter,
such as colour, size and shape distinguish one being from the other. These
qualities are what traditional metaphysics calls accidents. Then matter and its
accidents individuate. Africa, therefore is a community of people or race.
Some African scholars like Oyebola devotes considerable time in
articulating the various racial classifications. Among the class of animals,
humans have identified themselves, in contradiction to others of the animal
group, as homosapiens. This classification falls into four categories:
Europeans, Americans, Asiaticus and After (African).
Although it is difficult to say which racial classification is better than the
other, anthropologists and scientist seem to settle generally for three major
groups “based on geographical isolation”, namely: Caucasian, Mongols and
Negroes. Caucasian are said to be derived from Europe. Mongols derived
from Asia, Chinese and Indians are major subdivisions. The Negroes are
derive from Africa, this include the people of West Africa.
By and large, the quest for African identify in the area of African
philosophy is fastened under the same principles. What is the Africa? Who is
the Africa? Or who qualifies as the Africa? How can an African be
50
characterized? What can be attributed to the Africa? But the question of who is
an African goes beyond mere geographical location. Africans are grouped
under Negroes or black people. Not all black people are a dark-skinned as the
people of West Africa who are said to typify the Negroloid group. Negroes are
not in one continent. Oyebola is aware of this designation of similarity by
geography and skin pigmentation when he observes that although the home of
the Negro race is the African continent, some found in it do not strictly belong
to it: “The Hamites (Berbers) and Semites who are found mainly in Northern
African do not belong to the Negro or black race. They are light skinned.
These, as well as the moors or Arabs found in the North African countries, are
entirely different from the black race. Apart from the difference in skin colour
between the inhabitants of North African countries and black race, the white
North Africans, sometimes describes as dark-skinned Caucasians, are also
separated from the Negroes of black Africa by their difference in culture and
history. White Africa is also Mediterranean and it is a continuation of Europe”.
Oyebola however rightly points that with time the Hamites and later
semites have in different degrees come to intermingle with the black race.
Even among the Negroes in Africa we have millions who have been
hamiticised to a varying degree. Ordinarily, a single characteristics such as
colour, ancestry or geography cannot settle the question of who is an African.
Besides, racial classifications do not stop at a descriptive study of the races
and the geographical locations of the races studied. For instance, Carolus
Linnaeus divided human beings into four categories: Oyebola shows, Carolus
51
Linneaus makes more than a descriptive statement, thus that the Ameraicanus
are tenacious, contented, free, and ruled by custom; the Europeans are light,
lively, inventive and ruled by rites; the Asiaicus are stern, haughty, stingy, and
ruled by opinion; and Africans are cunning, slow, negligent, and ruled by
caprice38.
The Western judgements or attitudes on Africa have been based on
mere cultural bias, which is explicitly shown in the historical realities of slavery
and slave trade. In retrospect therefore we recall Hegel‟s own description of
the Negroes: “In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that
consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial
objective existence…as for example, God, or law… in which the interest of
man‟s volition is involved and in which he realized his own being. Thus
distinction between himself as an individual and the universality of his
essential being, the African in the uniform, undeveloped oneness of his
existence has not yet attained; so that the knowledge of an absolute being, an
other and a higher that his individual self, is entirely wanting39.
In Hegel‟s estimation, there is an ontological distinction, which the
Negro is as yet bereft of: he cannot yet go beyond himself… beyond his
instinctual behaviour and posit the existence of a being outside of himself. For
him
a
distinction
is
arrived
at
through
reflection
and
theoretical
conceptualization. Ontology, “Is the study or science of reality”. Metaphysics,
we understand is the philosophical study of the realm that is to say, that which
52
exists independently of the act by which we know it; the science of “being qua
being”.
Metaphysics can be sub-divided into: Ontology, natural theology,
rational psychology, cosmology. Natural theology “ is the study of God”. His
existence, nature and operations. Rational psychology concerns itself with the
study of man; while cosmology is the study of the common aspect of visible
universe with special attention to non-living bodies.
Ontology is thus a philosophy of being. Unlike European ontology, it
aspires to break the dichotomies in conceptual vision, in contrast to the
traditional European philosophy which conceives reality in essentially static,
„objective and dichotomized or dualistic terms; hence the absolute distinction
between body and soul, matter and spirit, one being opposed to the other. On
the contrary, “the African conceives the world beyond the diversity of its forms,
as fundamentally mobile, yet unique reality that seeks synthesis”. This way of
conceiving reality is similar to the conceptual schemes of Bergson and
Teilhard de Chardin, who redirected the intellectual compass of men and
women of their time to go beyond the outer space of reality and listen to their
inner throbbing of reality. To stop at colour, matter, energy and so on is to take
the sign for the reality it represents.
The African ontology acknowledges that there are forms in the world,
but not in the sense that matter is discreet. African looks at tangible qualities of
things: shapes, colour, smell, weight, and so on as a mere signs that; Have to
be interpreted and transcended in order to reach the reality of human beings.
53
Like others, more than others, he distinguishes the pebble from the plant, the
plant from the animal, the animal from man; but once again, the accidents and
appearnces that these different kingdoms only illustrate different aspects of
the same reality. Thus reality is being in the ontological sense of the world,
and it is life force40
In other words, matter becomes for the African a system of signs that
has not the final ground for its explanation; but what is reality is part of the
whole gamut of the interconnected life force. Therefore, in the African
ontology, “there is no such thing as dead matter: every being, everything… be
it only a grain or sand…radiates a life force, a sort of wave-particle; and sages,
priests, kings, doctors and artists all use it to help the universe to its
fulfilment41.
Action is interpreted according to as it conforms or deviates from the
interconnectedness of
life
force.
Seen
in
themselves,
entities
look
contradictory, but in relation to the whole order or life force, they are
complementary. A recognition of the unity of forms that links back to God is an
expression of what we might call „cosmic-solidarity. Senghor affirms that:
Thus, for the African man is composed of course, of matter and spirit, of
body and soul; but at the same time he is also composed of avirile and
feminine element; indeed, several „souls‟. Man is therefore a composition of
mobile life force which interlock: a world of soliderity that seek to knit
themselves together. Because he exists, he is at one end and being: and of
54
the three orders of the mineral, the vegetative and the animal, but beginning of
the human order42.
For the Africans „force is a necessary element in „being‟. “Force” is
therefore unseparable from the definition of “being”. Tempels, in his search for
African metaphysics stated thus: metaphysics does deal with the abstract or
the unreal. These are but its notions, its definitions, its laws, which are abstract
and general as the notions definitions of law of every science always are” 43.
Man in African traditional life is a deeply religious being and in a deeply
religious universe. Religion becomes the life-wire on which African ontology
rests. It means that, every aspect of the life of the African is religious. Life to
the African is a process of transformation and transmutation.
Edeh, in his work, Towards an Igbo metaphysics, subjects the African
notion of being to a philosophical analysis. To the African, he writes, “being is
being”44. It is a tautology. But this goes to show that, for him “being cannot be
defined. He struggles to grasp what it is “to be,” among the African and winds
up stating it in a tautology.
2.3 Free-Will
The concept of free will, human freedom and their interpretation were
introduced into general philosophical discussions from the metaphysical
speculations of good and evil. “Freedom” has been a battle cry for the premodern and modern African since the dawn of history, and has now become
an integral part of man‟s existential struggles. One must admit that lack of
55
proper understanding and articulation of freedom by Africans creates its own
dilemma especially in contemporary African socio-political lives.
In philosophy, some scholars have questioned the omniscience and
omnipotent of God. For them, if God is the cause of all things why did he
cause things he has no control over? They ask. Why indeed, if he was so
deeply concerned with man‟s behaviour and had the power to make them as
he choose, did he not endow them with a nature and a form of life which would
ensure that they always behave in ways of which he approved? They believe
that since God has created everything, there can be nothing good or bad.
Their logic looks plausible if not subjected to another metaphysical view which
Socrates, Augustine, Descartes, Hume, Aquinas and a host of others try to
prove with the reasonableness of free will. Free will, the power to decide to act
as one chooses, is the basis of human freedom. Free will is a property of the
mind whereby, when everything is physically ready for action, the will still has
a choice of its own with regard to that action. Man may choose to act or not to
act, to do one thing or to do another. The will is, therefore, nothing else but
that power of the soul by which it is determined of itself, and by virtue of an
active principle inherent in its nature, to seek what is agreeable to it, to act
after a certain manner, and to perform or omit an action with a view to
happiness.
Since this technical sense of „free will‟ is defined in terms of uncaused
causes, it must indeed be immediately obvious that any such libertarian freewill could not be but incompatible with any universal causal determinism. In
56
this understanding, the traditional philosophical problems of free-will are seen
as problems of the logical analysis of, and of the logical relations between
members of two ranges of terms and expressions, focusing upon the big
divisive question whether the presupposition and the implications of the
application of members of the other set. On the other hand, we have all the
notions which are apparently essential to the ascription and repudiation of
responsibility. „He acted of his own freewill‟, for instance, „He has no choice‟,
or „He could have done otherwise‟. On the other side we have the ideas
embraced in such claims as that everything which happens could in principle,
of cause be subsumed under universal laws of nature.
Sartre dramatic conclusion of free-will stated thus: “That man, being
condemned to be free, carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders;
he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being .45 The
question whether the law of casualty applies in the same strict sense to human
actions as to other phenomena, is the celebrated controversy concerning the
freedom of the will; which, from at least as far back as the time of Pelagius,
has divided both the philosophical and religious world. The affirmative school
or opinion is commonly called the doctrine of Necessity, as asserting human
volitions and actions to be necessary and inevitable. The Negative maintains
that the will is not determined, like other phenomena, by antecedents, but
determines itself; that our volitions are not, properly, the effects of causes, or
at least have no causes which they uniformly and implicitly obey.
57
Hick in Miller‟s46 work, Questions that matter: An invitation to
philosophy, points out that free will is a condition of humanhood, and sin
enters the world through human free will. In furtherance, he maintains that
God could have so made humans that they would freely but always choose
the right. Hick‟s position is that where there may be no contradiction in God so
making his creatures that they always act freely but rightly, there is a
contradiction in God so contradicting his creatures that they freely respond to
him in a loving, trusting and faithful relationship. By transferring the entire
weight of error to the will. Descartes frees „the power of understanding‟ from all
suspicion that it might be responsible for error. „For by the understanding
alone (He writes) I neither affirm nor deny anything, but only conceive the
ideas of things regarding which I may form a judgment; nor is my error,
properly so called, found in the understanding thus accurately taken.
Consequently, there are no false ideas, no material falsity. This is not to say
that the will as much is the cause of error: „for the power of the will consists
only in our being able to do or not to do a thing (that is, to affirm or deny, to
pursue or flee) or rather it consists in this only, that in affirming or denying,
pursuing or fleeing whatever our understanding proposes to us we act in such
a way that we do not feel in any way constrained by an external force. Thus,
as a simple power, will is innocent. In practice, however, it is not. But for
instance the apperception of „I think‟ is a living experience of our power of
choice and cannot serve as a basis from which to infer the existence of a
substantial free ego.
58
We give the name of “will” to that force or power of the soul whereby it
modifies and regulates its operations as it pleases, so as to be able to
suspend, continue or alter its deliberations and actions; in a word, to be able to
determine and act with choice. It is by his will that man has a kind of command
over himself and his actions, and is rendered capable of conforming to rule
and answerable for his conduct.
This view simply states, that man is free and responsible, while in this
universe, for whatever action and in whichever direction he chooses to act. It
carries with it the notion of one being responsible for what one does here on
earth since man is rational and is free to choose between options of good and
bad. Man sometimes chooses to do evil and we should not associate evil with
God, since anyone who has done something wrong chooses to do so and not
decreed to, by the Good God.
It is also the existence of free will that is the cause of evil and never
God, even though God made man good, right from the “kingdom of paradise”,
in his own likeness and image. In fact, it is not God that ordained good and
bad; it is rather human deviation. Descartes view was that people should not
blame evils on God and fate but rather on the weakness of intellect and poor
cultivation of the will. The existence of will or wrong choice as far as he is
concerned is possible because men, conscious of their volitions and their
appetites, never give a thought to the causes which disposes them to desire or
to exercise their will. Our free-will gives us the power to search for almost all
that we want to know.
59
Some of our desires are the products of our nature, such as, the desire
for food. We are born with the potential to develop them. Many of our other
desires are formed by our upbringing, through education, and environment
generally. Biological or social as the origins of these desires might be, it is true
in either case that we do not choose them. And since we do not choose these
biological desires, we are not free when we act from them. Freedom of
conscience is, after all, widely recognized as an essential part of what we take
from to be, even if it is not the whole of it.
2.4 Freedom
As a philosophical concept, there is no unanimity regarding freedom.
Two principal ideas of freedom prevail in its history one which called liberal
view, a negative conception of freedom sees it as the absence of constraint to
the attainment of our desires. The other is a positive conception of freedom. It
makes constraint a condition for the realization of our freedom. This is the view
of the philosophical metaphysicians which sees freedom as a means of selfactualization.
