Friday, November 26, 2010

HEGELIAN and NYEREREAN ETHICS AND CONTEMPORARY TANZANIAN ETHOS


This paper was presented by Dr.Jason Ishengoma(UDSM) at the second Philosophy in East Africa 2010 held at the Blue Pearl Hotel,Ubungo Plaza,Dar es Salaam(18th -19th ,November,2010.)The Conference was organized by the Philosophy Association of Tanzania (PHATA).

1.  INTRODUCTION

Ethos, in the sense of norms or morals, is lived before they are reflected upon. This implies that we first live in a society that has its own ethos, and it is when these seem to conflict with the real social consciousness of the members of that given society that the reflection, that is, the questioning of their importance or their ground is produced. Before that, social norms are taken for granted. Moral philosophy or Ethics, unlike morals or norms, is a reflection on morals, a searching for the ground on which morals are based.

In this paper I want to elaborate two studies: Hegel and Nyerere by showing how the two philosophers developed the ethical principles of the individual human subject who is free and social at the same time. My reading of Hegel is limited to his treatment of the idea of “recognition” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and my reading of Nyerere rounds on his “New Synthesis of Man and Society” in Freedom and Unity.

  1. BACKGROUND: KANT AND HEGEL
Hegel’s philosophy falls in the post Kantian era. Both Kant and Hegel had a common starting point that of man as thinking will: the concept of freedom that is the core idea for modern philosophical reflection. Kant considers the will of human subject as unattainable identity with the universal will of the transcendent intelligible world, while Hegel synthesized the two in the concrete social ethical reality whereby each individual subject has his moment or station and his definite duties; stipulated by the social norms. Unlike Kant whose subject self is abstract, Hegel’s subject is concrete and objective. For Kant, man’s rationality is innate in every man as the faculty of giving clear, distinct and fixed ideas; while for Hegel reason is an immanent impulse of rationality that is in a continuous movement realizing itself in human experience.
Their metaphysical foundation of ethics differ in that Kant’s is unspeakable, remains always in search; while for Hegel it has always manifested itself in human history. For Kant the moral imperative the “act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”, (Kant: 1990. 38) does not refer to any concrete historical situation, it is res interna. Hegel on his part expressed his metaphysics in definite and concrete forms found in the res publica produced by man in a concrete given social set-up: the state which is the temporal conditions for exteriorization of the categorical imperative. Kant’s ethical trend is a continuation of modern thinking which absolutizes the human subject by alienating him from the society: individualistic and psychologistic ethics; while Hegel’s ethics goes back to traditional trend which defines man as virtually a social creature in need of virtue. Hegel’s view is that ethics properly understood corresponds to a historically specific form of social organization in which the subject becomes self-conscious.

Nyerere on his part developed an ethical theory based on African philosophical anthropology of family-hood. He maintains that the principles of love, sharing and work that hold African traditional society could apply to a larger community: a nation.

3. ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATION OF HEGEL’S ETHICS

The search for the principle of reality and the ultimately rational justification is the fundamental problem with all socio-political theories. Without justification of any theory almost any opinion is as good as its opposite. There are no more criteria on which to judge any theory. What is the ontological reality upon which our judgment and theories are based? This is the question that Hegel struggled with in his day by trying to bring an answer in midst of liberal with no external founded thinking. Hegel takes into account the society he lived in, the liberal society articulated by thinkers like Descartes, Hume, Lockes and Kant for whom the individual human subject finds his norms and truth from his interiority without reference to the outside world, the tradition; and out of this situation Hegel built his theory that solves the tension between tradition and a free modern human subject.
To be sure Hegel did not provide ethical theory but his theory could but be the implication of his logical metaphysics theory. Hegel’s ethics is founded on his doctrine of recognition giving the ontological priority of solidarity over the individual in isolation as it is suggested by Descartes. Hegel prescribes mutual recognition coming from creativity or production. This sounds well in the African context where the individual is always seen in the eyes of the community.
            REASON
Hegel strongly believed that the logical categories order the philosophy of spirit. This basically means that the content of Hegel’s philosophy of human culture is structured and ordered by the logical categories which represent the truth of the world. These categories are those of Reason as the capacity to think.
The starting point of the subject, as spirit, is Experience. Through the experiences, consciousness discovers what it is in truth; this is done not simply through observing nature but through thinking. Hegel (1972) tells us that the “I” is the “universal next to and for itself”(para.439) what all human have in common with myself being the I But the “I” has this activity of universalization that is to it.  The “I” is this very act of thinking seen as subject:
Because I am at the same time in all my feelings, representations, situations like culture, morality etc., the thought is present everywhere and, as category, penetrates all these determinations. (Hegel, 1972, para. 20)
The specificity of man, the subject, is thinking; and all other determinations or forms are outside this specific character of man. It is this activity that frees man of the immediate, from particular to universal, it is this activity that is at the root of the dialectics of consciousness and self-consciousness. As Hegel (1972) puts it
Thanks to rethinking something is altered in the way by which the content is first in the sensation the intuition, the representation; which is but by the mediation of an alteration that the true nature of the object has an access to the consciousness. (para. 22)
Hegel does not mean that “thinking alters its object but that by altering the way in which this object is given, it penetrates its true nature, its universal nature”. (Hegel, 1987, para. 32) The act of thinking the universality is self determination and freedom; its freedom is to think the way all individuals think. Universals found in the immediate (not freed) are simple objects. In the immediate nature, the object is immersed and not distinct, and it is by subjectivity that the object becomes in and for itself.
Hegel has rightly emphasized the importance of thinking as an activity by which Truth is reached. He also makes an important distinction between what the consciousness produces in understanding and the thinking of infinity. Metaphysics of understanding is dogmatic because it keeps half-truths isolated, while speculative idealism brings the principle of totality and may reach further than inadequate formulations of the abstract thinking.  It should be kept in mind that before he is dialectic, Hegel is first and foremost speculative. By speculative Hegel maintains that reality is by bipolarity: he would say for example that any thought is concrete, as any concrete is thought. Or to put it in other words we can say that “the soul is neither only finitude nor infinitude it is as one as the other; and for that matter neither one nor the other”. “The battle for, the speculative reason is a fight to break the rigidity to which understanding had reduced all things”. (Hegel, 1987, para. 32)
This fight of reason is always negation of what thought at first sees, in which is accomplished a mediation that does not come from outside in one word it is reflection in itself. As activity, thought is “active universal”, hence what it produces is the universal and may be called a self-actualizing universal. “Represented as subject, the thinking existing subject as thinker is I.”(Hegel, 1972, para.20) The ‘I’ which is not a simple I but a universal I, that which is given to every one. This is the principle by which the subject discovers itself as well as the heart of the object, it is reflection or re-thinking.
This being the case Hegel’s ethics takes what is presented in the concrete, the social norms, and establishes its foundation, that is, its spirit. Hegel discovered that what makes human free and habitant of the world of the truth of their own existence is habiting in a state of pure recognition in absolute otherness. This discovery is illustrated in his Phenomenology of Spirit in the dialectic of “Lord and Bondsman relationship”.
The historical-social process of struggle for survival by which the rational becomes actual by establishing the habitant that is one’s own, in its real concrete world, as contrasted with its logical aspects, is a process of mutual affirmative recognition. Recognition is the intersubjective existential configuration, the actuality, in which the concept of freedom appears. The dialectic of recognition is not an easy way where things follow a well paved road.  It is a fight, “the fight for life and death”, because self-consciousness is at first “the simple being for self”; all that which is not itself is excluded and unessential. Singularity which is the first characteristic of self-consciousness, is exclusive, it is a negative character.  The exclusivity can work in the subject-object relationship; I can deny the existence of a tree by cutting it down and transforming it into what I want: a timber or a door. By so doing I affirm my consciousness as a being with internal capacity of doing and acting. I am capable of doing something. But in social relationship that is not the case, because the other is also self-consciousness. Hegel portrays a story of the first social encounter, where there are two individuals facing each other, individuals who do not yet recognize the other as a self-consciousness individual, but as immediate living-being.  In that pure abstraction of self-consciousness, this self-consciousness shows itself as a pure negation of his objective mode.

 In this non-ethical life, the other is taken as an immediate living-being (an object) that must be annihilated so as to confirm self-consciousness; to be certain that I am myself. That pure negation means disregard of all “determined being-there,” that manifest itself as a living thing, a life that should be annihilated if required. Consequently, to consider the other as an object (remember she/he is also self-consciousness) is to start a battle; because the other has also the same movement, she/he is the pure negation thus he/she want allow to be terrorized. This is what Hegel says to be: “a twofold action: action on the part of the other and action on its own part”. [1]  In the first “action” the individual confronts the other by threatening his/her life, she/he tends towards the death of the other. In the second “action” (action on its own part) the individual by threatening the other’s life, the other who also have the same activity, she/he engages her/his own life. Here is where the principle of freedom for Hegel (1977) is articulated:
 It is only through staking one’s life that freedom is own” because “the Individual who has not risked his life may well be recognized as a person, but he has not attained to the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. (para. 187)

The fight of self-consciousness leads to negation of all objectivity, any or particular.

