Arụmarụka (Dec 2022)
Reflections on Bernard Matolino’s Contribution to Philosophy in Africa
Abstract
This paper reflects on Bernard Matolino’s contribution to philosophy. For heuristic purposes, I stipulate a distinction between what we may call the negative and positive projects when considering a philosopher’s body of work. The ‘negative project’ of a philosopher’s work involves his critical engagement with the extant literature in his discipline. There will be leading thinkers, theories or even schools of thought at any given time and in any discipline. One of the ways the voice and perspectives of a thinker emerges is through critical interaction with these thinkers, theories and schools of thought. I describe this part of the researcher’s work as ‘negative’ largely because it involves criticism, revision or even outright rejection of certain ideas/views/arguments in the literature. The positive project of the philosopher’s work focuses on his own distinctive and novel contribution to the field. Beyond criticism, revisions and repudiation of others’ ideas/views, a philosopher might also want to posit their own ideas or theories in the discipline. A careful reading of Matolino’s work will reveal both dimensions, the negative and positive projects. The aim of this paper is to throw a spotlight on Matolino’s work by focusing on the negative project as his contribution to African philosophy (without suggesting that there is no positive project in his corpus in philosophy).