Sigmund Freud adopted a negative conception of freedom. His basic
contention is that culture restricts freedom. His argument is a mixture of
psychological and hedonistic view points. For Freud, the only measure for true
freedom is pleasure and happiness which aim at the maximization of our
instincts, people become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the degree of
privation that society imposes on them in virtue of culture ideals.
60
Malinowski subscribes to a positive conception of freedom. An utilitarian
view of freedom, which subjects the idea of individual freedom to the collective
aspirations of the community. He sees culture as the basis of emancipation of
human specie.
The integral freedom given to man through the development of his
cultural instrumentality is objective. “It consists of a more efficient and better
founded-way of satisfying the innate biological desires of man, and in the
indefinite extension in the range of human monolity”47. He opines that this
integral increment in freedom has its demands and sacrifices on the part of the
individual.
The New International Webster‟s Comprehensive Dictionary48, defined
freedom as thus, “Exemption or liberation from slavery or imprisonment.
Exemption from political restraint or autocratic control; independence, liberty of
choice or action. “What rational beings resent are obstacle to effective
choices, more so when the obstacles are as a result of the free action of
others. Usually, man regards himself as free in proportion to what he does or
thinks what he chooses without any restraints from other people. In other
words, he is free when he effectively carries out his desires within a range of
alternatives without hindrances. One is held to ransom, to unfreedom, on the
other hand, when the range of one‟s effective choices is narrowed down by
external impediments such as law, authority, or custom.
Okolo, identified two types of freedom as “freedom from” (without and
within) and “freedom to”. For Hartman, “freedom like spirit is dynamic, it
61
progresses dialectically against its own obstacles. It is never given, it must
always be sought for”49. Freedom is the power in man to act in his own
volition. That is positive freedom. Mind as freedom applies both to the
understanding and the reason, since both are spontaneous activities that
interpret and arrange. But because the understanding is confined to a fixed
system of categories, it is less than the reason that criticizes, stretches, and
transforms the categories of the understanding. In other words, negative
freedom was associated with force and death. Furthermore, when conflicting
interests in society are overcome, individuals come to be treated as equal,
undifferentiated, and expendable units.
Freedom, according to Hegel50 is something that has to be achieved,
and it therefore would be impossible in the absence of opposition and
negation. Hence, although negative freedom in its abstract form is “a fury of
destruction”, it is a necessary element in concrete freedom. Free-will is not the
liberty of indifference but the rational organization of the feelings and impulses.
Ordinarily, rationality is not a power that could reside in an isolated
individual. To be rational, the individual must draw up the resources of an
organized and differentiated society and must be formed and educated to do
this. His will is then in harmony with the ends of the various social groups by
which he has been influenced (customs and traditions), and in civilized
societies, with the more complex ends of the state. In conforming to these
pressures and in obeying the laws of the state, the individual is achieving his
own rational ends and in so doing is free.
62
The liberal view that man is free to the extent that he is guaranteed a
sphere within which he can do what he wishes without interference from
others. Such freedom if it at all exists, be stigmatized as negative, abstract or
merely willful. Man enjoy concrete freedom when the various orders and
groups of traditional and civilized life are maintained in and by the community.
In Hegel‟s Introduction to Philosophy of History, he says that world
history is nothing but the progress of consciousness of freedom. The fact that
he takes mind as the driving force of history indicates why he insists that our
own desire, whether naturally or socially conditioned, are a restriction on
freedom. Freedom, for Hegel, is not freedom to do as we please. Mind must
be in control of everything else, and must know that it is in control. This does
not mean (as it did for Kant), that the non-intellectual side of nature is simply to
be suppressed. Hegel gives our traditional and socially conditioned desires
their place, as he gives traditional political institutions their place; but it is
always a place within a hierarchy ordered and controlled by mind.
Mind progresses towards freedom by chipping away at this obstacle.
This is the road to freedom, because individual human minds cannot find
freedom in rational choice when they are looked into conceptions of
themselves that do not acknowledge the power of reason or its inherently
universal nature. A consideration of what might be called the classical liberal
conception of freedom might prove useful. Liberals generally see freedom as
the absence of restrictions. „I am free if others do not interfere with me and do
not force me to do what I do not want to do‟. This is the concept of freedom
63
that, Isaiah Berlin in his celebrated essay: „Two concepts of liberty‟, called
„negative freedom.
Mill is one of the greatest libertarians of the modern times. Mill values
liberty above the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness because liberty
is the most fundamental of all the elements that contribute to the greatest
happiness principle. This is more so when considered in the light of the
ranging words of Patrick Henry; who famously exclaimed, “Give me liberty or
give me death”. The moral basis for Mill‟s relentless defense of liberty or
individual freedom is that freedom from the unjustified interference of others is
absolutely essential if one is to attain happiness. For Mill, freedom has intrinsic
worth as well as extrinsic worth.
Berlins writes, „If we hear it said that the definition of freedom is ability
to do what we please, such an idea can only be taken to reveal an utter
immaturity of thought. For it contains not even hint of the absolutely free-will;
of right ethical life, and so forth‟. The problem in this notion of freedom is that it
takes the choices of the individual as the basis from which freedom must
begin, although how and why these choices are made is a question that those
who hold this conception of freedom do not ask. But the individual choice,
considered in isolation from everything else, is the outcome of arbitrary
circumstances. There is a clear parallel, between this view and that of those
who define freedom as the ability to do what we please.
However, freedom for Hegel is not restricted state of interference, as in
Mill, but total state control of the affairs of the individual and social groups. For
64
Hegel, it is by adhering strictly to the control of the state, by immersing oneself
in one‟s role, as a citizen, by fulfilling one‟s role within the overall purpose of
the state that the individual realizes his true freedom, happiness and
rationality. He holds that freedom is possible only by state or community
interference with the actions of individuals, through political institutions. It is
only when one accepts his moral and traditional obligations within the
community that one is regarded as a free and rational being. The community,
like the state is an end in itself and the individuals are mere instruments of it.
Therefore, freedom, for Hegel,51 “is not merely the right to pursue one‟s private
ends within a set of social institutions which mutually restrict all members of
the society against one another, but the identification of one‟s private interest
and goals with those of the state for the development of an organic unity as an
instantiation of the universal spirit in history.”
This dialectical scheme is sufficient to show that from Hegel‟s position
freedom is thinkable only if the concept of freedom can be thought
dialectically. Freedom is not simply an undifferentiated and ineffable
experience; free-will is articulated in discourse, the task of philosophy being to
extract its underlying logic and to show that his logic is not merely a formal and
empty structure but the logic of being. For Kant, an objective experience of
freedom is impossible.
65
NOTES
1.
Andrew Uweh. Terrorism a Global Threat. Sunday Champion March 17
1986. p 11.
2.
Idike, E. Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy (unpublished
material). Department of Philosophy. U. N. N.
3.
Idike, E. Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy
4.
Ekei, J.C. (2001). Justice in Communalism. A Foundation of Ethics in
African Philosophy. Lagos: Realm Communications Ltd. P.97.
5.
Ekei, J.C. (2001). Justice in Communalism.
6.
Ekei, J.C. (2001). Justice in Communalism.
7.
Nze, C.B. (1989) Aspects of African Communalism. Onitsha: Veritas
Publishers. p14.
8.
Nze, C.B. Aspects of African Communalism p.13
9.
Ugwuegbu, A. (1970). Ultimate Reality: Man and His Existence in the
Modern World: Enugu Standard Educational Services Ltd p. 34
10.
Njoku, F.O.C. (2002) Essays in African Philosophy, Though and
Theology. Enugu: Snaap Press Ltd. p 280
11.
Njoku, F.O.C. (2002) Essays in African Philosophy, Though and
Theology. p280 – 281
12.
Njoku, F.O.C. (2002) Essays in African Philosophy, Though and
Theology. p 281
13.
Eneh, J. O. (1999). An introduction to African Philosophy and Thought.
Enugu. Satellite press limited. p80
14.
Ifemesia, C. (1979). Traditional Humane Living Among the Igbo. An
Historical Perspective. Enugu. Fourth Dimension Publishing
Company. pp 6 –7
15.
Mbiti J. S. (1969). African Religions and Philosophy. London:
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. p. 1.
16.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.23
66
17.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 252
18.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.1
19.
Okolo, C. B (1983). What is to be African? Essays on African Identity
Enugu CECTA Nig. Ltd. p 31
20.
Edeh, E. M. P. (1985). Towards an Igbo Metaphysics. Paris presence
Africaine p. 24.
21.
Placide Tempels (1953). Bantu Philosophy. Paris Presence Africaine. p.
24
22.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.82
23.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.82
24.
Okolo, C. B. Introduction to African Philosophy. Department of
Philosophy. U. N. N.
25.
Nze, C. B. Aspects of African communalism. p42.
26.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.100
27.
Nze, C. B. Aspects of African communalism. p28.
28.
Nze, C. B. Aspects of African communalism. p28.
29.
Onuoha B. (1965). Elements of African Socialism London. Andre
Deutsch
p. 50
30.
Nze, C. B. Aspects of African communalism. p18
31.
Ruch, E. A. et. al. (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. Rome: Catholic Book Agency
p.202
32.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.101
33.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.88
34.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 267
67
35.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.34
36.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 268
37.
Onuoha B. Elements of African Socialism p50
38.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.32
39.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.33
40.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.87
41.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.89
42.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 265
43.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 266
44.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
p 286 – 287
45.
Njoku, F.O.C. Essays in African Philosophy, Though and Theology.
46.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.32
47.
Edeh, E. M. P. Towards an Igbo Metaphysics. p. 32.
48.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.120
49.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.48
50.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.49
51.
Onuoha, B. Elements of African Socialism. p88
52.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.100
53.
Placide Tempels. Bantu Philosophy. p.100
54.
Mbiti J. S. African Religions and Philosophy. p.88
68
55.
John Herman Randall Jnr. et. al. (1950). Readings in Phylosophy. New
York: Barnes and Nobles INC. p187
56.
Miller, ED.L (1996). Questions that Matter. An Invitation to Philosophy
(4th ed) McGraw-Hill Companies INC. p382
57.
Hector Haw Ion (1956). Philosophy for Pleasure. A Fawcet Premier
Book. Philosophical Library INC. p.87
58.
Paul Edwards (1989). Hegel London: Macmillan publishing company p.
42
59.
Edo
Pivcevic (Ed) (1975). Phenomenology and Philosophical
Understanding. London: Cambridge University press. p. 199
60.
The
New International Webster‟s Comprehensive
Encyclopaedic Edition. Trident Press International.
61.
Peter Singer (1983). Past Masters. New York. Oxford University press.
p. 24.
62.
Paul Edwards Hegel p. 28
63.
Idike, E. Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy. Department of
Philosophy. U.N.N
64.
Idike, E. Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy. Department of
Philosophy. U.N.N
Dictionary.
69
CHAPTER THREE
MAN IN AFRICAN ONTOLOGY
Practically, every African society has its own myth or myths concerning
man. African ontology is basically anthropocentric. Man is at the very centre of
existence, and everything else is seen in its relation to this central position of
man. God is the concrete explanation of man‟s origin and sustenance. It is as
if God‟s existence is for the sake of man. The spirits are ontologically between
God and man. Man is not merely a passive element in the rhythm of nature.
He, with the help of the specialists (diviners, witch doctors, etc) and the
ancestors plays an active role in nature. He actively participates in the
mysterious forces which keep the universe going. He is not just a parasite
living off the earth. He lives in it, feeds and sustains himself.
According to Aquinas, man is not only a rational animal, incarnate spirit,
and thus free but above all a person. There is then, in nature, nothing superior
to man, Gilson, writes: “Now, every man is a person, it is his act of being which
gives men that combination of gifts which he alone possesses: Of being a
reason and person; all he knows, all he does, all he wills, issues from the fact
by which he is what he is.
It is through man that, the inferior forces in the hierarchical order are put
into active life-force. Mbiti, who pioneered a great work on (Bantu) African
philosophy, observed that, “even inferior beings such as inanimate beings and
minerals, are forces which by reason of their nature have been put at the
disposal of man, of living human forces, or of man‟s vital forces”.1
70
Philosophers and social scientists for instance, are making the mistake
of supposing that the identity of words in the western and African cultures
implies an identity of meaning. Man, for example, does not mean exactly the
same thing in all this cultures because of the basic assumptions of the
cultures. Man is man by virtue of the way he is situated in the world, the way in
which he is the centre of the world. He is man by the way he acts, reacts and
is acted upon by events, that is to say, the way he is interwoven with the
multiplicity of events. Aquinas thought on the nature of man, can be expanded
on the point with Brennen: Man is a person. When we have said this such
about him, we have paid him the highest possible tribute that can be given to a
cosmic creature. He is, to speak, the top rung on the ladder of corporeal
substance.2
Man lives in a religious universe, so that nature and its objects are
intimately associated with God. African knowledge of God is expressed in
names they give to their children. In traditional African community you can
observe names as, „Chukwuma‟, God knows, „Chukwuemeka‟, God has done
great, etc. Some names in Africa describe the personality of the individual, or
his character, or some key events in his life. There is no stop to the giving of
names in many African societies, so that a person can acquire a sizeable
collection of names by the time he becomes an old man. Other names given to
children may come from the living-dead who might be thought to have partially
„re-incarnated‟ in the child, especially if the family observe certain traits in
common between the child and a particular living-dead.
