THE PHILOSOPHY OF MY PEOPLE AND MY
GAINS IN PHILOSOPHY
BY
MUOGBO MICHAEL IZUCHUKWU
TERM PAPER: Explain your
understanding of Philosophy from the perspective of your people, and having
done philosophy for a whole semester, what have you gained from the course?
Being a Term Paper submitted to the
Department of Philosophy, Seminary of Saints Peter and Paul, Bodija, Ibadan, in
Affiliation with the University of Ibadan, in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the Award of the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy (B.A. HONS.).
COURSE
INTRODUCTION
TO PHILOSOPHY
COURSE
CODE
SS/PHL/101
LECTURER
REV.
FR. EMMANUEL OGUNDELE
DATE:
JANUARY,
2013.
INTRODUCTION:
Philosophy
as a discipline originated from man because man found himself on earth and must
make meaning out of himself.
Etymologically the word philosophy emanated from the synthesis of
two Greek words: Philo and Sophia, Philo means love and Sophia means
wisdom. The lexical conjugation of these two Greek words gave philosophy the
etymology meaning as lover(s) of wisdom; wisdom in the technical sense.
Philosophic wisdom has to do with a search for knowledge about man and the
universe[1]. A
philosopher is a lover of wisdom and a technical thinker; this places him above
the level of an ordinary wise man.
No
definition of philosophy is controversial or generally accepted by all
philosophers. In the first place, philosophy is primarily thinking about
thoughts and ideas about the world and can be perceived or understood as a
rational critical thinking of a systematic kind about the nature of everything
there is.
The
conception and definition of philosophy varies for philosophers and also from
one epoch to another. Different
philosophers have given the definitions of philosophy as it implies or applies
to them. Williams James, the father of American pragmatism defined
philosophy as the habit of always seeing an alternative of not taking the usual
for granted of making conventionalities fluid again of imagining strange state
of mind. Odera Oruka defined philosophy as a free investigation of the
first principles of human life, which are the most fundamental principles which
underlie human life. John Locke, a British philosopher, defines
philosophy as the process that requires the analysis of the idea with which a
mind is stocked. It requires the unpacking of our mind to reveal their simple
constituents with the view of finding out their truth value and relevance to
us. Alfred North Whitehead, defined
philosophy as a discipline whose gifts are insight and foresight as sense of
the worth of life, insured that sense of importance which backs up all
civilized efforts.
Philosophy
is done in two important senses, the wider sense and restricted sense.
In the wider sense it is informal and simply means having a sense of philosophy
while in the restricted sense it means doing philosophy and understanding its
precepts. When philosophy is informal in the wider sense, it becomes loose-
ended but when in a restricted sense it is formal and real. Having a philosophy
of life is different from doing philosophy because in doing philosophy there is
emphasis and more technical understanding of the aspect of the discipline.
Philosophy
is not limited to personal individuals alone but is also extended to peoples;
individuals as a group. No philosophy should be held in comparison with another
so that any philosophy does not loss its value. Here in this work I discussed
the philosophy of my people with regards to how they face their everyday
challenges and what I have gained from philosophy, after doing it for a
semester.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MY
PEOPLE
The
philosophy of a place is based on how they view the world in relation to how
they live and confront their everyday challenges. The philosophy of my people discussed
here is metaphysical in sense. It is not a philosophy in the restricted sense
but philosophy in the wider sense because it is loose ended. The philosophy of
my people is based on traditional facts in relationship to the way they live in
communities.
In
my people’s epistemology, they
mostly depend on elders, chief priests of notable shrines in the community,
experience, and ethics etc as their most reliable sources of knowledge and they
verify the truth value of knowledge some times through empiricism, rationalism
and pragmatism, in the sense that they verify knowledge with their senses of
perception, rational reasoning and through the work ability or manifestation of
a concept or knowledge.
In
my people’s ethical philosophy, they
held to and insisted that a community should not be governed by a person who is
not morally unstable and dishonest; so that when issues or problems are brought
to him he would treat it objectively without being subjective to any person.
In terms of individuals, my people’s ethics
held that married women should not be leaving their matrimonial home to go and
commit adultery; if a wife is caught cheating, she would bear the consequences
and it is also applicable to men. People, according to the ethical culture of
my people are not allowed to take or tamper without being authorized anything
that belongs to the gods of the land. Some acts are bound to be immoral by the
ethics of my people, acts like: digging out already cultivated yams that does
not belong to you, raping or to pregnant a girl whom you would not marry,
beating a person old enough to be your father etc.
