Consciencism is certainly a difficult book that the less philosophically-prepared requires assistance to understand. The basic difficulty, apart from its complicated presentation, arises from the fact that in writing the book the author, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, makes many assumptions about the reader’s familiarity with certain Philosophical and Logical terms and principles. In this Preface, we do not only try to explain some of the terms and principles. In addition, we try to explain some difficulties that Nkrumah’s own usages present to even the sophisticated reader. In the chapters that follow, we present the structure of the texts in the difficult chapters as well as simplified meanings of those texts. It is our hope that the reader will do well to critically compare our versions with the author’s, the latter’s own meaning being supreme.
This suggests that while we seek to make Consciencism accessible to the less philosophically-trained, we, as well, seek to invite the reader into the effort at unravelling the apparent mysteries that render the book so difficult for so many. In fact, that is what philosophy does – nobody is too little in the philosophical endeavour to offer an opinion. The importance of this practice needs be emphasized; for, if the venerable African philosopher, Prof. Kwasi Wiredu, holds that what he himself says about anything becomes true only when his listener or reader confirms it in another statement then the less venerable needs to be more humble. What we say here, therefore, becomes the truth for readers only if they find our interpretation in correspondence with their own.
In this respect, it is necessary that readers, in spite of initial difficulties, read the text from the book first. Reading our own explanation here comes in later so that readers get an opportunity to compare the correctness or otherwise of their own understanding. This raises as well as sustains their confidence and enthusiasm for onward reading. This is not what most readers of the book do and thus end up abandoning it only to behave later as if they are experts of the entire text. The philosophical enterprise requires constant application of oneself to the views of others even where one is certain of one’s own position on any issue. Readers’ benefits from this manual, therefore, emanate from the extent to which they try to achieve their own understanding before reading the relevant portion of the manual. That is challenging but the benefit is worth the try. (This does not prevent the reader from doing the reverse; that is, reading this manual first or alongside the book).
This critical approach to the process of attaining philosophical understanding differentiates a philosophical manual such as this from an electronic gadget’s manual where critical experimentation could be fatal. Whereas the latter manual requires nothing in the nature of consultation with several users, the former keeps on consulting even after the formation of an opinion. Thus, the fundamental question of philosophy relating to ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ continues to be investigated after thousands of years of philosophical discourse. And, that is where we begin the explanation of terms and principles. Quite naturally, we begin with what philosophers refer to as ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’. What do they mean? Do they mean the same thing as used in everyday discourse?
Certainly not. When philosophers talk of ‘matter’ they are not talking about what we mean in everyday usage when we ask the question ‘What is the matter?’ Whatever you see, like the book in front of you, or smell, like the aroma from a pineapple, or feel, like the softness of a mango fruit in your palm, or taste, like the sensation of mango juice on your tongue, or hear, like the sound of music, is ‘matter’ for the philosopher. In other words, whatever comes to your awareness by way of any or all of your sensory organs is said to be ‘matter’. So that, these that come to your awareness through the senses are said to constitute (make up) the external world. Reference to this external world as the material world is another way of saying the same thing. They are interchangeably used and usable.
There are certain things, however, which do not immediately come to our awareness through the senses but are considered material because they ultimately derive from data received from the material world. Take as an instance the term ‘father’. This is a relational term. You do not know a father by simply looking at a man. You need further information such as whether he has a child and whether that child was conceived in a pregnancy for which he was responsible. So is ‘mother’ a relational term. So is ‘sister’ a relational term. So is ‘brother’ a relational term. So is ‘slave’ a relational term. And so on and so forth. All these relations are material relations and constitute part of the external world. Thus, in the external world we have both objects and their relations.
