Abstract
This chapter will examine the themes of nihilism, pessimism, and optimism as they feature in the thought of the Nigerian philosophers, Innocent Asouzu and Ada Agada. While endorsing Asouzu’s basic optimistic vision of reality, I will, nevertheless, point out the inadequacy of an almost entirely optimistic theory of human existence in accounting for the phenomena of nihilism and pessimism. I will compare Asouzu’s ibuanyidanda philosophy with Agada’s consolation philosophy. I will show that consolation philosophy supplies a broader vision of the world that attempts the reconciliation of the optimistic and pessimistic outlooks. Finally, I will sketch a theory of meaning in life, based on the submissions of ibuanyidanda and consolation philosophies and present this outline as promising much for the development of an African philosophy of life. The essay will adopt the method of analysis and evaluation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The intellectual love of God is a kind of emotional attitude generated by the knowledge that God is eternal and is the ultimate cause of all things, including the pleasure that follows the recognition of God’s eternity (Spinoza 1910: 218–219). According to Spinoza, the mind is a fixed and eternal mode of thought, with God as its cause. Since God is eternal the mind too is eternal. The stoic acceptance of the condition of human existence and the world, and the conclusion that all is well, which follows from the knowledge of things sub specie aeternitatis (in the context of eternity), leads to the emotional-cum-intellectual state that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. He writes: “The human mind in so far as it knows itself and its body under the species of eternity, thus far it necessarily has knowledge of God, and knows that it exists in God and is conceived through God” (Prop. xxx, 216). See Subheading 4.3 of this essay for the consolationist notion of intellectual love. We see at once a happy convergence of Asouzu’s joy of being, Spinoza’s intellectual love of God and my notion of intellectual love. All three concepts advance a monistic and complementaristic perspective of reality.
- 2.
This is the doctrine that mental stuff is fundamental and distributed throughout the universe. A discussion of panpsychism is, however, beyond the scope of this essay.
- 3.
I am of the opinion that whether we go with the objectivity thesis or the subjectivity thesis of the laws of nature, the very assumption that there are regularities in nature, which the human intellect seeks to structure under mathematical rules, confirms the yearning essence of nature and intuitively and rationally validates the panpsychist thesis. If the objective universe did not reflect fundamental mentality, the human mind would neither succeed in structuring the universe mathematically nor determine that there are laws of nature. The universe, then, is rational (cf. Whitehead 1978). Crucially, the consolationist affirms that this rationality is grounded in an underlying yearning essence best understood in terms of emotionality – mood.
- 4.
My thinking on the relation of the ‘goal of existence’ and ‘meaning of existence’ has changed slightly. The human mind desires that perfection be the goal of existence; what is possible, however, is consolation which becomes the meaning of human existence. See Subheading 4.2 of this essay.
References
Agada, A. (2015). Existence and consolation: Reinventing ontology, gnosis and values in African philosophy. St Paul: Paragon House.
Agada, A. (2018). Consolationism: A postmodern exposition. In J. O. Chimakonam & E. Etieyibo (Eds.), Ka osi sọ onye: African philosophy in the postmodern era (pp. 231–252). Wilmington: Vernon Press.
Asouzu, I. I. (2004). The method and principles of complementary reflection in and beyond African philosophy. Calabar: University of Calabar Press.
Asouzu, I. I. (2007). Ibuaru: The heavy burden of philosophy beyond African philosophy. Zurich: Lit Verlag GmbH &.
Asouzu, I. I. (2011). Ibuanyidanda and the philosophy of essence. Filosofia Theoretica, 1(1), 79–118.
Benatar, D. (2006). Better never to have been: The harm of coming into existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boethius, S. (1902). The consolation of philosophy (trans: Cooper, W.V.). London: J.M. Dent and Co.
Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Cho, W. S. (1995). Before Nietzsche: Nihilism as a critique of German idealism. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 18(1), 205–233.
Cottingham, J. (2003). On the meaning of life. London: Routledge.
Edet, M. I. (2016). Afroxiology, conceptual mandelanization and the conversational order in the new era of African philosophy. Calabar: 3rd Logic Option Publishing.
Gyekye, K. (1995). An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme (Rev. ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1941). The sickness unto death (trans: Lowrie, W.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Martin, R. (1993). A fast car and a good woman. In D. Kolak & R. Martin (Eds.), The experience of philosophy (2nd ed., pp. 556–562). Belmont: Wadsworth.
Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religions and philosophy. London: Heinemann.
Menkiti, I. (2004). On the normative conception of a person. In K. Wiredu (Ed.), A companion to African philosophy (pp. 324–331). Oxford: Blackwell.
Metz, T. (2013). Meaning in life: An analytic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morioka, M. (2015). Is meaning in life comparable? From the viewpoint of ‘the heart of meaning in life’. Journal of the Philosophy of Life, 5(3), 50–65.
Moser, C. A. (1964). Antinihilism in the Russian novel of the 1860s. The Hague: Mouton.
Nagel, T. (1971). The absurd. Journal of Philosophy, 68(20), 716–727.
Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power (trans: Kaufmann, W., & Hollingdale, R.J.). New York: Vintage Books.
Nweke, V. C. A. (2018). Global warming as an ontological boomerang effect: Towards a philosophical rescue from the African place. In J. O. Chimakonam (Ed.), African philosophy and environmental conservation (pp. 149–160). London/New York: Routledge.
Ogbonnaya, U. L. (2018). Asouzu’s ibuanyidanda ontology: A postmodern interpretation. In J. O. Chimakonam & E. Etieyibo (Eds.), Ka osi sọ onye: African philosophy in the postmodern era (pp. 253–272). Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press.
Ozumba, G. O. (2011). Integrative humanism and complementary reflection. Filosofia Theoretica, 1(1), 151–170.
Pisarev, D. (1958). Selected philosophical, social and political essays. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House.
Sartre, J-P. (1966). Being and nothingness (trans: Barnes, H. E.). New York: Pocket Books.
Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The world as will and representation (trans: Payne, E.F.J.). New York: Dover Publications.
Senghor, L.S. (1964). On African socialism (trans: Cook, M.). London: Pall Mall.
Spinoza, B. (1910). Ethics (trans: Boyle, A.). London: Dent.
Taiwo, O. (2016). Against African communalism. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, XXIV(1), 81–100. https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2016.759.
Tartaglia, J. (2016). Philosophy in a meaningless life: A system of nihilism, consciousness and reality. London: Bloomsbury.
Thacker, E. (2015). Cosmic pessimism. Minneapolis: Universal Publishing.
Whitehead, A. N. (1978). In D. R. Griffin & D. W. Sherburne (Eds.), Process and reality: An essay in cosmology. New York: The Free Press.
Wolf, S. (2010). Meaning in life and why it matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Woodward, A. (2002). Nihilism and the postmodern in Vattimo’s Nietzsche. Minerva: An Internet Journal of Philosophy, 6, 51–67. www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol6/nihilism.pdf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Agada, A. (2022). The Themes of Nihilism, Pessimism, and Optimism in Ibuanyidanda and Consolation Ontologies. In: Chimakonam, J.O., Etieyibo, E., Odimegwu, I. (eds) Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70436-0_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70436-0_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-70435-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-70436-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)