Idée de renaissance selon Marcien Towa

Abstract

Marcien Towa, in his long philosophical exploration, examines the question of African renaissance, which he tries to define and conceptualize in relation to that of the liberation of Africa, from the view point of its progress. This work aims at discussing the definition and conceptualization of African renaissance according to Towa in that he identifies it with freedom as the possibility of development in the modern sense, namely, the mastery of science and technology, the ability to organise and comply with ethical rules to operate the State or the company. Indeed, faced with the ravages of imperialism, the first African intellectuals reacted with a movement called Negritude, with the intention of freeing their continent from the grip of the foreign invader. From Negritude was born ethnophilosophy, an intellectual movement focused on the exhumation of authentic philosophy to Africa. While Negritude insists on the exaltation of the Negro, his culture, his specificity and his originality, ethnophilosophy is narcissistic, advocates the cult of difference by promoting a specific philosophy to Africans. Thus, in his conceptualization of the idea of rebirth, Marcien Towa opposes an uncompromising critique of these two systems of thought by showing that Negritude and ethnophilosophy are not likely to promote any development in Africa. For this reason, he comes to the idea of self-denial which involves the identification, the assimilation of the secret of Western power. This secret is nothing but the mastery of philosophy, science and technique. It is the limits of African culture that must compel Africans to carry out an intellectual, cultural, ideological and theological revolution aimed at opening up to the force of Western civilization, in order not only to liberate themselves, but also to regain health and vigor. This idea still retains its relevance today, because the African renaissance or development in the modern sense in most of the young States of Africa is still slow to see the light of day due, in large part, to its technical and scientific backwardness. Nowadays, in addition to philosophizing taking into account our current problems of freedom and development, it is about Africans freeing themselves from the colonial mentality present in them and around them.