This is Black History Month. And I am discussing Dr Paget Henry who is Black and is a Historian. But as a black historian Paget Henry since his student days, his doctoral thesis, his history of Antigua and Barbuda published in 1985, concerned itself with what Black and West Indian historians, even metropolitan historians do not concern themselves with. Namely, the Belief Sector. That is why we have economic history, or social history, or military history. What women and men believe, and how these beliefs mediate the social and economic conditions in which the very men and women whose story, or history one is relating at a given point in time in a particular space, forms no part of the story or history. Paget Henry went in a new direction. Glory be to him.

It was logical then from this discussion, his delineation of the Belief Sector in Antigua and Barbuda’s history, that Dr Paget Henry would go on to discuss African philosophy.

African philosophy is supposed to be a non-existent category. Africans, western civilisation would have itself and all others believe, thought nothing. The same could not be said about Chinese, because the works of Confucius or Lao Tse have been preserved. Nor about Indians, because Buddhism has exercised world influence. But it could be said about Africans, because the philosophic writings of Africans were destroyed by conquest, beginning, say with Alexander of Macedon, known in Western history as Alexander the Great, and continuing with Islamic invasions and conquest.

The truth of the matter is every people, be they Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Africans must, as an act of living, reach determinations about the universe. How they came to be, what they exist for, and how they can become more human, that is, less and less of the animal evolutionary past.

Now I am going to say that Dr Paget Henry is making a most distinguished, indeed a world historical contribution to African thought, that is to say, African philosophy. He got there, mark you, by first working on the history of Antigua and Barbuda and inquiring why our world view manifested itself primarily as obeah. That is, African conceptions, cut off from their original base, by our random distribution here without tribal continuity. We saw that in my article last week.

Now we are going to go into some deeper waters. But don’t worry dear reader, we shall ride every mounting wave, however high, not only safely but with pleasure on this journey into uncharted seas.

Professor Paget Henry says cogently that "throughout the African world" at this point in historical time, there is "the loss of economic sovereignty." But, says Dr Henry, it is at this moment of loss of sovereignty in Africa and the Diaspora, which he calls quite nicely Africana, that there is a growth of "philosophical autonomy and creativity." He says this is most appropriate because with the decline in the economic sphere, we might find "the potential for important intellectual innovations," which will strengthen "the foundations of our collective identity". So, the exploration of our own African ideas and systems of thought might give us, shall we say, new impulses, for being in this world, in a new way, and collectively.

I want to tell you then that Dr Paget Henry is doing this in a wonderful piece entitled "Philosophy and the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition". This article is what I call his prolegomena. Or, for simplicity’s sake, his introduction to his major philosophical work entitled Caliban’s Reason - Studies in Afro Caribbean Philosophy. So let us embark, on a canoe, in deep philosophical waters, in which, unlike Ulysses, we may at the seafarers end, find a new way of being, collectively. This is no play-play journey.

Dr Henry says straight away, this: "The philosophical contributions of our African heritage are not engaged." That’s heavy hitting. But what follows is even heavier: "The invisibility" writes Professor Henry of this African philosophic tradition "is to a large extent characteristic of our intellectual tradition as a whole." Thus we are in no position to grasp "the significance" of being "African" let alone the "African heritage". Indeed, Dr Henry, thorough-going as ever, says that our intellectual tradition, like the Western intellectual tradition, "has resisted and continues to resist", with might and main, "the intellectual contribution of African philosophy". This, to say the least, has been to our peril, and is largely responsible, for the perilous and parlous state of our economies. Therefore, the inquiry into African philosophy is of paramount importance at this conjuncture of time.

What then is this African philosophy? Every philosophy poses the question or rather answers the question "what does it mean to be man"?

I have to interject here so that we may be less abstract and more concrete. The art of being human has to be considered against its opposite. That is how can I, as a human being, be other than the brute beasts which human beings in the original state find themselves surrounded and preceded by.

Animals eat. Mate or have sex. And provide for their young or off-spring. Human beings, like animals, need food, must reproduce themselves, therefore must have sex, and must provide for their off-spring. These characteristics we share with the animal kingdom, as well as natural selection.

But humans, unlike animals, change nature by work. Thus we provide food and clothing, as well as shelter against nature’s hostile elements. Caves were not enough, so man had to construct huts initially, houses eventually.

So animals find nature as given. They cannot change it. They eat grass. They cannot grow grass. They can hide under nature’s trees or in the caves. They cannot construct houses as protection against nature. Animals drink water, they cannot make storage for it. Nature is a given. Fixed.

