Intersubjectivity : a cosmology theodicy and narratology of Ubuntu in conversation with the philosophy of organism of A.N. Whitehead

Abstract

The rationality of this interdisciplinary transversal conversation is premised upon the conviction that there is much in common between the relational ontology of ubuntu (e.g. ubuntu ngummuntu ngabantu) and the philosophy of organism of English mathematician and philosopher A.N. Whitehead. It is revealed that the African aphorism which speaks to the deepest longings of a people has metaphysical and philosophical moorings and the speculative process schema is based on physicality. In the course of the transversal encounter, the mutual prehension of ubuntu-process yields a systematic response to creaturely physical and mental suffering. A challenge of theodicy is encountered by 'process' in posing divine passive complicity amid active redemption. Ubuntu, for its part, is expanded into a responsive postfoundational mode. In both internal conversations, ubuntu proves that it can bear the weight of an expanded application and process prehensions are given flesh. An extended narratological examination takes place between ubuntu-process, neuroscience and an ubuntu-process approach to the homiletic of parables. Suggested trajectories for further application of a postfoundational understanding of ubuntu, armed with not only its liminal expertise but the relational cosmology of the philosophy of organism will comprise invitations to apply Whiteheadean ubuntu-process to investigations of human relationship to the environment and among differing human tribal allegiances, an elaboration of its intraand inter-personal/intra- and inter-social dynamics drawing upon the learning from the permeability of formal fuzzy logic, further elaboration awaits in an ubuntu-process contribution to studies of integral theory, critical theory and embodied realism; the place of ubuntu-process among other ontologies and, finally, the role of ubuntu-process in descriptive and prescriptive analyses of mimetic dynamics.