African Philosophy in Search of ldentity (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 629 for Russian Marxism) than does either the Lossky or Zenkovsky history, and it pays far more attention to secondary thinkers than does Russian Philosophy. Thus it nicely complements the existing works, and from that point of view it could indeed be called "indispensable"--in the sense of necessary (but not sufficient) for the fullest possible picture of Russian philosophy for readers of English. Finally, the work offers a variety of new perspectives on the history of Russian philosophy. Most of the contributors, including the editor, are affiliated with the Department of the History of Russian Philosophy at Moscow State University, a department charged, during the Soviet era, with preserving and disseminating a "MarxistLeninist " interpretation of its subject. Now relieved of that responsibility, the authors are free to depart from previous dogma--something they do here with varying degrees of success; the sympathetic treatment accorded some of the great Russian religious philosophers in the work shows how far some of these authors have gone. The diversity of approaches among them is itself a refreshing change from the faceless sameness of earlier Soviet scholarship in this area (as is, incidentally, the balanced if debatable appraisal of Western scholarship on the history of Russian philosophy presented in an appendix by Mikhail Maslin). Thus the present work is welcome not only because its coverage complements existing studies but because it introduces the views of these well-informed and newly empowered Russian scholars into the intellectual community outside their homeland. JAMES P. SCANLAN Ohio State University D. A. Masolo, African Philosophyin Search ofldentity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Pp. 3ol. NP. Professor Masolo has written the first full-length history of contemporary African philosophy, It is a well-informed as well as reflective history in which he does not shy away from bold criticisms of the writers discussed. The coverage, though wide, is not complete; but on this count a pioneer must be accorded some immunities. In any case, Masolo's book is rich in the variety of topics treated, which should encourage a revision of the idea, not infrequently voiced, that African philosophy in our time has been mainly a debate as to whether there is such a thing as African philosophy. In fact, in the controversy that has raged over African philosophy the important issue has not been whether it exists but rather how best it may be done, given the intellectual complications occasioned in our culture by our colonial past. It is to the author's credit that in his very detailed discussion of the second question he does not waste time on the first. One of the strongest points of this work is that in its treatment of twentieth-century developments in African philosophy it focusses on both the Francophone and Anglophone areas of Africa. The importance of this can hardly be exaggerated for, somewhat like the situation of virtual noninteraction which until recently existed between Continental and Anglo-American philosophy--though for different reasons, 63o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:4 OCTOBER i996 connected with yesterday's colonialism--there has been little cross-fertilization of ideas between these two compartments of Africa. Another strong point of Masolo's history is that it brings out clearly the productive influence that intellectual fermentation among peoples of African descent in the diaspora in the first half of this century exercised on certain early trends in contemporary African philosophy. It is generally known that the important movement of ideas known as Negritude, associated most famously with the name of Leopold Senghor, the distinguished African statesman, poet, and philosopher, owed at least its name to the literary work of Aim6 C6saire of Martinique. But it is not often recognized that it also owed inspiration and even directly embodied stimulation to the Harlem Renaissance. This "conjunction" of thought, among other things, is the subject of the first chapter-far and away the most interesting and important of the book. With an evident talent for ferreting out unusual thought-connections, Masolo writes of the influences of surrealism, phenomenology, and existentialism on Negritude and related African or African-descended philosophies, exploring in the process the interplay, by way of both agreement and disagreement...