Black Philosophical Condition From Pre-Colony to Post-Colony

Abstract

This article builds on Chancellor Williams’ “new approach” in the study of African history to analyze Black philosophical condition through different movements of Black thought in the form of birth, death, rebirth, and internal and external enemy. It argues that Blacks created the earliest age-intelligence system of thought in the pre-colony; that European conquests of Black sites through slavery, colonization, and neo-colonialism reshaped Black philosophical condition along the lines of irrationality, servitude, absence, and negation; and that contemporary Black philosophical condition is marked by enmity. Thus, this study engages with significant accomplishments of Black thought from pre-colony to post-colony, the philosophers’ war against Blacks, Black revolutionary ideologies, as well as Black enemy and the enemy of the Black. It concludes by highlighting the need for current and future philosophers to reposition African system of thought in age-intelligence philosophy.

Plain Language Summary

Condition of Black Philosophy Before and After Colonisation

This article discusses how the philosophy of Blacks (people of African descent) developed before and after colonisation in Africa. I highlight age-intelligence philosophy, which entails how long people have existed on earth and their capacity to reason or resolve individual and societal challenges needed to go together in the pre-colony (Black societies before colonisation). In turn, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and colonisation led European philosophers such as Georg Hegel to question the thinking capacity of Blacks in the post-colony (African societies after colonisation) given the inhumane conditions that these events created for Africans. To counter European-generated doubts surrounding the thinking capacity of Blacks, continental and diasporic Africans such as Henry Sylvester Williams, Kwame Nkrumah, and Aimé Césaire developed Pan-Africanism, négritude, consciencism, and other ideologies in the nineteenth century. However, Blacks are still targets of endless antagonism by their own design and by non-Blacks in the contemporary world. Therefore, there is the need for current and future African thinkers to re-develop age-intelligence philosophy.