ISSN 1011-226

Quest 

An African Journal of Philosophy

Revue Africaine de Philosophie

 

Quest can only survive and thrive if you send us your best articles as contributions/
Quest ne saura survivre et croitre que sur condition que vous nous envoyez vos meilleurs articles comme contributions

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THE RESUSCITATION OF QUEST

Since early 2009, when the last three annual volumes (XX, XXI, XXII: 2006, 2007, 2008) of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie were published, our journal (like so many others) has gone through a bumpy patch. The same year saw the end of the five-year hospitality agreement between this journal and the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands. The Editor had negotiated this agreement in 2004 (as the only successful outcome of a long series of international applications for subsidy), and though it had failed to bring the secretarial and administrative assistance so badly needed, it had at least paid for printing and postage. We thank the African Studies Centre for its loyal support over these five years, and for its more incidental support in the future. Against the background of the international financial crisis from 2008 onward, revenue from subscriptions, sale of back issues, and reprint fees dwindled, and costs of printing, web design, hosting and postage were mounting. Meanwhile Quest was enjoying ever greater popularity on the part of established and junior contributors, and also the quality of the articles submitted went from strength to strength. Under those circumstances the Editorial Board saw no alternative but to sit back and wait until the financial situation would clear up sufficiently to produce, dispatch and host new annual volumes. In 2011-2012 the felicitous reprint of three Quest articles in the Eboussi Boulaga Festschrift edited by Lidia Procesi and Kasereka Kavwahirehi (Beyond the lines: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, A philosoph­ical practice / Au-delà des lignes: Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, une pratique philosophique, Munich: LINCOM), and the fees secured in that connection through the good services of Professor Valentin Mudimbe (Member of the Quest Advisory Editorial Board) seemed to bode better times for our journal; but then the Editor went down with serious illness for two periods of half a year each. By the end of 2012, these medical hurdles had finally been taken, and three new annual volumes are now lined up for imminent publication, before the middle of 2013 – including one special issue on Masolo under the guest editorship of Professor Thaddeus Metz from South Africa. A cheaper production process yet more attractive format were meanwhile initiated, of which the present double annual volume XXIII / XXIV (2009-2010) is the first implementation. For, rather than already bringing out these three volumes, we decided that we should first devote the combined annual volumes XXIII-XXIV to a long-standing book project of the Editor, in honour of his 65th birthday, and in recognition of his contributions to Quest and to the sake of African philosophy over the past decade. The book’s anti-hegemonic, anti-Eurocentric approach to long-range transcontinental philosophy from an African perspective is a fitting expression of the spirit of Quest, and a significant contribution to the global history of philosophy. While the digital version of Vols XXIII-XXIV was already made available at the Quest website by the end of 2012, the printed version is only dispatched now, due to practical difficulties. These Vols XXIII-XXIV will be sent to all those who held a subscription for the years 2009-2010. The annual volumes XXV and XXVI (to be published before Autumn 2013) will be sent to entitled subscribers i.e. those holding a paid-up subscription up to and including 2012. Those who understandably suspended their payment in the belief that Quest had ceased to be published, are advised to renew and pay up. Invoices to that effect will go out in September 2013. Subscriptions may also be renewed using the relevant page on the Quest website, http://www.quest-journal.net/subscriptions.htm , or simply by an e-mail to shikandapress@gmail.com . After keeping the subscriptions at a constant, low level for over a decade, we are now forced to slightly raise the subscription fees as from January 2013:

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to a postal address inside Africa: € 32.50 (institutions), € 32.50 (individuals) (was € 30).

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to a postal address outside Africa: € 45 (institutions), € 45 (individuals)  (was € 40).

Volume XXVII (on Masolo) is to appear in October 2013 and will be sent to all those then qualifying. Of course, all this only applies to the printed version of Quest – as ever since 2002, Quest will continue to be made freely available through open access on the Internet, which makes for wide and unimpeded access world-wide and especially in Africa. All correspondence including submission of contributions, and subscription matters, henceforth to be sent to shikandapress@gmail.com . We trust that with these positive developments, the resuscitation of Quest is a fact, and we count on your continued support,                                                                                                                                                           Wim van Binsbergen, Editor

Introduction (homepage)

Topicalities: Colloquium 'The transcultural framework for the construction of African knowledges' 23-3-04 / Actualités: Colloque 'Le cadre transculturel pour la construction des connaissances africaines' 23-3-2004

Contact information / Adresses

Editorial team/ Équipe éditorial  

Directions for contributors / Directions pour les contributeurs

Forum/Tableaux des messages

Access the Internet volumes of Quest  / Accès aux volumes Internet de Quest

Subscriptions (printed version only -- Internet version is free)/ Abonnements (version imprimée seulement -- la version Internet est gratuite)

You are already a subscriber to the printed version of Quest / Vous etes déjà abonné à la version imprimée de Quest

Cumulative contents of Quest / Table de matières cumulative de Quest

Ordering back copies / Disponibilité et commande des numéros antérieurs

Conferences/Conférences

Other activities / Autres activités

Miscellaneous / Objets divers

TXT files / Fichiers non-formattés 

Dossier Quest

Use and reprint of Quest articles (©)

Electronic form for referees (password protected)

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text of Volumes XXIII-XXIV (2009-2010)
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BY WAY OF POSTSCRIPT/SUMMARY: Before the Presocratics: Corroborating the world-wide antecedents of Western philosophy, while pinpointing the rupture which Empedocles and his contemporaries
constituted (PDF, 7 pp.)

