November 22 Colloquia: "Edward Wilmot Blyden and Fichte’s Nationalist Philosophy of History"

Join us on Friday, November 22 from 4-6 p.m. MST in person in ASH 2-02A and online for "Edward Wilmot Blyden and Fichte’s Nationalist Philosophy of History", a research talk by Zeyad El Nabolsy (York University).

Abstract: Edward Wilmot Blyden’s contributions to Pan-Africanism have been widely recognized. Scholars have noted that Blyden’s conception of what he called the “African Personality” reflects the influence of his reading of Herder, Fichte, and Mazzini. However, there has hitherto been no attempt to identify the precise elements that he borrowed from the aforementioned thinkers. This talk focuses on the influence of Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation on Blyden’s philosophy of history and his philosophy of education. I argue that while Blyden does not explicitly refer to Fichte (or to Herder or Mazzini, for that matter), his philosophy of history as presented in his Islam, Christianity, and the Negro Race, with its emphasis on the existence of racially specific laws of growth is indebted to Fichte’s philosophy of history. In particular, I show that Fichte’s idea that there is a Bildungsplan for humankind, which requires that each people or race [Geschlecht] should develop its particularity [Eigentümlichkeit] provided a suitable framework for Blyden’s defence of a special developmental path for peoples of African descent.

Bio: Zeyad El Nabolsy specializes in the history of Africana philosophy with a focus on modern African philosophy. He have previously published on Amílcar Cabral’s philosophy of culture, methodological debates about racism and ideology in the historiography of philosophy, classical German philosophy (especially Kant and Hegel), Paulin Hountondji’s philosophy of science, modern African political and social philosophy (with a focus on African Marxism), and ancient Egyptian philosophy. He is currently working on a comparative intellectual history of nineteenth African philosophy with a focus on James Africanus Beale Horton (in West Africa) and Rifa'a al-Tahtawi (in Egypt), in addition to a manuscript on Paulin Hountondji.

Join online here.