A Hope Beyond Mere Images
A response to Robert Odero’s “The Memory of Paradise (I)” (Part 1 of 2).
In recent months, Robert Odero has graced The AfroDiscourse with two profound reflections on Africa’s path to redemption. In the first of his reflections, Odero spoke about what he sees as (black) Africa’s fixation on the past, on history, on the graveyard of time – and he lamented that this fixation seems to be a remembrance unaccompanied by a gaze towards the future. It is, in short, a memory without hope. To remedy this situation, based on a reflection on St. Augustine’s thoughts on time in his Confessions, Odero insists on recovering (or simply obtaining?) the hope in the afterlife that animates the Christian faith and that long served as an inspiring and renewing impetus for the energies of Western civilization.
However, while Odero’s suggestion is undoubtedly cogent, his interpretation of “hope” and “future” leaves room for doubt. Even as he argues that Africans are fixated on memory – an image of the past – he proposes that the African unite his memory to a fixation on expectation – and this is an image of the future. And yet, it is clear that an image is not the reality it represents. To put it bluntly, the image of a cow does not give milk. To put it less bluntly (but more sharply), the image of being is not Being. And more sharply still, the mere image of future salvation is the same as a myth that lacks power to save. Yes, Odero hits the mark when he argues that the fixation on the past must be conquered by hope and the future. But this hope and future must be more than mere images.
Before examining Odero’s arguments in more detail and developing the theme of “a hope beyond mere image”, I would like to clarify some things. First, what follows does not include an analysis of the thought of St. Augustine of Hippo. Instead, it responds to Odero’s interpretation of Augustine – one which, besides, is based on a translation that diverges significantly from St. Augustine’s actual words in his Confessions. Second, the present article does not reinterpret John Mbiti’s thoughts on the African’s sense of time either. In particular, the revindication of the African’s relation to the past, which Odero attempts in the second of his reflections, is left for the second part of this response. Indeed, in that second half and partly inspired by Odero’s reflections on the African past, I hope to show how the arguments in this present article make a case for an “African genius”, a vein of genuinely novel and truly African insights to be mined for the benefit of Africa and the world.
In this part, though, we will respond to Odero’s main arguments in his first reflection and point out how the confusion of the future with an image of it undermines the remedy he proposes to the African “fixation on the past”. Following that, we propose a notion of future and hope based on Leonardo Polo’s “transcendental freedom” and explain how it implies a hope that really does lead us into a future beyond mere images and, based on this, reframe Odero’s representation of “the African problem”.
All that said, let’s dive into Odero’s arguments.
Odero’s first argument: time as continuum in St. Augustine of Hippo?
Odero bases his reflections on a quote from book XI of St. Augustine’s Confessions, which, curiously, he translates as follows:
[Time is] present to us as past in memory, as present in attention, and as future in expectation.
Immediately afterwards, Odero rephrases these words:
In other words, the past is nothing but the human mind as it remembers, the present is nothing but the human mind as it considers the here and now, and the future is nothing but the human mind in expectation. […] Time is precisely “the flow of the ever-present now” – a flow held in place by our mental attention or by the consciousness of the present moment.
Odero thus seems to interpret time as fundamentally a continuum, a flow that we capture with our mental attention. Past, present, and future would all represent different points along the continuum, different moments in the flow. The past would represent “points that have passed, that have been”; the future would represent “points that will come to be, but are not yet”.
Clearly, the future to which Odero refers as future is in fact present to the mind. We can only speak of “the future” if we are referring to a reality that we are currently thinking of and expressing through our words. But if, in reality, the future is not the present, that is, if the future simply is not (yet), then this “future” to which we refer with our words, these “future” moments in the flow of time, are not really “the future”, because we are speaking of them as if they were present. In other words, the idea of the future is not in fact the future. To speak of the future in this way, we must first reduce reality to an idea – an image – that is all present, all at once: the continuum or, in Odero’s words, “the flow of the ever-present now”. In short, the future to which Odero seems to refer is not, in fact, the future, but only its pale image, an idea that appears to lack symbolic reference to what it would express. This idea does not lead us beyond our present state but, instead, mires us more deeply within it. However, contra Odero, our hopes do not belong to such a future reduced to idea. For hope reaches beyond the present – and therefore, beyond the image.
