hegelian thesis on africa

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First page of “A Critique of Hegel's Concept of Africa”

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A Critique of Hegel's Concept of Africa

This study focuses on a critique of Hegel's erroneous conception of Africa, precisely black race of Africa. Africa is one of the continents of the world and it is very rich in human and mineral resources. It is often denoted as the 'black race'. In the past, some western scholars doubted, and almost denied the humanity as well as the intellectual ability of Africans. Among such scholars is Georg Hegel who even excluded Africa from the world history. Some derogatory terms such as 'irrational', 'uncivilized', 'irreligious', etc. were used to refer to Africa. Hegel argued that Africa has no place in the world history and has actually nothing to contribute to the world history. The fundamental questions are: Is it correct to describe Africans as irrational and uncivilized people? Has Africa any place in the world history? Is Hegel correct in his concept of Africa? This study, employing analytical and critical methods, examines Hegel's concept of A...

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Many Black scholars reject G.W.F. Hegel, for his Philosophy of History ignominiously and grotesquely denigrates Africans. This article first discusses Negritude’s detournement of Hegel’s theses and, from an African point of view, refutes two Hegelian theses: slavery and the state in Africa. Hegel contradicts itself, and the very dialectic analytical method that excluded Africa from universal history also fully reinstates it.

In his speech at the University of Dakar in July 2007, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy referred to Africa as the continent that has not yet fully entered history. This article takes this obvious reference to Hegel as its starting point and examines the current significance of ‘Hegel’s Africa’. Through a close reading of The Philosophy of History and The Phenomenology of Spirit, it shows that Hegel’s remarks on Africa are by no means incidental. They constitute rem(a)inders of a modernity that is based on the construction of Africa as its own limit. The return of Hegel’s Africa, the article concludes, can thus not be restricted to a problem of the new European right. It is part of an understanding of modernity that remains haunted by the specters of racism.

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African philosophy remains bedevilled by relics of Hegel's racist chants against the rationality of Africans, and this situation deserves revisitation and reevaluation for reconstructive purposes. In this paper, I implicate Hegel's concatenations as necessitating the reactive fervour within which a significant portion of the themes, thesis, and content of African philosophy is locked. This influence, which partially eclipses African philosophy, I term historical denialism. In an attempt to repudiate Hegel's constructs, some philosophers in Africa seem ideologically contrived into developing or discovering an authentic philosophy for Africans, and in the process, advocate cultural essentialism as determinants of philosophy-at least logically. Averring that philosophy is not the sole representation of thought, I proceed by exploring other trajectories which could have informed a non-reactive African philosophy, while logically linking Hegel's denialism to subtle silencing of his idealism within philosophical discourses in Africa. This subtle silencing, which shortchanges pedagogy of philosophy on the continent, forms the other half of the eclipse in philosophy in Africa. I conclude the discussion by asserting that while it may be imperative to exorcise Hegelian ghost in African philosophy, to use Olufemi Taiwo's coinage, essentializing African philosophy would either further enmesh the field in a reactive predisposition, or limit its reflective and multifarious possibilities.

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