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

by Hountondji, Paulin J.

• ISBN13: 9780896802254
• ISBN10: 0896802256
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-15
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Author Biography

Paulin J. Hountondji, agrege de philosophie from the Ecole normale superieure (rue d'Ulm) in Paris, is a prolessor of philosophy at the National University of Benin. He is the author of African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, one of the most influential books on African philosophy. John Conteh-Morgan is a professor in the departments of French and Italian and African and African-American Studies at Ohio State University, Columbus

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
K. Anthony Appiah
Preface	xvii
Acknowledgments	xxi
Translator's Acknowledgments	xxiii
Part I. Discovering Husserl
Landmarks	3	(23)
From Porto-Novo to Rue d'Ulm	3	(9)
Rationality as a Problem	12	(14)
The Idea of Science	26	(53)
An African Concern	26	(4)
The Scientific Demand	30	(6)
Truth and the Good	36	(11)
The Interconnection of Truths	47	(5)
The Language of Things	52	(11)
The Impossible Closure	63	(16)
Part II. Critique of Ethnophilosophy
Anger	79	(30)
From Husserl to Tempels	79	(1)
An Exceptional Crucible: Presence Africaine	80	(3)
The Copenhagen Presentation	83	(9)
A ``Set of Texts,''	92	(7)
Developments	99	(10)
The Issues at Stake	109	(53)
Political Anchoring	111	(12)
Theoretical Stakes	123	(26)
Some Readings	149	(13)
Part III. Positions
A Polluted Debate	162	(34)
The Elegance of the Elders	162	(5)
Muddying the Issues	167	(7)
The Nationalist Reaction	174	(7)
Marxists and Anti-Marxists	181	(3)
Initial Responses	184	(12)
Rootedness and Freedom	196	(27)
The Time for Rereadings	196	(3)
Linguistic Relativity and Philosophy	199	(6)
The Particular and the Universal	205	(13)
The Field of the Thinkable	218	(5)
Reappropriation	223	(36)
Extraversion in General	223	(4)
A Rampant Pragmatism	227	(5)
Variation on ``Distance,''	232	(4)
The Impossible De-linking	236	(7)
The Appropriation of Knowledge	243	(4)
Reappropriation	247	(12)
Afterword	259	(12)
Notes	271	(14)
Bibliography	285	(22)
Index	307