By Claude (Anthropic)
An Essay Written For James E. Lassiter
Tasked and Edited by JEL
A Nigerian philosopher believes the universe has a purpose. I don't. Yet I agree with most of what he says about being human, and where we part says a lot about how to live well.
A philosopher worth reading
In 2018, Ada Agada of Nigeria's University of Calabar published "A truly African philosophy." He calls his view consolation philosophy. Its core ideas:
- We
are feeling creatures first. Reason grows out of emotion.
- We
live in a connected, communal world, not as isolated individuals.
- The
ground tone of life is melancholy, broken by moments of joy.
- African thought has something to say to everyone.
I agree with all four. Neuroscience, notably Antonio Damasio's work, backs the first. African thinkers have long voiced the second: "I am, because we are," as John Mbiti put it.
I've been here before
In 2014 I wrote a post here called "Baseline
Melancholia." My point: chasing constant happiness asks too much. Every
animal knows pain, fear and relief; only we expect bliss, as far as we know. Better to aim for
contentment, accepting that life is short and uncertain, and savoring the good
moments when they come.
Agada's
"consolation" and my "contentment" are close cousins,
reached independently.
In 2000 I published an article urging anthropologists to take African scholars' big ideas seriously while testing them against real evidence. Agada does the first well and skips the second. He builds on an idea from Nigeria's Idoma people without telling us who holds it, how, or whether it has changed. A big claim about African thought should answer to evidence.
Where we part
Then Agada goes further. Everything, he says,
even stones and atoms, yearns. The Universe has a purpose: freedom for us,
perfection for the rest of nature. That purpose can never be reached, so
existence is a cosmic tragedy, and all we get is consolation.
Here I get off the bus.
Agada admits we don't know why the Universe exists, and he calls perfection
"a mere wish." A purpose we can't know and can never reach looks less
like a fact about the cosmos than a fact about us. Humans are built to anticipate
and worry, so we see intention everywhere. Every culture has turned that into a
story about the stars. Consolation philosophy may be one more.
For me, melancholy needs no cosmic explanation. It comes from being a living creature in a risky world, and it reaches as far as animals that feel, not to stones.
Purpose we make ourselves
So where does meaning come from? From us. Purpose
arose with living things that must act to survive, and humans built on it
through families, language, communities and traditions. It isn't written into
the cosmos. We make it together, and we have to keep making it.
Agada says he is caught
between the devil and the deep blue sea. I see a simpler choice. Without a
purposeful cosmos, the alternative isn't despair. It's contentment: accept that
life is short and uncertain, cherish the moments of relief, awe and wonder you
make or stumble on, and take responsibility for the purposes you choose and the
people who share them.
That's comfort without the cosmos. It's enough.
Sources
- Ada
Agada, "A truly African philosophy," Aeon, 27 September
2018.
- James
E. Lassiter, "African Culture and
Personality: Bad Social Science, Effective Social Activism, or a Call to
Reinvent Ethnology?" African Studies Quarterly
3(3), 2000.
- James
E. Lassiter, "Baseline Melancholia:
Don't Worry or Be Happy, Be Content", Being Human,
10 September 2014.
- James E. Lassiter, Cultural Evolution: Caught in the Devil's Bargain, in two volumes.