71
The African sees in man the living force, the force or the being that
possesses life that is true, full and active. Man is the supreme force, the most
powerful among created beings. His force, his life, his fullness of being force
consists in his participation to a greater extent in the force of God. Man (living
or dead) can directly reinforce or diminish the being of another man. All force
can be strengthened or enfeebled. That is to say, all beings can become
stronger or weaker because of the action of one person. Africans say of a man
that he grows, develops, acquires knowledge and that in doing so he
increases his force or vitality. When the traditional African says; “I am
becoming stronger”, he is thinking of something quite different from what we
mean when we say that our power or physical strength is increasing. Man can
only increase his force by obeying the laws of nature, knowing about the
growth of beings and their ontological influences. Because of the relationship
and interaction of beings, African ontology affirms that the action of one
person could affect other people, even the community by either increasing or
weakening their vital force.
God, for the African, possesses the supreme, perfect force. He is selfexistent, „the caused cause‟. God is the causal agent, the sustainer of other
forces, being himself the first cause – the efficient cause. At this level, man, by
the divine force, is himself a living force. Man is not in any sense the first or
creative cause of life, but he sustains and adds to the life of the forces which
he finds below him within his “ontological” hierarchy. This is the sense in which
we should understand the expression that African ontology is centred on the
72
idea of vital energy. For the African, no being can entirely annihilate another,
(man or inferior forces) to the point that he ceases to exist. Doubtless one
force that is greater than another can paralyze it, diminish it or even cause its
operation to cease totally but for all that, the force does not cease to exist.
Existence, the African believes, comes from God and cannot be taken from a
creature by any created force. This is why the African believes that there is
force which can be tapped from, all objects of created. Man for the African has
the power of knowing. He regards knowledge and wisdom as living forces,
which consist in understanding the nature and action of other forces, that is to
say, metaphysical knowledge of forces, or of beings. It means therefore that
for all intents and purposes, the practical aim of knowledge among traditional
Africans, is the social welfare of the group. The “good” is never seen as an
advantage of particular individual, but belonging to the whole.
According to African thought and tradition, “Man should be able to grow
ontologically, became greater, stronger. He should equally be able as „Man‟, to
diminish, lose his vital force and come to an end in the complete annihilation of
his very essence. This is the state of the dead. It is the condition into which
those who have passed over, fall if they have no means of reactivating
themselves through those living on earth. They can no longer exercise their
vital influences, either for the increase of life or its decrease.
Man is in relation of being to being to his God, his community, his family
and his descendants – past and present. He is also related to his possessions,
73
his land and all that grows or lives on it. All acquisitions bring and increase to a
man‟s vital force.
African ontology is opposed to the European concept of individuated
things, existing in themselves, isolated from others. It must be said that
Africans have a double concept in relation to being and even time. Tempels,
states it thus: Force is not for them (Bantu) Africans an adventitious,
accidental reality. Force is even more than a necessary attribute of beings.
Force is the nature of being, force is being, being is force.3
When Africans reckon time, it is for a concrete and specific purpose, in
connection with events but not just for the sake of mathematics. Since time, for
the African is a composition of events, people cannot and do not reckon it in
vacuum.
In western society, time is a commodity, which must be utilized, sold
and bought; but in traditional African life, time has to be created or produced.
Man is not a slave of time; instead, he „makes‟ as much time as he wants. This
is why you can hear statements as such from westerners, „These Africans
waste their time by just siting down idle‟. Another common cry is, „Oh, Africans
are always late! It is easy to jump to such judgements, but they are
judgements based on ignorance of what time means to African peoples. But to
Africans those who are seen siting down, are actually not wasting time, but
either waiting for time or in the process of „producing‟ time. Instead of
numerical calendars, Africans would call it, phenomenon calendars, in which
the events or phenomena which constitute time are reckoned, in their relation
74
with one another and as they take place, i.e.. as they constitute time. For
example, new yam festival, an expectant mother counts the lunar months of
her pregnancy, etc.
The centrality of man‟s position in African ontology could be expressed
thus: God is at the peak of the hierarchical order; following closely is the first
fathers of the clan, spirits and the living-dead. The next is man and below man
is the interior forces, animate and inanimate. Man is at the centre of created
universe. This explains that, „all being, all essence, in whatever form it is
conceived, can be subsumed under life-force. Nothing can be conceived
outside this world-view. Tempels, affirms that “man is a force, all things are
forces”. Place and time are forces and the “modalities” are forces.4
In defining man‟s essence, the essential distinction of his powers, the
nature of his habits and acts, Aquinas asserts in no uncertain terms man‟s
dignity and right place among created beings like Aristotle, Aquinas, holds that
man is a rational animal and consequently a being of two worlds; a composite
of matter and form.
Mills‟s concept of man involves a theory of human right or moral rights.
He conceives of man as a rational being with freedom of choice and with a
wide range of capacities for development. Human well-being depends upon
the exercise of freedom and spontaneity, within the structures of rationality.
Mill makes it quite clear that the right to liberty, as he conceives man, is meant
to apply only to rational beings. Ontologically, man is the peak of cosmic
perfection. Such is the exalted and true position of man.
75
In reiteration to the centrality of African “humanism”. In a pamphlet
prepared for the National Council of the united National Independence Party at
Lusaka in 1967, Kaduna argues as follow: It is our tasks of fighting to preserve
the man-centred society… (and that) we must remember that it is people
above ideology; Man above institutions. We must continuously refuse to
slavishly tie man to anything. Society is there because of man… in other
words, whatever we undertake to do we have got to remember that it is man
that is the centre of all human activity.5
3.1 Origin of Man:
Among many peoples in scattered parts of Africa, there are lots of
myths concerning the origin of man. Many of the creation myths, assert that
man was originally put in a state of happiness, child-like ignorance, immortality
or ability to rise again after dying. Marriage for instance, in Africa is a complex
affair with economic and religious aspects. It is both an institution and event.
While young, the African child is faced with the problem of marriage and as
soon as children grow up, marriage is placed before them as an important
event that must be gone through.
The general idea of the myth of creation is that God created man
elsewhere and then lowered him to this world, or for various reasons man
descended and settled here on earth. The Akamba creation myth according to
Mbiti, is that God lowered the first pair of mankind from clouds to the earth.
There are people who hold that God used clay to make man, the way that the
76
potter does with pots. For this reason, God is often spoken of as the potter,
molder and maker. The universe is described as having its architectural origin
and form from God, who is here pictured as its Artist-Chief. The Shilluk of
Ghana according to Mbiti, believed that God used clay of different colours in
making men, which explains differences in skin pigmentation.
The anthropocentric nature of African ontology pictures man at the very
center of existence, and with this, the African peoples sees everything in
relation to man‟s central position. It is only God who can give explanation of
man‟s origin and sustenance. The majority of African people for Mbiti, place
the creation of man towards or at the end of God‟s original work of creation. It
is generally believed that God is the originator of man, even if the exact
methods of creating man may differ according to myths for different peoples.
The African creation myth, south of Sahara asserts that the first man
came down from the sky or heaven and landed in „Nri‟. According to the
cosmological myth the first man wandered for days if not months. And when
„Chukwu Okike‟, saw that, the first man was lonely and may not accomplish
the anticipated work „Chukwu‟ then sent down another, this time, a woman.
And from then, they started procreating to what is now known as the „Igbo
nation‟. This is why in Africa creation, myth „Chukwu Okike‟, is referred to as
The Great Molder. „Chukwu‟, means God and „Okike‟ simply means creator.
Every life-force in African ontology owes its existence, essence and origin to
God (Chukwu).
77
In a related set of myths according to Mbiti, it is held among the Ewe,
Baluba, Maasai, Nandid, Nupe and others, that man came originally from a leg
or knee. This knee or leg belonged to some other being, evidently like man.
The leg got swollen until finally it burst, letting out a male person one side and
a female on the other side. On the side of modern evolutionary theory
concerning man‟s origin, Darwin, states that man originated from the family of
„Ape‟. This was a long historical „Process‟ which eventually culminated to what
is today man.
The Biblical, account of man‟s origin, was that God created man in his
own image and likeness. God blessed man, and said, “Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth”. 6 The other Biblical account of man‟s creation and origin was that, God
„formed‟ man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living being. And when „man‟ was found to
be lonely, God said, „it is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a
helper fit for him‟. And God, caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and
while he slept, took one of his ribs to form his second or woman. So the origin
of man is tailored towards the myths or understanding of a particular tradition.
Ordinarily, some part of African, version or myth accords to a great extent to
the Biblical account, which is God‟s account.
78
3.2 Destiny of Man:
On the destiny of the human soul and body, Aquinas writes in several
places and it will be interesting to see for St. Thomas, conscience, natural law,
eternal law and man‟s freedom can only be fully understood in terms of man‟s
destiny. The soul is spiritual in the sense that its existence and its specific
operations are notified to those of the bodily organism. The soul is by nature
incapable of destruction and cannot cease to exist with the disintegration of
matter (body) at death, as the materialists hold. Human destiny however for
Aquinas relies more on grace than on nature; on revelation, more than
reasons; for it is by revelation that the Christian knows of man‟s supernatural
destiny. But this aspect of man‟s destiny is totally foreign to African ideas,
nature and destiny of man.
For instance, Mesner
7
in his book, Social Ethics – Natural Law in the
Modern World, expresses a deep insight on the existential purpose of man
which is charged and animated by the genuine spirit and vision of religion: as
thus: a survey of what constitutes the existential end of man makes it, I think,
at once clear that our conception of the essence of morality answers the
commonest and surest human experiences.
No rational being can live for long without some at least implicit form of
metaphysics. That is, without somehow situating himself with regard to the
forces and events in his physical world which mark his existence, his
relationship with his fellow men and with regard to some ultimate reality.
Without such a metaphysical view, forces or beings would be strangers in a
79
world of which man could not make any sense. Of all created, beings, man is
the only animal which does not only live his life, but is also aware, of the fact
that he is part and parcel of it. Ruch et al., in recognition of what they
described as a peculiar African metaphysics, put it thus: “African metaphysics
is a lived metaphysics, practiced in the words and gestures of everyday
experiences”. 8
In traditional African community, birth is the first rhythm of a new
generation, and its rites are performed in order to make the child a corporate
and social being. The initiation rites cement and make him an active and
responsible member of the community. Death plays the final rhythm of
physical existence. Death stands as a „Mean‟ between the world of human,
beings, and the world of the spirits, that is to say, between the visible and the
invisible world. Nkrumah stressing the confusion between the visible and
invisible world puts it thus:
In many African societies the dialectical contradiction between visible
and invisible was reduced by making the visible world continuous with the
invisible, world. For them (Africans) heaven was not outside the world but
inside it. These African societies did not accept transcendentalism, and may
indeed be regarded as having synthesized the dialectical opposition „outside‟
and „inside‟ by making them continuous that is, by abolishing them. 9. Death is
a phenomenon that is universal to all created material beings. This is so
because sooner or later everyone personally faces it, and partly because it
brings loss and sorrow to every family and the entire community.
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In traditional Igbo African, death is conceived as a departure, a change
of state, a movement and not a complete annihilation of man. As far as the
traditional Igbo is concerned, the departed move on to join the company of
„their‟ departed relatives, and the only noticeable change in them is the decay
of their physical bodies. Their „souls‟ or „spirits‟ move on to another state of
existence. The Igbos strongly believes in the immortality of the soul. For Igbos,
this world is not a home of external abode. All men are foreigners and life here
is a pilgrimage. Most importantly to the Igbos life is likened to a „market‟, a
place where all are both buyers and sellers, who must eventually go home at
the end of all buying or selling. The „real home‟, is the hereafter. Birth, death
and reincarnation play a very prominent but sensitive role in man‟s destiny in
African thought.
The grave is paradoxically the symbol of separation between the dead
and the living. The rites of the dead involves the corporate group and the
whole community at large. The living-dead are also involved, actively or
passively, because it is they who will in turn receive the “new arrival” in the
land of the spirit. The dead person is actively received when the person lived a
„good life‟ on earth. But passively if he or she did not live a worthy life. And
according to Nze, to live a good life, “It is life that finds solace, that discovers
human essence and realization in belonging to and sharing with the whole
community”. 10
It matters to the Igbo for instance, to come to this world and depart from
it in a fitting manner. By this statement it is meant that a child is not supposed
81
to be born feet first. It should be head first. To die with a protruding and
swollen belly, swollen feet and hands, is bad death. The traditional Igbo
ontology frowns at a married woman who dies without ever giving birth to a
child. Also, to die lying flat on one‟s belly is an abomination which can only
befall an isolated and solitary individuals, who, lived bad lives. A solitary
person the Igbo will say, “dances carrying his bag”, a terrible sad life. This
clearly shows how central the principle of cause and effect or retributive justice
is in Igbo cosmology. In it, too, the cause and manner of death are important
and must be known for they generally determine nature of burial rites to be
given to the dead person.
For the Igbos, a good life, which means good death, imports unity, unity
in oneself, in the family and the entire community. Ordinarily, this makes the
dead and the living concretely united. It is a big honour to oneself, the family
and the community. The family interestingly, is the most important single unit
in Igbo culture. Bad life and bad death, for instance, causes losses to families.
