A Tactical Recap to the Fermented Ph.D. Dump
In the previous "Dump", I wrote about comparing different philosophies via comparative philosophy. I briefly mentioned some of the problems that might arise. Briefly, the philosopher is always implicated in her own search for "truth", "a good life", and so on. She cannot escape the fate of reading herself in her own work. More abstractly, different contexts demand different things, different times demand different ways of practicing philosophy, different places demand different dispositions, and so on. A method that can make room for this more dynamic situation is better. One such a method, still part of comparative philosophy or intercultural philosophy, is conversationalism, or the method of practicing African philosophy as part of the conversational school. In this post, I will attempt to simplify this method into one single post, but this will be a tough ask; the method is extremely convoluted and it has various strands. The founder of this method, Johnathan Chimakonam, states in a recent article hidden in a footnote:
Simply put, Chimakonam clearly states that he does not like the idea of his method being assigned to one article. So, going against his wishes, let me try and explain his method in a very condensed manner without losing the rich complexity behind it.
I will be referencing two of his sources which you can find here:
I hope that you will find this method of doing African philosophy interesting! I am a little biased as he is one of the main figures I am researching in my own work. But I will keep it as brief as possible. Let us start.
Methodizing Relationship
Philosophy is usually characterized as a lonely armchair exercise in the sense that it is merely the thoughts of someone thinking about their own thinking, or thinking about their own experiences, and so on. One can see this very clearly in the style of philosophy of René Descartes. His philosophical works are, in some sense, his own thoughts about the particular topics at hand. His subjective thoughts are preferred over and above the rest. His philosophy goes so far as to state "cogito, ergo sum", or I think, therefore, I am. Most undergraduate philosophy students will be familiar with the subsequent solipsism that follows, that is, the minds of others are brought into doubt by this mere statement. I am only conscious of my own thoughts; the thoughts and minds of others are problematic. They can be mere fictions of my imagination, or I cannot be sure that they even have thoughts!
That aside, Chimakonam (2017b:120) wants to and subsequently does systematize and methodize relationships. Relationships are conceptualized as
"a wilful, creative and critical epistemic experience which two agents [or parties] share with the intention to create new concepts and open up new vistas for thought,” (Chimakonam, 2017a:15)
In very simple terms, this relationship is characterized by a constant creation and co-creation; the "other" person is not doubted to exist or to think. The "other" is, in fact, necessary for the practicing of philosophy! (We will get to this in more detail below.) The practice of philosophy, thence, cannot happen without the other. But one might state that this is not new, Socrates, for example, practiced philosophy in this rather dialogical manner. But if one reads the Platonic dialogues carefully, one can clearly see that Socrates never really needed the other for he already had the conclusion of the conversation in his mind! That is, he already knew in some sense where the dialogue would end up at. Yes, it looks like the other is needed, and it seems that Socrates was the midwife to ideas, but it is a very strange relationship if you carefully read the dialogues.
The relationship in conversationalism, as will become clearer later on, is not of this kind. The two (or more) participants regard each other as essential in the process of creation and co-creation. Socrates, one might state, was after the truth or capital T truth. Conversationalism, in contrast, I would argue does not take this a fixed or rigid idea; we are not after some fundamental truth. Instead, we are seeking the creation of new concepts, or the amendment of old concepts that might not be applicable today, and so on. One might thus ask, how is it to unfold?
The Doubter and the Proponent: A Disregard for Synthesis
The nature of the relationship in conversationalism might be traced back to the Igbo word for conversation. Chimakonam (2017b:120), for example, writes that
“The idea of conversationalism traces back to the Igbo notion of “arụmarụ-ụka,” which roughly translates to: “engaging in critical and creative conversation.""
To reiterate, this relationship depends on the other being there in a specific mode, namely, as a doubter. Socrates, for example, doubted (in a loose sense of the word) the other, Descartes doubted, one might thus say that doubting is essential to philosophy. Rather than subjectivize or internalize this doubting, the method of conversationalism states that one needs another who does this doubting in the creative relationship. Chimakonam (2017b:121) wants to call this doubter "nwa-nju". This position, one might hesitantly state, is similar to the anti-thesis position in a dialectical relationship.
The proponent, on the other hand, is called "nwa-nsa" (Chimakonam, 2017b:121). Again hesitantly, one might state that this is similar to the thesis position in a dialectical relationship. I say hesitantly because essentially Chimakonam rejects the notion that a synthesis is required, the necessary conclusion of a dialectical relationship. I will do a post on this idea in a future post. But in short, if we take the idea of the Socratic dialogue, the thesis position was, for example, the initial statement of whoever Socrates went into dialogue with. "What is Justice?" he might have asked an unlucky passerby. The passerby would state that justice is XYZ, hence the thesis position. Socrates, instantiating the anti-thesis position, would question the unlucky passerby on this notion of justice to such a degree that he/she might need to amend that position. But this amendment culminated in what one might call a synthesis position. It is the rejection of the thesis position due to the anti-thesis position so that synthesis might occur. After the attack of Socrates, the passerby might now have a reworked notion of justice. (This is obviously oversimplified to some degree.)
To the mind of Chimakonam, this is giving up too much. We should disregard the desire to yield to the demands of synthesis. In more practical terms, we should not aim to reject our initial (thesis) position in order to synthesize it with the onslaught of the anti-thesis position. Instead, we should merely amend our original nwa-nsa position in the face of the attack of nwa-nju. It is not a wholesale rejection of the initial position; one might more appropriately call for a creative reworking of one's initial position. Chimakonam (2017b:121), in his own words and with some input from myself, writes that the method of conversationalism proposes to
- assess “the relationships of opposed variables”
- by shuffling thoughts between “disjunctive modes”, i.e., giving the option between the two variables, “and”, “or”, “but”, etc., and “conjunctive modes”, i.e., by joining together, connection between things,
- in order to “constantly recreate fresh thesis and anti-thesis”
- but “each time at a higher level of discourse”
- and most importantly without the expectation of a synthesis.
Postscriptum, Giving in to the Demands of Chimakonam
It looks like Chimakonam, as per the first quote of this post, might have won! I have tried to write something simplistic on the method and could not get it all done. I only scratched the surface so far. I have not even gotten to the essential assumptions one needs to make to keep the method afloat. I will need to do this in the next Ph.D. dump. For now, I think I will leave this post as it is, it is already extremely long for such a simplistic idea. I do not know why I thought I would be able to get it done in fewer words! It just goes to show that it is not easy to say something simplistic.
In any case, I hope that you somehow got something from the post and that the method, even in its infancy now, might look like something worth the expansion to follow!
For now, I hope you are well and on your way to better yourself with education and learning!
The photographs used in this post are my own, taken with my Nikon D300. The musings and writings in this post are also my own readings of Chimakonam's work. His articles can be found in the hyperlinks above.