Page 36 - CONSCIENCISM By Kwame Nkrumah_Neat

30 CONSCIENCISM PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY 3 1
concerns ofhuman life are differently concdved, philosophy reveals revolution matured in his attempt to explain nature in terms of
a different bias. And as society becomes differently organized, nature. The second revolution consisted in his belief that the unity
philosophy is differently conceived. During the European Renais­ ofnature consisted not in its being. but in its materiality.
sance, when man became the centre of the tmiverse, the hmnan The social milieu in which Thales lived encouraged him to
mind and the ways in which it might fix the limits of what is insist on explaining nature in terms ofnature. In Ionia. where he
real became the chief topics of philosophy. There was a grow­ . lived, political power was becoming entrenched in the hands of a
ing attempt to identify what could be with what could be known, . mercantile class which had a vested interest in the development of
and this tendency later attained its subtlest and most defmitive nautical techniques and techniques of production, for it was on
statement in the critical philosophy of Kant. The rise of ration­ such techniques that their prosperity hinged - more so when their
alism was indeed one whole stream of thought which kept reality society later became more firmly based on slave labour. The Greeks,
firmly within the light of human reason, until in the writings as Xenophon confirms in his Economics, came to regard mechanical
of Leibniz processes came to be mere analogues in nature of · arts with contempt. But in Thales' time, individuals, including
logical relations. In this way the limits of the human tmderstand­ philosophers, depended more on their own productivity for sus­
ing came to be identified with the limits of nature. This idea tenance. Indeed, during one particularly good olive harvest, Thales
survives today in the notion that logically there are no mysteries, astutely cornered the available olive presses in Miletus and sub­
that to every question there is an answer, that there is nothing on sequently hired them out at exorbitant rates. Owing to the change
earth, beneath the waters or in the heavens above, which is in in the structure of society whereby social-political hegemony
principle unknowable. passed into the hands of the mercantile oligarchy, prosperity no
Empiricism too was, despite its antagonism to rationalism, a · longer depended in a crucial way on a propitiation of the gods in
reflection ofman's conception ofhis own position in the scheme of connection with agriculture. It depended on commerce with its
things. It, too, sought to make the limits of what is real coincide ancillaries whereby the Ionian products were marketed along and
with the limits of the human understanding. For it tended to across the Mediterranean.
regard what is real exclusively in terms of impressions upon our There was consequently no need to continue to explain the
senses. world by reference to the gods. Thales' intellectual predecessors
During the European Renaissance, when man gained an increased had invoked supernature in order to explain nature. But ifthe gods
appreciation of his personal and individual dignity and freedom, were to be explanatory devices for accounting for phenomena,
philosophy responded with disquisitions on the nature ofnatural then there was nothing to prevent the most vicious inequalities
rights and connected ideas. Philosophy attempted to provide from arising in society. Where gods are used to account for nature
principles which should inform any political theory, ifit is to con­ a certain degree of sacerdotal power is inevitable; and where
form to the Renaissance conception of man. Nor had philosophy · priests have wielded political power, it is not only explanations of
in this departed from its early character. At every stage between natural phenomena which have been bemused with theology;
Thales and modern times, philosophy was firmly geared on to theological explanations for social phenomena have also been
what were, for the time being, conceived as primary concerns of encouraged. With the priests securely installed as the onlyauthor­
life. ized popularizers of the divine will, the only persons fitted by
The history of Greek democracy, for example, must really be calling and by grace to expound mystic purposes, social inequalities
traced to Thales. Thales spearheaded two revolutions. The first arise to fortify their exclusive role .. And since their power is thought