The individual concerned cuts off all links with the family of man and that of his
ancestors and thereby reduces the membership of a given family.
A dead man in Igbo culture is not a rejected person, one without rights.
He is entitled to fairly comprehensive burial rites. This is the last respect and
glorification the living owes and accords him. And failure on the side of the
living to do this brings about harassment of the living by the dead, leading to
what we call „malingering spirits‟. These are spirits whom the family failed to
accord their burial rites and those who died‟ sudden death‟. When the dead
82
person is accorded full burial rites, his “spirit” automatically rests in peace with
the spirits of his ancestors. The rites of mourning serve to disentangle the
dead from the living and solidify the web of relationship once again. The
individual existence becomes a continuum of alternating periods of life in this
world and in the spirit land. Death becomes the gate-way to one aspect of
existence (external existence) as birth is to earthly existence. Both phases are
inextricably intertwined. Indeed, death is the cause of birth or life. It is a
continuum, one face of the roller and life the other.
11
As soon as a person dies he becomes a living-dead, he is a living dead
in the sense that he no longer exists in the body, though the features which
describe him in physical terms remain, namely name. For instance, if the
person who is dead was a great wrestler, farmer, such honors do not die with
him. He will still be known by his personal name, and if he appears to human
members of his family, they recognize „him‟ as such. In Igbo cosmology, he is
counted part of the family, even though people know and realize that he is
dead. It is primarily his family that keeps his memory going. Whenever he
reappears, it is to those within his household, and rarely to people not related
to him. But even when the departed person appears to members of his own
family, there is usually no exchange of greetings, which in Igbo culture is an
important social means of contact. Socially, therefore, it means that something
strange is beginning to happen and that a real distance between the dead and
human beings has begun. The living-dead are not forgotten but are, chiefly
venerated through libation, offerings of food wine, kola-nuts and so on. The
83
personal immortality, of the living-dead is wholly dependent on his
descendants.
Important, also is that a victim of bad death or metaphysical death, is
permanently dead. Such a victim receives no burial rites. In traditional Igbo
culture his spirit has no permanent place, no peace and finally no hope of
reincarnating himself. There is thus, a kind of what Nze, describes as „autodestruction‟, an expression, which inconveniently evokes the „negation of
negation‟.
12
it is tacitly held that the being of the African is indestructive. It is
without finality. Death is rather a withdrawal, a submergence of life into death
and death into life. Every Igbo being looks forward to reincarnating himself
after death. This is believed to be his right, a natural right which ensures from
the desire to preserve self or the lineage. Though one may wish to
reincarnate, but wish alone is not enough. Reincarnating oneself is dependent
on the type of life one lived.
In whatever manner, bad or evil death occurs, it invariably isolates the
victim completely from, all his or her relations and friends, both living and yet
unborn. No funeral rites are accorded to him or her. Funeral rites in Igbo
tradition are the greatest respect and honour which the living can pay to their
beloved dead ones.
To sum up one might say, “God is a good, powerful and loving father
who has created the harmony of nature for man‟s benefit”. The weakest part of
this harmonious totality of origin and destiny in the myth is the question of
human destiny, that is to say death and life after death. Almost every Igbo
84
culture has mythical explanations of the origin of death and has developed
quite an elaborate ritual connected with death and burial. Ruch et al on the
mystery of death and hereafter, which is the final destiny of man put it thus:
“No other people have achieved a precise idea of life after death all by itself.
This is not surprising since without mentioning other difficulties – the life to
come is conditioned by our elevation to supernatural life and can only be
known by revelation; this revelation … has been progressive. For long
centuries even the Jews, while believing in man‟s survival did not expect any
other retribution than that of life here below”.
13
Death which is the final destiny of man is more difficult to accept than to
explain its origin. The Igbo people, while accepting the fact and reality of
death, even its cause of all deaths. For the African man, death is due to
sorcery, witchcraft, etc. Death is seen ultimately as part of the harmony of
nature. It is not complete destruction of a person but a merely „passing away‟
into another state of existence. It is without doubt, something cruel, a painful
parting; to the invisible world. Shakespeare, for instance, writes that, “death is
a necessary end, will come when it will come”
14
. Mbiti, puts it more clearly
thus: The invisible world is symbolized or manifested by the visible and
concrete phenomena and objects of nature. The invisible world presses hard
upon the visible: one speaks of the other, and the African peoples „see‟ that
invisible universe when they look at hear or feel the visible and tangible world.
This is one of the most fundamental religious heritages of African peoples…
This religious universe is not an academic proposition; it is an empirical
85
experience, which reaches it height in acts of worship”.
15
Beyond this point,
African traditions and religions are in fact beclouded in silent.
3.3 Man as Distinct from Nature in African Philosophy:
For Igbo peoples, man lives in religious universe. God is the origin and
sustenance of all things. Man does not only originate from Him but also owes
his existence to Him. Man‟s understanding of God is strongly coloured by the
universe of which man is himself a part. Man, ontologically considers himself
to be the center of the created universe. According to Mbiti, this egocentricism
makes him interpret the universe he finds himself both „anthropocentrically‟
and „anthropomorphically‟.
Man, according to Ugwuegbu,16 is not only a mere material bundle and
that human nature is both imminent and transcendent of the natural order. He
further stresses that man is not absolutely and totally a child of nature. Also,
John MacMurray,
17
in his book, The Nature of Religious Experiences, gives
us a deep insight on human nature in its propensity to transcend the natural
processes. “We are both transcendent of experience and imminent of it. The
union of transcendence and immanence is … the full fact about human
personality… we are accustomed to find it applied in theology of God, and it is
usually assumed to be a peculiar and distinguishing attribute of Deity. We see
now that this is a mistake. The union of immanence and transcendence is a
peculiar and defining characteristics of all personality, human or diviner; but it
is primarily a natural, empirical fact of common human experience. Religious
86
reflection applies it to God as a defining characteristic of universal personality
because it finds it in experience as a given fact of all finite personal
experience.
In this same strain of thought, Niebuhr, identifies what he calls two
paradoxes of human knowledge about the nature of man, “One of them
obvious and the other not quite so obvious”. The two are not usually
appreciated with equal sympathy. The obvious fact is that man is a child of
nature, subject to its vicissitudes compelled by its necessities, drives by its
impulses, and confined within the brevity of the years which nature permits its
varied organic form, allowing them some, but not too much, latitude. The other
less obvious fact is that man is a spirit who stands outside of nature, life,
himself, his reason and the world. 18
The ideal of the western culture is the conquest of nature on the one
hand and living according to nature on the other hand. Science for the western
man is a tool for conquest and this goal explains the belligerent nature of the
western culture. Unlike the existentialists particularly of the radical type, the
Igbo does not regard the universe or the nature „ out there‟ as merely thrown
into being. According to Okolo, “Nature is the product of a good God. Nature is
not here simply and solely to be exploited, subdued, and absolutely
conquered”.
19
But for the African, it is to be venerated as the source of his
material needs, the tombs of his ancestors and shrines of his gods. The Igbo
obtains his needed material goods not so much by conquering and mastering
it as by submitting to it and venerating it as well.
87
If the Igbo makes no sharp distinction between self and the world, man
and nature, subject and object. If all these are one inseparable reality in a
world of reality in a world of aesthetic qualities and continuum, what do God,
spirit, man, nature, society, good, evil, art, magic, space, time, etc. mean to
the African in Igbo culture? This view or attribute does not reveal the almost
complete mastery of the forces of the universe found in western science and
technology, but points to a humble submission of the African to nature. The
mythical Igbo does not want to dominate the forces of nature but to live in
harmony with them for the benefit of the whole reality of which he is a part.
There is a fundamental optimism in this attitude: “a child like confidence that
nature has been created by God for the benefit of man and that wisdom
dictates that we should not exploit it, but live in harmony and humble
communion with it if we want to enjoy its benefits”.
20
This wisdom demands
patient submission rather than the bustle of artificial productivity. It assumes a
respect for the profound mystery of life and the primacy of the values of the
heart over those of intellect, of love and harmony over science and
technology. A positive element of this fear lies in its providing the traditional
Igbos with the absolute and intuitive certitude that man is necessarily tied up
with and dependent on his fellow man and on nature. To be is to participate.
No man is alone. Injury or damage to nature is a breach of cosmic harmony
and order which attracts penalties from the gods and when venerated, good
fortune and blessing.”
21
Maquet also put this idea thus: Nature, which man(
the African) can never ignore is vast and indifferent. It hurts as much as it
88
protects and the good man as often as the bad is on turn victim and
beneficiary. 22
This fear also provides the Igbos the wisdom to accept both suffering
and joy from a superior force. There is a lot of realism in this attitude. Man is
and can, only be great when he recognizes his limitations and accepts
solidarity with other beings. Man precisely is aware of the harshness of nature,
and should be more companionable to each other and try to live harmoniously
together, because he knows that only by acting collectively can he reap the
benefits and overcome the hardship of nature. Western man for instance,
culture is conceived in terms of man transforming nature to his image and
resemblance. To cultivate nature means, to modify it for our benefit. A
“cultivated man” is one who does not behave spontaneously and naturally. But
for the mythical Igbo, “to cultivate” nature is similar to cultivating an
acquaintance”. For him doing means always re-doing, (he) knows only a
global reality over which he does not have any radical initiative and in which
nature and the supernatural are closely associated with each other”.
23
All this leads to an essentially conservative attitude in mythical
existence not only in Igbo, but in most rural African areas around the world as
well. Tradition becomes a value in itself, not only because it safeguards the
cultural, social and emotional unity of the group, but also because it expresses
the ontological and eternal sameness of the real world which underlies the
world of daily experiences.
89
The myth gives to human knowledge and action ontological values of
eternity to life, a unity which even death cannot destroy. “Primitive man… is
the man of the unity which is not yet lost; all the horizons are within his reach.
The divorce between the real and the true, which will lead to adventures of
thought and of freedom has not yet been performed.” Because of the manner
in which nature is being handled in the face of scientific and technological
modern world, we must therefore ask ourselves as Kaunda did: “Is there any
way that my people can have the blessing of technology without being eaten
away by materialism and losing the spiritual dimension from their life”.
24
The
attitude of the white man to nature, no doubt, is defiant. Nature is there to be
mastered and completely subjugated in the service of man. Man for Francis
Bacon, „is the minister and interpreter of nature, though he also advised
obedience to it as a condition for subduing it.‟ 25
The aim of the myth is undoubtedly to explain the world. But this
explanation is not to be by purely empirical or purely intellectual categories,
and not even by the sense and the intellect combined, because neither alone
nor combined can these two faculties encompass the dimensions of the world.
In the world of the myth, there is no knowledge for its own sake. The myth
wants to satisfy all the dimension of human existence in its concreteness. It is
less concerned with knowing than with providing a feeling of security in the
present, a sense of connectedness with existence in the past and permanent
hope for the future. All knowledge is for practical aims. For instance, with the
Igbo mode of knowledge we said: “Where Western man sits behind his desk,
90
solving theoretical problems of life and of the world, the African creates his life
in the world, concretely and with a vivid concern for the future as far as it is
foreseeable. Where western man puts down the result of his speculations in
neat and tidy equations, which can never become a living part and parcel of
the thinker, the African participates in the event which he expresses in the
symbolism of his dance and of his complex ritual. To use a contemporary
phrase insist full and literal meaning. The African is „with it‟”.
26
In Igbo ontology
as opposed to Western analytical world, nothing is lifeless or „soulless‟.
Everything is filled with „force‟ or „being‟. This force dominates or prevails in
the Igbo universe. What the Africa experiences, in his universe of the world, is
given to him. He (African) did not create it.
For instance, what the Western man calls an inert or lifeless material
world is alive for the Igbos in this view of nature. One may hear the Igbos say
that there are spirits in the trees, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc.
Unfortunately this has often been, interpreted by western scholar to mean that
the Igbo is an animist. Nature to the Igbos should be venerated. He means by
it that “Being” or “Force” permeates the whole universe, matter and spirit are
inseparable reality. There is an intimate connection between the existing and
non existing force. This force is active. Man, animals land plants share from
this life-force and it can be communicated to things. This life-force is
impersonal and non-conscious yet constitutes the individuality of every living
force, or individual. Every person has its own life-force, and this can vary
quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Life-force is under the direction or
91
guidance of the soul which is also a force, though it does not vary qualitatively
or quantitatively. The Igbos has no definition of such forces but only describes
them in terms of their functions. The soul, “Uche” in Igbo language, would be
something like the individual will, thought, conscience and judgement. The
soul, for the Igbos is not a kind of entity or a determinate thing that goes to
heaven or hell after death. Vital-force and soul co-exist in the same individual.
The two are not independent entities existing on their own. Interactions
between man and man, man and nature, man and God, are those between
vital-forces. Superior and higher forces directly influence lower ones, while
inferior or lower forces have indirect influence on superior forces. The norms
of morality depend on maintaining, respecting and strengthening the
relationship between the hierarchy of forces in the universe. Everything the
Igbos think about and feels has to be in the image of a living force interacting
with other living forces.