         RECOGNITION:
The recognition of personality, begins with the recognition of a person's property, and takes the form of human relations recognized through the mediation of external objects: social relations which seem to have an external existence - words, concepts, institutions and laws as well as tools[2] and products which meet the needs of people other than the producer. In the Hegelian dialectic, the producer is the bondsman, and the one who enjoys the product is the master. Through the historical struggle between the producer and the two comes to consciousness of what they truly are: they depend on each other. The producer who produces more than he/she wants for her/his consumption, needs the other, call it the market, to display his/her production; and the consumer needs the product in order to satisfy his/her desire.
In order for the producer to produce more than it is required for his/her own needs, there is a force behind that Hegel terms fear. Fear is manifested in the servile consciousness though the transformation of the object: labour. Gadamer (1976) explaining this moment writes:

Freedom of self-consciousness consists not only in self-confirmation given to existing things, but also in a true assertion of self in opposition to the tendency of existing objects (p.70) 
The truth of the rational subject, a subject who confirms and asks for freedom, does not depend simply on recognition of the person as equal-recognition of the law; the truth of freedom comes from what Gadamer calls “the consciousness of being able to do”, “that constantly sees itself confirmed in what it does and has done.”(Gadamer, 1976 p. 70)  It is through work as “forming-formator” that self-consciousness suppresses the foreign element of the object and imposes its form.  The object thus formed is in fact the true reality before which self-consciousness has stood trembling. 
The relation between the desire and its object is no more annulment but it takes “a permanent form”.  The act of forming has not only a positive result – shaping things – it is “also, the negative significance of fear.”(Hegel: 1977. para. 196) Man is at first confronted with “a being for self” which he transforms and of which he denies the “being-for-self” and cultivates in it his own image; consciousness becomes thus “in and for-self”. “But this objective negative moment is none other than the alien being before which it has trembled.” (Hegel, 1977, para. 196)  Through work, self-consciousness has become master of the first master, it has imposed its proper form to the object; it has kept the object into existence (not as first relation of desire) but that object is no more alien or foreign.  It is through consciousness of servitude, in fear, that the truth of self consciousness is found:
The being-for-self is present in the bondsman himself; in fashioning (cultivating) the thing, he becomes aware – that being–for-self belongs to him, that he himself exists essentially and actually in his own right. (Hegel, 1977, p.ara. 196)

The object thus formed is no more alien; the form it has taken is just the form of consciousness, that form which now exists exteriorly is in fact the interior form of consciousness.  Hegel (1977) confirms this by saying:
The two moments of fear and service as such, as also that of formative activity, (cultivating activity) are necessary, both being at the same time in a universal mode. (para.1976)  
Discipline and obedience are required in service so as to be able to make something that may really be said one’s own.  Production does not come only from a primary desire it must be disciplined and controlled. For Hegel that which is thus produced needs a market. The market is the culmination of the process of human development which holds the product of the person’s labour. It is through the object in the world that one is recognized by others as somebody who has produced something for them. The society recognizes this object (the work as object) which is found in the objective spirit.  (see the copy right)
In the dialectic Lord and bondsman we have the springing up of humanity, individual and social; the base of ethical life.  The ethical problem at hand is two sided: we need to have individuals who know themselves as such (the pure ‘I’), who stands shinning out; at the same time we need to have the “Lord” (society) that shapes the others according to his/her own will.[3] The historical man and woman, the one who can “writes or narrates” his/herstory, is shaped and lives in a given society.
The free individuals are those who risk their life and who, through fear, are are capable of self-determination. The determination-in-self is not isolation but, first and foremost, realization that we need one another. That realization must be proved, that is, we must work as if all life depends on the self alone and at the same time realize that life depends on the others.  Society that gives tools to the individual person through “education and formation” is vital for self-consciousness; but that society itself must be founded on rational base if it must deal with rational subjects. It should not be based n fear or on force, but on universal principles that every reasonable person may recognize and by which be recognized.
Hegelian ethics takes that ontological principle of recognition and formative activity, as its base. It shows that the ethical world, the social norms, because they are human, they are fruits of human labour and as such should be seen not as foreign objects created by the master for control and manipulation, but as essentially product of reason that portrays the consciousness at work. The two kinds of ethics, that of Being, (ethics of Virtue) and that of Doing, (ethics of Duty); are in fact two sides of the same coin. The question of “what sort of person should I be?” which carries the ethics of being is as important to the question “what must I (not) do?” the concern for the ethic of duty.


