African century journal ISSN 2514-5673
‘I am a man, nothing human is alien to me‘ – Terence the African.
This peer-reviewed journal was started in 1999 at the dawn of the 21st Century
MARCH 2022
What is the major change since Dec 2021? Obviously, the Ukraine war is the apparent difference. But is it the true difference or only the apparent difference? There is much talk about a changing world.There are two aspects to this changing world: the decline of the US and the emergence of a new multi-polar world. It is easy to conflate the two but that would be a major error. These are two separate movements.
In the US, the resistance to the new world merely brings about the collapse of the US dominance faster than otherwise. Some Americans talk as if it were ever credible to seek the Wolfowitz plan of indefinite US dominance. This would be a resurrection of the 1,000 year Reich in US garbs. Members of the American elite who witnessed the decline of US attribute this to some enemy action. This all assumes that America’s rise was due to its own cleverness and bar enemy action would inevitably last for ever.
This relates to the lengthy article in this issue -’Emergence of Modern Western Eschatology’. Originally written for proposed book, it focuses on the complex tools required to understand the western view of Africa and the world. Hegel, in one of his wise moments, describes how it is when an age grows stale and cold that its features become clear and discernible (Note 1). That this article attempts to delineate the features of the Western world-view would then be evidence of its terminal decline. Perhaps. It is a tough and delicate task to see the Western world from a distance without rancour or obsequiousness. Western culture and academia say so much that is untrue about itself that even its own scholars are deeply lost.
As the new age emerges, the distinct features of the former reveal themselves as in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, while the vaunted self-image crumbles into dust.
Notes
- ‘When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.’ GWF Hegel ‘Elements of the philosophy of Right’ ed A Wood, trans HB Nisbet, Preface p.23
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