The Hyphen Function as the Horizon of Africa Tomorrow

It goes without saying that the name of the periodical Africa Tomorrow has a prospective connotation. It is an invitation to look at the horizon, which offers an immensity of hope. The horizon, by the way, is not only ahead of me, for if I turn around it is still there. Likewise the horizon is not only ahead, or behind me, it is also on my left and right. The horizon is not a straight-line. It is circular. I can point at it and, at the same time, rotate in my position without losing it.

Africa Tomorrow is not only prospective; it is not a mere direction towards the future. It is not only the ridding of burdens and imperfections of the past and a leap into the future to search for better solutions, new ways, and new "horizons". The tomorrow of Africa Tomorrow is circular. As such it doesn't exclude any past for the sake of a prospective future. It is rather a connective. It absorbs, encompasses the richness and the miseries of yesterday, and turns them into today's stepping stone in order to build up a future always and already remedied.

For some people a circular movement is a sign of the loss of direction and a lack of progress. He who has lost his way is said to turn round and he who doesn't progress clearly in his arguments is said to turn round the pot. For some non-short-sighted minds, a circular movement is not always a vicious circle. Like in a spiral, there is a progress in the back and forth movement. A spiral movement is circular at the same time directional. He who follows the whirls doesn't simply repeat the previous rotating movement, but by doing so, he has spiralled up.

The horizon is a circular configuration, for it doesn't sharply cut off the past from the present towards the future. Rather it proceeds from the past to the future via the present. In a more technical way, the horizontal configuration retrieves as in a spiral the past, the lower, and suppresses by sublimating it. That is the essence of the dialectical development of the human mind.

This issue of Africa Tomorrow follows the process of suppression-sublimation. It is more a hyphen than a leap, for a hyphen links and separates at the same time. That property defines the dynamism of the human mind, which proceeds dialectically, tryout-error, and affirmation-reconsideration… Africa Tomorrow is a forum of constructive discussions characterized by that back-forth movement, that continuity through discontinuity, suppression-sublimation, accepting in the present time the reconsideration of the past for a better tomorrow. The yesterday and the tomorrow are linked by a hyphen: Africa Tomorrow. Through this periodical the experienced past and the future to prepare today appear to be like a tree by a fountain. The latter nourishes the roots of the former and keeps it growing up bigger and greener. The former protects the latter with its shade preventing it from drying up.

The six articles of the present issue are to some extent all about that back-forth movement. All of them question, reconsider a certain state of affairs and prolong by improving it. Under the heading related to philosophy and human sciences the reader will find five interesting articles. The article written by Mr. Victor Badibanga Bin Kapela "Toward a Hermeneutic of Cultural Object. An Essay On Over-Determined Symbols Theory and its Applicability to African Culture" is a hyphen between the vocation of philosophy to universality and the cultural foundation of that vocation. In this first part of the essay, the author attempts to apply contemporary philosophical hermeneutic to African culture, and thereby show how African philosophy needs be conceived today. By opting for an analytical philosophical perspective, the author succeeds in bringing out the rationality that marks thought everywhere irrespective of cultural, political or geographical differences. Philosophical method constitutes the central issue, discussed and developed, especially for the sake of defending and promoting African identity, but also to show the relevance of continental thought to interpret culture in general. Revival of values, the value of self-criticism and the development of a critical spirit are some of the contributions that a foundational philosophical method may make to the society. The current article shall surely help one to appreciate these issues. It further facilitates what the African Church has hitherto been practising, namely inculturation.

Reverend Father Stanislaus Bigirimana inserts himself into that dialectic of the spiral, by questioning and reconsidering in the light of Lonergan epistemology the basis and mechanism of the noetico-noematic character of human cognition. His article stands over against the opinion that knowing is just the apprehension of the relationships between the objects of the world. The article springs from there and encompasses that opinion by underlining the necessary relationship between the noema and the noesis, the object of knowledge and the knowing subject.