At this point, let us look at the term ‘material’ more closely. In Economics as well as Philosophy of History, we hear of references to ‘material forces’. Do not confuse this with the metaphysical concept. Whereas in Metaphysics (a branch of Philosophy) ‘material’ refers to all things and their relations outside our awareness of them, Economics uses the term restrictively to refer to only a part of the list of things in the external world. Hence, for Economics, a building that is not in use in the process of economic production is not a material force. With Metaphysics, that building is very material, being visible. In Philosophy of History, ‘a material force of production’, or ‘productive force’ for short, can be so complex and fluid as to be accorded to ‘an ideology’ – in all that it does not have anything to do with the metaphysical concept. This distinction is very important if we are not to confuse what is true in economics with what is true in philosophy. It is the tendency to ignore such distinctions that makes the understanding of Marxist philosophy and Consciencism difficult.4
Apart from those distinctions, there is an innocent confusion created when the language of everyday discourse is mistakenly used in a philosophical discussion. When ordinary language says ‘Emeka indulges too much in material things’, it does not carry the same meaning assumed in philosophical discourse. To be materialist, in the Emeka fashion, is not to have some beliefs about the world but rather to lead an indulgent life style. Again, this distinction is necessary if we are not to trivialise the philosophical endeavour and digress into a confusing land of no return. Our anxiety here is to restrict the meaning of ‘matter’, ‘material’, and even ‘materialist’ (to which we shall come presently) to the philosopher’s usages alone in order to avoid commonplace confusion in the philosophical discourse.
Nevertheless, even among philosophers there is the tendency to confuse these usages in different departments of the philosophical endeavour. This causes deep-seated confusion since the same terms are used in the different departments with different meanings; and, yet, the same philosopher transfers one department’s usage to the other. For instance, our discussion of ‘matter’ so far is in the area of abstract philosophy or metaphysics. Thus, ‘material’ and ‘materialist’ used in the discussion have ‘matter’ as their root term whence they are derived. The philosopher, however, uses these same two terms with different meanings in social philosophy and philosophy of history. In social philosophy and philosophy of history, ‘matter’ as that which has weight (and mass) with relational properties is not a category. That is why terms derived from it here mean differently since their root term is different.
That root term is the ‘economic’ or ‘material production’. Hence, the danger is that when we make claims about the correctness or otherwise of statements about matter in abstract philosophy we might be tempted to make the same claim about material production in social philosophy and philosophy of history without the relevant discourse. The resultant confusion, if we make that mistake, only creates difficulty for our understanding – leading to everlasting criticism. And, if we may digress a bit for the benefit of advanced readers, this is why some people have difficulties in understanding how claims made in dialectical materialism (abstract philosophy) could be said to validate the claims of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history (philosophy of history). Of course, the criticism is unwarranted since the Marxist claim is about the use of materialist dialectics as the method applied in the formulation of historical materialism. The former is the life of the latter just as the theory of gravity is applied in the science of aeronautics and is its life.
In this discourse, so far, we hold that in abstract philosophy we understand ‘matter’ to mean that which is outside the mind. What we hold to be outside the mind is not just an object but also the relation(s) that it has with other objects. Hence, in what we call the ‘external world’ we find not just objects but also relations which exist between and among the objects. We will return to expand on this presently.
For now let us turn to ‘spirit’. This category is fraught with more confusion and controversy than that of ‘matter’. In some texts, it is used interchangeably with ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ or even ‘conscience’. The most disturbing practice is its interchangeable use with ‘Spirit’ spelled with a capital ‘S’. Whereas ‘spirit’, ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ are man’s possessions (predicates) and thus cannot be conceived independently, ‘Spirit’ suffers no such dependence – being an independent entity. Hence, discourses that equate statements about ‘spirit’ with those about ‘Spirit’ tend to confuse more than enlighten us. Rigour in philosophical discourse requires of us the avoidance of such inappropriate uses that only confuse everybody. Once we observe the distinction, we could even discourse on relations between ‘Spirit’ and ‘spirit’ without absurdity.
In thus alerting ourselves, let us find out what philosophers mean by ‘spirit’. This is better understood when we determine, first, what ‘mind’ is. One interesting thing about philosophers is that they shy away from an exact definition of ‘mind’ but rather prefer to tell us what constitute it. They tell us that unlike ‘matter’, which, according to them, is extended in space, our thoughts and experiences make up our ‘mind’. These thoughts and experiences are inward and non-extended unlike the external world. Thus, inwardness is a basic nature of ‘mind’. Also, the ‘mind’, with these thoughts and experiences, is conscious. In fact, for the philosopher, it is ‘consciousness’. Our concern here is to call attention to the fact that philosophers consider ‘mind’ as a human possession (although they also credit animals with a certain measure of it). It is in this sense that it is also called ‘spirit’.
