Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T16:15:31.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exiled from History: Africa in Hegel’s Academic Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

Tom C. McCaskie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Many scholars, African and otherwise, have excoriated G.W.F. Hegel for his dismissal of Africa from history and progress in his lectures on the philosophies of history and religion. This has been done by quoting his texts and setting his words in the context of his influence on nineteenth-century European imperialism and racism. A different approach informs this paper. I treat Hegel, a complicated person, as a working university academic with a career to make and an overriding desire to publicize his own thought. I provide biographical insights relevant to these matters, and go on to examine specific texts about Africa that Hegel either sought out or chanced upon, read, misread, excerpted, used, and misused in support of his theorizing and apriorism. Attention is paid throughout to the construction, recording, and dissemination of Hegel’s lectures, and to aspects of their reception and authority in the educational formation of selected modern African intellectuals. I argue that such persons and African studies more widely are still trying to come to grips with the long and enduring shadow cast by Hegel over both the past and present of the continent.

Résumé:

De nombreux chercheurs africains et d’ailleurs ont vertement critiqué G.W.F. Hegel pour son exclusion de l’Afrique tant de l’histoire que du progrès dans ses conférences sur les philosophies de l’histoire et de la religion. Cette critique a été faite en citant ses textes et en plaçant ses paroles dans le contexte de son influence sur l’impérialisme et le racisme européens du XIXe siècle. Une approche différente informe ce papier. Je traite Hegel, un personnage compliqué, comme un universitaire de métier devant construire sa carrière et désirant très fortement faire connaître sa pensée. Je fournis des éclairages biographiques pertinents sur ces questions et analyse ensuite des textes spécifiques sur l’Afrique que Hegel a soit recherchés ou trouvés par hasard, lus, mal lus, extraits de leur contexte, utilisés ou utilisés à mauvais escient pour soutenir ses théories et préjugés. Une attention toute particulière est accordée à la construction, à l’édition et à la diffusion des conférences de Hegel, ainsi qu’aux aspects de leur réception et de leur autorité dans la formation pédagogique de certains intellectuels africains contemporains. Je soutiens que ces personnes et les études africaines plus largement tentent encore de s’attaquer à l’influence très vaste et durable des idées développées par Hegel sur le passé et le présent du continent.

Type
Critical Historiography
Information
History in Africa , Volume 46 , June 2019 , pp. 165 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adhikari, Mohamed, “A Total Extinction Confidently Hoped For: The Destruction of Cape San Society under Dutch Colonial Rule, 1700–1795,” Journal of Genocide Research 12–1/2 (2010), 19–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allina, Eric, “The Zimba, the Portuguese, and Other Cannibals in Late Sixteenth Century Southeast Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 37–2 (2011), 211–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allman, Jean, and Tashjian, Victoria, “I Will Not Eat Stone:” A Women’s History of Colonial Asante (Portsmouth NH/Oxford/Cape Town: Heinemann/James Currey/David Philip, 2000).Google Scholar
Althaus, Horst, Hegel: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Polity Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Barrow, John, An Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow Bart., Late of the Admiralty (London: John Murray, 1847).Google Scholar
Barrow, John, Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, 2nd revised edition, 2 volumes (London: T. Cadell and W. Davis, 1806).Google Scholar
Barnett, Stuart, “The Ruling Categories of the World: The Trinity in Hegel’s Philosophy of History and the Rise and Fall of Peoples,” in: Houlgate, Stephen and Baur, Michael (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Hegel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 315–331.Google Scholar
Barr Nisbett, Hugh (trans.) with an Introduction by Forbes, Duncan, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
Beiser, Frederick, Hegel (London/New York: Routledge, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beiser, Frederick, Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beiser, Frederick, After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840–1900 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, “Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” in: Barnett, Stuart (ed.), Hegel After Derrida (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 41–63.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, “The Challenge of Enlightenment Racism to the Study of the History of Philosophy,” Radical Philosophy Series 1, 117 (2003), 13–22.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, “Hegel’s Racism: A Reply to McCarney,” Radical Philosophy Series 1, 119 (2003), 32–36.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, “Critical Philosophy of Race and Philosophical Historiography,” in: Taylor, Paul, Alcoff, Linda Martin and Anderson, Luvell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race (New York: Routledge, 2018), 3–13.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, Homo Academicus (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1984 [reprinted with a new postface by the author, 1992]).Google Scholar
Bowdich, Thomas, Mission from Cape Coast Catle to Ashantee (London: John Murray, 1819).Google Scholar
