Individual Case Presentation 1 Group One

We are all born into a society and as Aristotle remarked:

“whoever cannot live in a society must either be a beast or a god”. Individuals constitute the society, but an individual cannot grow into full maturity without the society. The society nurtures an individual for the enhancement of his/her survival logic. The degree of the development of a society depends on the intellectual empowerment of its citizens.

This is where the society needs formation not only in the practical sciences but also in the theoretical sciences. The objective of the theoretical sciences is the truth and they include those sciences which search for the truth through the power of the mind. The mother of the theoretical sciences is philosophy.

Philosophy, in its committed and objective search for wisdom, aims at discovering the truth through impartial reflections. The philosophic study is a rational vocation for man to make the best out of his existentiality. Philosophy is man‟s intellectual invitation to undertake life objectively, to shun the deceptions of appearances and superficialities. To this end, Bertrand Russell says;

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The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense and opinions, from the habitual beliefs of his age and culture and from uncritical convictions grown up in his mind without check and consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world becomes definite, obvious; things rouse questions; unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously dismissed or rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophise false certainties begin to fall, new questions arise; new horizons open for us. In the presence of those questions, philosophy is able to suggest many possibilities that enlarge our thought and free us from the slavery of custom and prejudice.³

On the superficiality of irrational life which Russell has written about, this work recall that Socrates had centuries before emphasised that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. An examined life is one in which there is constant rational effort to distinguish appearance and reality, truth from falsehood.

Philosophy educates and empowers the individual to avoid simply following the crowd or to be led by the nose, but to personally grasp the essence of his/her practices. Philosophy trains her candidate to think objectively before acting, to be rationally convinced about his beliefs and practices, and be personally responsible for them. A philosopher does not take things for granted or do things because tradition, or culture, or a group, or a club habitually does so. Without neglecting his cultural background, a philosopher examines the rationality of cultural practices and beliefs thoroughly knowing their consequences before engaging in them. A philosopher does not act by the whims

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and sentiments of the moment but out of personal conviction principally through reflection.

Man by nature is a philosopher, because he is endowed with reason. This work cannot say that Nigerians lack philosophical knowledge. The science of philosophy, it must however be said, is absent in the secondary schools and it began lately in the universities because attention was paid more to the legal and productive sciences. But that was a mistake. Philosophy is inevitable for the comprehensive development of the individual and the state. What rules the world are ideas and not simply food and technology. Descartes hammered it into the ears of the French world that the degree of the development of a nation depends on the strength of its philosophy. Philosophy not only builds on intellectual visions and ideas, but also criticises for a better understanding of the implications of the pretensions of the sciences on society and humanity at large. One of the problems in Nigeria is that philosophic study has not spread wide enough as to enable people comprehend the necessity of developing enlightened responsible characters for the general welfare of the nation. It is unfortunate that the mother of all the sciences is somehow treated with ignominy in a developing nation like Nigeria.

The social maladies in Nigeria are that people do not quite understand the implications of the ideas they propagate.

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Philosophy rationalises society, empowers society and people to be critical of what they do and say. Philosophic study would help in no small measure to take Nigeria out of tribalism, egoism and individualism to the spirit of altruism, nationalism and patriotism.

Enlightened philosophic minds would easily comprehend the necessity of truth-telling for the building of common trust. People would not be easily moved by religious “abrakatabra” after acquiring some tints of critical thinking. The spirit of black resilience, nationalism, patriotism and altruism and of the common good would acquire more profundity where there is broad education in political philosophy. We would not have been running a crippled educational system if we had rightly intellectualised the inevitability of education for the growth of a nation. If the developed world have branded Africans lazy, it is because we have not been properly sensitised on the need to take up our destiny in our own hands. We have chosen to become the dumping ground of the goods/wastes from other nations, because we chose to be mere consumers.

We have refused to be groomed in the philosophy of labour and of self-assertion in a world in which nations are throwing their weights around proudly avoiding servitude of whatever sort to other nations. We have resorted to exploitations of all kinds because of laziness, poor economy, and lack of personal initiative even after attending and attaining university education.

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Inauthentic existence abounds every where because people have not been helped to think and live according to their means. They falsely measure their weights with societal opinions even though it brings them pains. Only philosophic life can help individuals manage their lives according to their means and not in view of what people would say. Inter-ethnic hatreds and discrimination, the mounting disrespects for the human person and the denial of human rights are due to poor instructions on the science of man.

We are worried that the western patterns of life are gradually eroding our traditional values because there is hardly any philosophy to protect our cultural identity in the universe of cultures and traditions. Whenever cultural practices fail to inspire and sustain their logic, they would easily give way to new ones.

We need philosophies to sustain ancestral values, and to wisely modify outdated ones. The philosophic study cannot be over emphasised for building a highly flourishing state.

6.2.2 The Imperative Need for Civic Education and the