For the Igbos, everything is force or shares in this force. He often feels
and thinks that all things are similar. Although this does not portray him Igbo
incapable of making distinction between a tree and a goat, a bird and a man.
Rather, the ontological relationship among forces do not permit him to see
things in isolation. In fact, Igbo ontology frowns at “I” or individual existence as
isolated entities unrelated to one another. All things are ontologically related in
the nature of things. Self and the world interpenetrate each other in such a
way that: there is no clear-cut demarcation, man and the world, this world and
the next. What the western man, for example considers as material things are,
92
for Igbos tools of mysterious forces. In spite of the endless diversity of
multiplicity of things, in the Igbo culture, there is a similarity or unity, which is
“force”. Igbo ontology holds that nature is force and nothing else. And since
everything is in everything else and conditioned by everything else, there are
no static or permanent position in the universe
27
. The Igbo universe of force is
one of transformation and transmutation. No clear and definite opposites exist
in the Igbo unitary world because everything is one: everything is everything
else.
Nature in the broadest sense of the word is not an empty impersonal
object or phenomenon. It is full of religious meaning. Man gives life even
where natural objects and phenomena have no biological life, namely
mountains, rivers, lakes, etc. God is seen in and behind these objects or
phenomena. They are His creation and they manifest Him, and symbolize his
being and presence. The Igbo people preserve in their heart the innate feeling
of God and of their dependence on Him. Such a religious feeling is one of the
Igbo values of which they are proud and jealous of. Religion therefore was not
imported into our Igbo continent.
Man is not merely a passive element in the rhythm of nature. There is
no idea among Igbo thought of “being”, divorced from the idea of “force”.
According to Tempels: “Force is not for them (African) an adventitious,
accidental reality, force is even more than a necessary attribute of beings:
Force is the nature of being, force is being, Being is force”.
28
In African
93
anthropocentric ontology, there is what can be called an interaction of forces
or beings, or cob-web relationship of forces. And this constitutes the
environment or nature in which he (man) lives, provides means of existence,
and establishes a mystical relationship with him and other things.
94
NOTES
1.
Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African Religious and Philosophy London:
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., p. 11.
2.
Quoted by Uzoma, N. E. (1995) Human Freedom in Aquinas p. 25.
3.
Placide Tempels (1965). Bantu Philosophy. London: Heinemann:
Educational Books Ltd. p. 24.
4.
Placide, Tempels Bantu Philosophy p. 17.
5.
Ruch, E. A. et. al, (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. Rome: Catholic Book Agency. p
229.
6.
The Bible Genesis: 1:28.
7.
Ruch, E. A. et al, (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. p. 120.
8.
Ruch, E. A. et al, (1981) An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. p 122
9.
Ruch, E. A. et al., An Introduction to the Main Philosophical Trends in
Contemporary Africa. p 129
10.
Nze, C. B., (1989). Aspects of African Communalism. Onitsha; Vesitas
Publishers, p. 58.
11.
Nze, C. B., (1989). Aspects of African Communalism. p 59
12.
Nze, C. B., (1989) Aspects of African Communalism.
13.
Ruch, E. A. et al., (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. p 129
14.
William Shakespeare (1959). Julius Caesar. London: Longman Group
Ltd. p. 87
15.
Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African Religion and Philosophy p. 57
16.
Ugwuegbu, A. (1990). Ultimate Reality: Man and His Existence in the
Modern World. Enugu: Standard Educational Services Ltd. p.34.
17.
Ugwuegbu, A. (1990). Ultimate Reality: Man and His Existence in the
Modern World. pp.32 – 33
95
18.
Ugwuegbu, A. (1990). Ultimate Reality: Man and His Existence in the
Modern World. P. 34
19.
Okolo, C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African Identity.
Enugu: CECTA Nig. Ltd. p. 21.
20.
Okolo, C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African Identity.
p.22
21.
Okolo, C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African Identity.
22.
Quoted by Okolo, C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African
Identity. p.22
23.
Ruch E. A. et. al., (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. p. 116
24.
Okolo C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African Identity.
p 26
25.
Okolo C. B. (1993). What is to be Africa? Essay on African Identity.
p 22
26.
Ruch, E.A. et. al. (1981). An Introduction to the Main Philosophical
Trends in Contemporary Africa. p. 106
27.
Placide Tempels (1965). Bantu Philosophy. p. 26
28.
Placide Tempels (1965). Bantu Philosophy. p. 26
96
CHAPTER FOUR
PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
As the problem which we are probing is that of freedom, its significance
is mostly involved in connection with the measure of autonomy, individualism,
personhood accorded by a culture of an individual. However, we do not mean
the kind of individual that fosters anarchy and hooliganism but which impetus
to initiative. According to Dine, “individuality means all the characteristics that
belong to an individual and that mark him out from other in a group”. This in
philosophical anthropology is the concept of “personhood” “Mmadu”. Mmadu is
created by Chukwu (God) who endows him with distinctiveness exemplified in
“akala-aka” – a physical manifestation of the principle of individuation on the
palm of every person. Igbo metaphysics allows us to believe that man is a
composite being, made up of matter and form, body and soul.
Here, what this study intends to tackle is the need to ameliorate to a
greater degree is the individual predicaments in Igbo communal system. This
basic freedom provides an impelling force which helps man to adopt some
positive individual existence beneficial to the community and disapprove those
considered inimical to his survival. In fact, we are concerned more with those
traditional values/norms which the community have used to cage the
individual. Mention have to be made of some like, human sacrifice, castesystem, killing of twins, denial of education to women, restraining pregnant
women from eating eggs, etc.
97
In Igbo, as in many other cultural groups, there are a number social
institution that constitute a problem on individual freedom. There are political
institutions, legal institutions, religious institutions, marriage institutions as well
as family and age-grade. Through these institutions the community defines
what ought to be, the values to be accepted, who is a free-born or a slave etc.
In Igbo traditional society as in other communities, the individual to be
sacrificed to an idol his consent is never sort. Here the emphasis is on group
decision. The individual bows not his will but the will of the community/group.
According to Ekei‟s work, Justice in Communalism. In Nanka; a community in
Igbo land, there is a taboo, still current, that a wife must not see the corpse of
the (dead) husband under the pain of serious communal sanctions. Then has
woman‟s sight of her husband‟s corpse got any evils causal effect on the
survival and flourishing of the individuals within or outside the immediate
family? Or, does it have any similar evil effects on the community as a whole?
If not then where is the freedom of the individual in this community?
A caste system is morally offensive in theory and practice, because it is
a hierarchy in which some groups are counted as superior to others. A caste
system may avoid social tension but it is morally offensive. Since justice
concerns the social other as well as the rights of the individual. Consequently
caste system is a negation of social and an aberration of the individual
freedom. Community makes the individual in Igbo, so much so that, „A people
that loses the king is still a people, but a king who loses his people is no longer
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a king‟. Behind the government is the nation, and nation makes government
not contrariwise.
The traditional Igbo communalism, particularly in the past, like any other
society was not perfect. There were abuses and expectations as well. The
Igbo past, as presented by Africans today may be partly false, partly
exaggerated and partly censored of its less desirable elements. This may be
done consciously or subconsciously. In some sense all history writing is a
selective process, partly scientific and partly myth. It may be the truth, but is
never the whole truth. We need our past and we need it to be glorious or at
least respectable if we are to find our identity as a group. Although we may
know intellectually that some past moral history of our people is morally
questionable or down-right evil, such as, the killing of twins, caste system etc.
Although some African writers tend to according to Ruch et al, “present the
past as the golden age, a kind of earthly paradise, in which people lived
happily and in perfect harmony. There is a bit of the “Myth of the noble
savage” in all this, a harmless romanticism which like idealised history is
necessary for the collective happiness of a people” 2. Ordinarily while every
culture has a right to praise its values, it should neither be blind to its own
defects, nor be closed to the good aspects of other cultures.
The traditional Igbo community, is a communal society which often
identifies with one‟s personal problems. This notwithstanding, one often
realizes that the same Igbo man who speaks of the kinship network as a
source of strength also confesses that it is a source of weakness as well. This
99
goes to affirm the popular African saying, that it is the house rat, not the bush
rat, that knows where the mother keeps her condiments”. Both family and
community laws expect much from the individual, and often bind him with
chains of taboos which weigh heavily on his individual freedom. The individual
is expected to be perfect and idealistic and nothing short of these qualities
would be tolerated. Sometimes actions and allegation not of his making, are
blamed on him.
Mill, for instance writes that restrictions on the freedom of the individual
violate “the moral nature of man”. He Mill argues: “if all mankind minus one
were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one
person, than us, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind…
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false
opinion, and if we are sure, stifling would be an evil still.. To refuse a hearing
to an opinion, because they (masses) are sure that it is false, is to assume that
their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of
discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Also an individual whose actions
are not in line with the community ethos is killed to ward-off its evil
consequences from the entire community. Community interest certainly
supersedes individual interest or freedom.
In a fairly democratic society, the have-nots have equal rights with the
haves in pursuance of their individual rights and freedom. A man who is lazy, a
never-do-well, finds it difficult to compete with his richer kinsmen. Class
distinction is not absent in Igbo community. There is a clear cut division
100
between the free-born and the slaves. A man because he is a free-born enjoys
many opportunities in life. He is entitled to hold title (traditional), full funeral
rites, etc. But a man who is purported to be a slave, is not regarded as a
human being (he is less than human). He is not to be associated with, and
entirely at the disposal of his master. He also has no right to any privileges
beyond those accorded him by his master. His freedom, is totally within the
whims and caprices of his master. The slave only lives to advance his
master‟s interest.
Tempels, who pioneered a great work on African (Bantu) Philosophy
writes, that cases abound where “a man finds himself accused of exercising a
pernicious influence and is condemned by reason of the illness or death of
another without his being convicted of fault or even of any wicked inteniton” 4.
Here freedom of personal defence is entirely lacking, unwillingly the accused
submits to the decisions of the group and accepts penalties inflicted, which
included banishment. Often times, this leads to death by sacrifices are often
communal rather than “individual”. In cases where a community is afflicted by
epidemic, usually human sacrifice is resorted to appease the gods. In such
cases, a young man or a virgin usually dies for the community‟s sin whether
he or she wills it or not. He or she dies for the greater good or greater
happiness of the community.
Mill, for instance holds that, we must give fair play to the nature of each
individual, meaning that the right to liberty for all requires an equal right of
freedom for all persons. Mill identifies four main sources of wrongful
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interference of the liberty of the individual as follows: the unjustified intrusion
by another individual, by the majority of the population, i.e. the tyranny of the
majority the coercive force of public opinion and by the unjustified interference
by the state. He concludes his thesis thus: “The sole end for which mankind
are warranted individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action
of any of member, is self-protection. That the only purpose of which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his
will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physically or morally is
not a sufficient warrant”.
Mill‟s emphasis on the prevention of harm and self-protection is
perfectly consistent with his treatment of “utility as the ultimate appeal on all
ethical questions”. However, he stressed that liberty “must be utility in the
largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive
being. The individual in traditional Igbo community is not even given the
opportunity or freedom to air his view in any consultative assembly where, for
example, the elders or the group have taken some definite resolution. This and
other things constitute the problems of individual freedom in traditional Igbo
community.
We however disagree with this view of keeping an individual in a
subservient position by placing him or her under a corporate society. For the
essence of freedom consists in having a free will and being able to exercise it,
in a choice without any force of pressure. The point we are making or trying to
put across is not for the individual to go out of himself and cause harm to
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others but that the individual should not be sacrificed to the group. Indeed
history has clearly pointed out individuals, who have often deviated from
customary ways and beliefs of their people and asserted their own
individuality, with worth-while lessons for humanity. Mill for instance
categorically states that:
It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in
themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling it forth, within the
limits imposed by the rights and interest of others, that human
beings become a noble and beautiful of contemplation... and
strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by
making the race infinitely better worth belong to. In proportion to
the development of his individuality each person becomes more
valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more
valuable to others. 4
An individual enjoys his freedom only where he has autonomy over his
„existence‟. And it should not be forgotten that the individual in an Igbo
corporate society owes his life to the community, ancestors, living dead and
yet unborn. He is to make sacrifices whatever his social status is even to the
extent of losing his life. His existence is constantly being threatened by these
life-forces. We may say that, the Igbo communal society by virtue of its
organisational out-lay and workings is easily likened to a totalitarian state- in
the sense that it manipulates individual choice or freedom though collective
interest.
103
In a nutshell, we affirm that, individual choice and freedom are
practically impossible, indeed unthinkable in corporate Igbo society. The
freedom of the group, which actually negates individual freedom cannot be a
substitute for it- (individual freedom). For the individual simply exists for the
community. This is clearly supported by the aphorism, “I am because we are,
and since we are, therefore I am”5. Consequently, the problem of individual
freedom boils down to this: “That man is free only to the extent to which his
actions are seen rooted in a force beyond his control, his freedom being as it
were something in a gift. By and large a lot of force constitute the problems of
individual freedom in traditional African society.
6
4.1 Individual
The New International Webster‟s Comprehensive Dictionary
10
, defined
individual thus: “Existing as an entity; single; particular; not divisible; not
capable of actual division without loss of something essential to its existence.