Because we are talking about knowledge, let's stay in that field and put up a new question: what could be the signs of human knowledge? How do we come to know that man knows? Reverend Father Kazimierz Kubat's article contains an element of answer: theories are the systems of laws (scientific theories) or systems of ideas (philosophical theories) that express human attempts to know. This author asks the question to know whether a physical theory of everything is possible. Reverend Father K. Kubat intends to depart from the opinion that human mind is naturally inclined to seek for unification of reality, that various scientists look forward to finding "holistic" explanatory principles of the universe. Indeed, a theory of everything seeks a simple formula or a set of basic principles, a unitary vision of the world that encompasses all phenomena. In a diachronical and synchronical fashion, this author would like to see how the traditional and contemporary scientific positions are connected and disconnected. The article, which is the second part of a three-part paper, prolongs as a spire the historical explanation of various attempts to unify reality in deductive explanatory systems.

Doctor E.J. Boos continues with the same fundamental approach in his article "The Misapplication of the "Is-Ought" Distinction and the Role of Justice in Hart's Legal Theory", wherein he intends to show that H.L.A. Hart's position in The Concept of Law, that the validity of law is not grounded in the fact that the content of law is essentially moral, is incongruent with his insistence that the ultimate rule of recognition is grounded in normative (social) behaviour. Hart's insistence that there be an attitude of shared acceptance toward the ultimate rule of recognition compromises his insistence that there is no logically necessary relationship between law and morality. The problem in Hart's legal theory seems to be rooted in his strident efforts to make application of the general tenets of positivism. His attempt to keep separate the fields of law and morality while at the same time attempting to satisfy the parameters of his own project as a "descriptive sociology," are in conflict. In short, Hart seems to have too stringently applied Hume's Is-Ought distinction to the realm of legal theory.

Under the heading dedicated to Theology and Culture, Reverend Fr. Felix Mushobozi questions the social and political conscience of his time. He looks at the horizon of Tanzania social life and finds in John Paul II's social encyclical "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis," a means to go beyond the decadent socio-political situation of the people of Tanzania and rescue man in his social dimension in general. In his article, "The Virtue of Solidarity: An Answer to the Social Question in Tanzania", Rev. Fr. Felix Mushobozi appeals not for the traditional abstract social ethics, rather for a contextualized formation of consciences, educating human persons on how to address not only their own individual needs but also those of others and especially the most vulnerable in society. Problems of poverty, lack of corporate responsibility, and the like, will find durable solutions only through collaboration and cooperation. He highlights the importance of the virtue of solidarity to remedy the social wounds for the sake of the common good; that is to say the good of all and each individual, because we are all really responsible for all."

Reverend Father Jose Maniparampil gives also a perfect model of a unitary vision of a horizon. First of all he contrasts the idea of the Church as one and the Church as many. Then he manages on biblical foundation to demonstrate the link in the opposition between the one and the many. Indeed, Vatican II Council admitted that the universal Church is a communion of individual apostolic Churches. Is there any scriptural evidence for this concept? There had been many attempts on the Fourth Gospel to claim the primacy of Peter or that of the Beloved Disciple with the idea of challenging Papal primacy or of asserting it. Two major questions usually asked are: Does the Fourth Gospel agree with the Synoptics in seeing Peter as the undisputed leader of the disciples and later head of the Church? Or does it deliberately depreciate Peter and replace him with the Beloved Disciple? But, we see another question involved here. The Fourth Gospel does not replace Peter with the Beloved Disciple, nor does it accept the undisputed primacy of Peter. The Fourth Gospel admits Peter's primacy provided this primacy does not exclude the other apostles' equality and their Church's individuality. Or, in other words the Fourth Gospel opposes the exclusive tendency of Petrine Church and argues for the equal dignity and rights of the individual Apostolic Churches that constitute the universal Church: the Church is a communion of individual Churches.

Let me give the reader the time to discover in depth the flavour and the riches of this issue of Africa Tomorrow, characterised by the attempt to see the link in the opposition between the traditional and the modern, between what the yesterday ought to be and what the future will have to be, either in man's sphere or in the sphere of his relation to the Absolute God, principle of his existence. Pierre Theilard De Chardin called it "Christosphere", which is the goal of "Cosmosphere", "Biosphere" and "Noosphere". In "Christosphere" Christ reveals himself as the Word who was there at creation time with God (Alpha) and also as He who marks the achievement of human history (Omega).

Victor Badibanga Bin Kapela,
The Editor