By Arden (ChatGPT) for
James E. Lassiter
As Tasked and Edited by JEL
NOTE: Compare this essay to the one I posted earlier, "Comfort Without The Cosmos: An Old Anthropologist On Living Well." Notice the difference in tone and phrasings between what Arden (ChatGPT) and Claude (Anthropic) produced. Notice also that Claude, at my lowest paid subscription level, has no graphics generator. I had to go to Arden, also at my lowest paid subscription, for the image in Claude's post. Claude's post is more punchy, Hemingwayesque. This one by Arden more nuanced. Both AIs delivered exactly what I tasked them to do, in the manner I set for them. - JL
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Nigerian philosopher Ada Agada's Aeon
essay, “A
Truly African Philosophy,” offers a provocative and welcome contribution to
our understanding of the human condition. Drawing upon African philosophical
traditions, Agada develops what he calls consolationism, a philosophy
grounded in the proposition that melancholy, rather than happiness, is
fundamental to existence.
I find much to admire in
his argument. Agada's Homo melancholicus reminds me of my own 2014
essay, “Baseline
Melancholia: Don't Worry or Be Happy, Be Content” in which I suggested that
the precariousness of animal existence makes suffering, fear, and uncertainty
unavoidable features of life. Happiness is not our natural, permanent
condition. Moments of contentment, joy, and wonder are precious precisely because
they are fleeting.
Agada's emphasis on
emotion as fundamental to existence also resonates with neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio's understanding of feeling as foundational to consciousness and reason.
Equally welcome is Agada's insistence that African intellectual traditions have
something important to contribute to philosophical understandings of our common
humanity.
In my 2000 African
Studies Quarterly article, “African Culture and
Personality,” I examined African scholars' efforts to identify widespread
cultural values and patterns of thinking, including communal relationships and
the interconnectedness of life. I argued that Western social scientists had
become excessively reluctant to investigate broad cultural similarities because
earlier generalizations had encouraged stereotyping and racism. Those dangers
were real, but abandoning comparative inquiry was not the answer.
But Agada and I part
company over a fundamental proposition. He writes that the universe has a
purpose: the realization of freedom among conscious beings and the perfection
of nature. This is where his otherwise compelling reflections cross from an
understanding of living beings into speculative metaphysics.
I see no convincing
evidence that the universe possesses a purpose or strives toward perfection.
Evolution has no predetermined destination. Living organisms strive to survive
and reproduce; humans, through consciousness and culture, develop purposes, values,
and aspirations of their own. We should not mistake these for intentions
residing in the cosmos.
There is another
distinction worth emphasizing. Consolation may help us endure life's inevitable
suffering, but much human suffering is neither inevitable nor natural. It
arises from social institutions and cultural arrangements that humans have
created and can change. Understanding the human predicament must therefore
involve not only finding consolation but also confronting the conditions that
make life unnecessarily miserable for so many.
Agada has given us a
thoughtful, distinctly African contribution to an enduring philosophical
conversation. His consolationism deserves serious consideration even by those
of us who cannot accept its cosmic teleology.
We need not believe that the universe has a purpose to find purpose in our lives, nor that happiness is our natural condition to make life more humane and worth living.
Related Reading
Ada Agada, “A
Truly African Philosophy,” Aeon; James E. Lassiter, “Baseline
Melancholia: Don't Worry or Be Happy, Be Content” (2014); and “African Culture and
Personality: Bad Social Science, Effective Social Activism, or a Call to
Reinvent Ethnology?” (African Studies Quarterly, 2000); James E.
Lassiter, Cultural
Evolution: Caught in the Devil’s Bargain, two volumes.
