There is Caribbean history, Caribbean literature, and Caribbean music; but is there Caribbean philosophy? When this question is asked in this manner, there appears to be a tone of skepticism, to the effect that Caribbean philosophy may not exist In order to claim that Caribbean philosophy exists, we need to provide a ground for dislodging this seeming skepticism. The attempt to provide such ground may be regarded as the question of Caribbean philosophy.
The question whether there is or can be a Caribbean philosophy has engaged the attention of some scholars, who are not necessarily professional philosophers. For instance, Paget Henry (2000: xi) says that “Caribbean philosophy has been carefully embedded in the practices of non philosophical discourses almost to the point of concealment”. Henry traced the reason for this situation to the fact that the history of colonialism and slavery created a situation in which attention is shifted from traditional philosophical discourses.
It is interesting to note that one of my students in a term paper made an allusion to this kind of argument. According to her, the Caribbean (government, public) does not pay particular attention to philosophy as an academic discipline because attention is focused, nowadays, on the development of science and technology. In essence, one yardstick of measuring the importance of a discipline is (material) utility.
We shall respond to these two positions, starting with the latter. Our response will be both practical and theoretical. Practically, developments in the contemporary world suggest that we need philosophy to organize our world, to understand our history, to assess our present and to plan for our future. Philosophy is able to do this by virtue of its character as a critical and analytical discipline. The critical nature of philosophy enables us to question received beliefs. It also prevents us from seeing ourselves as the final authority on any issue. This attitude promotes the virtue of tolerance which is necessary for peaceful co-existence, especially in a multicultural society like ours. Theoretically, we have to note that development in science has to be guided by the development in the knowledge of human persons who are supposed to be the beneficiary and recipient of the gains of science. Persons are loci of value and there are issues about what we should do, rather than what we could do in certain situations. As we live in human societies, we should be weary of interpreting utility in terms of material conditions alone. In this connection, Bertrand Russell (2001:89) has warned us against “the practical man” who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that man must have ‘food* for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing ‘food’ for the mind. In other words, utility should not be seen only in material terms; there is also an aspect of utility that speaks to the intellect and philosophy is a good candidate for this description.
In response to Paget Henry’s concealment theory, we will like to mention two points. Firsdy, it might be the case that he is referring to the broad sense of philosophy in which philosophy is seen as a set of principles on which a particular society or culture is predicated.
This is a legitimate use of the term. However, this usage is different from philosophy in the professional and academic sense. secondly, the fact that the philosophy of the Caribbean is concealed is not unique to the Caribbean. This is always the case in most cultures. It is the task of the philosopher (or sociologist of knowledge) to examine these data, analyze them and attempt to make them relevant to a given situation.