Individual as a concept has no concrete definition as such, in traditional
Igbo society. Aristotle treated the problem of one and many universal and
particular. In his Metaphysics, maintaining that there are universals which are
concepts but that particulars are concrete individual things. Plato, on the other
hand, insists that there are no real particulars or real individuals as such. What
is actually real are the universals. Particulars, he holds, are only participations
of “forms” or universal concepts in the world of ideas. In fact, he denies
knowledge of the material world and concrete individual things as such.
104
Aristotle, unlike Plato, is more objective in that he holds that the world is
knowable through observation. Hence, he arrives at his notion of „individual‟
things. There cannot be in nature two individual things which differ in number
alone. For it must be possible to give a reason why they are diverse, which
must be located in things themselves.
According to Ruch et al to define an Africa as a person born and bred in
Africa is really a circular definition, because one must further define “African
Stock”. On the other hand, if by African we mean a person born and bred in
the continent of Africa, then we have Africans of various physical types:
namely, the Bushmen, Pygmies, Bantu, Berbers and even whites and others.
It is a biological fact that these physical types differ from each other in
recognisable bodily characteristics.
But do these natural and biological facts make up the black African as a
distinct kind of human being? Do they give him a distinct personality?
Ordinarily, what makes a man or individual a human being is, on the one hand,
the specificity of the human body namely: walking erect, having hands with
opposable thumbs, a specific chromosomal pattern, etc. This makes an
individual a biological species. On the other hand, man‟s unique psychological
endowment distinguishes him even more radically from all non-human
animals. Man is rational and free but this typically human characteristics
combine with other psychological aspects which man shares with other animal
such as instincts, habits, emotions, sensitivity, appetites. These animal traits of
man find themselves profoundly modified and affected by their competition
105
with his rationality. Every normal, mature human being, whatever his racial or
geographical origin is, shares in these specifically human characteristics. All
these qualities make each human being a unique, unrepeatable rational and
free individual, who precisely because of his rationality and free will, has an
infinite potentiality and therefore an infinite respectability and dignity. A
complete and perfect notions of individual substances involve all their
predicates-past, present and future. Individuals therefore, are diverse
expressions of the same universal and of the same universal cause or caused
cause, namely, God. However, these expressions vary. In Locke‟s own idea
for instance, individual is peculiar: „Only I am I‟ and its properties are
inalienable. The labours of my body cannot be shared.
On the other hand, while human nature and its dignity is universal and
common to all men, each human person is also a particular mix of all the
elements which go into his making. This particular mix determines his
individual personality, for instance, character and temperament and his
physical individuality. Physically people differ from each other in size., weight,
age, health, speed of reaction, resistance to fatigue, blood group, etc. These
individual differences are partly due to physical and psychological inheritance.
To greater extent, however, the psychological characteristics of a person are
also formed by social influences and pressures, education, environment, mode
of life, etc. the character and personality of an individual are molded by his
complex mixture of influence, and yet, man is not entirely determined by them.
His rationality and free will enable him to make a greater or lesser use of each
106
of his inherited and or acquire potentialities. The individual can make free
options and choices of values. It means that centuries of cultural and social
pressures on a group (as to what is obtainable in Igbo African communal
setting). Do produce value priorities and hence character traits which tend to
become dominant throughout the life of the group, even though many
individual within the group may not precisely fit the pattern. Ruch et al
observed that: “Culture is a racial reaction of this milieu tending towards an
intellectual and moral balance between man and his milieu. As the milieu is
never more immutable than race, culture because a perpetual effort towards a
perfect balance, a divine balance. Education is the instrument of culture it
consist for the child in the acquisition of experience accumulated from
previous generations in the form of concepts, ideals, methods and techniques.
For Ostwald in Chuta‟s work, Culture, Concept and Application for Normative
Development, defined culture as that which distinguishes man from animal”7
On the concept of individual, there are many different aspects of our
nature that can be singled out as particularly significant depending on our aim
and point of view. This fact is witnessed by the use of such expressions as
Homo politicus, Homo aeconomicus and Homo faber 8. In freedom, the aim is
to work out a conception which is congenial to the most deep-seated Igbo
communal system. The point of doing this is to see whether we can resolve
the conflicts therein; namely, caste system, human sacrifice on the way basic
traditional social institutions should be arranged if they are to conform to
individual freedom.
107
Individualism is a concept which have been variously used and
misunderstood by many. In political philosophy, individualism is a theory of
government according to which “the good of the state consist in the well-being
and free initiative of the component members”.9 Individualism, it should be
noted, is by no means identical with egoism, though egoism is always
individualistic. This is a clear manifestation that “A” may imply “B” but it does
not have to be identical with or equivalent to it. A person who is an individualist
may also be a conscientious altruist. He is only opposed to interference with
individual freedom wherever, in his opinion, it can be avoided. Lewis, writes,
that man is a distinct individual and has his own distinctiveness. The New
International Webster‟s Comprehensive Dictionary10 defines “Individualism
thus: The quality of being separate; personal independence in action,
character, or interest; A personal peculiarity; idiosyncrasy, A tendency or
attitude, in religion, ethics or politics, favouring the liberty of the individual
opposed to socialism, totalitarianism.
4.2 Community
Every community faces the problem generated by human experience,
namely, the duality of the self and the world; individuality and universality; one
and many; time and eternity freedom and necessity. The solution a given
culture proposes to this problem determines its normative theory, its social and
religious doctrines. In the social context, the metaphysical question can be
formulated thus: what relationship exists between the individual and
108
community? The relationship between the individual and community produces
the cultural doctrine. The problem cannot be resolved by interviewing all
individuals within the culture, but rather by examining the nature of things
within the belief-system of the culture. Webster‟s International Dictionary11
defined community thus: “The people who reside in one locality and are
subject to the same laws; an have the same interest.
What is easily said about in Igbo metaphysics is that its horizon is
essentially towards others. According to Okolo, it is self-in-relation-to-others, a
being-with-others. In traditional Igbo society, individuals become real only in
relationship with others, in a community or group. It is the community which
makes the individuals, to the extent that without the community, the individual
has no existence. Consequently the African is not just a being but a beingwith, a being-with-others. The African self Okolo, writes is “defined in terms of
„we-existence‟
just
as much as „we‟ in „I-existence‟ through social
interactions‟. 12
In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except
corporately. He owes his existence to other people, including those of past
generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole. The
community in Igbo, must therefore make, create or produce the individual; for
the individual depends on the corporate group. Physical birth for instance is
not enough. The child must go through the rites of incorporation so that it
becomes fully integrated into the entire society. Just as God made the first
man, as God‟s man, so now man himself makes the individual who becomes
109
the corporate or social man. It is a deeply religious transaction. It is only in
terms of other people does the individual become conscious of his own being,
his own duties, his privileges and responsibilities towards himself and towards
other people.
The Igbo believes that everything in the universe is a life-force, that
there is a hierarchy of forces; and that all forces are in constant interaction. He
also believes that the universe of force is centred on the self. That the nature
of things requires that all forces be strengthened and not weakened; that the
individual should be seen in the light of the whole and that meaning,
significance and value depend on the art of integration. The normative theory
of Igbo culture embodies these beliefs. Culture is a product of man, lived and
cherished as an interpretation of mode of being or situating-in-the world. So it
should be emphasised that culture is man-made… a human construct. It is an
idea of man. Ideas live in the minds of men. Ideas change because human
beings change, hence culture can change or be modified. Culture like every
other product of man‟s idea, is not static or close-ended. It is open – ended.
Every normal individual has three levels of existence namely: as an
individual, as a member of a group and as member of the community. The
Igbo culture fuses these three levels together through the belief that all forces
are perpetually interacting with one another and interpenetrating each other.
There is nothing like a solitary individual in a cultural scheme of Igbo reality.
The life of the individual is the life of the whole community because what each
life-force does affects the whole web of social, moral and ontological lives.
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While the individual strives to satisfy his personal desires and to develop his
abilities, he must see all his efforts as aspirations in the light of the whole. The
normative theory determines the extent to which the individual can achieve an
„inner equilibrium‟ and support the well-being of community. On the third level
of existence, which is the communal one, the individual acquires a new life
and meaning. Here the „I‟ become „we‟. This level is achieved because the
individual mind is elevated to ideals, which lie even beyond conscious
understanding. Beliefs in ancestors, in the „living-dead‟ and the future
generations and in God who is the creator and sustainer of the community
make the synthesis of the individual and the whole community possible.
Without spirit for instance, life is empty. The individual, society and the
universe are permeated by spirit. Spirits are forces that create order and
disorder, strength or weakness. Spirit embraces the power of beliefs, ideals
and thought. It constitutes the source of inspiration, vitality and possibilities.
Spirit for Igbos is the source of authority, of law and of integration. Spirit
maintains the unity of vital process that is to say, “individual, family, group,
community and all expressions of life”. Spirit adds depth and cohesion to life.
As a unifying vital principle, it creates the awareness of a wider and deeper
content of life and, with this standard, human activity and achievement are
evaluated. The spirit is the vital force that creates a community of people. The
community is not the number of the individuals in a society. “To be a man is to
be born into a community of spirit”.13 Every individual has to manifest the
community in him or her by sharing from and in the collective beliefs and task.
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Anyanwu in his celebrated essay defined, community thus: “community is the
product of common faith, not common fact”
14
. It is only through the spirit can
solidarity between the past, present and future generations be achieved. The
making of a King or a Chief shows the extent to which the power of the spirit is
regarded as the necessary principle of authority, truth, order, harmony, and
strength. All is directed towards one thing- „communal spirit‟. He directly
becomes a spiritual leader (not because he is a Priest), but because the
community is governed by the spirit.
Even though the Igbo spirit lays emphasis on the community spirit; the
community is not a tyrant. The awareness of individual selfhood, position and
circumstances is not absent. Consequently, the community is not the only
reality. The individual (a life-force in relation to other life-forces), is also a
reality. What the Igbo call their heritage includes the works and contributions
of individuals in a community. It is therefore impossible to abolish either the
individual or the community.
The spirit of community requires a lot of sacrifice to uphold human
dignity. The community of people, through its awareness (that is, intuitive
awareness), and insight into the nature of things knows what kind of sacrifice
that collective living demands. Ordinarily, the initiation rites and ceremonies
the offering of sacrifices to ancestors, spirit and God, are religious and
psychological mechanisms for strengthening and maintaining the precarious
equilibrium between individual and community. When things go wrong, the
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people change themselves, not nature or the world, because self-order is
world-order and not the other way.
Within the communal spirit, the individual had the obligation and duty to
work and live for the whole. The whole is not an abstraction imposed on the
people by the dominant few. Rather, it is the creation of the spirit which time
and usage have tested and found worthy of man‟s pursuit. The individual,
seeing himself in the spirit, not from the arbitrary dictates of elected officials
(as to what is obtainable in modern world). Justice comes from the will to do
right, not from envy. Civilization, within the context of the „Communal Spirit‟, is
the work of the spirit which embodies itself in the beliefs, aims and institutions
of the people. The Igbo artistic works express the civilization shaped by the
spirit. The Igbo is not a spiritualist, a materialist or a rationalist, but rather a
vitalist. He wants life, more and more life, and this embraces all aspects of
human experience, values and possiblities.15
Spirit is what constitutes the whole man, not a part of his faculty.
According to Anyanwu, man cannot act and live without faith. This is why
religion permeates all vital activities. Living is initiation or a spiritual passage
from one level of life to another. Initiation rites are ways of gaining contact with
and sharing in the continuum of vital experience. Such rites enhance the
community as an environment for human development and as an organic
symbol of the universe. The community confers on man his personality. Living
in the community of ordered relationships implies that order and unity are
expressed by adequate symbols which depict the idea of life and its process in
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relation to this order and this unity. In the community, and through symbols
and individual and social psychology are integrated and elevated to the realm
of the ancestors and of God.
The community is the spiritual environment where the drama takes
place. The purpose and meaning of life depend on the development of the
whole, the duty to work for the whole and the obligation to live for the whole.
Any act that militates against the norms of the community is like „a
metaphysical contagion‟ which affects the land, the community, the family, the
past and future generations and the whole universe. 16 In Igbo cosmology,
there is unity in development and continuity in change. Nothing is static in the
universe of life-force. Both unity and diversity are the necessary conditions of
reality. The unity of individual satisfaction and freedom lies in the social ethos
of the community.
In such a community individual interests and the interests of the whole
are in harmony. In choosing to do my duty I choose freely because I choose
rationally, and I achieve my own fulfilment in serving the objective form of the
universal, namely; the community. This is because customary law is embodied
in the concrete institutions of the community. It ceases to be abstract and
empty. It prescribes to the individual, the specific duties of my role in the
community.
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4.3 Status of the Individual
In the concept of individuality the opposition of the universal and the
particular is conceived as the source of the power of the will to determine
itself. At the same time, the will involves the ability to determine oneself in
respect to a limited end; this second characteristic of the will is that of
particularity; here, the will becomes something determined. Finally, will is the
union of these two moments: (by a certain indeterminacy and the ability to
determine oneself). It is the particularity reflected into oneself and in this raised
to universality, that is, to individuality.
