Teilhard de Chardin and Senghor on the civilization of the universal

II.3. THE NEGRO-AFRICAN VISION OF THE WORLD

The conception of reality by Africans is in many ways different from the way the Westerner views the world. Our attitude to life cannot therefore but be different from the western attitude to life. It is important to consider how the negro-African views reality in order to see why Senghor adopts and adapts the Teilhardian considerations on the Civilization of the Universal.

II.3.1. The Concept of Being

When the Westerner considers reality as empirical, Africans look at being as dynamic. In effect, for the Westerner, everything can be tested and can be explained scientifically. He believes in empirical causality and seeks to know the material causes of things. He holds that a thing is what it is and not something else. He is more or less occupied with experience and bases his conception of reality on the law of non-contradiction, law of identity, law of the excluded middle, which are the basic principles outside which thought must be incorrect.

For Africans, Being is dynamic, not static. It is concrete, real. As such, we are aware of the fact that there are causes and reasons that cannot be explained scientifically. We are aware of the fact that a thing can be itself and still be something else. We are not only aware of this, we live it intensively. Sometimes, our vision of things tends to defy the principles and categories of western thought. There is more to the world than what only the eye can see. We are engaged in the events and things that occur and we are involved in Being. Let us consider the illustration of Jude Thaddeus MBI on this point:

A tree falls and kills a man. The westerner would say there was an accident, a tree fell and killed a man. Then he would bring out his equipment and go to examine the tree. Perhaps he would discover that the tree was hollow inside. Perhaps, he would be able to establish that there was a storm at the time the tree fell. The man happened to be passing just at that moment and so he got killed. To prevent this from happening again, he would, perhaps, decide to fell all trees within a certain distance from the highway.^52(*)

Mbi continues by showing how Africans look at things in a way that is different from the western vision of the world:

He (the westerner) doesn't think of praying about the matter. Our peoples, on the other hand, would look at the man. They would want to know why the tree fell on this man. For them this is not just a simple event. It is an occurrence that has meaning. God, the Ancestors, the spirits, other human beings come into picture. Relationship has been disrupted somewhere and this situation must be set right in order to prevent a repeat of this kind of occurrence. They would go for a nggambe man to find out the origin of this evil. Then they would offer sacrifices of appeasement and try to procure protection for the members of the family. They don't think of changing the physical conditions.^53(*)

These are two completely different approaches to the same situation. When the Westerner will stress on the material dimension of events, the African will stress more on the spiritual dimension of it. He will see the spirit everywhere. Because Africans usually think and react the way they do, they are often condemned as being superstitious and illogical. After all, can we say that what is not known does not necessarily exist? Can we actually attribute the effectiveness of what is only to that which is known? Do we have the right to reject totally the African's understanding of being as dynamic? This will certainly lead us to the absolutisation of rationality in its scientific and technological form, the error of Positivism.

We suppose, therefore, that it is wiser to see the western vision and the African vision as complementary ways of being-in-the-world. The human being is both matter and spirit:

A purely rationalistic approach to reality, which takes account only of the materially demonstrable, can be just as lopsided as one, which sees spirit everywhere. It doesn't help the situation if we simply disregard and condemn. It would do a lot more good if we try to understand and move forward...^54(*)

It is important to acknowledge our differences in the way we look at Being instead of trying to condemn one attitude or the other. The two visions are necessary in the construction of the Civilization of the Universal.

* ⁵² Jude Thaddeus Mbi, Ecclesia in Africa is us, Yaoundé, 2004, pp.70-71. [The words are underlined by the author]

* ⁵³ Id.

* ⁵⁴ Jude Thaddeus Mbi, Ecclesia in Africa is us, Yaoundé, 2004, pp.70-71