In
my people’s metaphysical philosophy,
they held to the position that any one that died a sudden death like a person
who died in an accident, a person killed by arm robbers, a person buried alive
etc. will have a restless soul and would keep appearing as a ghost till they
get rest; when their ancestors welcomes them to the land of the dead because
according to my people’s philosophy, the soul of a dead person would be
restless until it is welcomed to the land of the dead by the ancestors.
For
the case of the people that committed suicide, they should not be buried in the
normal traditional way but they are to be thrown into the evil forest and their
souls remains restless. The restless souls are held to be the ones that appear
as ghosts to cause problems to the living in the society.
My
people also held to the position that ghosts
do exist but they are metaphysical in
nature; they possess supernatural powers and do things in a way super-ordinary
to what a normal human being can do. With regards to the philosophy of my
people, a ghost can make itself visible or invisible depending on the situation
and occasion. One cannot possess, feel or touch a ghost because it is a
metaphysical being but a ghost in the other hand can possess, feel or touch
human being in the sense that a ghost can knock and slap somebody.
A
ghost according to the philosophy of my people appears mostly during the late
hours of the night and seldom during the day time. There is a similar being to that of a ghost in the
philosophy of my people, and that is ‘Ogbanje’.
The Ogbanje emanated from native reflections, trying to solve the problem
of frequent death and reincarnation of different children in the same form and
family.
In
the years long past, in some families a woman will give birth to a child of whatever
gender and the child will die after a few weeks or months and in some cases
after few years. If the same woman gives birth again, a carbon copy of the dead
child would be born, in other words it is the same child that reincarnated back
to life, but for the sake of clarifying doubts, when the second child dies the
parents would give him or her mark(s) even to the extent of burning the child
before burial so that when the child reincarnates again it will carry those
marks, so there will be no need of doubting whether the issue of frequent reincarnation
of a child is true of false.
In
an attempt to solve this problem, a group of native doctors in the ancient Igbo
community, embarked on metaphysical reflections to find out the cause of the
problem (frequent death and reincarnation of children in families). After their
reflections, they found out that most of the families where this problem occurs
are without children, so they concluded that it was the gods that have decided
to punish the families may be because the couple’s marriage was illegal,
untraditional or not done according to the laws of the land; therefore it was
not supported by the gods. The native doctors clarified that apart from the
gods being angry, the force or the spirit responsible for the frequency of death
and reincarnation in general is the force or the spirit of ‘Ogbanje’ and it is indiscernible.
The spirit of Ogbanje can be cast
out from a person especially from a child by offering a sacrifice to appease
the gods for whatever wrong must have been done to them and also appealing to
them to break the bond or connection between the person, especially a child and
the forces of Ogbanje.
“The
philosophy of my people is based on traditional facts in relation to the way the
face problems and live in the communities. It is loose-ended because it is not
a philosophy in the technical sense”.
WHAT I GAINED FROM THE
COURSE PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy
is a course that its application is essential and needed in our day to day
activities to help us have a better result or output and a clear view of the
things happening within our environments and around us.
Before
I started this course, I was a philosopher not in the technical sense
but in the wider and generous sense, this is because it is all about me having
a philosophy of life because a
being that has no philosophy of life is living abnormally, but having
done philosophy for a semester and also looking through the windows of the
different definitions of other technical philosophers, gives me a clear conviction
that doing philosophy is different from the fact that one has a philosophy.
As
it was quoted in the book edited by Ayo Fadahunsi titled philosophy and the
society that, “philosophy is concerned with human development”, the course has
helped me to develop my personality by training my mind to see things
critically and to seek the meaning and intelligibility of things as they are.
It has made me an original thinker; to have thoughts of my own origination
rather than just relying on others people’s thoughts and supporting their
positions.
I
learnt so much from philosophy as a discipline. In the course philosophy I was
thought and I got to understand the importance of asking ‘why’ in a doubtful
situation rather than remaining all the same a numb and confused. As a
philosopher in the technical, I gained the virtue of eagerness to be critical
about things in order to know the causes of unusual things and clear my doubts
about them. Philosophy has thought me to be observant and inquisitive about the
things a common man would take for granted. I learnt that my formal view of
problems which was hoi polloi in nature is not adequate for the purpose of
philosophy in the restricted sense.