One of the most re-occurring problems in Philosophy almost as old as
the enterprise itself is the nature of self, its status, and place in nature. One
easily recalls the classical confession of Socrates,
myself.
17
“I
can‟t as yet know
However, in modern times, Descartes more than any other thinker
re-echoed the problem with renewed urgency, in what was termed his soulsearching question, “what then have I previously believed myself to be? I
believed that I was a man,
he answered. But what is man”? 18 Kant‟s
Copernican Revolution threw back the burden of self-inquiry upon the inquiring
self by regarding the anthropological question”, “what is man”?
The search for self-knowledge has indeed become a challenge in
practically all philosophical systems. “An interest in Philosophy should include
an interest in the self is the firm conviction of Socrates. Though in spite of
divided interests in philosophical inquires these days, the problem of selfknowledge or understanding of self still commands a lot of attention and
115
importance among philosophers. Although, the major thrust of this wok is
indeed to articulate the notion of social self in African philosophy. We have
already seen the essence of the African‟s Cosmic vision which is, that the
universe is not something discrete but a series of interactions and
interconnections of forces. This is equally the mode of undersigning self
Tempels, expresses it thus: “Opposed to the European concept of individuated
things existing in themselves, isolated from others, so Bantu psychology
cannot conceive of man as an individual, as a force existing by itself and apart
from its ontological relationship with other living beings and from its connection
with animals or inanimate forces around it”.
19
In fact, individuals only become real in their relationships with others, in
a community or a group. It is the community which makes the individual to the
extent that without the community, the individual has no existence. In Igbo, “I
am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am”. 20 And adaptation of
Descartes‟ “Cogito Ergo Sum.”
Tom Mboya of Kenya also stresses African self as essentially social, a
being-in-community. Most African believes that, Africans “have a communal
approach to life. A person is an individual only to the extent that he is a
member of a clan, community or a family. For Nyerere the African is born
socialized. Just as Bantu (Black African) ontology Man never appears as an
independent entity. Every man, every individual form a link in the chain of vital
forces, a living link, active and passive, joined from above to the descending
line of his ancestry and sustaining below him the line of his descendants.
21
116
Every individual feels the need to identify with a group of people. Just
as an individual normally treasures his own personality and may criticize those
who are not like him, so also do people, as social animals, value their
membership of a human community. Aristotle, rightly observed that only a
beast or a god is made to live a life of solitude without the emotional support of
being able to identity with a group. Such a life is unthinkable in Igbo communal
life, it is a negation of negation. Also, Maritain in defining a notion observes as
thus: “a community of people who become aware of themselves as history has
made them who treasures their own past, and who love themselves as they
know or imagine themselves to be, with a kind of inevitable introversion”. 22 It is
therefore not out of place that an individual will tend to resent criticism not only
of his own character, but also of the personality, real or imagined, of his
community. Senghor, summarizes it thus: “A nation that refuses to keep its
rendez-vous with history, that does not believe that it bears a unique heritage
that nation is finished, ready to be placed in a museum. The Negro- African is
not finished before he even gets started.” 23 The question of „individual identity‟
or „collective personality‟ could have been saved if these concepts had been
used by all with a greater degree of clarity and if a sharper distinction had
been maintained between:
i.
what constitutes man as man in common with the whole human species
and what determines his particular individual or collective „personality‟,
117
ii. what are the constitutive potentials of man as man and what are the
results of value options and priorities with individuals and societies may
accord to various elements of man‟s complex constitution: and
iii. what particularities are due to genetic particularities or limitations or
deficiencies and what is the result of historical and cultural factors. 24
The Igbo is not just a being but a being-with-others. The self, or the I, is
defined in terms of “we-existence” just as much as “we” in “I existence”
through social interactions. It is no doubt, that individuals appear passing away
in the treatment of self by many philosophers. The status of man vis-à-vis his
contribution to universal harmony should be on the basis of his traditional
culture, consist in referring the unity of man and the world by linking the flesh
to the spirit, man to fellow man, the pebble to God.
118
NOTES
1.
Ekei, J.C. (2001) Justice in Communalism. A Foundation of Ethics in
African Philosophy. Lagos: Realm Communications Ltd p125.
2.
Ruch E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. Rome: Catholic
Book Agency p. 217.
3.
Placide Tempels (1953). Bantu Philosophy Presence Afracaine. pp 48 –
49.
4.
Okolo, C.B. (1983). What is to be Africa? Essays on African Identity.
Enugu: CECTA Nig. Ltd. p.4
5.
Mbiti, J. S. (1995). African Religions and Philosophy. London:
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd p. 1
6.
Ruch E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. Rome: Catholic
Book Agency p. 217.
7.
The
8.
Ruch E.A. et al. (1981) African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p181
9.
Chuta, S.C. (1992) Culture Concept and Application for Normative
Development. Awka: Mekslink Publishers Nig. p8
10.
Patridge, P. H. (1967). „Freedom‟ Encyclopaedia (ed) Paul Edwards
Vol. 14. pp. 486.
11.
The New International Webster‟s Comprehensive Dictionary
12.
Rawls, J. (1893). Political Liberalism. Expended edition Columbia
University Press. New York. p.300
13.
The New International Webster‟s Comprehensive Dictionary
14.
Okolo, C. B. (1983). What is to be African? Essay on African Identity.
Enugu: CECTA Nig. Ltd. p. 6
New International Webster‟s
Encyclopaedic Edition.
Comprehensive
Dictionary
119
15.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p376
16.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p374
17.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p374
18.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981) African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p181
19.
Okolo, C.B (1993) African Social and Political Philosophy. Selected
Essays. Nsukka: Fulladu Publishing Company. p116.
20.
Okolo, C.B (1993) African Social and Political Philosophy. Selected
Essays. p117
21.
Okolo, C.B (1993) African Social and Political Philosophy. Selected
Essays. p117
22.
Mbiti J. S. (1995). African Religions and Philosophy. p. 214
23.
Okolo, C.B (1993) African Social and Political Philosophy. Selected
Essays. pp124 – 125
24.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An Introduction to the Main
Philosophical Trends in Contemporary Africa. p183
120
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Igbo society is at least a collectivist society, bringing together into a
collectivist a number of individuals, who remain individuals in a society is quite
different from the western society. Igbo society is a community. The Igbo puts
more stress on the solidarity of the group and on the communion of the
members than on the autonomy and the contributions and needs of the
individuals. Though, this is not to say that it totally neglects the person, but
rather that it does not primarily conceive the person as an individual but as a
member of a kind of mystical body in which the individual can achieve his full
development, his originality and his potential. Indeed, this Igbo community
goes beyond the individual human members, since it involves a communion
with all beings in the universe man, God, animals, plants, stones a perfect
balance, a divine balance. For instance, “Education is … the instrument of
culture. It consists in the acquisition of experience accumulated from previous
generations in the form of concepts, ideas, methods and techniques” 1.
Since the individual cannot be separated from nature (a culturally
conditioned environment), and community, all are one single aesthetic quality
within which exist both freedom and necessity. In the world of aesthetic
events(dynamic and living world), to be man is to constantly develop and
strengthen the relationship among all forces (religious, moral, aesthetic,
linguistic, communal, political and mental). It would be totally unimaginable,
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alien and inappropriate to say that a person or community had “developed”. In
the Igbo world of events, every thing everyone is always “developing”.
What does freedom mean to a unitary man who sees himself as an
inseparable part of the universe, of nature and of community? The awareness
of freedom does not even arise because he feels already free. To maintain
that freedom, he develops the sense of duty and the obligation to live and
work for the whole. Individuals and nations demand one form of freedom or
another solely because they have lost it. From what does the individual need
freedom? It cannot be freedom from God, life, spirit, the universe, the
community, and past and future generations. Such an individual does not
even exist and if he did, he could not develop. The Igbo does not ask for
freedom from the life force or symbol mediating his life. Being conscious of the
fact that he lives in a community, he has to develop the sense of duty and
obligation to maintain the community, because the well-being of all is his own
well-being. Freedom is not possible in a community where individuals pursue
personal desires to the detriment of the general well-being. The reconciliation
between the imperatives of freedom and individual interests is possible in a
community because the community does not exist outside the individual
himself. He (individual) contains the community and is contained by it.
Communal people feel a bond of identity because their ways of life are those
of the divine order, that is, the nature of things. The individual in the
community is a microcosm of the universe. He regards himself as the agent of
„collective humanity‟. The Igbo is keenly aware that the community is a web of
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relationships with God, spirit, ancestors, past and future general, etc. He could
free himself from all these obligations and responsibilities and thereby
proclaim his freedom, that is, if one has to think of individual freedom. But he
knows that his life would be inauthentic and that the freedom he achieves by
not living according to the nature of things would ultimately work against his
own development. From his conception of the self, the universe, the
community and the spirit, to defy social order (an inseparable part of the
cosmic and divine order) would be to assault his own existence both as an
individual and as a social being. The bond of unity constitutes his standard of
social good. The first principle of his freedom is unalienated existence. For an
alienated man is a man without freedom of any kind. Freedom arises from the
awareness, which communal people have about their social nature. Within this
freedom and the bond of unity which it implies, the purpose of the community.
A community of people does not talk of rights, equality and freedom but of duty
and responsibility to God, life and the people.
To be unfree means to be individually and collectively in disharmony
with the order of nature which effectively affects the order that is, ontological
order itself. The breaking of a taboo for instance, is seen as endangering the
ontological equilibrium of the group: the perfect harmony which ought to exist
in and between the physical, social and religious dimensions of and which
constitutes the ontological locus of man‟s conscience is over-shadowed by the
impact which his act will have on the existential harmony of the group.
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Here, “freedom” is made on the principle of “I am because we are”. The
individual survival and flourishing is seen in the context of communal survival.
“Freedom is based on cooperation, sympathy and peaceful coexistence are
devices for securing the necessities without the survival of the community is
threatened”. Thus, the individual freedom takes into consideration the welfare
of the kindred, and of the community at large. This goes to confirm the primacy
of the community over the individual, more so, because no individual man
however great can win judgement against the community. There is no
meaningful legal adjudication against the community stand. “Individual is one
with his own community, and his freedom as one with his community is similar
to his freedom as an individual”.2
In traditional Igbo society an individual who die of a protruding stomach
is not buried but thrown into the evil forest. It is a common knowledge that
female are denied the opportunity of education. A woman who gives birth to
twins is sure to face the traditional music of death (death of both mother and
the twins). This is the area we are looking at the individual freedom in Igbo
communal setup.
In Igbo culture, “to be is to participate”. No man is alone. This fear also
provides for the wisdom of accepting both suffering and joy as they come to us
from a superior force. There is a lot of realism in this attitude: man is great
when he recognizes his limitations and accepts his solidarity with other beings.
Dependence is the normal condition of man and fear is the consequence,
although a vitiated consequence, of his human condition. However, let us not
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romanticize life under the pressures of mythical beliefs, nor should we
romanticize nature, which can be exceedingly harsh and insensitive. Precisely
because of this awareness of the harshness of nature, men are more
companionable and take the trouble to live harmoniously together, because
they know that only by acting together can they reap the benefits of nature.
Fear also leads to the conviction that there exists an invisible world which acts
on the visible world, a conviction which can although be found in all cultures,
but which is particularly vivid and influential in the traditional African world.
To do wrong in Igbo communal set-up means not merely to be
individually in disharmony with the order of nature without effectively affecting
the order itself, but rather to harm and disorganize this order itself. Breaking a
taboo is seen as endangering the ontological equilibrium of the group: the
perfect harmony which ought to exist in and between the physical, social and
religious dimensions of life and which constitutes the ontological locus of
man‟s conscience is over-shadowed by the impact which his act will have on
the existential harmony of the group. Crime is not to be punished by some
legally determined penalty, but will automatically result in some physical effect
harmful to the individual, his relatives or the clan as a whole. If the doer has
not properly performed the mythical liturgy, and since every act has a ritual
dimension, the normal effects expected from this act will not be forth-coming.
There will be sickness, deaths, drought, storms or other disasters, unless this
evil effects are thwarted by opposite and more powerful magical rites.
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Now the most immediately felt aspect of the order of nature and the one
which most intimately and continuously affects man‟s life is the social order as
lived in the family and the community. It is therefore essential that man should
do nothing that would destroy the harmony of his group, but, on the contrary,
all this actions should positively contribute to this harmony.
It is very important at this juncture, to ask a pertinent question, namely,
how free is the individual in Igbo communalism? If the individual is totally
under the firm grip of a compulsion by his over dependence on and his over
identification with the community does he possess his liberty and freedom
where liberty in the words of Locke, consists in the absence of external
constraints.
The individual is not free where his will and choice is determined by his
community. As a member of the corporate group he, only enjoys that amount
of freedom which cannot stop the existence of the whole. In marriage, the
individual operating within the dictates of his culture, as a part of a whole does
not demonstrate any freedom of choice and liberty except that which is
allowable to him by the corporate group. The individual, just like man in Marx,
class society is alienated from his society and his other man.
