Amo’s Hermeneutics and Hegel’s Historical Prejudices Against Africa

During the lifetime of Anton Wilhelm Amos(ca.1700-ca.1755),the hermeneutics served not only interpreting and understanding of philosophical contexts,but also to overcome the prejudices and the underlying spirit of partiality with them.As one of the first modern theorist and systematician of hermeneutics,Amo dealt intensively with the prejudice problem.According to him,any prejudice is a mistake of the mind.Generalizing,Amo claims that prejudices are not a consequence of a false knowledge,but they arise by the lack of knowledge par excellence and are therefore in contradiction with reason.Amo sees the task of hermeneutics to counteract the prejudices inherent contradictions.With regard to the historical hermeneutics,he recommends to look at the past,not by selective or specific moments,but in its generality,in order to avoid contradictory and even false interpretations.But he acknowledges that only generalists as polyvalent historians of philosophy with an interdisciplinary mindset and multilingualism knowledge have this ability to general thinking.It will be examined more closely in this presentation whether Hegel can meet the hermeneutic claim within the meaning of Amo because of his pessimistic-ridiculous and contradictory prejudices about Africa.Finally,the question will be whether Hegel perhaps confounded his mental projections with the real history of Africa why he did not succeed to identify the real causes of the problems of this continent,and to describe their immediate consequences objectively.

The Situation of the Indigenous African Languages as a Challenge for Philosophy

In view of the increasing demands for the rehabilitation and promotion of indigenous African languages,a philosophical answer to the question of what can and should be done to effectively counteract the continuing marginalization of languages is often required.Despite the relatively successful coexistence of African and European languages,which has produced mixed languages,all measures must be taken to ensure that the native languages of Africa are used in the future as a means of expressing Africa’s identities and worldviews.This chapter tries to show how the philosophy of convergence can contribute to overcome the language dilemma in Africa.

Criticism of Colonialism and the Colonial Memory Work in Germany

Colonialism is an ideological system that was not only contrary to traditional African law(family law,popular law,etc.),but was also incompatible with the dignity of man.Colonial tyranny in Africa began with the political implementation of the decisions adopted at the Berlin Conference of 1884/85,its essential principles of international law being the inviolability and the purity of colonial borders.Thus the European colonial powers managed to avoid wars of aggression and prevent uprisings by African people.Since the dominant theories of colonialism were Eurocentric,they could scarcely contribute to adequately investigating the nature of colonialism,let alone adequately describing its dimension in Africa.Instead of examining the shades of the colonial system from different cultural perspectives to inform people objectively,Eurocentric theories prevented any attempt at truth about colonial injustice.Unfortunately,some Europeans still tend to endorse the colonial injustice system in Africa with cheap and cynical Downplaying terms.The fact that colonial policy has a long history,however,in no way indicates that it should necessarily be accepted or legitimized.On the contrary,since its inception colonialism met with violent and intellectual opposition until African countries attained national sovereignty and territorial integrity.This article demonstrates the significance colonialism has in Africans’intellectual discourse and shows how the colonial question is discussed in Germany.