Breckman, Warren, Marx, The Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Bredin, Miles, Pale Abyssinian: The Life of James Bruce, African Explorer (London: Flamingo, 2001).Google Scholar
Breisach, Ernst, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Bruce, James, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile: In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773 (5 volumes) (London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1790).Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan, Hegel, Haiti and Universal History (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Clark, and Seiler, Christiane, Hegel: The Letters (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press for the Purdue Research Foundation, 1984).Google Scholar
Cherniak, Samuel, and Heckman, John, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomy, An Inland Kingdom of Africa; Compiled from Authentic Memoirs; with an Introduction and Notes (London: T. Spilsbury, 1793 [second printing with a new Introduction by John Fage, London: Frank Cass, 1967]).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974).Google Scholar
di Cesare, Donatello, Heidegger and the Jews: The Black Notebooks (London: Polity Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Dupuis, Joseph, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London: Henry Colburn, 1824).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerhardt, Volker, Mehring, Reinhard and Rindert, Jana, Berliner Geist: Eine Geschichte der Berliner Universitätsphilosophie bis 1946 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutting, Gary, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habib, Rafey, Hegel and Empire: From Postcolonialism to Globalisation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heintze, Beatriz, “The Extraordinary Journey of the Jaga through the Centuries: Critical Approaches to Precolonial Angolan Historical Sources,” History in Africa 34 (2007), 67–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henningsen, Bernd (ed.), Humboldts Zukunft: Das Projekt Reformuniversität (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008).Google Scholar
Heywood, Linda M., Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heywood, Linda M., and Thornton, John K., Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Making of the Americas, 1580–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Hingston Tuckey, James. Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire Usually Called the Congo, in South Africa, in 1816 (London: John Murray, 1818).Google Scholar
Hodgson, Peter (ed.), Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. I-III, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1984/1985/1987).Google Scholar
Hoffmeister, Johannes, and Nicolin, Friedhelm (eds.), Briefe von und zu Hegel: I (1785–1812), II (1813–1822), and III (1823–1831) (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1969 [reissued 2015]).Google Scholar
Hountondji, Paulin, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Hountondji, Paulin, The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on Philosophy, Culture, and Democracy in Africa (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Hyppolite, Jean, Gènese et structure de la Phénomonologie de l’esprit de Hegel (Paris: Éditions Montaigne, 1946).Google Scholar
Hyppolite, Jean, Figures de la pensée philosophique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971).Google Scholar
Iggers, Georg G., “The Intellectual Foundations of Nineteenth-Century German ‘Scientific’ History,” in: Macintyre, Stuart, Maiguastica, Juan and Polk, Attila (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 4: 1800–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, David, “Fichte on the Vocation of the Scholar and the (Mis)use of History,” Review of Metaphysics 63–3 (2010), 539–566.Google Scholar
Kent Wright, Johnson, “History and Historicism,” in: Porter, Theodore M. and Ross, Dorothy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 113–130.Google Scholar
Kirkland, Frank, “Kant on Race and Transition,” in: Taylor, Paul, Martin Alcoff, Linda and Anderson, Luvell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race (New York: Routledge, 2018), 28–42.Google Scholar
Kreines, James, and Zuckert, Rachel (eds.), Hegel on Philosophy in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Law, Robin, “Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections on the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey,” Journal of African History 27–2 (1986), 237–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Robin, “The Slave-Trader as Historian: Robert Norris and the History of Dahomey,” History in Africa 16 (1989), 219–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Robin, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Law, Robin, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving “Port,” 1727–1892 (Oxford/Athens OH: James Currey/Ohio University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Marchand, Suzanne L., German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Marinã, Jacqueline, Transformations of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mata, Inocência (ed.), A Rainha Nzinga Mbandi: História, Memória e Mito (Lisbon: Ediçŏes Colibri, 2012).Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille, On the Postcolony (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, Achille, Sortir de la grande nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2010).Google Scholar
McCarney, Joe, Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000).Google Scholar
