Le;opold Se;dar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet and philosopher who in 1960 also became the first president of the Republic of Senegal. In African Art as Philosophy , Souleymane Bachir Diagne takes a unique approach to reading Senghor’s influential works, taking as the starting point for his analysis Henri Bergson’s idea that in order to understand philosophers one must find the initial intuition from which every aspect of their work develops. In the case of Senghor, Diagne argues that his (...) primordial intuition is that African art is a philosophy. _ To further this point, Diagne looks at what Senghor called the “1889 Revolution,” and the influential writers and publications of that time—specifically, Nietzsche and Rimbaud, as well as Bergson’s Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. The 1889 Revolution, Senghor claims, is what led him to the understanding of the “Vitalism” at the core of African religions and beliefs that found expression in the arts. _ This book offers a distinct, incisive look at an important figure in African literature and politics that will be welcomed by scholars in African Studies and philosophy. (shrink)

Immortality is humanity’s great quest, the supreme utopia. In his science fiction novel Le Grand Secret, René Barjavel reflects on the convergence between love that defies time, science that conquers sickness and wisdom that triumphs over death. Spinoza reminds us that death cannot ontologically have a place in thinking about the living and Bergson assumes a ‘current of life’ running through bodies and generations, dividing up and flowing together without losing its force. That life force has no connection with the (...) new philosophies of the trans-human or post-human which imagine a post-humanity living longer, healthier and less miserably, thanks to biotechnology. If human beings were an exceptional diversion in the course of evolution, it is one of intensification, creation and emancipation, and not of extension and addition as the life-sciences would have it. (shrink)

This paper compares Leibniz’s statements about Islamic fatalism with the way in which the question has been debated in Islamic theology and philosophy, in particular by Indian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. Speaking of destiny, Iqbal writes that it is “a word that has been so much misunderstood both in and outside the world of Islam”. He meant that, on the one hand, Muslims themselves have misconstrued the notion as a strong belief in absolute predestination while, on the other hand, non-Muslims have (...) mischaracterized Islam as a religion based on blind fanaticism stemming from a faith in an already written fate. Such a characterization was given philosophical dignity by Leibniz when, responding to the criticism that his philosophy inevitably led to necessity and fatalism, he insisted on establishing a distinction between what his doctrine did say about necessity and what it must not be mistaken for: Islamic fatalism, or fatum mahometanum. The author concludes on Iqbal’s philosophy of time as duration as the condition for an amor fati without fatalism. (shrink)

Claude Imbert often declares that the activity of philosophy now needs to be in line with the teachings of anthropology. In her book Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the very fact that the last course of the author of Phenomenology of Perception, questioning ‘The Possibility of Philosophy’, sketched out ‘the anthropological outline of an intellectual activity unburdened by any a priori’ [les contours anthropologiques d'un activité intellectuelle délestée de tout a priori] is considered by her as more evidence for such a necessity. My (...) contribution explores the meaning of Claude Imbert's affirmation that today the possibility of philosophy is deeply connected with anthropological knowledge. It will, in particular, confront such an affirmation with the debate among African philosophers, concerning the relationship between philosophical activity and ethnography. (shrink)

This contribution is a presentation of the encounter between Greek philosophy and Islam and of the way in which philosophical thought was consequently appropriated by the Muslim world. What made this encounter possible was the existence, within the Muslim world, of a spirit of openness able to overcome the fear of a ‘pagan’ thought: this spirit helped develop the position that Greek philosophy, qua wisdom, could not be ‘foreign’ to the universe of the Koran. The Arabic language, as it became (...) a philosophical language, bears traces of such an appropriation. Today, in Africa, the debate on philosophy could usefully take into account the tradition of Islamic philosophy which is also African to some extent and which would help enlighten, in particular, the question of transforming African tongues into philosophical languages. (shrink)