Humans at first have to abide by nature so to speak. That is, our first clothing is natural - a fig leaf. Then she or he makes the fig leaf into cloth. (I suspect, but cannot prove, women first created cloth, probably as a matter of womanly necessity, and became the first creators. But we will not gender quibble.) Unlike animals humans make things from nature.

I want you to follow me carefully. Animals have cognitive processes. They hear sounds. They respond to sounds this way or that way if the sound is deemed dangerous or non dangerous. They know danger or non-danger from past experience, or their memory of it.

I am being very deliberate. And you will see why later. So the animal has some basic cognitive processes.

But because the animal does not make things from nature, its cognitive processes do not develop beyond the point of what we subsume under the category "instinct."

The essential difference between humans and the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts on land, is that humans make things from nature for survival and comfort. In making things humans develop cognition, that is, thought. But the essential difference between humans and animals is not thought, but that humans make things. The essential characteristic of man is, therefore, work. Work is the process by which humans make things from nature, or from other human-made things. Clear. Cognition is a process towards work. One conceives of a chair in one’s head, then one works and creates the chair. Work is the realisation of thought.

Simple as this may sound, I have been arguing here, that the essence of the human, and being human, is not to be found in Thought. That is, "I think therefore I am", as the Rationalists have held. Or, in the authentic moment which punctuates the ceaseless ache of boring everydayness as the existentialists have held.

What I am postulating is that the whole of what is known as world history is really the creation of the human through labour.

As a matter of living, that is, as a matter of necessity, we are compelled to transform nature to satisfy human needs. In the process of doing so we change nature and simultaneously change ourselves. In that process too, we produce and reproduce ourselves physically, socially and intellectually as we acquire new needs, powers and capacities.

However, it is just as erroneous to give primacy to intellectual work (the order-giver) over manual work (the order-taker), as it is to assume that human beings, or being human, can only attain its historically possible levels of development only through work. Full human development requires the all-round development of our capacities and powers for work and for enjoyment of our mental and physical potential, away from work. The one reinforcing the other. The need for work and the need for leisure are intrinsically (dialectically) related. They are unity-opposites.

It is therefore not accidental that we humans, at the end of the 20^th century, are so alienated at work that we wish to be liberated from work. Liberated from work to the hedonism of pleasure. Interested only in the quantity of pleasure we can get away from dehumanising, unfulfilling work. That is, the satisfaction of sensual pleasures and sleep. Happiness begins and ends in the bedroom - preferably after doping by TV!

Not unexpectedly then, sports becomes a mass source of pleasure, substituting emotionally, beautifully and physically for the dread scene of meaningless work.

With that foundation we can proceed with Dr Paget Henry at a higher level as he gives us the essentials of African philosophy.

Dr Paget Henry goes to the heart of the matter. African sages he says had the notion of sunsum, he uses the African word in this case, the Akan for the ego. This sansum or ego, in African philosophy, says Dr Henry, is the ‘organ’ or structure that mediates our ‘I" or our sense of "personal autonomy" and if I may simplify Dr Henry, mediates and instructs our sense of free will. "The sunsum" then says Dr Henry "is the organiser of our everyday consciousness." Put simpler for easy comprehension this sunsum is the means by which we make sense of and relate to the world daily.

Then says Dr Henry this sunsum through which we apprehend the world daily "often makes errors in choosing the possibilities which will define itself." Again by way of interpretation, this sunsum or ego, may, out of the possible choices, choose that which leads to growth, or that which is static, or negative. "These errors are often" says Dr Henry "compounded by tendencies of the sunsum to centre and enclose itself around its chosen possibilities leading to a condition that Wilson Harris [the great Caribbean writer and thinker] described as "ontic closure".

Now we are quickly in very deep waters. The choices we make daily through the sunsum or ego, which I would call, encoded past experience, makes us closed, limited to our yesterdays, and there are no new tomorrows. We are closed. Our being is centred in the repetitive, hence "ontic closure". We have locked out ourselves from new possibilities, so to speak.

Before we leave the sunsum, the ego, or what I call for easy comprehension, the encoded past experience by which we make sense of the world daily, we must grasp this other defining characteristic of it in African philosophy.

Dr Henry says "The particular moment of ignorance that leads the sunsum into error is its ignorance of the parts of itself that are not social, but spiritual in nature."

Now this is many, many fathoms deep. And what is this "spiritual" part which the sunsum is not fully aware of, and therefore falls into error. In African philosophy it is okra to use the African word. And what in African philosophy is this okra? [Not for heavens sake the vegetable which, by its slipperiness, distinguishes fungee from wet and balled cornmeal. Hope you laughed].

Dr Henry says that in African philosophy the okra "is the divine spark of the creator which exists in all human beings". Note well divine spark. So, in African philosophy there is a divinity.

