Cult and functionalised values

would be rapid changes in our environment, both physical and social.

From the foregoing, Oladipo seems to be arguing that for Africa to be liberated from cultural crisis, and then usher in cultural development, African philosophers and scholars must begin to recognise the necessity of the connection between cultural renewal and creativity. This is because, for any search for valid and pragmatic solution to cultural crises, there must be a contribution of creativity and serious cultural renewal. As Oladipo puts it,

There can be no cultural renewal in Africa through a single-minded, nationalistic commitment to African culture or through some kind of unalleged difference to science and technology and its achievements. The attainment of cultural renewal in Africa...requires that we unfetter human relations through a process of social reconstruction designed to achieve freedom from injustice and oppression, and mental freedom.³⁸

Above all, the need for African development implies a more urgent need for a change in African thought and life. As a result, Oladipo thinks that African philosophers can contribute to the achievement of this change only if they seriously consider the reappraisal of African culture as a philosophical imperative. This task, for him, is nonnegotiable for the development of Africa.

instituting or justifying a given set of political interest and goals.³⁹ Thus, an ideology, especially in politics, refers to a set of ideas, a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things and several tendencies proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society. As a result, ideology is a central concept to politics because it is a system of abstract thoughts applied to public matters. However, political ideology is a set of ideals, principles, or doctrines of an institution or class that offers some political or cultural blueprint for a certain social order.

The word ideology was coined by Destutt de Tracy in 1796⁴⁰ from the words ‘idea’ and ‘logy’ with which he referred to the study of ideas. In practice, an ideology is a coherent system of ideas that is neither right nor wrong, but only is a relativistic intellectual strategy for categorising the world. Ideology is an almost ideal way of life for society and some individuals, political organisations or other groups try to influence the ideology of a society to become closer to what they want it to be by broadcasting their opinions. Thus, dominant ideologies often hold to assumptions that are largely unchallenged.

Oladipo’s concern about ideology hinges on the fact that an ideology consists of a set of fundamental values, which a society is implored to strive to imbibe, and so, it can be said to be prescriptive and normative. Thus, Oladipo observes that in the surge of the African society, different ideologies have been proposed. From the philosophical discipline, for instance, Nkrumah’s

Consciencism,⁴¹ Awolowo’s Democratic Socialism,⁴² and Azikiwe’s Neo-welfarism,⁴³ have all been proposed with each claiming to best suit the African condition. Taking into cognisance, the role of the philosopher as “a self-conscious critic of the way society is organised, particularly its underlying principles, and the ideas and ideals people live by,”⁴⁴ Oladipo argued for the need for a critique of ideology by the African philosophers so as to expose “the untenable, the irrational and the fantastic”⁴⁵in societal beliefs.

Nevertheless, Oladipo noted that the critique of ideology would distinguish between ideology in the good sense and ideology in the bad sense, though he relies on Kwasi Wiredu’s definitions of these two senses of ideology.

Ideology in the good, best or desirable sense, according to Wiredu, is “a set of ideas about what form the good society should take, and any such set of ideas needs a basis in first principles.”⁴⁶ On the other hand, ideology in the bad or undesirable sense, for Wiredu, is “a ready-made set of ideas meant to be adopted by governments as the exclusive basis for the political organisation of society.”⁴⁷Given this distinction, it becomes clear that ideology in the bad sense is, to quote Wiredu again, “a set of dogmas to be imposed by the government, with force if necessary.”⁴⁸ Also, it becomes even clearer to notice that this bad notion of ideology dominates in African political practice and it has, to quote Oladipo,

Stifled the development of a democratic tradition in Africa, shortly after independence and for a long time thereafter. For what it did was to make

politics a clash of passions to which the core socio-political (democratic) values of debate, tolerance, cooperation and compassion were irrelevant. In short, this pernicious sense of ideology bred nothing but dogmatism and authoritarianism.⁴⁹

Furthermore, Oladipo insists that Wiredu’s distinction between good and bad senses of ideology is still very relevant for the development of our society today. He, however, maintains that the importance of the distinction is to point out that “to oppose ideology in the bad sense is not necessarily to reject it in the good sense.”⁵⁰ In other words, a critique of ideology does not amount to an absolute rejection of all ideologies; it spares or even supports the good ones whereas it wrestles with and rejects the bad ones. Wiredu puts this expressively that “the philosopher has the obligation to combat with ideology in the bad sense just as he has the obligation to promote ideology in the good sense.”⁵¹

Besides, while Oladipo berates ideology in the bad sense as not only untenable, but, also, quite counter-productive, he seems to implicate philosophy as an ideology in a sense much more plausible. Oladipo regrets the obvious divorce between philosophical activities in Africa and African socio-political reality. He complains that philosophy has not been able to perform the task of raising political consciousness in Africa, simply because “philosophy is seen primarily as a research discipline.... This has denied philosophy of its social purpose and, consequently, marginalised African existential concerns in African philosophical practice.”⁵² As a result, Oladipo recommends that African philosophy should become more ideological, and so transcend mere intellectual

work in the school and dwell more on the issue and meaning of social phenomena in the society so as to occasion development in Africa.

To further strengthen his argument for philosophy as an ideology, Oladipo quotes Ngoma-Binda who argues that African philosophy should become more ideological in order to make it come alive, that is, to make it

“capable of acting in an efficient way on consciences and on social life.”⁵³ According to Ngoma-Binda,

Philosophy can obtain power only if it is conceived as an ideology, namely, a thought transmitting a message of wisdom, an ethics seeking to infuse itself into the heart and a social body of a targeted community.... Ideology is here understood in the positive sense of a cluster of ideas with the political and ethical aim of the triumph of a valuable case.⁵⁴

Oladipo, however, pointed out that the valuable case, for us in Africa, is simply the transformation of society in a manner that will maximise the possibilities of life and joy for the African.

Also, while Oladipo agrees that much of philosophy is social philosophy, he however, sees as problematic, the suggestion that unless a philosophy has an explicit social purpose, or it is readily available for policy formulation or social action, then it is relevant to society. He argues, therefore, that the power of philosophy derives not so much from the philosophers’ interest in immediate phenomena, but in the capacity to see beyond them and to identify and analyse their intellectual foundations.