Hence, ‘spirit’ is man’s inward presence. This is distinguished from the Spirit that some equate with God or Satan (and their surrogates) all of which are understood to be independent of human beings or animals and could, through such surrogates, enter the body and leave when they like or when forced out through exorcism or sin. It must be clear to us that given this difference philosophy can admit such Spirits primarily only as objects or entities in the external world and not confuse them with the ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’ that is a human possession and part of the definition of man. Spirit, spelled with a capital S, is then very well understood as an external reality, a form of matter. These two different spirits, with different meanings, we say, should not be mixed up by way of using them interchangeably. In this respect, a derivative like ‘spiritual’ must be linked up appropriately to its root term to avoid digression and the consequent confusion. Just in the same way, ‘materialist’ and ‘spiritualist’, as derivatives, must be appropriately linked up to their root terms. In fact, in abstract philosophy (metaphysics) the frequent usage is ‘idealist’ in place of ‘spiritualist’.
To sum up this discourse on ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’ it is clear that we include in ‘matter’ all that is external to man. An inventory (list) of that externality exposes to us not just objects and their relations as well as other situations (as, in fact, a ‘relation’ like ‘distance’ is a situation which Nkrumah states at page 11 paragraph 3 ‘… can only be a situation which is part of the world’; in fact, at page 17 paragraph 1 he specifically refers to ‘the objects and situations’) but also Spirits that interact with man or the world’s visible or even invisible habitat. With ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘consciousness’ or ‘conscience’, we include thoughts and experiences as the inner presence of man. In our reading of Consciencism, we can wriggle out of the complexities of the book if we bear this world view in mind as we consider the author’s critical presentation of the history of philosophy. Once we do this, any unauthorized switch in the use of any concept is easily detected and this helps us to keep on track with the lines of argument.
This positions us to say a few things about ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’. These have their ordinary language usages that could be confused with philosophical usage. Remember Emeka? For ordinary language, his being a materialist means that he indulges in materialism. This materialism is confused with philosophical materialism. Certain philosophical pretenders think that philosophical materialism advocates worldliness, which is what materialism means in ordinary language, and thus confuse the categories. Philosophical materialism is a position on the mind-body problem in metaphysical discourse. So is philosophical idealism which has nothing to do with being unrealistic, as in ordinary usage. These have nothing to do with life-style. Detect digression and stick to the issues.
Such digressions could be found in a certain way even in Consciencism where the reader needs to treat them separately from the real flow of the discourse. In fact, some of the difficulties in reading the book arise from the unannounced journeys into what are actually issues in social philosophy or philosophy of history – thus straying away from the ongoing discourse in metaphysics. Those journeys are not, however, accidental. They stem from Kwame Nkrumah’s anxiety to show a connection between metaphysics and social philosophy by way of exposing what he calls the social content of metaphysics. It is, therefore, in the interest of the reader to detect those unannounced digressions and stick to the mainstream discourse. The digressions, in fact, do not invalidate the mainstream discourse.
How? We have referred to the digressions in Consciencism as journeys. That is what they are. And they are swift ones. It returns later to the mainstream discourse to make its case. If the reader does not detect the unannounced digression, when it occurs, they will be tempted to consider it as a continuation of the discourse and end up in frustration out of their inability to see consistency in the argument flow – and, thus, fail to see the picture described. We are saying that the digressions are quick thrusts away from metaphysics into social philosophy in attempts to illustrate connections between the two spheres of philosophy – after which the discourse gets back on course. The reader needs to bear in mind this kind of structure in the book to be abreast with its line of thought.
Ours is to critically find our way to the heart of Consciencism as a philosophy with an ideological dimension directed at a conscious reorganization of African society and for an African society that exudes an independent capacity to assert itself in the comity of the world’s people. We are talking about the movement of Africans and peoples of African descent – the movement of the Black Star!
[Since new forms of society emerge from but are not imposed on the old a process of evolution and revolution is always involved. It is the task of the revolutionary to discern the evolutionary moments of the newly emerging and progressive trend so as to promote its development and dominance over the old and dying trend. The decisive moment, the revolutionary moment, is when the final act is undertaken to formally assert and constitutionalize the predominance of the new and the demise of the old. Evolution is thus involved in the revolutionary process as its initial stage.]