This okra "often escapes our awareness or we are usually conscious only of our sunsum and our honan or body." All three together, sunsum, honan and okra says Dr Henry "constitute the unity of the human person according to Akan thought or African philosophy". Incidentally, these concepts can be found among the Bantus or Hottenots, with varying emphasis here and there.

Now get this. Dr Henry says that in African philosophy "What is special about the okra is that it carries within it the Creator’s plans for each individual." Each individual in African philosophy is endowed by her or his Creator with an okra. That is, the Creator’s specific plan for that specific individual. It is more, you will note then the Christian "soul". It is the Creator’s specific plan per individual. And, profoundly, one can either fulfil the specific okra, the Creator’s individual plan, or betray it.

Let me use Dr Henry’s inimitable compression of this grand idea: "To achieve full humanisation, the sunsum, [the ego the "I"] must carry out its self-creative activities within the guidelines encoded in the okra." If we through the sunsum do not follow the guidelines of the okra we remain unfulfilled, frustrated, shall we say truncated human beings living in "ontic closure" or an inauthentic existence.

I think we have gone far enough out to sea, for us to take advantage of the calm, and rest on our oars. Then we can see where this Paget Henry African and philosophic bark has taken us through.

Now, what is defined above and in rudimentary fashion are the elements of a philosophic system. By that I mean, a body of thought which comprehensively lays out how to be human, and how to become more human, realising the okra, or the Supreme Being’s divine plan for each individual.

The African, for example, through this system of thought, said that the individual sunsum, as parent or parents could not raise a child. The child would develop and attachment to the individual parents. However it took the collective sunsum, if you like, the collective consciousness of a group to raise a child. Then the child at a certain stage, through rituals, (worship) mainly the dance, could be brought in touch with its okra and so the Supreme Being’s individual plan for the child within the group and in furtherance of the group would be realised if each child, correctly brought up to recognise the deeply human, made the right choices.

This worship, or rituals, meant appealing to the departed ancestors, cleansed by death, who were the mediators between the individual and the Supreme Being.

Now let us see what this means in social, or actually lived terms. At first in African society all things had they in common. Needs were met in common from the common work of all. In time, war with other societies, created a class of warriors, who by collecting the spoils of war had more than the "common" group. A leader or King emerged, who now settled disputes, between his immediate followers who had most, the warriors who had more, and the larger common group who had far less. A class of priests emerged who served as the memory of the society, keeping and reciting its history even writing it. This same class of priests healed the sick. Studied the stars and related human behaviour to the stars and its spiritual nature.

Dr Henry calls this "philosophical anthropology." Here he and I part company.

Properly and philosophically this belief system has to be called "metaphysics". The belief that human being or the being of humans on earth, is spiritually pre-determined in a divine plan is known as metaphysics. So to speak, in African metaphysics, it is one’s correct relation, through the okra, to the spirit world, which made one more human, as one realised the plan of the Supreme Being not in the next world, but in this world. On death, becoming ceased. After death one joined the realm of ancestral spirits. Ancestral spirits collectively aided those on earth to become more human by imparting ancestral wisdom and guidance, on appeal, through the rituals of worship. These "leaps" were celebrated with special festivals.

It will be noted that African metaphysics is essentially different from European metaphysics. There is no divinely revealed word. No divine prophet foretelling the future. The priests or griots or "shaman" were not "holy". They recorded. Kept the healing powers and unctions of the group. They recorded too, in long recitations, of call and response, the leaps made by the group, the community, the state one from stage to another.

The point here is, is that armed with this African metaphysics Dr Henry is now going to walk all over, and with absolute confidence and certainty, one of the pillars of western thought. Professor Henry is in his black professorial majesty as he does so. It is a wonderful moment in time.

George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, Dr Paget Henry writes, "excluded this [African] philosophy from the table of humanist discourse on the grounds that it lacked an awareness of any power higher than the sunsum or ego." For Hegel [and here he quotes Hegel himself: "religion begins with the consciousness that there is something higher than man."

Paget Henry continues "Hegel makes this awareness the foundations of all culture and morality". And again Dr Henry quotes Hegel: "For only with the consciousness of a Higher Being does the (human being) reach a point of view which inspires him with reverence."

Now this was a big deal when Hegel wrote that. He, of course did not say that he had learnt it in his theological studies at Tubingen from the work of the African, St Augustine of Hippo. Just in passing, it was St Augustine, the African, who used African metaphysics to rid Christianity of its millennialism, the return of Jesus after the millennium, to rule for a millennium, with 144,000 the Saints as his Cabinet.

Anyway, what Hegel (1770-1831) said, his conception or misconception that only with the consciousness of a Higher Being does the human being reach a point of reverence, presumably his highest form of being, is said today, as a commonplace, by any Antiguan or Barbudan housewife, waterfront-worker, maid or bus-boy. It has become so commonplace that it leads to "ontic closure".