But this is not to say that we find this problematic notion of time as continuum in Augustine. I will not pronounce myself one way or the other on the matter. Instead, I limit myself to pointing out that Odero’s translation of the words of the bishop of Hippo differs quite significantly from the original text. For Augustine, there is not “one time” but, in fact, “three times”, as we see in this more accurate translation of the original Latin by Edward Bouverie Pusey. The relevant text is in italics; the rest is relevant context:
What now is clear and plain is that neither things to come nor past are. Nor is it properly said, "there be three times, past, present, and to come": yet perchance it might be properly said, “there be three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future.” For these three do exist in some sort, in the soul, but otherwhere do I not see them; present of things past, memory; present of things present, sight; present of things future, expectation.
As we will see later, the distinction between past, present, and future as present in the soul in distinct ways is at least reconcilable with Leonardo Polo’s understanding of hope and transcendental freedom. For now, though, having indicated a crucial problem in Odero’s perspective on the future, we should examine how this affects his understanding of hope.
Odero’s second argument: a non-eternal eternity, pale image of the future
After speaking of time as a continuum along which past, present, and future are different points, Odero argues that “memory” in Augustine is connected to the anamnesis of the Neoplatonists, and that Augustine then relates it to a future climactic fulfillment. For Odero, this anamnesis refers not to a set of remembered ideas but, instead, to
an inner ontological tendency within all men that directs them towards the divine … [and opens] up all men to the prelapsarian origins of time.
In Augustine (as Odero interprets him), however, the divine is not just “before time”, but is instead also “after time”. God is eternal, containing time within Himself rather than being contained within time, so that He is both before and after, past and future. Eternity contains the continuum within itself and, therefore, is outside the continuum. But in Jesus Christ, God has entered time itself. For that reason, the past and the future all meet in the present, because that which contains the entire continuum has entered it, bridging the gap between all moments; consequently, as Odero expresses it in a particularly poetic phrase, “[our] earthly activities could echo into eternity just as God’s divine activity had reverberated in time.” This echoing of the present in eternity, in the eternity that is after (and before) time, justifies hope, because we are certain that the present is directed towards the future world and that, therefore, it has an overall meaning and direction. Or so runs Odero’s argument.
Odero’s position here contains an estimable effort to relate the present to eternity. Nevertheless, the argument requires rescuing, for, as it stands, it is radically undermined by the notion of time as a continuum, and the consequent distortion of eternity. As we have already said, to conceive the past or the future as points along the temporal continuum is to think of them as present – albeit in the mode of “has been” and “not yet” respectively. Thus, they are not seen as what they are: past and future. Instead, they are seen as pale images nearly devoid of substance. To think of the future as “not yet” is to imagine it as a present, but one that is not – in other words, it is to imagine it as a nothingness, and then to join the idea of nothingness to that real experience that is “will-be”. Clearly, nothingness does not exist outside the mind. Whatever content there is in the idea of “future” belongs to that experience of “will-be” – and it is in this sense that the future is present.
To grasp this idea better, we may refer to the Aristotelian notion of being: ens. Ens is the present participle1 of the Latin verb esse, meaning “to be”. We can understand this notion as a noun – “the thing that is”, “id quod est”. This is the nominal sense of the term “ens”. Thus, we can speak of such disparate realities as a chair or dog or man as each being an “ens”. But the experience of “will-be” does not refer to the nominal sense of ens. Instead, it refers to the verbal sense – to “be-ing” as a verb, rather than “being” as a noun. The nominal sense of ens corresponds to ideas of things; on the other hand, the verbal sense expresses their reality, which our ideas do not contain: they are be-ing. This real distinction between the nominal and verbal senses of ens, affirmed by Thomas Aquinas,2 can be expressed in much simpler terms: the idea of a cow does not give milk, nor does the idea of a lion roar, nor does the idea of a man think.3 Now then, the future as “will-be” corresponds precisely to this verbal sense of ens – a be-ing that “will be”, which only makes sense precisely because it is verbal. This is how the future is present – and this, incidentally, would be a non-problematic way of understanding the phrase Augustine did use to explain the future: “the present of things future, expectation [exspectatio – literally, “looking outwards”].”4
As for eternity, it becomes clear that to understand it as “beyond the continuum” or “containing the continuum”, as Odero seems to do, is to falsify it, because time is not a continuum. Hope is not immured in the present moment that is then transmuted into coinciding with “the future”, that is, with a not-yet-existent point on the graph of time – for the “not-yet” is not the future, and time is not a graph. Reality is not its mental image; instead, the image points to reality. Only insofar as it points to the reality is the image of the continuum true.
