Interpretation for Liberation - Wolff, Ernst

. .

Résumé :

Preface. Approaching African hermeneutics

Chapter 1. Introduction: Hermeneutics as a trend in African philosophy
1. Hermeneutics: a provisional description
2. The place of hermeneutics in African philosophy
2.1. The place of hermeneutics in African philosophy: using Oruka as a point of departure
2.2. The place of hermeneutics in African philosophy: using Nkombe and Smet as a point of departure
2.3. Preliminary conclusions
3. Hermeneutics: an author-based approach

Chapter 2. On the threshold: from cultural philosophemes to African hermeneutics -Theophilus Okere
1. African philosophy: a historic-hermeneutic investigation of the conditions of its possibility
2. What is non-philosophy?
2.1. Culture from the view of ethnophilosophy and its critics
2.2. Culture as a non-philosophical component of European philosophy
3. What is philosophy?
3.1. The conditions of the possibility of philosophy
3.2. From the philosophical crossroads to the possibility of African philosophy
4. How should philosophy and non-philosophy be linked?
4.1. Working on philosophemes
4.2. Towards a traditionalist or a contextualist view of belonging to a culture?
5. Conclusion
Select annotated bibliography

Chapter 3. Interpretation as a resource for political resistance : Serequeberhan between generality and particularity
1. The source: general anthropological claims
2. Philosophy in general
3. All humans and all philosophy
4. African philosophy
4.1. Critique: what is to be avoided
4.2. Advocacy: what is to be pursued
5. Improper African philosophy: self-imposed negation of historicalness in Nkrumah and Senghor
5.1. Nkrumah: pathology of extroverted Euro-normativity
5.2. Senghor: pathology of introverted or internalised Euro-normativity
5.3. On the unintentional servants of European Enlightenment
6. A new start: from horizon to hermeneutic discourse
6.1. Horizon and vocation
6.2. According mediations their due: expanding and transcending the lived horizon
6.3. Tradition
6.4. Actuality and ideality: normativity and liberation
7. From horizon to action
7.1. Original violence with C?saire
7.2. [Counter-]Violence is no choice (but a matter of necessity)
7.3. Fusion of horizons and practices of freedom: with Fanon and Cabral
8. Conclusion
Select annotated bibliography

Chapter 4. Critique of African hermeneutic reason : interpretation triggered and oriented by praxis-Okolo Okonda
1. Orientation: praxis, hermeneutics, tradition
2. Praxis, crisis, development
2.1. Crisis
2.2. Development as revolutionary praxis?
3. Hermeneutics
3.1. Every theory of reading presupposes a theory of text and vice versa
3.2. Every reading is oriented toward some kind of appropriation/re-taking [reprise]
3.3. Every reading and every appropriation is determined by a worldview of the subject who reads and appropriates [or re-takes]
4. Tradition
4.1. Tradition as text
4.2. Tradition and the difficult balance between the already there and the not yet
4.3. What is co-extensive with tradition: worldview, ideology, identity
4.4. Provisional conclusion on tradition, worldviews, ideology, and identity
5. Critique of hermeneutic reason: shifting perspectives and complexity as a virtue
6. Ethnophilosophy: contra ... and pro
7. Orality
7.1. Proverbs
7.2. Conclusions on orality
8. Work, critique, and violence
9. Philosophy, singular and universal: the ambition of Okolo's book
10. Conclusion
Select annotated bibliography