Abbed Kanoor: Rethinking Philosophy with Fabian Eboussi Boulaga
Lecture, January 9, 2025, Universität Hildesheim
Hörsaal 2 and Live-Stream
Series: What is Philosophy? A Critical Polylogue with Philosophers from Africa
Abstract:
As a contribution to our polylogue with African philosophers, I dedicate my lecture to the Cameroonian philosopher Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (1934–2018). In three phases of his thought, we find different but interconnected cores: 1) The philosophical quest for African intellectual autonomy: From La crise du Muntu—where he deconstructs the assumptions of ethnophilosophy and global philosophy in order to elaborate an authentically African vision of philosophy—to Christianisme sans fétiche: revelation and domination—where he critically discusses the historical entanglement of domination and religious institution in Africa, in order to liberate it from its alienation and constitute an authentic community of faith. 2) In his writings of the 1980s and beyond, Boulaga became more explicitly involved in political intellectual activities. Thinking freedom and liberation takes the form of building a political community in the vacuum between the post-colonial African situation with all its potentialities on the one hand, and the paradoxes of post-colonial African states on the other. 3) In his later essays and interviews (as a master of thought for young researchers), he has tried to give an overview of his own philosophical life and of African philosophy. This is where the topos of philosophizing becomes more central, even if his philosophy has always had a direct link with its place of thought.
In my lecture, I focus on two moments of his philosophy: 1) His double critique of ethnophilosophy and the passive reception of the canonical tradition of Western philosophy in Africa. 2) The topical and topological approach to philosophy as his answer to the previous critique.
Philosophy, as Eboussi understands it, is a practice of discussion that is always taking place in relation to others and based on the topos and the topics of discussion. Philosophies always have something to do with the places of experience, but also with topoi of discussion. I try to show that this is where geophilosophy encounters the situatedness of thought, but also something atmospheric about the field or dimension being discussed. There is a necessity that comes from outside, but not directly from the environment, geography or political order, but from an outside that is immanent to philosophical discussion itself. This approach to philosophy is neither genealogical nor teleological, since philosophy is considered a dialogue of places (le dialogue des lieux).
Short Bio
Abbed Kanoor is the managing director (Geschäftsführer) of the DFG-funded Center for Advanced Studies “Philosophizing in a Globalized World – Historical and Systematic Perspectives” (GloPhi). He holds a PhD in philosophy with a focus on the phenomenology of world-time in Husserl, Merleau-Pony and Blumenberg from the universities of Paris Sorbonne and Wuppertal. Before moving to Hildesheim he was a senior research fellow, lecturer and later wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Center for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Studies of University of Tübingen, conducting a project on intercultural phenomenology. He worked as directeur de programme de recherche at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris (2019–2025) and visiting lecturer at the universities of Toulouse Jean Jaurès (teaching phenomenology and political philosophy) and Hildesheim (French contemporary philosophy).
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