Thus, we pave the way for a recovery of the golden kernel of Odero’s second argument, a recovery I briefly sketch here before going into more detail below: to say that Eternity is beyond time, with regard to the future, is to say that Eternity transcends the “will-be” that presently is be-ing; to say that the Eternal has entered time is to say that the Transcendent has somehow addressed Himself to the “will-be” that is be-ing; and to speak of hope is to speak of man’s always-ongoing response (respond-ing) to the eternal Word, Jesus of Nazareth.
Odero’s third argument: Africa’s need for a forward-looking gaze
Odero ends his argument by considering John Mbiti’s “African concept of time”. While there is much that we could say about this – and much more that Odero does say in his second reflection, which the second part of this response will address – we limit ourselves here to the conclusion that Odero draws:
From Mbiti’s perspective, the African’s concept of time is not linear and forward-looking; rather, it moves forward by spiraling backward, so to speak. […] If we dared to be brutally honest with ourselves, we would also admit that we are still trapped in a cyclical, backward-looking, vision of time. […] There is a glaring deficiency in our vision of time and life. And where there is no vision, there is no future, no development worthy of the name. Let us say it more clearly and in religious language. Our time-consciousness stands in need of redemption. […] Africa’s development is tied to her vision of the future and her management of time.
Now, it is certainly true that a fixation on the past suffers from a “glaring deficiency” of a hopeful gaze towards the future. The connection that Odero makes here is valuable. And yet, with due respect, I must add that his insight, too, needs a certain redemption – redemption from a notion of time as fundamentally a continuum, by understanding the future from within a vision of the verbal sense of being: be-ing. Just such an understanding, together with the Transcendent addressing Himself to man in Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Word, form the foundation for the hope that (as we will see) reveals the true nobility that Africa’s “fixation on the past” is called to be.
Leonardo Polo’s transcendental freedom and a hope beyond mere images
In summary, while Odero’s theses definitely contain laudable elements, they are undermined by a fundamental flaw. In my view, the root of the problem is the reductive notion of the future that seems to lurk behind his words: to conceive the future as a point along an imagined continuum is to reduce it to an image present in the mind as an object of thought. The future is thus reduced to a bare “id quod”, apart from the “est” – a noun without the reality of actual be-ing as a verb. In short, this reductive notion of the future de-futurizes the future, as Polo puts it.5
The hopeful vision of life that Odero argues Africa needs requires another kind of “presence of the future”, to use the Augustinian phrase, a presence of the future that does not de-futurize it. This is where Polo’s notion of transcendental freedom comes in – for he describes “transcendental freedom”, the freedom that the human person is, as “possession of the future that does not de-futurize it”.6 This description speaks of precisely what we are seeking: a presence of the future that does not de-futurize it, but that also means that the future is truly present.
Before exploring transcendental freedom more thoroughly, two other instances of this notion come to mind and may help to make it more intelligible. The first is one that Polo himself refers to in a later work: St. Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epectasy (epéktasis), a term that this Greek Father of the Church uses to describe the soul’s eternal movement into God’s infinite being – the ever-growing character of the soul’s tension towards God.7 The second appears at the end of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia. In the final chapter, tellingly titled “Farewell to Shadow-Lands”, the characters find themselves in the Narnia of the afterlife, Lewis’s image of Heaven. The protagonists go deeper and higher into that Narnia (“Further up and further in!”), and each time discover a new Narnia:
“I see,” she said at last, thoughtfully. “I see now. This garden is like the Stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside.”
“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”
Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden at all but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all.
“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the Stable door! I see ... world within world, Narnia within Narnia....”
“Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”
Having set the stage, we now dive into transcendental freedom. First, we explain the irreducibility of the vision of being to the “mental object” – what I have loosely been referring to as an “image in the mind”. Next, we show that this vision of being is more radically an openness inward, an intimate openness, to the Transcendent. From this perspective, we can at last come to a fuller notion of the future and, more relevant for our analysis, a deeper understanding of hope. Finally, we reframe the African crisis as not just the lack of a vision of the future, but also the breaking of the past, before proceeding to offer a brief sketch of why transcendental freedom is the root of all novelty and, hence, goes beyond any fixation on the past. (In Part II, we will instead explain how transcendental freedom elevates the past rather than abandoning it, and indeed, why the elevation of the past is a certain perfection of transcendental freedom, so that hope always has a radically redemptive aspect regarding history.)
