Edward Wilmot Blyden and Fichte’s Nationalist Philosophy of History
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Zeyad El Nabolsy
Abstract
Edward Wilmot Blyden’s contributions to Pan-Africanism have been widely recognised. 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 paper focuses on the potential influence of Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche 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 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, can plausibly be interpreted as having been influenced by Fichte’s philosophy of history. I provide textual and contextual evidence to support this thesis. I show that Fichte’s idea that there is a Bildungsplan for humankind, which requires that each people [Volk] should develop its particularity [Eigenthümlichkeit] provided a suitable framework for Blyden’s defence of a special developmental path for peoples of African descent.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Die absolute Reflexion und ihre Kritik in drei Modellen: Hegel – Jacobi – Adorno
- Adorno und die Aufklärung: Konzepte und Kontroversen nach 1945
- Klugheit: Ein Schlüsselbegriff der politischen Philosophie Kants
- In Focus: New Perspectives on Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808) (Esther Neuhann)
- In Focus: New Perspectives on Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808)
- From the Jena period to the Reden: Philosophical and historical developments
- “With Fichte in His Field Pack” to the “Metapolitical” Front
- Germanness and Judaism in Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation
- Edward Wilmot Blyden and Fichte’s Nationalist Philosophy of History
- Buchkritik
- Was wir wollen können
- „Selbstdenken und Aufklärung sind eine Frage der Haltung …“?
- Auf eine Vielfalt der Gründe achten
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Die absolute Reflexion und ihre Kritik in drei Modellen: Hegel – Jacobi – Adorno
- Adorno und die Aufklärung: Konzepte und Kontroversen nach 1945
- Klugheit: Ein Schlüsselbegriff der politischen Philosophie Kants
- In Focus: New Perspectives on Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808) (Esther Neuhann)
- In Focus: New Perspectives on Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808)
- From the Jena period to the Reden: Philosophical and historical developments
- “With Fichte in His Field Pack” to the “Metapolitical” Front
- Germanness and Judaism in Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation
- Edward Wilmot Blyden and Fichte’s Nationalist Philosophy of History
- Buchkritik
- Was wir wollen können
- „Selbstdenken und Aufklärung sind eine Frage der Haltung …“?
- Auf eine Vielfalt der Gründe achten