“In neither case do we find any instance whatsoever of religious revelation. Ptah and Amma are only images making it possible to name the creative being, source of world order, the initial rational principle. The mythic narrative is an instrument; the issue at stake is the nature of the initial creative principle. That is the goal of investigation.” “The Dogon narrative is indeed at a philosophical advantage: it invokes no divine masturbation. Neither, in the text recorded by the anthropologists, and which we have set down here, does it require recourse to images of the ‘heart’ and ‘tongue.’” “In sum, we have here the same cultural community, the same speculative universe, a deep intellectual identity between pharaonic Egypt and other areas of black Africa. The French philosopher Paul Masson-Oursel, a distinguished intellect open to philosophical endeavor in all its cultural, biological, historical and geographical diversity, has pointed out, cogently, that ‘black mental attitudes’ were ‘the backdrop of pharaonic civilization.’” “The fact is that where the issue of genesis is concerned, the speculative philosophy of pharaonic Egypt is identical in content to other black African traditional conceptions. Further, pharaonic and African conceptions present a remarkable contrast to the reflections of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers who also undertook to seek and to discover the original element or cluster of elements out of which the universe emerged.” “According to Thales, the world originated, in the final analysis, from water. Anaximenes maintained that the source of the universe was a sort of mist. Anaximander posited something even vaguer, ‘the Infinite’, as the origination principle of all things.” Theophile Obenga “African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period: 2780-330BC” Page 85
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:12:34 +0000
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