 
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ISSN 1011-226X

QUEST

An African Journal of Philosophy/

Revue Africaine de Philosophie

Vol. XXIII-XXIV, No. 1-2, 2009-2010
[clickable link]

special issue published on the occasion of the journal Editor’s 65th birthday

Before the
Presocratics

[clickable link]

Cyclicity, transformation, and element cosmology: The case of transcontinental pre- or protohistoric cosmological substrates linking Africa, Eurasia and North America

by Wim M.J. van Binsbergen
[clickable link]

BLURB:
This exceptional and innovative work, the culmination of the author’s research over a quarter of a century, seeks to contribute to the study of the global history of human thought and philosophy. Written from an Attenuated Afrocentrist perspective, it revolves on state-of-the-art comparative methods and insights from linguistics, archaeology, ethnography, and mythology. It has a sound empirical basis (disclosed by full indexes) in its impressive bibliography and in its case studies of board games, geomantic divination, a South Central African clan system, East Asian correlative cosmologies (e.g.
易經 I Ching), cosmologies from Ancient Egypt, Africa, Native America and the Upper Palaeolithic, Greek philosophic texts (especially Empedocles), and linguistic continuities across Asia. It typologises modes of thought and traces their evolution since the Palaeolithic, claiming:

• we can reconstruct modes of thought of the remote past, in detail and reliably;
• such reconstruction is predicated on (and, in turn, confirms) two assumptions: (a) the fundamental unity of (Anatomically Modern) humankind, and (b) the porous nature, therefore, of geographical / political / identitary / cultural boundaries;
• this in particular means that sub-Saharan Africa has been part and parcel of global cultural history to a much greater extent than commonly admitted.

Applying this perspective to the Ancient Greek Presocratic philosophers who allegedly founded Western philosophy, we test Working Hypothesis (1): ‘a transformative cycle of elements (as attested in East Asia and Central Africa) has constituted a global substrate since the Upper Palaeolithic (over 12,000 years ago), informing – from a West Asian, ‘‘Pelasgian’’, proposedly proto-African source – Eurasian, African and N. American cosmologies’. An Alternative Working Hypothesis posits (2): ‘the transformative cycle of elements only dates from the West Asian Bronze Age’ (5,000-3,000 years ago). We also examine (3) ‘the possibility of this system’s transcontinental transmission in historical times’. Painstakingly, (2) and (3) are empirically vindicated, while much evidence of Upper Palaeolithic element cosmologies is found (but without cyclicity, transformation, and catalysis). This casts new light on Empedocles’ originality. Presocratic thought became a path to modern science because it constituted a backwater mutation away (especially in its reception) from the cyclic transformation dominating W. Asian / N.E. African Bronze Age cosmologies. This book’s anti-hegemonic, anti-Eurocentric approach from an African perspective is an apt expression of the spirit of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy.

Table of contents (with clickable links):
NB. the digital text as accessed by the hyperlinks below, retains colour graphics which have been converted to black-and-white in the printed edition, whose cover, however, has retained the full-colour format 

Chapter 0. Preface, acknowledgments, and overall orientation ....................................................... 5

Table of contents................................................................................................................................... 23

List of Figures.........................................................................................................................................27  

List of Tables...........................................................................................................................................30

Chapter 1. Introduction and theoretico-methodological orientation ..................................................31

Chapter 2. Inspiring data and a transcontinental comparative method:
Case study I. The pre- and protohistory of mankala board-games and geomantic divination
........ 41

Chapter 3. Case study II. The puzzling clan system of the Nkoya people of South Central Africa:
A triadic, catalytic transformation cycle of elements in disguise?
...................................................... 87

Chapter 4. Long-range, transcontinental manifestations of a transformation cycle of elements..................................................................................................................................................109

Chapter 5. The Presocratics in Western Eurasia: Four immutable elemental
categories as the norm throughout Western Eurasia for the last two millennia
............................. 149

Chapter 6. Exploring the long-range pre- and protohistory of element
cosmologies: Steps in the .unfolding of human thought faculties
.....................................................179

Chapter 7. Yì Jīng and West Asia: A partial vindication of Terrien de Lacouperie.............................................................................................................................................215

Chapter 8. Further discussion of transcontinental relationships with a view
of assessing our overall Working Hypothesis
.................................................................................... 255

Chapter 9. Conclusion: Diachronic varieties of the transformation cycle of
elements, and their global distribution
............................................................................................285

Bibliography..........................................................................................................................................297

Index of authors cited........................................................................................................................... 353

Explanatory index of proper names other than authors cited.......................................................... 363

Directions for authors /  Directions pour les auteurs..........................................................................................................................................397

 

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