The „caste-system‟ in Igbo communal society, is a replica of „class
society‟ system that is, obtainable in capitalist society. It may be argued that in
every community, especially in advanced industrial communities, thus: the
choice of the individual is ultimately that of the community and each
community exerts enormous control over its members. The community
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appropriates the individual and his activities, controls and dominates him. Igbo
communalism could be regarded as a social democracy in principle where
individuals are unequally treated. The individual is swallowed and totally
submerged in African communalism. There is curtailment of his rights and
liberties. Moreover, the individual resigns his natural right to the community or
the public, which presumably must be some kind of entity if it can receive a
grant of power. On the other hand, right is lodged, necessarily according to
Locke‟s theory, evenly in the hands of individuals until they resign it. Yet he
regarded this surrender of individual right as condition against both society
and government, for individual power is resigned “only with an intention in
every one the better to preserve himself his liberty and property, and society
itself is “obliged to secure every one‟s property”.3
For Locke all individuals are endowed by their creator with a right to life,
liberty and estate, aside from all reference to their social and political
associations, is certainty not a proposition for which any empirical proof can be
given. In Igbo communalism, there is nothing like individual catastrophe.
Shared experience is generally, in vogue. Communal and not personal or
individual interest weighs more in the estimation of the Igbo. If there is
individual freedom, why should the community suffer for the wickedness and
crime of the unjust. Communalism stifle and restricts individual freedom.
Because the part cannot be greater than its whole, in other words the
individual cannot be greater than the corporate group. Therefore, there is no
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individual freedom, because the existence of corporate freedom does not
tantamount to „individual freedom‟.
After all God who created all being gave every individual the reason
and intellect to either accept or doubt His being that is either/or. Either accept
whole heartedly or not. Individual freedom should not be chained under any
disability based on any unjustifiable ground namely, social pressures, religious
cum customary obligation/duties.
Every man has the right to be himself, unique and different from all
others. Every people have the right to its own collective soul: the right to be
different. This right is based on the natural evolution of a people, its history, its
wise men and heroes, its culture, its values. But every man lives in a society
and every people lives in greater fraternity of man kind. The social nature of
man and universal specific unity of man kind demand that each man and each
people freely subject their personal and collective freedom to the law of
harmony with other freedoms. A forced subjection does not respect the
essential nature of man and is therefore morally wrong, whoever may be the
subjecting force.
On the other hand, if the public or the community really has a unitary
quality of its own, there is no a priori reason why its decision must always be
made by a numerical majority. The individual in traditional Igbo society is an
„imprisoned individual‟ because nothing is done out of his own conviction. The
Igbo community does not at all consider the individual‟s interest in pursuance
of its own collective ends. African communalism with their close knitted
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corporate life, the individual is submerged, as regards his ideals, aspirations
and freedom of choice. In effect, the individual existence is at the „mercy‟ of
the group or community. Mbiti, writes: It is paradoxically the centre of love and
hatred, of friendship and enemity, of trust and suspicion, of joy and sorrow, of
generous tenderness and bitter jealousies. It is paradoxically the heart of
security and insecurity, of building and destroying the individual and the
community.”4
Everybody knows everybody else. A person cannot be individualistic,
but only corporate. Every form of evil, misfortune, every illness and sickness,
every crop failure in the field; every bad omen: these and all other
manifestations of negative influences that man experiences are blamed on
somebody in the corporate society. People in Igbo community create
scapegoats for their sorrows.
Also, because of this close knitted corporate society some African
authors in philosophy contend that the individual is free even though his
freedom is subject to the group. In Igbo, authority is recognized as increasing
from the youngest child to the highest being. As for the individual, the highest
authority is the community of which he is a corporate member. This authority
also has degrees, so that some of it is in the hands of the house hold family,
some is invested in the elders of a given area, part is in the hands of the clan,
and part is in the whole which may or may not be invested in central rulers.
Individual freedom has been the dilemma facing Igbo communal
system. This is so, because of the clash between the individual and the
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community. The first principle of his freedom is unalienated existence.
Freedom arises from the awareness which communal people have about their
social nature. Within this freedom and the bond of unity, which it implies, the
purposes of individuals are in harmony with the purposes of the community.
Though, this is not peculiar to communal set-up. We can only say, that it has
only become more intense and pronounced due to enlightenment.
In other words, many African writers stress the lack of conflict in
traditional African society. But studies have shown that there were classes
only that they were not antagonistic or exploitative as we know it today. Such
as in Marx‟s capitalist society. Even if there was no conflict, it was purely
because the individual was totally subjected. A situation where an individual
who is christened „a caste‟ can never hold any title or marry the so-called freeborn. The traditional Igbo society, in short lacked a proper articulation and
understanding of what freedom or individual freedom is. To the traditional
Igbo, freedom consists in living one‟s life in accordance with the values of the
society and concretely identifying oneself with it.
The traditional Igbo society tends to justify too much by laying too much
emphasis on the group rather than the individual. In this way, the traditional
Igbo society tends to submerge individual‟s desire into the corporate group, to
see the individual‟s actions as meant not for self but for the community. The
Igbo society, no doubt over dramatize the corporate life much more than that
of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy.
In effect therefore, the community creates man and he seeks confirmation and
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recognition of what he is from others. The individual ultimately lacks selfassertion and personal identity and hence freedom.
The traditional Igbo, is a unitary man, and could be likened to onedimensional man, in an industrial capitalist society. No diversity is allowed or
welcome. In short, there is nothing to stimulate the desire for an alternative
life-style. One is submerged in the corporate society. In Igbo society, man is a
„yes‟ that vibrates to cosmic harmonies. For instance, Fannon in his view
proposes nothing short of the liberation of man. If individuals should remain
slaves to customs and to outmoded beliefs and standards, there is lack of selfassertion and freedom.
Taking cognizance of all these facts, some African authors still hold
that, there is „individual freedom‟ to the extent he conforms to the general will
and does everything in the interest of the community. Should we then equate
obeying and living according to unquestionable norms and customs with being
individually free? If this is true, Montesquieu, who hold that the right to do
whateever the law permits is liberty and that men are free only when they are
being restrained and constrained, would no doubt accept this. But then, one
would be tempted to ask whether freedom is synonymous with what we have
just said above. By and large, it is obvious that there is no „individual freedom‟.
“Tribalism” which also stifles individual freedom in Okolo words can be
defined “as a bias for one‟s own or against other people on the basis of tribal
origin or cultural characteristics”.5 The bias is usually practical or dynamic in
traditional Igbo community, in the sense that it is acted out in public life and
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gathering, in social groups, etc. Also, its practical effects on social life, such as
preventing someone from marrying a girl or boy of his choice are an affront on
freedom. Other effects, such as alienation, fear suspicion, discrimination, intertribal wars, etc. are equally denial of individual freedom and choice.
Zik, in one of his lectures on tribalism delivered at University of Nigeria,
Nsukka in 1960, describes, “Tribalism, as an undue attachment of affection for
one‟s tribe or clan”. He further stresses that, “if the concept and practice of
tribalism would be a mode of adaptation to reality, then tribalism is an
instrument for national unity”.6 Zik maintains that, being human, they have
developed their means of communication and a way of life. So that factors of
race, language and culture are responsible for the existence of tribes or
nationalities. Since tribes are so linked with human society their existence
constitute in Africa, an anthropological phenomenon, and they cannot be
exterminated without committing wholesome genocide to a section of the
human race. Tribalism even in contemporary Africa of today confronts the
African with full rigour and bleakness, a continual source of social tensions.
For individual freedom to be practically feasible in Igbo communal
setting, it will have to be personalistic, socialistic and humanistic philosophy
aiming above all at a unity of totality in a dynamic communion of all beings
between themselves and with God in mutual embrace of love. It cannot be
materialistic or atheistic, because this would break the unity and totality of the
sacred and the profane and the overall hierarchy of beings, which dominate
the traditional Igbo world-view. Importantly too, it cannot be individualistic or
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rationalistic or purely theoretical, because it would break down the unity and
totality of the traditional social harmony and the integration of theory and
praxis which we find in the numerous Igbo myths. The traditional Igbo worldview it must be pointed out is rather a communion of souls than an aggregate
of individuals. It is a union, which comes from within, from the soul of a people
truly aware that individual man is not the measure of anything, a union which
is considered as a vital necessity.
The freedom, salvation and well-being of the whole group is dependent
upon the faith with which each member plays his role in the mythical liturgy.
One could say that in traditional Igbo society, man never does anything,
receives anything or suffers anything alone.
Of course, this attitude
considerably restricts and even stifles individuals creativity, originality and
freedom, but it also ensures a warm fraternity, hospitality and togetherness,
which would be the envy of individualistic cultures. It accounts for the Igbos‟
love for feasts, family gatherings, and communal activities.
By way of concluding, the Igbo notion of freedom is always a freedomwith-others; with practical end-result as a target. The Igbo could consider man
to be free, although his freedom is far from being “autonomous” freedom of a
discrete individual. “The individual is free” according to Nze, “even though his
will is determined by his community”. This raises a question whether a person
could be “free”, independent of his “will”? Of course, the statement would be
seem a contradiction to some traditional existentialists who conceive
“freedom” as the ability “to will” “to wish”, and “to decide”7. Thus, the
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existentialists would consider “freedom”, outside the “will”, as an illusion. But
for the Igbo, the question whether the individual is free is answerable only in
the context of “collectivity”. This work is not asserting in the totality that
freedom as a concept is lacking in Igbo communal set-up.
To sum-up, this study is not advocating for the individual who rejects
social obligations and the opportunity to associate with others nor the worship
of the community that submerges the individual in the community. Both of
them are equally destructive of the personality. In fact, for the Igbos the whole
cannot be greater than its parts; so the individual cannot be greater than the
community in which he is only a part. Igbos do not conceptualize values, if one
has to talk of freedom in pure western thought. It then means that there are no
bases for comparison or similarity. African world-view is not romanticism of
intellectual powress. It is a world-view full of participation, collectivism, familyspirit and emotion.
It is very obvious that the major problem today is the search for beliefs
and ideas to organize human societies, relationships and institutions. To
achieve this, we have a new conception of man in the universe. This work has
tried to examine the implications of Igbo cultural beliefs to deduce the
principles of human association from them (especially the negative aspects).
We are not implying that belief in customs and traditions is absurd or that the
individual has no worth. Rather, all the beliefs and ideas which impede the
integration of man with his faculties choice and experiences militate against
the strengthening of vital force. Such beliefs and ideas are evil.
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The Igbo cultural values teach that people are communities of believers
and God is the head of every community. The purpose and meaning of life
depend on the development of the individual through the development of the
whole, the duty to work for the whole and the obligation to live for the whole. A
community of people does not talk of right and equality but of duty and
responsibility to God, life and the people. Ordinarily, what is clear so far is that
for the Igbo, as for most people, freedom is concrete and pursued in a
historical situation. It is the struggle for the individual to actualize himself in the
essential spheres of human existence. It is as a matter of fact, the effort of the
Igbos to overcome internal contradictions of his human situation.
In concluding therefore, one could ask, if there is individual freedom,
why should the community suffer for the wrongdoing of one man, and also an
individual suffering in the same vein that of the community? In fact, if freedom
at all exists, it cannot be anything more than the freedom to act as we are led
to act by social, traditional, cultural and historical forces.
A customary morality, like Igbo community, which demands conformity
to its rules simply because it is the custom to conform to them, cannot
command the obedience of free-beings. Freethinking beings can only give
their allegiance to institutions that they recognize as conforming to rational
principles. Therefore, the modern community, unlike the ancient ones, must be
based on principles of reason.
As such, individual freedom is lacking in Igbo communal system,
because one is prevented (freedom from), by law or some other external
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authority from actually doing something which one is physically able to do.
Furthermore, in private as in public life, for individual value. For man counts on
it as his natural right, an essential part of what makes him human. Its denial to
groups or individuals in a society, for example, through laws or customs, is to
risk social upheavals, strives, or even revolutions in tribal as in more advanced
communities.
For the adherents of caste-system (osu) who claim that culture is an
idea it has an obvious implications: we can no longer stop at the collection of
artefacts of primitive stage of development and insist that it is Igbo culture
since ideas help people to adapt in the world, cultural expressions should be
under serious scrutiny. With better reflection, certain acts or habits are learnt,
some are dropped, better ways of understanding and expression modify or
render old ways useless.
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NOTES
1.
Ruch, E.A. et al. (1981). African Philosophy. An introduction to the main
Philosophical Trends in contemporary Africa. Rome: Catholic
Book Agency p. 182
2.
Njoku, F.O.C. (2002) Essays in African Philosophy Thought and
Theology. Enugu: Snaap Press Ltd. p232
3.
Njoku, F.O.C. (2002) Essays in African Philosophy Thought and
Theology. Enugu: Snaap Press Ltd. p232
4.
Okolo, C.B. (1993) African Social and Political Philosophy. Selected
Essays. Nsukka. Fulladu Publishing Company p. 56
5.
Azikiwe, N. (1960 – 64). President Azikiwe, “ Daily Times” Selected
Speeches. p. 22.
6.
Nze Quoted by Ekei‟s, J.C. (2001) Justice in Communalism. A
Foundation of Ethics in African Philosophy. Lagos: Realm
Communications Ltd. p98.
7.
Ekei, J.C. (2001). Justice in Communalism. A Foundation in African
Philosophy. pp. 98 – 99
137
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