McCarney, Joe, “Hegel’s Racism: A Response to Bernasconi,” Radical Philosophy Series 1, 119 (2003), 32–36.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Custom, Tradition, and Law in Precolonial Asante,” in: Adriaan, E., van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, B. and Zips, Werner (eds.), Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Power in West African Societies: Perspectives from Legal Anthropology (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1998), 25–47.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Asante Origins, Egypt, and the Near East: An Idea and Its History,” in: Peterson, Derek and Macola, Giacomo (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2005), 125–148.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Telling the Tale of Osei Bonsu: An Essay on the Making of Asante Oral History,” Africa 84–3 (2014), 353–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “‘The Art or Mystery of Physick:’ Asante Medicinal Plants and the Western Ordering of Botanical Knowledge,” History in Africa 44 (2017), 27–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Dreamworlds: Cultural Narrative in Asante Visionary Experience,” in: Green, Toby and Rossi, Benedetta (eds.), Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 353–376.Google Scholar
McCumber, John, Time and Philosophy: A History of Continental Thought (Montreal/Kingston: McGill University Press/Queen’s University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Meredith, Henry, An Account of the Gold Coast of Africa: With a Brief History of the African Company (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1812).Google Scholar
Moldenhauer, Eva, and Michel, Karl Markus (eds.), G.W.F. Hegel: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte and Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, I und II, volumes 12, 16 and 17 of Werke in 20 Bänden mit Registerband (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969 [reprinted 1986]).Google Scholar
Monroe, J. Cameron, The Precolonial State in West Africa: Building Power in Dahomey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyar, Dean (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves, “African Philosophy as an Ideological Practice: The Case of French-Speaking Africa,” African Studies Review 26–3/4 (1983), 133–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves, On African Fault Lines: Meditations on Alterity Politics (Pietermaritzburg: KwaZulu-Natal University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Müller, Niklas, Glauben, Wissen und Kunst der alten Hindus (Mainz: Florian Kupferberg, 1822).Google Scholar
Norris, Robert, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomey, An Inland Country of Guiney, to which are Added the Author’s Journey to Abomey, the Capital, and A Short Account of the African Slave Trade (London: W. Lowndes, 1789).Google Scholar
Pantoja, Selma, Bergamo, Edvaldo and da Silva, Ana Claudia (eds.), Angola e as Angolanas: Memória, Sociedade e Cultura (São Paulo: Editoria Intermeios, 2016).Google Scholar
Peeters, Benoȋt, Derrida: A Biography (Cambridge/Malden MA: Polity Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Penn, Nigel, “The British and the ‘Bushmen:’ The Massacre of the Cape San, 1795 to 1828,” Journal of Genocide Research 15–2 (2013), 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinkard, Terry, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Pinkard, Terry, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Pinkard, Terry, Does History Make Sense? Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippin, Robert, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise, “Scratches on the Face of the Country: Or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen,” Critical Inquiry 12–1 (1985), 119–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, C. Duncan, “Archibald Dalzel, the Scottish Intelligentsia, and the Problem of Slavery,” The Scottish Historical Review 62–2 (1983), 121–136.Google Scholar
Rivair Macedo, José, “Jaga, Cannibalism and the ‘Guerra Preta:’ The Mbangalas between the European Myth and the Social Realities of Central Africa in the XVII Century,” História (São Paulo) 32–1 (2013), 53–78.Google Scholar
Rothschild, Emma, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryback, Timothy, Hitler’s Private Library: The Books that Shaped his Life (New York: Knopf, 2008).Google Scholar
Singh Rathore, Aakash, and Mohapatra, Rimina, Hegel’s India: A Reinterpretation with Texts (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Smith, William (ed.), The Vocation of the Scholar (London: John Chapman, 1847).Google Scholar
Staller, Jared, “Rivalry and Reformation Politics: Reflections on Andrew Battell’s Jaga Materials Printed by Samuel Purchas from 1613 to 1625,” History in Africa 43 (2016), 7–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steudel, Johan C.F. (ed.), Vorlesungen über Christliche Moral (Tübingen: Ludwig Fues, 1823).Google Scholar
Strickrodt, Silke, Afro-European Trade in the Atlantic World: The Western Slave Coast c.1550–c.1885 (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2015).Google Scholar
Tavarès, Pierre, “Hegel, critique de l’Afrique: Introduction aux études critiques de Hegel sur l’Afrique,” (2 volumes), thèse de doctorat, Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris, 1990).Google Scholar
Thornton, John K., “New Light on Cavazzi’s Seventeenth-Century Description of Kongo,” History in Africa 6 (1979), 253–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Völkel, Markus, “German Historical Writing from the Reformation to the Enlightenment,” in: Rabasa, José, Sato, Masayuki, Tortarolo, Edoardo and Woolf, Daniel (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 324–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vom Bruch, Rüdiger (ed.), Die Berliner Universität im Kontext der deutschen Universitätslandschaft nach 1800, um 1860 und um 1910 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 [reissued with a new Preamble, 1989]).Google Scholar
Wolfes, Matthias, Ȍffenlichkeit und Bürgergesellschaft: Friedrich Schleiermachers politische Wirksamkeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, William, Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).Google Scholar