Truth and intellection, the vision of be-ing
Let us return briefly to the distinction between the nominal and verbal senses of being – “being” (ens) and “be-ing”. As Polo explains, this distinction comes up in Aquinas’s treatise De veritate (On truth). Specifically, Aquinas articulates his view on the distinction when addressing the very first question of the treatise: “What is truth?”8
Before Aquinas, Augustine had answered the question thus: “truth is that which is” – verum est id quod est. Now, as we have already noted, this expression is complex: it expresses the real being in a nominal sense and a verbal sense. However, Aristotle and Aquinas would adopt different positions regarding whether these two senses of “being” or ens are really inseparable or, instead, only conceptually distinct. The Stagirite would assert that they are conceptually distinct, but in reality, inseparable. Aristotle affirms that we cannot say “is” without an implicit “that which”; we cannot speak the verb as referring to some reality without an implicit subject. Otherwise, we would have an existing that is pure existing, without formal content, which would be intelligible.
Aquinas would take a divergent stance on the matter, though. He would hold that they are, in fact, really separable – and like Aristotle, he would refer to experience as a basis for his claim. Clearly, to speak of “that which is”, or ens, we must refer to ens insofar as it is contained within our reason. But our reason is itself ens. Consequently, ens is not in the reason according to its real being. Instead, it is there in the mind according to its nominal sense, and not its verbal sense. Therefore, the nominal sense and the verbal sense of ens are really separable, that is, distinguishable in reality; and “truth” is the same as “that which is” insofar as it thereby refers to the nominal sense, and not the verbal sense, of being. As we can see, this also addresses Aristotle’s objection: we cannot speak the verb “is” as referring to some reality without an implicit subject or content, a “that which”, insofar as the verb expresses an idea of reason, which must needs address itself to the nominal sense of being.
However, we have a difficulty here. If that notion of being that corresponds to the verbal sense is not known by the mind, then what we know is not the being as such but, instead, only the being as conceived. Yet, this does not accurately express our experience of knowledge as pointing towards a reality beyond itself. Our mind sees the being as such.9 But we cannot say that the mind, therefore, contains being; nor can we hold that the mind is simply reduced to being as a part – they are distinct. The only solution, then, is to hold that knowing and being are not reduced to each other, but instead, “coincide” or “touch”: knowing “touches”, or co-exists with, the real. But of course, the knowledge we are speaking of here is not the knowledge of reason – it is not the knowledge of what being is, i.e., in the nominal sense. Instead, as Polo continues,10 it is pure intellection, a knowing deeper than the knowledge of reason, a knowing to which corresponds what we might take the liberty of calling the vision of being – of be-ing. As such, intellection is not a “knowing”, but a “know-ing” – it is likewise verbal, so to speak, and corresponds to the personal act of being, gazing upon extramental acts of being.11
Now then, returning to the broader theme of the article, such a gazing does not contain esse. Instead, it is likewise verbal. Consequently, it is a gazing upon being that can “touch” being as be-ing, as “will-be”. In short, it can gaze upon the future without de-futurizing it, without reducing it to the static presence of a continuum, because this gazing itself is “will-be”.
Regardless of whether Augustine meant the word in this way, the notion of this gazing as “will-be” does seem to find resonance in that word exspectatio, looking outwards. That said, though, this gazing is also, and more radically, a looking inwards.
“Further in and further up!”
The next step is somewhat difficult to explain, though it is most profitably understood as a description that the reader should “follow along” like a musician follows a music score as he interprets it: the reader should look inwards to see within himself what is being described. Here goes.
The outward gaze is something we become aware of. We gaze upon being, and we are somehow internally open to our gaze. This does not mean we look upon this gaze. Instead, we gaze outwards, and we perceive the proceeding outwards of our gaze – that perception is the interior openness I refer to. Moreover, we recognize that this gaze is a light that illumines, even as we likewise perceive that its content or nature is not exhausted in mere illumining: that is not all it is meant for. Otherwise, we could not focus on the light, as we would be inexorably locked into looking outwards upon be-ing. Instead, that light- this gazing, which Polo refers to as the personal intellect or personal knowing- is also inwardly open to a Transcendence that we cannot perceive, a Light that transcends it. This Light, this Knowing, has been revealed to us as the Logos, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity; and the personal intellect seeks to become ever more knowing from Knowing, light from Light – but in a way that is verbal rather than nominal, future rather than a static continuum. Here is the gaze that seeks to see the face of the Lord, so that it may know Him as more intimate to it than to itself. This is true even for the non-Christian, for he is intrinsically and radically an opening to the Transcendent who, whether he knows it or not, has come in search of us.