But let us continue with Dr Paget Henry: "Hegel wrongly claimed that Africans have no knowledge of the immortality of the soul" and that among us Africans moral sentiments are non-existent. Hegel compounded his errors further when he attributed these absences to the lack of an awareness of a higher power among Africans. Everything I have said about African philosophical anthropology contradicts Hegel at every turn, and suggests a systematically distorted [racist] reading on his part. Indeed knowledge of a higher power, the spiritual regulation of the sunsum [by the okra] and the impossibility of achieving full humanisation without its co-operation, are the prime lessons of African philosophical anthropology" which I call African metaphysics.

Dr Paget Henry has left Hegel in racist tatters in this particular regard. Hegel is set on his feet by Dr Henry. Begging one hopes for forgiveness for his arrant racist strictures against Africans. Dr Henry, in turn, stern and taciturn, tells Herr Hegel that only when racism ends can there be forgiveness.

There can be no doubt that this refutation of a giant of western philosophy, Hegel, with concrete African philosophy, by Dr Henry clears away a lot of debris which has sat on the head of African people on the continent as well as in the African diaspora. Dr. Paget Henry, by his work, on and in African philosophy is an Antiguan and Barbudan giant of the 20^th century.

I want to take issue in conclusion, with what I call one of the great western revolutionary metaphysicians, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci today appeals to many Caribbean thinkers - not without merit and justice. Gramsci though lead them into the paths of abstraction, and therefore, inertia and inaction, from which the Caribbean intelligentsia suffers, historically. It is a plague worse than AIDS, in my view, at any rate.

Gramsci in a celebrated passage says: "The starting point of critical elaboration of consciousness of what one really is, and is knowing ‘thyself’ as a product of a historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, … without leaving an inventory, therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory."

I am going to be sharp, over-sharp, and say this is well constructed nonsense.

Gramsci says that to know yourself, one has to know oneself as a product of the historical process to date. OK, not much quarrel with that. But Gramsci says, that the historical process to date has deposited in you an infinity of traces without leaving an inventory. Quite true too. But says he, it is imperative at the outset of doing anything worthwhile or authentic to compile such an inventory. If you were to embark on such an inventory you would spend more than ten lifetimes compiling that inventory, that infinity of traces deposited in you by the historical process to date. In the end, you would know everything except yourself. Gramsci’s error, is the error of contemplative philosophy, one who, of necessity, spent much of his thinking life in prison, cut-off from participation in daily struggle.

One knows because one is born in a given race, in a given social class, One’s becoming is helped or hindered, by the strictures on that race, and the obstacles in the way of the social class into which one is born and grows.

It is by engaging, with those of your social group or race, to roll back all that impedes your forward movement, that one knows what one is capable of, and it is with that knowledge one understands "the historical process to date." One engages and one learns what are the essentials in the inventory of history.

The more one struggles with others against the dehumanising enemy, the more one learns the humanising validity or invalidity of all traces history has deposited in the combatants of both sides.

The more one escapes from the struggles of the day the more one becomes inhuman, imprisoned in the fetters of the ego (the sunsum) and the body (honan). In short, the inauthentic existence.

Put another way, one is born into a society which makes things for distribution and exchange. That process of production, distribution and exchange, has become quite unequal. The richest 20 per cent of the world’s population living in developed countries controls 86 per cent of the world’s GDP and 82 per cent of the international markets. The same 20 per cent has 74 per cent of the telephone lines, represents 93 per cent of Internet users and consumes 86 per cent of all that is produced. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the seven most developed countries, with 685 million inhabitants, is triple that of all the underdeveloped countries whose populations surpass 4.5 billion people. Our house, our street, our village or town, our parish or province, reflects that over-riding reality. Where one is born, or the position one comes to occupy in this arrangement determines one’s sunsum, ego, or organ for adjusting daily to that arrangement.

If one does not engage with others to change that arrangement, one becomes an inert, immanent being - sucking, eating, sexing, accumulating. Or, to use Dr Henry’s word an "ignorant" victim of it. It is by overcoming the individual "I" "ego", through acting with others, that one knows both what one is up against – the historical process which made human creations humans’ very own enemy - and how, by national and international networking (the okra) to overcome the antagonisms which stand in the way of full and truly human realisation, individually and collectively, in this world.

The point here though, is Dr Henry has made an inestimable contribution through African philosophy to that overcoming. We shall overcome. Or, we will be overwhelmed by the brutal barbarism in our world and deposited in our being over time. Being truly human means overcoming that barbarism, internally and externally, personally and globally.