The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhen
It is a kind of paradoxical consideration to associate philosophy with oppression. We almost all just submit to the temptation to consider philosophy in terms of wisdom, peace and other good, true and beautiful things. But almost all diabolic human acts in history are connected to some philosophers and philosophical ideas. Such philosophers as Alfred Baeumler and Martin Heidegger are notable examples of thinkers that generated ideas that fed Nazi ideology and political practice.
Adam Smith’s treatise on the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is not only considered the capitalist manifesto but it is also the book that gave the most eloquent, philosophical and daring justification of the enslavement of some nations by others. Alongside the scientists, especially biologists, that generated scientific propaganda about the genetic superiority of white people over the yellow, brown and dark people of the world, there were philosophers that projected the idea of white people as saviours of the human race.
It is actually some theologians, as philosophers of religion, that turned Christianity from a humble religion to a religion of Empire and conquest. In that way, Christianity was colonised and turned into Christiandom, a powerful and also evil kingdom of the present colonialist and capitalist world. Closer to home in South Africa doctrines of John Calvin, Calvinism, was used to foment Afrikaner nationalism and its political ideology of apartheid. Theology as a province of philosophy was deployed in weaponising religion and spirituality against those that found themselves in the receiving end of conquest.
Some dissidents inside
My argument would be reduced to a fallacy if I erase the historical truth that there are Enlightenment philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau that actually questioned and opposed colonial ideologies and practices. This is as much as there were some powerful white Europeans that expressed and acted their opposition to slavery and colonialism when the two systems actually stood to benefit them.
Philosophy had anticolonial and anti-slavery dissidents right inside Empire. These were dissidents because the norm around western thinkers was to support Empire. There were material and spiritual rewards for being racist and colonial. There are such philosophers as Wilhelm Georg Hegel who believed that true freedom could only exist in Europe. In the thought of Hegel, those people that were outside Europe, in Asia and Africa, had to benefit from enslavement and colonisation by Europe in order to access basic human freedom, civilisation and modernity.
There are other prominent western philosophers like the German nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche who advanced a philosophy of the will to power that was a valorisation of conquest and celebration of gratuitous power. The Will to Power is one of the philosophical doctrines to come from Europe that celebrate conquest, the overcoming of victims and the oppression of the conquered as objects and not even subjects of Empire.
Besides dissidents like Rousseau and Kant there were other philosophers like the Jewish-French ethicist Immanuel Levinas who, as a survivor of the Holocaust, adumbrated a philosophical ethics of the other as a human being and not an object. It is important to understand that conquest, colonialism and slavery, did not get the unanimous and unquestionable support of western philosophers. There were dissidents and philosophical bandits that thought against the grain and defended the equal humanity and legitimate personhood of the oppressed, inside the belly of the beast, in the Wild West. Like Jean Paul Sartre, Levinas became a western philosopher whose ethics could be utilised by black freedom fighters in their struggle against slavery, imperialism and colonialism.
Such hard-hitting philosophers of liberation as Frantz Fanon actually worked with the philosophies of the Levinases and Sartres of this world. Above human and evil constructions of radical difference the philosophy of liberation provides a meeting point for all human beings that respect human life and freedom. That is exactly why there are white European philosophers whose philosophies can be relied upon in the struggle for freedom from coloniality and its related oppressions. After all has been said and done freedom and liberation itself is an exalted human value that is ultimately natural.
The philosophy of oppression
Some apparently clever and refined ideas have been utilised for evil. Before the Empire Builders, Merchants and Missionaries hit the shores of Africa, Asia and Latin America ideas were generated and circulated that justified conquest and defended the domination of one by the other. Sciences, arts and religions were all turned around and weaponised against the conquered. Myths and stereotypes were constructed about blacks and the colonised in general as inferior objects. Ideas of the purity of blood and the superiority of some races ahead of others were constructed and circulated as scientific and philosophical wisdom.
Just as well as there is the philosophy of liberation there indeed is the philosophy of oppression and domination. Gifted philosophers of the west did expend their gifts in the service of domination and oppression. Cowardly thinkers, not to mention pretenders and sophists, tend to seek to align themselves with power even if it is evil power. Some of the most evil potentates of the world have carried out their heinous crimes with the support of some opportunistic and cowardly thinkers.
Philosophising for evil and oppression is very easy. It does not demand invention and or courage. It does not involve the difficult task that Edward Said described as “speaking truth to power.” It involves speaking power to the truth, silencing, erasing violating and punishing anyone that identifies with the truth and justice. The philosophy of domination is also fraudulent and dishonest. It has historically usurped such great traditions as Christianity and turned them around to use them for evil purposes. Such crimes against humanity as slavery and colonialism were carried out by persons and organisations that swore in the name of the Christ and claimed to be carrying out their duty to God.
Oppression and domination are so evil and so ugly such that even the worst oppressor wants to believe that he or she is doing good. Evil has never called itself evil. It dresses itself in various outfits and pretends, even to itself, that it is the good work of human deliverance. That is exactly why some of the most evil people are found in religious congregations and other groupings that enjoy a reputation for doing good. In that way, evil frequently does not know itself, it calls itself this and that when it is actually the darkness itself. Some of the worst evil cannot look itself in the eye or can it call itself by its true name, it operates under nicknames and other monikers. It is for that reason that oppressors need freedom more than the oppressed because they live false realities and exist in constructed universes that make them feel good as human deliverers when they are evil monsters.
Oppression and oppressors themselves are ignorant. Ignorance helps insulate them from hard truths about their evil. It is the paradox of oppression that even the worst of the evil oppressors wants to be seen, known and understood as a well-meaning human being that means no harm at all. A compelling ideological smokescreen is built by all forms of oppression and serves to conceal the reality of oppression and project it as human good when it is a crime against humanity. While the philosophy of liberation walks around by the light of day calling itself by its name, the philosophies and ideologies of domination walk around in borrowed names and stolen descriptions. The aphorism that the Devil is a Liar means much more than that as refers to a deeper way in which evil can only survive on lies.
Oppression creates a world and a universe of its own where it believes its own lies as truths and celebrates itself as just.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina in Pretoria: [email protected].