Just
as the definition of philosophy that says, “Philosophy is a process of
reflecting upon and criticizing our most deeply held beliefs and attitudes”,
the course has helped me to filter away the unwanted constituents of my mind
and to retain the relevant truth values. Several years have passed before I
with the aid of philosophy came to realize how irrelevant and untrue most of
the opinions and ideas I have in my mind are, I upheld so many false opinions and
I had so much taken them to be true and thus so doubtful and unrealistic were
the things I subsequently built upon them. In other words philosophy has helped
me to have a clear view of things not as I thought they are, not as I thought
they are to be but as they are.
When
I got in touch with the course philosophy, I understood that there are many
ways to tackle a problem systematically so I concluded that “Philosophy is not
an endeavor for the common man”. I realized that in an attempt to solve or
resolve a particular problem or issue, one have to first understand the problem;
what it is all about and should be conscious about ascertaining the views of
the alternatives. I also learnt that
in that kind of situation, one has to consider both the positive and negative effects of an issue even to the extent of
considering opposite positions before he can be able to make a balanced conclusion.
I
had a better change in my personality when I encountered philosophy in the formal
and technical sense, thus I realized I have to filter my mind and let go of my
deeply held hoi polloi irrelevant
beliefs and start again with the original foundation of philosophy in the
restricted sense. It made me cognizant of life not as a partial reality but as
a totality. It helped me to master the skills of argumentation and the
techniques of analysis so that I can think philosophically.
·
Philosophy with regards to my small
valuable knowledge of it as a person anticipating to have more knowledge of it
in the technical sense, applies to me as “An independent, democratic discipline
that deals with man and supports him on his ongoing struggle to know more about
his being, his environment and the purpose of his existence in a technical,
critical, and systematic way and also helps him acquire enough wisdom that he
would use to face his everyday challenges.” In other words philosophy is a
discipline that offers help for man’s critical quest to discover his being, his
environment and the reason for his being. This definition of mine, gives
philosophy an essential role to play in the clarification, production and
propagation of ideas and values that guides the thought and life of people
especially as it implies to me.
In
my own definition of philosophy stated above, the discipline is democratic in the sense that technical
thinkers (philosophers) has the full time freedom to question their doubts
whether the doubt is for a physical or metaphysical being. The discipline is
also independent in the sense that philosophy
does not draw its conclusion about issues from a particular point; it takes a
view of problems from different broad perspectives before it concludes on
anything, even to the extent of considering the positions of the rival
theories. It is not limited to a particular system or discipline like science,
anthropology, theology etc. In other words because of the holistic nature of
philosophy, it seeks to combine the outcome of the various sciences and human
experience into some kind of consistent whole view.[2] No
philosophical conclusion is authentic; this is because a particular technical
philosopher may conclude one thing and another technical philosopher will also
have a different conclusion with regard to same issue.
Philosophy
generates other branches of knowledge as explained by Isaiah Berlin in this
manner: “To use a smile that I cannot claim to have invented, philosophy is
like a radiant sun that from time to time, throws off portions of itself; these
masses when they cool down, acquire a firm and recognizable structure of their
own and acquire independent careers as tidy and regular planets; but the
central sun continues on its path and does not seem to diminish in mass or
radiance. The ‘status’ and ‘vitality’ of philosophy is another matter, and
seems to be directly connected with the extent to which it deals with issues
that are of concern to common man (Berlin 1998:2)”.[3]
CONCLUSION
Philosophy
is a course, designed by man to help him sort out the things irrelevant for his
being and to also give him a clear view of things, not as they are thought to
be but as they are, not as a partial reality but as a totality. It shows the
connection between thoughts and practice, in other words to make a point and
back it up shows its relevance.
Invariably,
with regards to the definitions of different philosophers stated above,
especially the definition given by Alfred North Whitehead, I can reach a conclusion
that a philosopher is a person who is intellectually equipped with the tools of
analysis and synthesis which often help in the critical examination of issues
and problems.
[1]Hope
publications, Ibadan, Nigeria:1999, Philosophy and society an introduction to
beginners edited by Ayo Fadahunsi pg 29
[2]
A Lecture given by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ogundele on Introduction to philosophy in
the seminary of Saints Peter and Paul, Bodija, Ibadan.
[3]
My people perish for lack of philosophy, An Inaugural lecture, 2010/2011 given
by Kolawole A. Olu-Owolabi in the Univeersity of Ibadan. pg15
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