Paulin Hountondji ( 1942 – 2024) 的聲譽主要取決於他對非洲"民族哲學( ethnophilosophy)本質的批判性

Paulin Hountondji  ( 1942 – 2024) 的聲譽主要取決於他對非洲"民族哲學( ethnophilosophy)本質的批判性

Paulin Hountondji, Revolutionary African Philosopher, Dies at 81

He rebelled against efforts to force African ways of thinking into the European worldview. His thoughts had the effect of a bomb in African intellectual life.

Mr. Hountondji in 2006. He had a brief political career in the 1990s, but, his son said, “it was out of the question for him to shut himself up in a political party.”Credit...Sophie Bassouls/Bridgeman Images

Paulin Hountondji, a philosopher from Benin whose critique of colonial-era anthropology helped transform African intellectual life, died on Feb. 2 at his home in Cotonou, Benin’s largest city. He was 81.

洪通吉的哲學影響包括他在巴黎的兩位老師，路易斯·阿爾都塞和雅克·德里達。 他的聲譽主要取決於他對非洲哲學本質的批判性工作。 他的主要目標是普拉西德·坦普爾斯和亞歷克西斯·卡加梅等作家的民族哲學。 他認為這種方法混淆了人類學方法和哲學方法，產生了「一門在理論世界中沒有公認地位的混合學科」（[1997]，第52頁）。 部分問題源自於這樣一個事實：民族哲學在很大程度上是對西方對非洲思想觀點的回應。 這種爭論性的作用違背了它的哲學有效性。

在後來的工作中，他的方法有所拓寬。 他仍然拒絕將民族哲學視為一門真正的哲學學科，但他已經轉向更多地綜合傳統非洲思想和嚴格的哲學方法。 他直到生命的最後幾天都為該論文辯護。[3]

 Hountondji's philosophical influences include two of his teachers in Paris, Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida. His reputation rests primarily on his critical work concerning the nature of African philosophy. His main target was the ethnophilosophy of writers such as Placide Tempels and Alexis Kagame. He argued that such an approach confuses the methods of anthropology with those of philosophy, producing "a hybrid discipline without a recognizable status in the world of theory" ([1997], p. 52). Part of the problem stems from the fact that ethnophilosophy is in large part a response to Western views of African thought; this polemical role works against its philosophical validity.

His approach widened somewhat in later work; he still rejected ethnophilosophy as a genuine philosophical discipline, but he had moved towards more of a synthesis of traditional African thought and rigorous philosophical method. He defended that thesis until his last days.^[3]