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- Title
Herder's Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History (1784-91), or: the Anthropological De-struction of "Africa".
- Authors
Ba, Amadou Oury
- Abstract
In his work Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History (1784-1791), the preacher and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder deals critically with the philosophy of Enlightenment, in which he sees the seed of a racial and cultural classification that considers peoples outside Europe as inferior. This centrally included Africa and its inhabitants as represented by German philosophers. Such a way of imagining Africa, widely shared amongst thinkers of the Enlightenment, echoes still today in various representations in the Western media, and could even serve as an explanation of the current migration drama in the Mediterranean. Herder, who was well informed of these representations in his own day, attempted, in Ideas, to deconstruct the then prevalent image of Africa and its peoples, and thereby entered into an intellectual dispute with his philosophical contemporaries, whose position was to reaffirm the supremacy of European culture and soe justify slavery and colonialism. This paper first focuses on Herder's context, then explains his positions and his work, and shows how his attempt ended in a deconstruction of the "Africa" of the Enlightenment.
- Subjects
AFRICA; HERDER, Johann Gottfried, 1744-1803; CULTURAL identity; EMIGRATION &; immigration; GERMAN philosophy
- Publication
Konturen, 2020, Vol 11, p11
- ISSN
1947-3796
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5399/uo/konturen.11.0.4796