4. NYEREREAN ETHICS
4.1 BACKGROUND
I have spent a lot of time and space elaborating Hegelian ontology that is the base of his ethics, that I won’t be able to give the same treatment to Nyerere. It suffices to say here that as Africans we can learn a lot from Hegel because African people, of which Nyerere is representing, are known to have tribal ethics that puts more emphasize on society than on an individual. But this tribal ethics is dying and Nyerere (1974) saw that early in the sixties. He writes: Traditional order is dying; the question which has yet to be answered is what will be built on our past and, in consequence, what kind of society will eventually replace the traditional one (p. 6)

Nyerere’s intellectual struggle was to formulate ethical or moral principles that would shape a modern Tanzanian society. It is generally agreed that Nyerere gave practical value to the primacy of the individual human rights of all Africans in their own countries without any discrimination. Although TANU started as an exclusive African party, it had at its core the vocation for all humanity. This universal principle was not without difficulties as Nyerere (1974) himself admits:
Inevitably there were some few members of TANU whom discrimination had made bitter, and whose basic lack of self-confidence has caused them to fail in this test. And inevitably there were also those whose membership and participation in the independence struggle had been motivated by greed and jealousy. Such people still exist in Tanzania, as elsewhere in the world. But the masses in Tanganyika and the vast majority of the TANU leadership stood firmly by the moral principle for which they had campaigned. (p. 4)

Nurturing his country from the cradle, Nyerere advocated national consciousness as the strength of TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) in the search for independence, in which all people will be respected as humans, have equality of opportunities and have equal Rights. In short TANU’s conscietization was based on certain moral principles that members were expecting to acquire once freedom was achieved. This consciousness is attributed to the history of Tanganyika which was a Trustee Territory under British administration, the feeling of the common oppressor and the Kiswahili language which was understood by many and was used as lingua franca. The first work for Nyerere was to create the National Consciousness by conscietization and awakening self-confidence and identity among Africans that was eroded due to long colonial submission starting with Arabs, German ending with British. Nyerere (1974) insists that “A vital task for any liberation movement must be to restore the people’s self-confidence.” (p. 3)

Without using any dialectic movement or argument, Nyerere believes that the core for any respectable member of society should first and foremost be to develop confidence in one’s abilities.

4.2 NYERERE’S SOCIAL DOCTRINE.
Nyerere’s base for social justice is based on his principle belief that “man’ s existence in society involves an inevitable and inescapable conflict –conflict of his own desires.” These desires can be summed up in one concept: freedom. Freedom in his thinking has two sides: freedom for and freedom from. Freedom for is that desire to achieve something, to do something that one aspires; this is positive freedom. And freedom from is that desire of non-interference or threat from the outside forces be they human or natural. The philosophy behind the principle justification for this desire for freedom is pragmatic and people centered powers ethics meaning that African desire for freedom moves around “an understanding of the hard facts of reality for Africa in the modern world” (Nyerere: 1974. 5). It is a loose and gain situation that the individual weights knowingly that he/she will benefit from. Nyerere (1974) says:
Men do not freely agree to participate in social relations for purpose of material wealth, for efficiency, or for the glory of the group, except in so far as these things serve them. Group wealth and group power are not themselves virtues for which men would sacrifice themselves or for which they should be sacrificed. They are virtues only in so far as they serve the object of society –which is man. (p. 7)

The idea of society nurtured by Nyerere is based on human equality in which everyone equally enjoys the national cake. In this way, there must be limits set by public ethics or laws to limit private interests against public desire. Possibly this is why during his era, little was heard about corruption (Mafisadi). They feared the system as it was working austerely.
Nyerere’s social moral principles is supported by a coherent doctrine or theory based on self-reliance and self-consciousness. Self-reliance doctrine in the Arusha Declaration went hand in hand with education or conscietization. The conscietization process is necessary for people centered development. Nyerere (1974) argues:
Development is for men/women, by men/women and for men/women. The same is true for education. Its purpose is the liberation of man/woman from the restraints and limitation of ignorance and dependency. Education has to increase men/women physical and mental freedom –to increase their control over themselves, their own lives, and the environment in which they live”  (p.  95)

How does the individual come to accept moral and social orders as a free and responsible agent? The answer to this is Nyerere’s philosophical anthropology that defines man/woman as conscious-individual in the world. This world, the society, shapes the individual but at the same time reveals to him/her his/her inner being: self-consciousness. Nyerere’s ethics is the humanizing morality through education whose role is to help a person to develop themselves, decide for themselves what path for development to follow, how to cooperate for the purpose of desired objects. The desired objects can be attained through work which liberates man/woman from natural dictated situation to human cultivated environment. Again, for Nyerere,  the capacity to form, that is to give form to the object, comes from learning through interactions at the same time it reveals to the individual person his/her inner capacity, the self-consciousness. Humans are thus not simple tool users, but also formators.