Thus, the personal knowing – the knowing that each of us radically is – reaches “further in and further up, " recalling C.S.Lewis's words that echo St. Gregory of Nyssa’s epéktasis. However, we now understand that these words refer not only to the afterlife but also to our earthly life in search of God, and an ever more intimate union with Him. This is the vision possesses the future without de-futurizing it,; it is the vision that is “will-be”, that will be more intensely light, more intensely meaning, more intensely knowing. This is the effulgent light from which all philosophy, all science, all symbol comes. This is the source of the marveling of the child, the yearning of the artist, the playful quest of the experimenter, and the pre-Christian’s straining towards an unknown God. This is vocation and mission. This is the word that every person is and is called to be in ever-increasing measure: an irreducibly unique seeking of the God who, whether we realize it or not, has come in search of us in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the knowledge proper to a hope that transcends mere images. Yet, as might be evident, the union sought is not one of knowing alone. Even more radically, the union desired is one of love – of God’s accepting of the effusive giving that we are and are called to be, a giving that opens upwards and inwards in the Spirit, into the Son, and towards the Father.12 This reaching upwards and inwards is Polo’s “transcendental freedom”.
Having cast hope and the future in more appropriate terms, we can now turn to the third element: reframing the African post-colonial crisis and its relationship to hope.
Reframing the African post-colonial crisis: growing beyond the breaking of a futureless past
If Odero is to be believed, the African crisis is one of a fixation on the past and a lack of a future-oriented gaze. Of course, it would be foolish to interpret his argument in absolutist terms: it is most certainly not the case that there is no future-oriented gaze, nor that all are fixated on the past – nor do I in any way assert that this is what Odero argues. However, after examining the notion of “future”, it seems that the problem is not so much the fixation on the past as the lack of a future-oriented gaze – at least, at first.
Without presuming to have engaged in a survey of the history of the various strands of tradition within sub-Saharan Africa,13 we can say that a vital strand running through her contemporary experience is the colonial encounter, 35 years after the last African country achieved independence from colonization. A post-colonial search for identity pervades her literature, as even a cursory search reveals – think of Chinua Achebe’s famous trilogy. This problem is not just the lack of a future-oriented gaze. Instead, it is this lack, but situated in a context where the recapitulation of the past seems impossible, or at least impracticable: the organization of territory has changed with the establishment of the State-based political model, an order of private property, and a centralization of economic development in a few areas that promotes rural-urban migration and the mixing of peoples. In such circumstances, the clan and the tribe tend to be reduced to a language group, to diminish as politically effective structures, precisely in the urban centers that are the seat of governance – and we observe a bifurcation, as if two worlds exist in each country.14 This bifurcation is simultaneously a dilemma: it seems that we cannot go back to what we once were, for that would be to reject the growth that we have experienced in education and numerous other sectors. However, we cannot leave the past behind either, because we are just not provinces of France or England. They have their past, their narrative, their meaning, and we have ours.
Precisely here is Polo’s rich notion of the future so valuable: the breaking of the past is an opportunity to turn towards the future – or instead, to become the turning-towards-the-Transcendent that is future; in other words, to hope. It seems to me no coincidence that the breaking of the tribe occurred simultaneously with what was the first evangelization for most of sub-Saharan Africa. Nor is it to be overlooked that so many missionary efforts set education as one of their priorities. The breaking of the tribe confounds the word that was transmitted from generation to generation, a stark revelation that it lacks the vigor to make sense of the world. For that reason, the breaking compels us to seek a deeper meaning, a deeper light – and ultimately, a deeper Word.
That said, we must point out two things before closing this article. The first is that the notion of the future adopted does not imply that we must jettison the past – as we will see in the second part of this response. Indeed, because the ultimate source of meaning is Transcendent Light, the hope that seeks Him also seeks (and continually finds) a redemption of the past. To the extent that she hopes, in that measure must Sub-Saharan Africa remember her past so as to take it up once more; her present sons must not only have their eyes filled with light, but must also turn their eyes once more upon their forefathers and, with filial reverence, point them to the light. One vital consequence is that African philosophizing (which, to be truly so, must be open to theological truth without being fideistic) must be accompanied by a lively and increasing knowledge of Africa’s history.
