Outline of Shaaban Robert’s idealism

Abstract

The influence and dominance of Anglo-American philosophy since World War II has left the false impression that the philosophical ideas of thinkers can only be found in either the journals dedicated to the different aspects and branches of the discipline, or in the compendiums and treatises of their authors traditionally regarded to be philosophical within those traditions. I said “false,” because it is hardly the case, yet the cultural bias and arrogance that came with colonial power left many people across the colonized world, especially in Africa, believing that philosophy had homes only in European languages and not in any one of their own. To be sure, style is one thing, and the thought content of a thinker’s endeavors is a whole different matter. The Western colonial biases in defining what ought to be regarded as philosophy has led to the neglect or underrepresentation of the materials and content of philosophical education in formerly colonized countries and cultures. But this ought not be the norm, as experiential issues thinkers deal with, as well as the styles they present these concerns in, vary from tradition to tradition, and none of them is more valid than another. In what follows I sketch how Shaaban Robert’s works can be read and reflected on, despite his unique and eclectic style, as works in social, moral, and even political philosophy. As he says it himself, a good text must be judged by the estimation of the audiences for whom it is written, and this can be the case only if the text appeals to, and stimulates their intellectual and emotional arousal, both of which are functions of the vernacular. Are English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, and any other language out there in the rest of the world, not just vernaculars to their respective native speakers after all? Similarly, and naturally for that matter, KiSwahili is the native language of all those people who consider it their native language through which they experience and think about the world.