The ujamaa policy had social, economic as well as political ethics. It was based on traditional belief that each individual though unique, is part and parcel of the whole; the family and for Nyerere the nation. The axis of this belonging is the participation of each individual in production. The traditional African production was not simply for the needs of the individual but was as well for the good of the whole. Each “member of the family accepts the obligation to work”, (Nyerere, 1974, p. 9) to contribute to the common good. TANU under Arusha Declaration creed emphasized that, money was not the center for development but people. It called for leaders not to make tours to European cities but to use and spend more time in the villages, conscientizing the people on how to bring about development through their own efforts: to show to them that they can do; to build self-confidence based on work that is vital for any proper human centered development. It laid down several principles, which were widely used as public ethics for all Tanzanians especially the public leaders.
The traditional belief in family-hood was expanded to include every Tanzanian and indeed every human being as being my “ndugu” (close relative).
A man or woman knows that she/he is a unique person with private desires. But she/he also knows that his actions must, for his/her own good, be restricted to those which are consistent with the good of his social unit  -his/her family. The institution of the family, and its procedures, then encourage that attitude of respect a society which can be harmonious and beneficial for all members equally. (Nyerere, 1974, p.9)

CONCLUSION
We have shortly shown how Hegel’s idea of recognition is vital for ethics and how Nyerere’s concept of ujamaa is the base for social ethics. The difference that is traced in the two sides is that; Nyerere, like Plato admits that the problem of moral integrity is due to ignorance. That’s why he put much emphasis on education, not simply the formal one, but continuous education.
Hegel on his part builds his metaphysics on reason as the capacity to think dialectically, that is, to see things in their totality rather than in their isolation. Recognition explains how free individual accomplishes his freedom in relationship with the other rather than in seclusion. The true human object of desire is achieved in the other rather than in the lonely self.
Nyerere on his side explains the need of the other in the hobbessian style. The self surrenders his/her freedom so as to gain more freedom. The personal desires are not necessarily reconciled with those of the other. There is no logical necessity as it is for Hegel.
Hegelian comprehensive and systematic ontology is elaborated from a “logical” starting point. The assumption is, since the contents of consciousness are “universal” they must be publicly graspable by others as well.
Nyerere’s stand is from his historical moment: the African ujamaa concept of love, sharing and work, these are principles on which modern Tanzanian ethics should be built. People should be awakened to engage in their own development. This philosophy of People’s involvement approach in development is articulated by our learned social scientist like Wamba Dia Wamba, Abdallah Aman Babu, to mention some.
In Hegel’s time there was a question of the individual subject for whom his/her individuality as a rational thinking subject (cogito ergo sum subject) was vital. For Nyerere the eroding traditional social order needed replacement. Nyerere’s education for liberation program was geared towards a creation of a rational free subject capable of analyzing his/her situation in view of his/her modernized africanity.
My ending question is this: “With what have we replaced that awakening project?”
 It is my view that the vacuum (left by rejecting the awakening project) is felt in the rising of fundamentalism be it in religions, tribal or racial that we are witnessing in today’s Tanzania. The presence of religious and ethnic attachment during this year’s general election, is it not asking us to create Tanzanian National Consciousness?



References:
GADAMER Hans-Georg,  (1976)        Five hermeneutical studies Yale University Press, (trans. P. Christopher Smith)
HEGEL,                  Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press, (1977) (trans. A. V. Miller)
Logic, Oxford, (1987) (trans. By W. Wallace)
Science of Logic.  TomeI, The Being, Aubier, (1972) Science de la logique, tome II
ISHENGOMA Jason,    Le sujet Humain et la Modernite chez Hannah Arendt, Memoire pour la Capacite doctorale, (1997) L’Institut Catholique de Paris.
KANT,  Emmanuel        Critique of Pure Reason, (1984) Everyman’s Library, (trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Intr. by A.D. Lindsay) 
Critique of Practical Reason, (1989) The Library of Liberal Arts,  (trans.Lewis White Beck) ;
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. (1990)The Library of Liberal Arts,  (trans.Lewis White Beck)  
NYERERE J. K.            Freedom and Unity, (1974) Oxford.



[1] Phen. # 187
[2] Remember that tools are social objects for no tool was ever the product of a single person any more than the need fulfilled by a tool.
[3] This point of having the “Lord” sounds like that of Aristotle who says that politics is the architetonic science because it the society through politics that decides what type of art to be instilled in children’s mind. Nichomecean Ethics  1094 a28

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