The second observation is that the evangelization of sub-Saharan Africa was not free from error. Accounts of this abound and can be found elsewhere. I limit myself to pointing out the following: in a certain measure, the colonizers stand, in a certain limited respect, as fathers to we who people the dark continent, with their own history of glory and misery that seeks redemption. I am not qualified to justify this claim. Indeed, I only repeat the words of a woman who both suffered the darkness and tasted the light: St. Josephine Bakhita. This Sudanese woman, abducted by Arab slavers at the age of 7 in 1877, sold and tortured, and later bought by an Italian consul in Khartoum and, eventually, taken to Italy where she discovered the faith, was asked by an Italian student of Bologna what she would do were she to come across her kidnappers by pure chance. Without hesitation, she responded:
If I met the slave-merchants who kidnapped and tortured me, I would kneel down and kiss their hands. If what happened to me had never taken place, how could I become a Christian and a religious?
Yes, error and, in some cases, wickedness plagued the colonial enterprise. But hope is stronger than its legacy, so strong that it can redeem it, just as it can – and indeed, must – redeem our own past, as we will see in the second part of this article.
In English, the present participle is indicated by the suffix “-ing”, as in ‘cook-ing’, ‘driv-ing’, ‘read-ing’, and ‘be-ing’.
This distinction corresponds to the famous distinction that Aquinas traces between esse and essence. The distinction is visible in the revealed truth that God created the world out of nothing – i.e., that the idea of the world is not the same as its actual be-ing. Of course, in created beings, esse and essence are not separate, though they are distinct. However, esse, and not essence, is primary – for that reason, even the essence “is”, the “id quod est”: the essence is not static. See Leonardo Polo (2010, 3ª ed.; 1ª ed.: 2003). Antropología trascendental. Tomo II: La esencia de la persona humana, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S. A., Navarra, pp. 56 and 64.
This last example is adapted from a phrase that Polo repeats: el yo pensado no piensa (“the thought I does not think”). For instance, see ibid., p. 44.
As Polo explains, the future of the cosmos is not the same as the future of the human person, as we will see below. Strictly speaking, the cosmos is not “will-be”. Rather, it persists – it continues be-ing. But the human person is presently “will-be”, is radically new as novelty, because the human person opens (is an open-ing – verbal, not nominal) towards God, who transcends creation and is “ever new”. See Leonardo Polo (2010, 3ª ed.; 1ª ed.: 1999). Antropología trascendental. Tomo I: La persona humana, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S. A., Navarra, pp. 222-226.
Leonardo Polo, Antropología Trascendental, Tomo I, op. cit., p. 226.
Ibid., p. 222.
Leonardo Polo (2014). Epistemología, creación y divinidad (1ª ed.), Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S. A., Pamplona, p. 111.
What follows is a rephrasing of Polo’s explanation: see Leonardo Polo, Antropología Trascendental, Tomo I, op. cit., pp. 34-38. Naturally, I take full responsibility for any logical or other errors contained herein – not because Polo is infallible, but because I recognize my own fallibility. In other words, in case of errors, kindly refer to the original passage.
Of course, one may object: How do we know that this experience is, in fact, valid? However, that question has nothing to do with said experience; the experience always precedes the question. Therefore, that question is based not on that experience, not on a reference towards reality, but instead on a subjective criterion that attempts not to know what is real but, instead, to dominate our own knowledge, to control it. But how can a criterion that emerges from within and directed inwards possibly claim legitimate authority over an experience that internally refers us outwards? If anything, to discover the truth or falsity of said experience, we should investigate it on its own terms – for it refers us outwards, unlike the pretension to control. See Leonardo Polo, Antropología Trascendental, Tomo II, op. cit., pp. 29-33.
See Leonardo Polo, Antropología Trascendental, Tomo I, op. cit., pp. 53-57.
I am taking liberties in referring to the act of being as “verbal”, insofar as the term might imply a subject of the verb. I use the term here without any such connotations. For the purposes of clarity, the distinction I have referred to as the nominal and verbal sense of being might be complemented by another description: being as a static object of thought versus being as outpouring.
Again, it is worth insisting that this is so regardless of whether we are Christian. Moreover, the hope we have described is not immune to despair – to a rejection of the seeking, a rejection of the giving. If these should occur, we reduce ourselves, afflict ourselves with the blindness of meaninglessness in the measure of our rejection, and in that same measure, imprison ourselves within the walls of our being, unable to love.
After just a cursory consideration, several come to mind: the Berbers of North Africa, the Axumite Empire of what is now Sudan and Ethiopia, the Christian influence in and Islamic conquest of large parts of both regions, the Hausa Kingdom and Mali Empire, the immensity that is the Niger-Congo speaking peoples, the complex encounter that was the European and Arab slave trade, the communication between Africa and the Middle East that gave rise to Swahili culture along Africa’s eastern coast down to Mozambique, and the Khoisan and the complex encounter that generated the Afrikaners.