The Kwame Nkrumah Trust

Consciencism argues that among Africans, there are:

(1) Those ‘competent in the art of forming not a concrete environmental view of social political problems, but an abstract, “liberal outlook”;

(2) Those who see everything as their ‘right, on account of their social standing’ and as ‘a personal distinction and privilege’;

(3) Those ‘vast numbers of ordinary Afrikans, who, animated by a lively national consciousness’, seek ‘knowledge as an instrument of national emancipation and integrity as free men’ and women.

So philosophically-speaking there are three broad types of Africans:

1. The Liberals
2. The Conservatives
3. The Radicals.

Naturally, there are those who fall within and/or between two or more.

There are only two world philosophies:

(1) Materialism; (2) Idealism

Chapter 1 looks at these two world philosophies of idealism (the universe is spirit) and materialism (the universe is matter) and retrospectively concludes that ‘our universe is a natural universe. And its basis is matter with its objective laws’. Our universe is a material universe.

Its primary nature is not spirit as idealism maintains; men and women who may claim that spirit is the primary reality are physically themselves, while professing all such claims, part of the physical material universe in terms of their physical bodies through which they exercise physical functions like move, think, feel and talk.

Nature is not all physical. Matter≠the physical. Matter include the non-physical too. Nature is matter does not mean that nature is all physical. There are four states of matter: solid (e.g. earth), liquid (e.g. water), gas (e.g. air) and plasma (fire).

Matter is a set of all things both physical and non-physical. To say that something is supernatural is to say it does not belong to Nature. But everything that exists in our universe belongs to nature. Thus it is not possible that in our universe something is super-natural (above nature) because nothing can be outside Nature. Unless one is saying that the thing is non-physical.

We accept that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

What is the point of the above? Action to change the world depends on how you conceive the world. Philosophically-speaking, you ought to conceive of the world in such a way that you have the conceptual tools to change it not just explain it.

Chapter 2 argues that the ‘history of philosophy shows it to have had living roots in human life and human society’ whether it be idealism or materialism and that ‘philosophies were reflections of social currents’, that ‘they arose from social exigencies’ and that ‘it is therefore not a little amazing that in the twentieth century, Western philosophers should largely disinherit themselves and affect an aristocratic professional unconcern over the social realities of the day.’

The unconcern of philosophers over contemporary social currents continues today in the 21st Century.

The ‘great philosophers, the titans, have always been passionately interested in social reality and the welfare of man’ and use philosophy ‘in the furtherance of cultural development and in the strengthening of our human society’.

So two questions arise:

First, which of the two philosophies of idealism and materialism should Afrika and Afrikan philosophers use to address Afrikan life and society under imperialism and its handmaidens colonialism and neocolonialism? Another way of putting this question is which philosophy should Afrikans use to understand and direct their life in the 21st Century.

Second, should Afrikan philosophers not rise to the challenge if Western Philosophers ‘affect an aristocratic professional unconcern over the social realities of the day’ to do with the Afrikan habitat and the Afrikan Personality? Another way of putting this question is which Afrikans will act on the behalf of Afrika to change the world.

The answers to the two questions are:

First, materialism ought to be the philosophy that Afrika and Afrikan philosophers use to address Afrikan life and society under imperialism and its handmaidens colonialism and neocolonialism; or today and going forward.

Second, Afrikans, Afrikan philosophers and Friends of Afrika acting as Philosophers should rise to the challenge to change the world.

The challenge is to change the world and the world of Afrika.

Chapter 3 recalls chapter 2 that ‘philosophy always arose from a social milieu,

and that a social contention is always present in it either explicitly or implicitly’

and that with philosophers ‘the content of philosophy seeks to affect social milieu, either by confirming it or by opposing it’.

In either case, ‘philosophy implies something in the nature of an ideology’.

An ideology is a ‘principle that defines a particular society’.

Accordingly, ‘in every society there is at least one ideology and even in societies where there are competing ideologies, ‘it is still usual for one ideology to be dominant’.

An ideology has many instruments at its disposal, to name a few, including:

History,
Economics,
Science,
Politics,
Philosophy and
Ethics.

If the above are so, the natural question therefore arises:

“What is the nature of the society – social milieu – in which Afrikans live today in terms of their material conditions, experiences and consciousness?.

This chapter thus examines the nature of the life of Afrikans:

(1) before colonialism,
(2) during colonialism and
(3) after colonial freedom,

The chapter concludes that Afrika has ‘three broad distinguishing features namely:

(1) The traditional way of life,
(2) The Islamic tradition in Afrika and
(3) The infiltration of the Christian tradition and culture of Western Europe into Afrika using colonialism and neo-colonialism as its primary vehicles’.

The life of Afrikans and Ghanaians was one in which they faced ‘the realities of colonialism, imperialism, disunity and lack of development. Singly and collectively these four militated against the realization of a social justice based on ideas of true equality’.

Clearly then there is ‘the need for the restitution of Afrika’s traditional humanist and egalitarian principles of society’.

Hence, reparations.

Chapter 4 logically continues that given the above social milieu – the life of the Afrika-, there must be, the need for, a brand new philosophy.

That new philosophy must be rooted in materialism and the world-view of Afrikans.

The new philosophy mus be different from the Western Philosophies of the colonial social milieu.

The new philosophy must be used at the time both to fight colonial rule for freedom from colonialism and to going forward to build a new and equal post-colonial free and just society.

The New African armed with a new philosophy builds a new global society in which Ghanaians are happy in a united and strong Afrika and the world is free from oppression and anti-Black bias.

Kwame Nkrumah proposes that new philosophy. It is called “philosophical consciencism”.

Philosophical consciencism in turn implies the ideology of “Consciencism”.

This is the philosophy and its ideological principle today that Africans must consider.

The philosophy argues that Afrikans sees the universe as one metaphysical matter that is inherently alive with diverse forces and that matter and spirit, in their diverse manifestations, are not exclusive to each other as idealists and materialists contend, but categorial aspects of primary matter and its inherent powers of convertibility.

So there is one material universe from which all humans arise hence human equality and the consequent need for human freedom and justice.

The diverse forces of the one universe like electricity are the human basis for scientific development and the economic and social reconstruction of our lives.